Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners



Quotes of the Day:


"It is customary in democratic countries to deplore expenditure on armaments as conflicting with the requirements of the social services. There is a tendency to forget that the most important social service that a government can do for its people is to keep them alive and free."
-- John Cotesworth Slessor, 1897-1979, British Air Force Marshall 

“Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead." 
- General James Mattis

"Patience strengthens the spirit, sweetens the temper, stifles anger, extinguishes envy, subdues pride, bridles the tongue."
- George Horne




1. Time To 'Stop' Zelensky! Indian Army General Decodes NATO's Strategy & Draws Conclusion To Russia-Ukraine War

2. The Freedom Academy

3. It’s been said… (PSYOP/Public Diplomacy/Influence Quote Test)

4. Our military insiders’ views of the new National Defense Strategy (Atlantic Council)

5. China Reportedly Paid Taiwan Officer to Surrender If War Started

6. Russia’s New Cyberwarfare in Ukraine Is Fast, Dirty, and Relentless

7. Confronting Iran Protests, Regime Uses Brute Force but Secretly Appeals to Moderates

8. After Pushing Conspiracies, Tulsi Gabbard Lectures Special Ops Students on Avoiding Disinformation

9. Rubio, Roy release 'Woke Military' investigative report

10.  RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 22 (Putin's War)

11. Tech war: US, Taiwan, Japan gallop ahead in advanced semiconductors while China remains stuck at mature-node chips

12. Red line over Taiwan question reiterated in talks between Chinese, US defense chiefs

13.  Fake Facebook and Instagram accounts promoting US interests had ties to US military, Meta says

14.  America Ignores The Pacific Islands At Its Peril

15. Jihadis issue vague threats against World Cup

16. Iran Aids Russia’s Imperialist War Against Ukraine

17. No Room for Half-Measures in Aviation Cybersecurity

18. Canada Intensifies Sanctions on Iran, But Further Action Needed

19. Officer sets out to rid the Army of label deterrents in upcoming book

20. What’s the Harm in Talking to Russia? A Lot, Actually.

21.  The Greatest Risk in Mobile Nuclear Power? Failing to Take Advantage of the Decisive Edge it Offers the US Military

22. Why Defense Budgets Will Stay High After the Ukraine War

23. Poland Is Building a Military Machine to Fight Russia (If It Has To)

24. Formidable But Not Invincible – Why the United States Should Not Overreact to China and Russia




1. Time To 'Stop' Zelensky! Indian Army General Decodes NATO's Strategy & Draws Conclusion To Russia-Ukraine War


An Indian perspective. I received a response from some Ukrainian- American friends. While acknowledging some points, they made the point that he does not really understand Ukrainian culture and the will to fight - or the lack of will to quit for which there is no Ukrainian word. They said the closest word they have translates as "cease" - which implies the ability to begin again. There is no work that translates with the finality of "to quit," e.g. to stop and to never begin again. I like that description of the Ukrainian people - they do not know how to quit. 


They live by Churchill's quote: "never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."


Time To 'Stop' Zelensky! Indian Army General Decodes NATO's Strategy & Draws Conclusion To Russia-Ukraine War

eurasiantimes.com · by Guest Author · November 22, 2022

Analysis By Major General SB Asthana (Retd)

With the crisis caused by a missile landing in Poland being watered down by NATO to avoid exposing its cracks, the Russian pullback from Kherson followed by consistent targeting of energy and critical infrastructure in Ukraine, and the twists and turns in War in Ukraine are becoming the new normal.

Russia-Ukraine War seems to be poised for dangerous escalation with multi-domain threats ranging from nuclear assertions/allegations, satellite references, energy grid targeting, cyber-attacks ever since drone attacks on Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet, sabotage of both Nord stream pipelines and bridge to Crimea giving it a renewed push after nine months.

General Mark A Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the USA, who has a thorough understanding of the military aspects of the conflict, has spoken out about the reality of the military situation in Ukraine, urging diplomacy and talks, which calls for serious consideration from American decision-makers, its NATO followers, and Zelensky.

Russia-Ukraine War: Existing Reality

The assertion by Ukraine that its counteroffensives are going well, assuming unending financial and military support from US-led NATO, gives them a reason to believe that continuing the fight to reclaim all lost territory is doable and preferable to negotiating with the Russians.

This is a risky proposition. Russia, too, finds it worthwhile to redeploy, consolidate, and retain its gains made so far until the winters start biting the opposing parties, following a hasty referendum in four regions to join Russia, followed by a pullback from Kherson, despite fresh troops from a partial mobilization of 3,00,000 reservists.

The dimensions of the war are expanding to include targeting critical dual-use infrastructure, energy grid, covert operations, enhanced information war, psychological offensive, and use of mercenaries, with no clarity of the end state that either side wants to achieve to terminate the war.

Russian Intention & Strategy

Having suffered a series of setbacks in military operations like Kharkiv and Kherson, heavy casualties to men and material, and a series of miscalculations about NATO’s resolve to support Ukraine, Russians seem to have modified their strategy appreciably.

Russia is nowhere close to achieving its strategic aim of liberating the Donbas Region and remaining southern Ukraine to join Transnistria to landlock Ukraine.


From a military perspective, consolidating its successes, redeploying soldiers in Russian-friendly areas by drawing back from hostile ones, as well as regrouping are reasonable options, given that it hasn’t received significant outside military material help throughout the protracted battle except for some hardware from Iran or, allegedly North Korea.

Russians realized they had opened wide frontages beyond sustainable limits with depleting combat resources; hence trading ground for viable defense lines is a sensible military strategy.

Their logic of pulling back from Kherson follows this strategy as it was impractical to hold such a large built-up area with a shortage of infantry suffering more casualties from insurgent attacks by Ukrainians.

It made better sense to pull back to the eastern bank of Dnieper, hold a more robust defensive line, and spare some more troops to pursue an offensive in the Donetsk region.

From the Russian perspective, Ukraine’s energy grid and essential services are just as much a target for dual use (civil and military) as the Russian bridge to Crimea; as a result, attacking them will have a more significant impact on undermining Ukrainian resolve to fight than close combat in pro-Ukrainian areas.

The mild nuclear reference by Russia to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, if Russian “territorial integrity” is threatened, will continue to prevent NATO from entering into contact war with Russia in the future, too, notwithstanding accidental triggers like the Poland missile crisis.

Russia is aware of its limitations in economic, diplomatic, information, and political warfare, which are heavily weighted in favor of US-led NATO and Ukraine.

From a Russian perspective, the optimal course of action is to hold onto its current territorial gains, extend the war into the winter, which could favor a fresh offensive to achieve remaining military goals, and give itself a stronger bargaining position to have the sanctions withdrawn.

Although Russians and Ukrainians are used to fighting in winter, greater energy availability with Russians can put them in an advantageous position.

US-Led NATO: Intention & Strategy

The overstated successes of the Ukrainian counteroffensives and its gains in the non-kinetic, non-contact, undeclared war against Russia in the economic, information, diplomatic, and political spheres may encourage NATO, but it shouldn’t be complacent about Putin’s nuclear threat since a tactical nuclear strike from Russia is not out of the question if it is cornered beyond a dangerous limit.

According to the realistic military assessment, even if billions of dollars are invested in Ukraine, little will change on the ground. General Milley is not the lone voice advocating a diplomatic course.

US President Joe Biden

Purely From the US point of view, it has achieved many of its objectives. Nord stream 1 and 2 are non-functional, and Russia’s influence over the EU is decreasing. EU is compelled to keep purchasing its expensive oil and military equipment.

Russia is now less powerful, and US dominance over the EU is no longer at risk. Therefore, it is time to “privately” tell Zelensky to talk because, publicly, the US will not like to shoulder the burden of compromise on the lost territory.

As a result, it is recommended that Zelensky take the call. The US now needs talks to secure earnings from contracts to rebuild Ukraine, which the entire EU will pay.

The US supports proxy or shadow wars after learning painful lessons in Afghanistan. They may have taken author Sean McFate’s writings too seriously to be motivated to win without fighting! In the context of waging a ‘Shadow War,’ the suffering of the Ukrainian people become conceptually irrelevant to the US.

However, as alternative global/localized financial systems evolve, the control of the US over the current global financial system will slowly get undermined; hence it can’t claim to be the outright winner. The Russia-Iran-North Korea axis will also be a concern for the US.

While continuing to assist Ukraine in the hybrid war until the last Ukrainian battles or for as long as the US desires, NATO’s political dispensation will continue to call on Russia to end the conflict publicly. The dilemma is that initiating talks when a significant chunk of Ukrainian territory is under Russian control would be seen as NATO’s weakness, but not doing so isn’t doing any better.

The war is not making Europe more peaceful, with millions of refugees mixed in with activated mercenaries and a long border with aggressively restructured Russia. It has given up its economic and energy interests to seek the security shelter of the US. EU states like Hungary oppose providing Ukraine with unending material support.

The EU will have to raise its defense budget while surrendering some sovereign decisions to the US to counter unfriendly Russia successfully in the long run. However, Ukraine and the EU must ask themselves: Will the US ever risk New York and Washington to save Kyiv or Poland?

Difficult Choices For Ukraine!

As per compilation by Kiel Institute, the cumulative aid of over $90 billion poured into Ukraine seems to have encouraged Zelensky to talk about defeating Russia and getting back his entire territory.

The rhetoric of Ukraine winning is giving an unrealistic hope to Zelensky that he need not speak to Putin and that all taxpayers in US and Europe will continue to deliver whatever he asks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Twitter)

One cannot ignore the fact that since gaining independence, Ukraine has lost 15% of its original land area in this war, displaced more than 6 million people internally, sent nearly 8 million refugees outside, suffered significant casualties, destroyed half of its energy infrastructure, and is struggling to maintain its much-touted democracy while operating under martial law.

Regaining lost territory from the Russians, who are seen to be digging in for a protracted war during winters and beyond, will be very tough even with the military support and armament of the US-led NATO.

While NATO’s military backing of the war effort won’t make Ukraine any more peaceful, it could lead to long-term changes in its territorial boundary, an endless proxy conflict, and an increased long-term Russian threat.

While President Zelensky seems to continue with the war and the western propaganda campaign depicting him as the undisputed winner as long as the US desires, it is unsustainable for too long, as a look at the map tells a different story.

Way Ahead To End Russia-Ukraine War

In the Big powers’ contestation in Ukraine, the world wants that war to end, as it makes everyone more susceptible to inflationary pressures and causes unprecedented energy and food catastrophe.

Because Russia has not yet succeeded in its strategic goals on the ground to convince NATO to withdraw sanctions, the negotiations appear to be challenging. On the other side, the political hierarchy of US-led NATO finds ongoing proxy war, without sharing any burden of body bags, as a convenient option.

Russian actions are encouraging NATO to accept the bid of Finland and Sweden to join NATO, as they have strong militaries, to secure its northern flank for a better collective security posture in the long run.

It’s also relevant in the context of Sino-Russian footprints in the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. Therefore, Russia might extend its direct land border with NATO by over 1000 kilometers, with Finland joining it as the end state, an outcome it wanted to avoid.

In the current phase of the offensive, the economic coercion by the West has led to energy coercion by Russia.

Pentagon seems to be coming to terms with reality, but US proxy Zelensky, who has been led to a garden path to becoming Hero, finds it difficult to swallow it as he is still parroting no talks till he gets back entire territory, including Crimea.

After the Poland episode, will US-led NATO see some sense in moderating him to get to the talking table remains to be seen?

  • Major General SB Asthana (retd) is a veteran Infantry General with 45 years of experience in national and varied international fields. Connect on Twitter at asthana_shashi or email shashiasthana29 (at) gmail.com. VIEWS PERSONAL
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eurasiantimes.com · by Guest Author · November 22, 2022



2. The Freedom Academy


For those interested in Congress' legislation directing to DOD to establish an Irregular Warfare Center (i.e., ‘‘John S. McCain III Center for Security Studies in Irregular Warfare.’’ ), this history may be instructive. But the bottomline lesson is the U.S needs a political warfare capability. 

https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/the-freedom-academy?utm​ Will theIWC be established, "sort of?"​


​Conclusion:


In the end, the Freedom Academy was established, sort of. Private funds, including some corporate donations, were used to purchase a 900-acre campus in Culpeper, Virginia, centered around a 1930s mansion (LBJ’s mistress, Alice Glass, is buried there as the location had a special meaning for the two of them). A private group, the American Security Council, owned the property and ran the institution as a conference retreat. Ultimately, they lost their way and went downhill. The property was broken up for sale and the library found its way to the Institute of World Politics.

The Freedom Academy

mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong

In early January 2017, my presentation at a King’s College London conference prominently featured the Freedom Academy. A couple of weeks later, that presentation became an article at War on the Rocks: “The Past, Present, and Future of the War for Public Opinion.” This “Political West Point,” as LIFE magazine called the Freedom Academy in 1961, naturally also featured in a chapter based on the article and the presentation, “The Politics of Information Warfare in the US”, that I contributed to an edited volume that came out of the conference: Hybrid Conflicts and Information Warfare: New Labels, Old Politics. A few years later, I used the chapter as the basis of my (successful) PhD proposal at King’s College London (which I’m now working on).

A quick note on the conference. It took place 11-12 January 2017. Four “western” presenter​s​ were paired with four Russian presenters. From the conference description:

This conference, organised by the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC, London) in association with the International Centre for Counter Terrorism (ICCT, The Hague), the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO, Moscow) and the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Düsseldorf), brings together for the first time scholars from Russia and the West to discuss the role and nature of hybridity, information warfare and strategic communications in contemporary world politics.

The conference organizers had some interesting challenges as the Russians were all travelling from Russia and the UK FCO was hesitant to allow visas to at least some of the participants. You can listen to the conference on SoundCloud.

That’s all to say that I was chuffed when I saw

Asha Rangappa

launched her substack entitled The Freedom Academy with Asha Rangappa. It’s not a coincidence her substack uses the Freedom Academy name as the FA was, she wrote, an inspiration for the project. Though I know at least my WOTR article and possibly my chapter made it to her through a mutual friend, if not through other channels, but I don’t know if these had any impact on her thinking. I do encourage you to subscribe – I did – to The Freedom Academy with Asha Rangappa. Also, I recommend reading

Asha Rangappa

’s short write-up about the Freedom Academy. For a bit more on the FA, read on.

There is, of course, more to the story of the FA than her brief summary. Here is additional context and substance from my chapter, “The Politics of Information Warfare in the US”:

In 1953, with the ink still wet on Reorganization Plans Nos. 7 and 8 [#8 established the United States Information Agency], Grant's group reorganized as the Orlando Committee to raise awareness of the dire difference in attention and capabilities between Russia and the United States. The new committee soon produced the Freedom Academy and Freedom Commission concepts. The academy, initially to be a privately financed operation, was to be overseen by a bipartisan oversight commission. The Freedom Academy was to be a research and education institute. Its students were to include civil society and government employees involved in the cold war to rectify the imbalance of “well-meaning amateurs competing with fully committed professionals.” Eisenhower's Psychological Operations Coordinating Board reviewed the proposal late in 1954, but the board separated policy from its information component and, thus, failed to recognize the need for the academy. Subsequent outreach to the private sector also went nowhere, likely because of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. Meanwhile, criticism of USIA increased. Congress, unclear about USIA’s mission, its impact, and allegations that USIA was competing with US media companies operating overseas, cut the agency’s funding. Eisenhower’s second USIA director, Arthur Larson, was actively opposed by congressional Democrats, from the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee responsible for USIA, to Senators Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX), who in 1957 would propose USIA be moved into the State Department, and J. William Fulbright (D-AR). They declared USIA ineffective and charged the director with wasting money… In the late 1950s, the Freedom Academy proposal was resurrected. Congressman Alfred Sydney Herlong, Jr., (D-FL) introduced in early 1959, a bill to establish the Freedom Academy and Freedom Commission. A foundational pillar was the establishment of an “operational science” of countering political warfare that closely integrated the range of government and private capabilities. A single organization—the Freedom Academy—was to “consider all aspects of this infinitely complex and sophisticated problems.” Ultimately, the bill remained focused on a research and training center that would analyze, document, and provide training on the tactics, techniques, and procedures of Russian nonmilitary conflict.
The government remained deficient in responding to Russian political warfare, which it acknowledge in an early 1959 appropriations hearing. Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon testified that the State Department erred by compartmentalizing the analysis, planning, and execution of programs to counter Soviet psychological, political, and economic warfare. Herlong’s bill picked up eager bipartisian support in both chambers… [Senator Karl E.] Mundt [R-SD], along with [Senators Clifford] Case [R-NJ] and [Paul] Douglas [D-IL], introduced the Senate version of the Freedom bill in the Special Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws under the Senate Judiciary Committee. Others, like Lev Dobriansky, Georgetown University professor and chairman of the Ukrainian Congress C​o​mmittee of America, threw their full support behind the measure. Dobriansky wrote a letter of support for the Senate bill decalaring that the bill “points to the most essential course open to us in combating successfully the conspiratorial and subversive inroads made by Moscow in the free world.” He continued by explaining the enduring nature of the Russian threat:
“The passage of this bill would make possible concentrated studies of Russian cold war operations in terms of indispensable historical perspectives which would deepen our insights into the basic nature of the enemy. Careful analyses along these and primarily substantive lines would reveal that what we classify today as Moscow's cold war techniques and methods are essentially traditional totalitarian Russian diplomacy. Contrary to rather superficial opinion, they are not the created products of so-called Communist ideology and operation. It can be readily demonstrated, for example, that methods now employed by Moscow in the Middle East, particularly in Iran, were in essence used by the white Tsars of the old Russian Empire. Except for accidental refinements, many of the techniques manipulated by the rulers of the present Russian Empire can be traced as far back as the 16th century.”
The academy was to be the equivalent to the National War College, but focused on nonmilitary conflict. Students would fall into three general categories: US government officials whose agencies were involved in the effort to resist communism abroad; leaders from US civil society, including management, labor, education, social, and fraternal and professional groups; and leaders and potential leaders in and out of government from foreign countries. The Freedom Academy was to be strictly a research and educational institution and would not engage in any operational activities. An editorial in the Saturday Evening Post explained the need for the academy in simple terms: “We don’t have amateur military officers. Nor do amateurs manage our huge industries. Yet we have thousands of amateurs who are trying their untrained best to resist attacks the highly trained professional Communists.”
The Freedom Academy never came to be, even though a Gallup poll showed a remarkable 70 percent of the public knew of the bill and supported it. The New Republic magazine denounced the proposal as vehicle to “propound dogma” while the Washington Post feared the academy would be subverted by the far right. The State Department strongly objected to the initiative primarily because it viewed the Freedom Academy as infringing on its primacy in foreign affairs. It also argued that its Foreign Service Institute (FSI) could do the job, though it never did and a limited proposal to expand FSI was quickly dropped after the Freedom Academy bill died. Ambassador Charles Bohlen, then in the State Department’s Policy and Planning Office, added the argument that private universities already performed the proposed mission of the academy.

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The reader may recognize the concerns raised by the New Republic and the Washington Post as they are echoed today. You may not recognize that while the State Department argued FSI could do the job, the department outright lied when making the claim and did not adjust FSI to accomplish any part of the FA proposal. Further, Bohlen’s argument was a distraction as much as it was inaccurate, as Grant had demonstrated in building up the proposal and as countless witnesses affirmed in testimony in years of public hearings.

The real death of the Freedom Academy came when Fulbright successfully argued the bill did not belong in the Judiciary Committee, then working what today would be considered the “homeland security” lane, but in the Foreign Relations Committee, of which he was the chairman. Once there, he promptly killed it. He had already begun his campaign to isolate USIA, an agency he believed should have lasted a few years at most, and certainly not ten. He would change USIA’s authorization to one year and amend the Smith-Mundt Act to further isolate USIA when he failed to close down the agency.

Nine bills to establish a Freedom Commission and Academy were introduced in the House. They were H.R. 352, introduced by Mr Herlong on January 9, 1963; H.R. 1617, by Mr Gubser on January 10, 1963; H.R. 5368, by Mr Boggs on April 2, 1963; H.R. 8320, by Mr Taft on August 30, 1963; H.R. 8757, by Mr Schweiker on October 8, 1963; H.R. 10036, by Mr Ashbrook on February 20, 1964; H.R. 10037, by Mr Clausen on February 20, 1964; H.R. 10077, by Mr Schade berg on February 24, 1964; H.R. 11718, by Mr Talcott on June 24, 1964.

In what I describe as their “surrender letter” following Fulbright’s squashing the bill, the Orlando Committee submitted a hope that remains unfulfilled today: “Someday this nation will recognize that global non-military conflict must be pursued with the same intensity and preparation as global military conflicts.”

Ultimately, the lack of support from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (Kennedy supported the idea when he was a Senator but had interests elsewhere when President) for the Freedom Academy shouldn’t surprise anyone. The nature of the cold war changed in the early 1960s, with some historians calling it “won” or “lost” at this time. For example, D.F. Fleming declared the cold war “lost” by the West in 1960, John Lewis Gaddis argued the West “won” in 1962, while Marc Trachtenberg wrote “Things had settled down” in 1963. The shift from the cold war to the Cold War and the “settling down” was likely behind Fulbright’s declaration that Russia wasn’t an inherent threat. (He also said that Radio Free Europe had “done more to keep alive the cold war and prevent agreement with Russia and improved relations than good.”)

In the end, the Freedom Academy was established, sort of. Private funds, including some corporate donations, were used to purchase a 900-acre campus in Culpeper, Virginia, centered around a 1930s mansion (LBJ’s mistress, Alice Glass, is buried there as the location had a special meaning for the two of them). A private group, the American Security Council, owned the property and ran the institution as a conference retreat. Ultimately, they lost their way and went downhill. The property was broken up for sale and the library found its way to the Institute of World Politics.

I recycle many quotes from and around the Freedom Academy discussions, including some found in this quiz – “It’s been said…” – from earlier this week. So, let me close with another quote from the FA period. This one is from George Gallup in 1962: “If a country is lost to communism through propaganda and subversion it is lost to our side as irretrievably as if we had lost it in actual warfare.” You can replace “communism” with autocracy and it remains accurate and true.

Thanks for reading this far.

mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong


3. It’s been said… (PSYOP/Public Diplomacy/Influence Quote Test)


From one of our nation's true experts on influence (Public Diplomacy, PSYOP, Psychological Warfare), Matt Armstrong.


I think this must be in response to all my queries to Matt. Every time he posts a quote on Twitter I always reply asking for a source. Now he is testing me and thall of the rest of us.


Please go to this link to take the poll. This is very instructive.

https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/its-been-said

It’s been said…

https://mountainrunner.us/2022/11/its-been-said/

  

​    ​For many years there has been widespread discussion of the need for reorganizing the Department of State. Students, publicists, members of Congress, and members of the Department itself have repeatedly pointed out that the Department has not been geared up to performing the functions required of the foreign office of a great twentieth-century world power.


​    ​The chief criticisms of the Department have been four: (1) that there was lacking a basic pattern of sound administrative organization, (2) that the type of personnel found both at home and abroad was inadequate for the job required in foreign affairs today, (3) that the Department was too far removed from the public and from Congress, and (4) that it was not prepared to provide leadership for, and maintain the necessary relations with, other federal agencies.


NOVEMBER 22, 2022MATT ARMSTRONG

Time for some words from the past. Whether history rhymes, repeats, or we find patterns regardless, I often share quotes from the past that seem highly relevant to the present. I do this to show that we’ve often been in a situation we think is unique to the present. It is not infrequent that past statements have the potential to reveal deficiencies in modern analysis, framing, and recommendations, but your perceptions may differ.

Below are ten quotes that I previously shared on Twitter and likely elsewhere (email correspondence, articles, presentations, etc.). The quotes are intentionally devoid of attribution below. At my other publishing (and, to be honest, where I primarily publish now) site — https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/its-been-said — each quote is followed by a poll for the reader to select which of three possible years the statement was made. Those polls are time-limited, so pop over quickly as they will close soon. Feel free to leave comments below with your guesses. We’re on the honor system here, so no cheating by Googling or searching this blog.

Q1:

It is necessary to remember, in the first place, that this war is not one that is being fought by the military forces alone. There are economic, psychologic, social, political and even literary forces engaged, and it is necessary for us in order to defeat the enemy, to understand fully the strength of each. Nor can the investigation stop with the forces of the enemy: it must extend to each country in the world and to every people. The question of winning the war is far too complicated and far too delicate to be answered by a study of only the powers and resources of the nations in arms.

Q2:

For many years there has been widespread discussion of the need for reorganizing the Department of State. Students, publicists, members of Congress, and members of the Department itself have repeatedly pointed out that the Department has not been geared up to performing the functions required of the foreign office of a great twentieth-century world power. 
The chief criticisms of the Department have been four: (1) that there was lacking a basic pattern of sound administrative organization, (2) that the type of personnel found both at home and abroad was inadequate for the job required in foreign affairs today, (3) that the Department was too far removed from the public and from Congress, and (4) that it was not prepared to provide leadership for, and maintain the necessary relations with, other federal agencies.

Q3:

Modern international relations lie between peoples, not merely governments. Statements on foreign policy are intelligible abroad in the spirit in which they are intended only when other peoples understand the context of national tradition and character which is essential to the meaning of any statement. This is especially true of a collaborative foreign policy which by nature must be open and popular, understood and accepted at home and abroad. International Information activities are integral to the conduct of foreign policy.

Q4:

We believe these phrases indicate a basic misconception. for we find that the “psychological” aspect of policy is not separable from policy, but is inherent in every diplomatic, economic or military action. There is a “psychological” implication in every act, but this does not have life apart from the act. Although there may be distinct psychological plans and specific psychological activities directed toward national objectives, there are no “national psychological objectives” separate and distinct from national objectives.

Q5:

But [the author] documents the difficulties, noting misconceptions rife in government officialdom and among other wielders of power, let alone intellectuals, about the nature and needs of political communication. He notes the absence of doctrine. He traces out disagreements between departments of the government (State and Defense especially) about who should wield this weapon and how, in war or in peace. He calls for concerted action under the wise and dramatic leadership of a President standing above departmental parochialism and conflict, aided by a co-ordinator in the White House. He insists that we must match ideas harmoniously with policies and actions, but claims we have not “found our ideas.”

Q6:

The United States Information Service is truly the voice of America and the means of clarifying the opinion of the world concerning us. Its objective is fivefold. To be effective it must (1) explain United States motives; (2) bolster morale and extend hope; (3) give a true picture of American life, methods, and ideals; (4) combat misrepresentation and distortion, and (5) be a ready instrument of psychological warfare when required.

Q7:

I am convinced an information program can contribute to our security just as can an army, a navy, and an air force; and that it can make its contribution in a manner that is vastly preferable to the threat or the use of force, and at infinitely less expense.

Q8:

I am sure if you get away from telling the truth, then there is no place where you stop.

Q9:

So long as we remain amateurs in the critical field of political warfare, the billions of dollars we annually spend on defense and foreign aid will provide us with a diminishing measure of protection.

Q10:

The truth is that a fact — an incontrovertible fact — is often the most powerful propaganda⁠

That’s it for now. Good luck!


4. Our military insiders’ views of the new National Defense Strategy (Atlantic Council)



Our military insiders’ views of the new National Defense Strategy

By Atlantic Council military fellows

atlanticcouncil.org · by dmalloy · November 21, 2022




Last month, the US Department of Defense (DOD) released its 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS). This document outlines clear priorities for the department, namely: defense of the homeland; deterring strategic attacks on the United States, allies, and partners; deterring Chinese and Russian aggression while simultaneously maintaining readiness for conflict; and building a resilient Joint Force.

While the document’s strategic prioritization is clear, what remains uncertain is how this strategy will ultimately be implemented across DOD. Defense leadership recognizes this, as the document states that “this strategy will not be successful if we fail to resource its major initiatives or fail to make the hard choices to align available resources with the strategy’s level of ambition.”

How can DOD meet the strategic priorities laid out in the 2022 NDS? The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s military fellows—active-duty officers who are serving a one-year rotation at the Atlantic Council—weighed in, addressing potential gaps between budgets and strategy, force employment mechanisms, sustainment and logistics, and security partnerships. The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied here are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views of DOD or any other US government agency.

Investing in security partnerships: The US should take larger risks to bolster Taiwan’s defense

Security cooperation has long played an essential role in US defense policy, but this NDS amplifies its role in competition for the next decade. The 2022 NDS states that “mutually beneficial Alliances and partnerships are our greatest global strategic advantage—and they are a center of gravity for this strategy.” The decisions to defend treaty allies have already been adjudicated, but the decision to support security partners such as Ukraine and Taiwan remains foggy. Overall, this NDS implies that DOD will likely need to take more significant risks to support Taiwan and to prevent a Chinese invasion.

The current war in Ukraine provides a case for security cooperation. Had the United States and NATO invested more heavily in Ukraine before Russia’s February 2022 invasion, they may have deterred Russia from attacking in the first place. In the past several months, the United States has invested approximately $17.6 billion in security assistance for Ukraine. In comparison, it only invested $2.7 billion from 2014 until February. The United States’ concerns about escalation with Russia were pervasive early in the Ukraine crisis, but along with NATO it has since taken much greater risks to help Ukraine survive and to contain Russia. US and NATO leaders are now likely pondering whether it may have been smarter and cheaper to invest earlier to prevent the war than to help Ukraine fight it.

When the United States invests in alliances and partnerships, it invests directly and indirectly to prevent (and, if necessary, respond to) any potential crisis. For instance, Operation Desert Storm (1990-91) included a coalition of thirty-nine countries worldwide. Desert Storm’s success relied heavily on a NATO alliance that was built for the Cold War threat but trained and ready for a crisis in the Middle East. US leadership in NATO has helped deepen the capability and willingness of European countries to cooperate in support of Ukraine. After Russia invaded, the speed and unity of the US, NATO, and European Union response were exemplary. The rate of armament shipments, funding supplied to Ukraine, sanctions on Russia, and the response to the humanitarian crisis should all serve as blueprints for coordination among allies and partners in the future. Enhancing US investments in Indo-Pacific alliances and partners will improve resilience for a potential conflict scenario in Taiwan or elsewhere.

The United States should implement an audacious strategy to help build Taiwan’s self-defenses and strengthen other Indo-Pacific allies and partners to help surge in a crisis. According to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), Taiwan is a security partner. The TRA places Taiwan a tier above Ukraine in terms of US commitment to its security. The additional ten billion dollars over four years in Foreign Military Financing for Taiwan proposed in the 2023 NDAA could further solidify US commitment to the partnership. Ideally, a US funding increase would spur other Taiwan security partners to increase their support and potentially create a NATO-like framework for deterrence.

The West will likely never know for certain whether heavily arming Ukraine pre-invasion would have caused Russian escalation or prevented the invasion entirely. However, given that Russia has repeatedly threatened red lines since invading and the West has routinely surpassed them, the United States and NATO likely could have been more aggressive without triggering a broader war. US defense leaders should use the lesson of Ukraine to push the limits of investment in Taiwan—along with other Indo-Pacific allies and partners—to prevent an invasion.

—COL Benjamin Johnson is the 2022-2023 senior US Army fellow at the Scowcroft Center.

Follow the money: DOD is betting on research but not sending the right signals to industry

At every opportunity, DOD leadership has sought to highlight the linkages between the 2022 NDS and the president’s fiscal year 2023 (FY23) budget request. Yet, while this strategy and budget were developed concurrently, fiscal constraints lead to necessary tradeoffs across programs.

Consistent with the NDS, DOD cut costs from the current force structure to make significant investments in building enduring advantages. The Defense-Wide funding request increased significantly when compared to projections in the Trump administration’s final budget request (9 percent compared to an overall DOD increase of 5 percent), with these accounts containing the offices of the undersecretaries of defense for research and engineering, and for acquisition and sustainment. Notably, these two offices will execute the increases to building enduring advantages programs, to include $3.3 billion for microelectronics, $1.1 billion for artificial intelligence, and $700 million for submarine industrial-base resiliency. Such investments were partially funded by reductions to current force structure, including the retirement of sixteen Navy battle force ships before their estimated service life, a reduction of twelve thousand regular Army troops, and 102 Air Force aircraft early retirements.

Moreover, the FY23 budget contains the largest research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDTE) request in DOD history, with funding requests of $130 billion for RDTE and $146 billion for procurement. Focusing too much on RDTE at the expense of procurement contributes to the “valley of death”—or the arduous journey commercial companies take to win DOD contracts—further underscoring that DOD does not have an innovation problem, but rather an innovation adoption problem. To field cutting-edge technologies, more funds ought to shift toward procurement over future budget cycles.

However, while all eyes are on the current budget year, the out-year funding projections in the Future Years Defense Program are concerning, as they result in real growth of -1.2 percent in FY25, -0.6 percent in FY26, and -1.4 percent in FY27 (using a projected 2.2 percent inflation rate, which is far below what we’ve seen lately). This demonstrates that additional force structure reductions may be required in future budget cycles, and that heavy RDTE investments may not necessarily lead to transformational technologies in the field—if there won’t be enough money for production. The NDS prioritizes a resilient defense ecosystem and healthy industrial base, but out-year projections do not send a demand signal to industry for sustained investment and will impact NDS implementation in the long term.

Now, Congress has the next move: Work remains ongoing to finalize the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act and appropriations bills. Throughout committee mark-ups, there has been strong bipartisan support for additional FY23 defense funding.

—LCDR Marek Jestrab is the 2022-2023 senior US Navy fellow at the Scowcroft Center.

Something old and something new: Force employment modernization must match an ambitious strategy

As outlined in the NDS, the “principal approach to advancing these priorities is integrated deterrence,” which is a whole-of-government approach to deter aggressive and malign actions by US adversaries, gain and maintain advantage throughout the competition continuum, and mitigate risk in advance of potential conflicts.

As discussed above and articulated by others, there appears to be a gap between NDS objectives and budgetary realities. However, much of what is discussed as new within the NDS bears strong resemblance to strategy and guidance that has existed for several years. It can be argued that the 2018 NDS2018 Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning, and the 2020 Irregular Warfare Annex to the NDS already created the necessary strategy framework to drive the department toward the strategic ends outlined in the 2022 NDS. What has remained constant, however, are the mechanisms by which joint force employment is planned and executed. The new points of emphasis—in particular the reliance on campaigning, as well addressing gray-zone activities simultaneously with conflict preparation—require a modernization of joint force employment concepts.

The NDS explicitly states that “campaigning is not business as usual,” but rather a more sophisticated approach to “aggregate focus and resources” to ensure that operations, activities, and investments are linked to the stated priorities, while critically incorporating “feedback loops” ostensibly to course correct in the midst of dynamic long-term campaigns. Devising a long-term strategy to deter Chinese and Russian malign influence globally is decidedly more complex than a campaign to dismantle a violent extremist organization in a single theater. Integrated deterrence campaigns require a high degree of focused understanding about US adversaries, the effects of military operations in concert with other instruments of power, and mitigation of strategic and escalatory risks.

However, current force employment mechanisms are more conventionally rigid, generally tying expeditionary forces to operating locations and adjudicating objectives years in advance of action, making it difficult to incorporate feedback loops and adjust to adaptive adversaries. Similarly, the rotational model employed by the military often caps the amount of time a particular problem can be focused on by expeditionary units or joint task forces, which can limit understanding and ultimately the options presented to commanders. As opposed to executive branch organizations that often focus on specific problems for decades, military units may shift from divergent problem sets over several years. Given the premium the NDS places on coordination and collaboration with not only the executive branch but also allies and partners, DOD must allow more flexibility in how it aligns multi-domain capabilities against priority operational problems.

The Joint Strategic Planning System (JSPS) is critical to the ways and means in which force employment supports the strategic objectives outlined in the NDS. The military speaks in the language of requirements, which are specific and tangible activities that capability owners can use to develop operational concepts. Requirements and intermediate military objectives are defined in campaign plans, and the JSPS directs the development of Global Campaign Plans (GCP), Functional Campaign Plans, and Combatant Command Campaign Plans. In particular, GCPs “address the most pressing transregional and multi-functional strategic challenges across all domains… are global in scope and focus on integrating activities oriented against specific problems designed to achieve unity of effort for day-to-day activities,” according to the JSPS. Each GCP has a designated Coordinating Authority (CA) who has overall responsibility for the planning and execution of their associated GCP, and it is in this area where modernization is needed. Competing with Russia and China is a global endeavor, thus CAs must be armed with a global understanding of the problems sets to ensure that their campaign plans logically connect with each other and can be resourced and adjusted dynamically. The department should look to devise cross-functional teams from across the executive branch as well as key allies to provide CAs with holistic understanding of these global problem sets to better inform the development and modernization of the GCPs.

The NDS makes it clear that the United States should not look at Russia as solely a problem in the European theater, nor China as solely an Indo-Pacific issue. Nonetheless, the force employment modernization to foster global deterrence campaigning must also account for the necessary preparations for regional conflict. Creative leadership is the key, as the NDS states that “we must not over-exert, reallocate, or redesign our forces for regional crises that cross the threshold of risk to preparedness for our highest strategic priorities.” This means that the department and CAs should encourage operational activities that satisfy requirements related to conflict preparation, as well as the ability to fight in the gray zone. Often referred to as “two-fers,” these types of operations can allow for a more efficient force employment model that can be scaled as required depending on prioritization.

—Lt. Col. Justin Conelli is the 2022-2023 senior US Air Force fellow at the Scowcroft Center.

The Iron Triangle: Tradeoffs and challenges in building a sustainable, survivable logistics infrastructure

The 2022 NDS prioritizes a future force logistics capability able to operate in a contested environment and withstand attack from an adversary. Sustainability and survivability are key elements of effective logistics support, but current US sustainment, throughput, and distribution information technology (IT) systems are optimized toward neither. The pace at which the United States addresses these gaps, and the resources put toward closing them, will have an outsized impact on the nation’s ability to execute campaigns as outlined in the NDS.

Referred to as the “Iron Triangle,” the “good, fast, and cheap rule” encapsulates the tension between quality, speed, and investment in meeting stated priorities. Better understanding the tough choices confronting modernization of sustainment systems better informs the risk calculus of tradeoffs between effectiveness, speed, and cost, potentially closing the gap between possibility and probability.

The 2018 NDS made mention of logistics only insofar as to state a need for resiliency and agility “while under persistent multi-domain attack.” In contrast, the 2022 NDS’s call-out for a modernized sustainment and logistics capability is a step in the right direction in confronting changes within the operating environment. Investing big (or not) is a critical choice if the United States’ intent is to operationalize DOD’s role in strategic deterrence, maintain the edge within a campaigning construct, or buy decision space in order to maintain strategic options. Doing any of these things without aggressively resourced, suitably reinforced logistics IT systems will result in an inability to deliver effective sustainment as a means to generate combat power during enemy disruption or attack, or to credibly enforce strategic deterrence.

However, US IT logistics systems are unclassified, lacking interoperability, and multi-domain incapable, making them ill-suited to effectively support the joint force in a contested environment. While these capability gaps are nothing new, they are increasingly prime for exploitation within a competitive environment as vast as the Indo-Pacific theater. Numerous upgrade options exist across the commercial sector—to name a few, Amazon, Walmart, Maersk, and FedEx all leverage artificial intelligence, predictive algorithms, and myriad tech advancements in support of throughput/distribution models. These commercial systems capitalize on speed and quality in terms of delivering products on time and on target, possessing the elements of flexibility and resiliency long sought by DOD. Sure, ordering and receiving a personalized beer koozie within twenty-four hours is wildly different from large-scale sustainment operations in a maritime campaign—and these commercial systems are not yet wartime tested—but they are available now, offering a starting point from which to build.

Done right, the logistics systems modernization called for in the 2022 NDS will not come cheap, and developing and integrating commercially available systems will incur risk in areas that are left without funding as a result. Historically, logistics and sustainment do not compete well with high-end, exquisite tech capabilities. While a necessary function, logistics is often considered mundane and does not capture the imagination in the same way as the high-end technological advancements set out in the NDS. For now, the services are responding to the realities of logistics system limitations by experimenting with how to leverage current resources and new methods of employment. As an example, the Marine Corps, in concert with our naval counterparts, continues to develop and implement expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO), a form of expeditionary warfare involving mobile, low-signature naval expeditionary forces whose express purpose is to conduct sea denial, support sea control, or enable fleet sustainment in an austere, contested maritime environment. In sum, the United States will get what it is willing to pay for in logistics and sustainment, and its urgency in mitigating the gaps will reflect the choice to (or not to) invest heavily.

Sustainment is indeed a warfighting function, but it is often resourced as a supporting effort. The results are as one would expect when the investment is “cheap.” Setting the force specifically for operational plans looks different than multi-domain logistics when operating in the gray zone. Adapting a proactive approach to sustainment as a warfighting function, similar to intelligence and more recently communications and information in the targeting cycle, will enable effective campaigning, allowing the US to preserve strategic options and decision space in the changing security and operational environment.

—Lt. Col. Michelle Melendez is the 2022-2023 senior US Marine Corps fellow at the Scowcroft Center.

This article is part of the 21st Century Security Project by the Scowcroft Center’s Forward Defense practice with financial support from Lockheed Martin.


5. China Reportedly Paid Taiwan Officer to Surrender If War Started


A few years ago (pre-COVID), I participated in an Asymmetric Warfare Conference in Taiwan. One of the generals stated that the PRC/PLA espionage challenge is so great that he knew sitting among the uniformed military at the conference were PLA spies - active duty military officers recruited by the PRC.  


He asked for counterintelligence recommendations. One specific problem he asked us to focus on was that retired officers were heavily targeted. The poor compensation of officers both on active duty and through pensions for retired officers made them susceptible to recruitment.Based on the assumption that the Taiwan military was infiltrated and compromised, I submitted a proposal that would establish a program for officers to report the recruitment approach when they are targeted. They would provide information about the recruiter. They would be allowed to keep the money provided by the PRC. The Taiwan government would match the money, and the officer would then be given specific information in response to PRC taskings to the officer. The best case is that Taiwan would use a double agent to pass information or deception information.  The likely case would be that this program itself would be compromised because of PRC infiltration. However, because the PRC could never know for sure how well the program is implemented they would no longer be able to trust that they were recruiting a real spy or that the information they were gathering was in fact accurate or only information Taiwan wanted them to have. This might reduce the amount of PRC espionage efforts against Taiwnese officers.


China Reportedly Paid Taiwan Officer to Surrender If War Started

  • Infantry colonel was given nearly $1,300 a month, reports say
  • Taiwan has long faced espionage threat from bigger neighbor

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-22/china-reportedly-paid-taiwan-officer-to-surrender-if-war-started?sref=hhjZtX76

BySarah Zheng

November 22, 2022 at 5:02 AM ESTUpdated onNovember 22, 2022 at 6:21 PM EST


Taiwan is investigating an infantry officer on suspicion he took monthly payments from China for years to gather intelligence and surrender if a war ever broke out, saying the case highlights the “serious threat” posed by Beijing’s espionage.

The colonel received NT$40,000 ($1,280) each month from China after he was recruited to spy by a retired Taiwanese military officer in 2019, the Central News Agency reported Tuesday, without saying where it got the information.

The officer was suspected of taking a photo holding a signed letter promising to surrender to China if fighting started, CNA said. Other large media outlets in the self-ruled island, such as the Liberty Times and United Daily News, reported similar details on the case, without saying where they got the information.

The episode underscores the challenges Taiwan faces stopping its larger, resource-rich neighbor from snooping, especially on its armed forces. The US has long been worried about Taiwan’s ability to keep technology and other secrets out of Beijing’s hands.

Former Vice Defense Minister Chang Che-ping -- once Taiwan’s third most important military official -- was investigated in 2021 due to concern about contact with a Chinese spy ring. Chang was cleared and served as witness in a case that eventually led to the indictments on spy charges in June of a retired general and lieutenant colonel. It was unclear how their situations were resolved.

Read: Xi’s Fiery Taiwan Rhetoric Raises Risk of War in His Third Term

The Defense Ministry in Taipei said the allegations against the infantry colonel show “how the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration and recruitment, intelligence collection and theft of secrets has become a serious threat.” The ministry didn’t name the officer in its statement.

It added that it was taking steps to educate its ranks, from officer down to enlisted men, on Chinese espionage.

When asked about the spying allegations at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian avoided commenting, saying it wasn’t a diplomatic issue.

Last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping reaffirmed at a twice-a-decade congress of his ruling party that Beijing was willing to use force to prevent the democratically governed island’s independence. 

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has courted closer economic and military ties with Washington to counter increased pressure from China, and says she already leads a sovereign nation awaiting broader recognition.

— With assistance by Lucille Liu

(Updates with comment from China’s Foreign Ministry.)


6. Russia’s New Cyberwarfare in Ukraine Is Fast, Dirty, and Relentless


Excerpts:


In the early days of Russia's invasion, for reasons that aren't quite clear, Kremlin hackers targeting Ukraine appear to have used a grab bag of at least half a dozen wiping tools of varying quality inside of victim networks, such as HermeticWiper, WhisperGate, and AcidRain. But in more recent months, the GRU appears to have deployed mainly CaddyWiper, again and again, Mandiant found, though in modified forms, changed just enough to evade detection. (Ukraine's SSSCIP, for its part, declined to confirm whether it has seen the same nine CaddyWiper attacks Mandiant had tracked.
"It's like they've said, ‘We're not gonna build out a fancy multifaceted wiper like NotPetya that can worm on its own. What we need is just something that's really lightweight and easily modifiable and easily deployable,'" says Roncone. "So they're using this not-that-great, does-the-job wiper, which seems like part of shifting their entire tactical strategy to accommodate these fast-paced operations." And while those quick-and-dirty methods may not be as flashy or as innovative as the GRU cyberattacks of the past, they can nonetheless inflict serious digital chaos in a country that needs every resource it has to fend off Russia's invaders.

Russia’s New Cyberwarfare in Ukraine Is Fast, Dirty, and Relentless

Security researchers see updated tactics and tools—and a tempo change—in the cyberattacks Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency is inflicting on Ukraine.


ANDY GREENBERG​ ​SECURITYNOV 10, 2022 10:15 AM

Wired · by Condé Nast · November 10, 2022

Since Russia launched its catastrophic full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, the cyberwar that it has long waged against its neighbor has entered a new era too—one in which Russia has at times seemed to be trying to determine the role of its hacking operations in the midst of a brutal, physical ground war. Now, according to the findings of a team of cybersecurity analysts and first responders, at least one Russian intelligence agency seems to have settled into a new set of cyberwarfare tactics: ones that allow for quicker intrusions, often breaching the same target multiple times within just months, and sometimes even maintaining stealthy access to Ukrainian networks while destroying as many as possible of the computers within them.

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At the CyberwarCon security conference in Arlington, Virginia, today, analysts from the security firm Mandiant laid out a new set of tools and techniques that they say Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency is using against targets in Ukraine, where the GRU’s hackers have for years carried out many of the most aggressive and destructive cyberattacks in history. According to Mandiant analysts Gabby Roncone and John Wolfram, who say their findings are based on months of Mandiant’s Ukrainian incident response cases, the GRU has shifted in particular to what they call “living on the edge.” Instead of the phishing attacks that GRU hackers typically used in the past to steal victims’ credentials or plant backdoors on unwitting users’ computers inside target organizations, they're now targeting “edge” devices like firewalls, routers, and email servers, often exploiting vulnerabilities in those machines that give them more immediate access.

That shift, according to Roncone and Wolfram, has offered multiple advantages to the GRU. It's allowed the Russian military hackers to have far faster, more immediate effects, sometimes penetrating a target network, spreading their access to other machines on the network, and deploying data-destroying wiper malware just weeks later, compared to months in earlier operations. In some cases, it's enabled the hackers to penetrate the same small group of Ukrainian targets multiple times in quick succession for both wiper attacks and cyberespionage. And because the edge devices that give the GRU their footholds inside these networks aren't necessarily wiped in the agency's cyberattacks, hacking them has sometimes allowed the GRU to keep their access to a victim network even after carrying out a data-destroying operation.

"Strategically, the GRU needs to balance disruptive events and espionage," Roncone told WIRED ahead of her and Wolfram's CyberwarCon talk. "They want to continue imposing pain in every single domain, but they are also a military intelligence apparatus and have to keep collecting more real-time intelligence. So they've started 'living on the edge' of target networks to have this constant ready-made access and enable these fast-paced operations, both for disruption and spying."

In a timeline included in their presentation, Roncone and Wolfram point to no fewer than 19 destructive cyberattacks Russia has carried out in Ukraine since the beginning of this year, with targets across the country's energy, media, telecom, and finance industries, as well as government agencies. But within that sustained cyberwarfare barrage, the Mandiant analysts point to four distinct examples of intrusions where they say the GRU's focus on hacking edge devices enabled its new tempo and tactics.

In one instance, they say, GRU hackers exploited the vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange servers known as ProxyShell to get a foothold on a target network in January, then hit that organization with a wiper just the next month, at the start of the war. In another case, the GRU intruders gained access by compromising an organization's firewall in April of 2021. When the war began in February, the hackers used that access to launch a wiper attack on the victim network's machines—and then maintained access through the firewall that allowed them to launch another wiper attack on the organization just a month later. In June 2021, Mandiant observed the GRU return to an organization it had already hit with a wiper attack in February, exploiting stolen credentials to log into its Zimbra mail server and regain access, apparently for espionage. And in a fourth case, last spring, the hackers targeted an organization's routers through a technique known as GRE tunneling that allowed them to create a stealthy backdoor into its network—just months after hitting that network with wiper malware at the start of the war.

Separately, Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center, known as MSTIC, revealed today yet another example of the GRU launching repeated cyberattacks on the same Ukrainian targets. According to MSTIC, the hacker group it calls Iridium, more widely known as the GRU hacking unit Sandworm, was responsible for Prestige ransomware attacks that hit transportation and logistics targets in Ukraine and Poland from March to October of this year. MSTIC notes that many of the victims of that ransomware had earlier been hit with the wiper tool HermeticWiper just before Russia’s February invasion—another piece of data-destroying malware linked to the GRU.

The GRU, Roncone and Wolfram point out, have certainly targeted "edge" devices before this new phase of the agency cyberwar in Ukraine. In 2018, the agency's hackers infected more than half a million routers worldwide with malware known as VPNFilter, and they similarly attempted to create a botnet of hacked firewall devices that was discovered just ahead of Russia's Ukraine invasion in February.

But the Mandiant analysts argue that only now are they seeing that hacking of edge devices used to accelerate the agency's pace of operations and to achieve persistence inside networks that lets the GRU pull off repeated intrusions against the same victims. That's meant that instead of having to choose between stealthy cyberespionage and disruptive cyberattacks that destroy the very systems they're spying on, the agency has been able to "have their cake and eat it too," as Roncone puts it.

Ukraine's own cybersecurity agency, known as the State Services for Special Communications and Information Protection, or SSSCIP, agrees with Mandiant's conclusion that Russia has quickened its pace of cyber-operations since the start of the war in February, according to Viktor Zhora, a senior SSSCIP official. He confirms that the GRU, in particular, has come to favor targeting edge devices while other Russian intelligence agencies, such as the FSB, continue to use phishing emails as a common tactic. But he argues that the examples of repeated wiping of the same organization in quick succession, or a wiping attack followed by an espionage operation against the same target, remain relatively rare.

Instead, Zhora contends that the GRU's switch to a faster operating rhythm shows how the agency's hackers are racing—struggling, even—to keep up with the speed of physical war.

“Operating in a covert mode over the last eight years, having unlimited financial resources, widely available human resources, gave them a lot of opportunities. They used that time to test, to probe and develop new technologies. Now, they’ve needed to increase the density of their attacks, and they require much more resources," says Zhora. "They still try to carry out their expected role, to be Russia's most active and destructive agency. But with sanctions, with the intellectual flow out of Russia, with difficulties in human resources and infrastructure, their operational limits are significantly greater. But we can see in the tactics they use that they're still seeking new opportunities for intelligence and wiping options."

At times, Roncone and Wolfram say, GRU hackers do seem to be struggling to keep up with the new pace they've set. In one case, they saw the hackers backdoor an email server but set up their command-and-control server incorrectly, so that they failed to control it. In another case, they sent the wrong commands to a wiper tool, so that it failed to wipe the systems it had infected. "It's just the tempo and probably a bit of human error and burnout that leads to these sort of 'oopsies,'" says Roncone.

Another shift in the GRU's hacking to "quick and dirty" methods can be seen in the specific wiper malware that it uses, according to Roncone and Wolfram. Since May, Mandiant has observed GRU hackers deploying the relatively simple, targeted wiper malware known as CaddyWiper in nine different operations targeting Ukrainian organizations—five attacks in May and June, then another four last month.

The decision to make that small, straightforward wiper code its sabotage payload of choice represents a stark contrast with years past. In 2017 and 2018, the GRU group Sandworm unleashed complex destructive worms inside of target networks that took months to hone and deploy: automated, self-replicating, multi-featured code such as the Olympic Destroyer malware designed to cripple the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and the NotPetya malware that hit Ukrainian networks and spread worldwide, causing an unprecedented $10 billion in damage.

In the early days of Russia's invasion, for reasons that aren't quite clear, Kremlin hackers targeting Ukraine appear to have used a grab bag of at least half a dozen wiping tools of varying quality inside of victim networks, such as HermeticWiper, WhisperGate, and AcidRain. But in more recent months, the GRU appears to have deployed mainly CaddyWiper, again and again, Mandiant found, though in modified forms, changed just enough to evade detection. (Ukraine's SSSCIP, for its part, declined to confirm whether it has seen the same nine CaddyWiper attacks Mandiant had tracked.

"It's like they've said, ‘We're not gonna build out a fancy multifaceted wiper like NotPetya that can worm on its own. What we need is just something that's really lightweight and easily modifiable and easily deployable,'" says Roncone. "So they're using this not-that-great, does-the-job wiper, which seems like part of shifting their entire tactical strategy to accommodate these fast-paced operations." And while those quick-and-dirty methods may not be as flashy or as innovative as the GRU cyberattacks of the past, they can nonetheless inflict serious digital chaos in a country that needs every resource it has to fend off Russia's invaders.

Update 12:10 pm EST 11-10-22: Added MSTIC's attribution of the Prestige ransomware attacks on Ukraine and Poland to the GRU's Sandworm group.

Wired · by Condé Nast · November 10, 2022


7. Confronting Iran Protests, Regime Uses Brute Force but Secretly Appeals to Moderates


Are we seeing the revolution in Iran? WIll it be successful? What does the success mechanism look like?



Confronting Iran Protests, Regime Uses Brute Force but Secretly Appeals to Moderates

Purges of rivals and reformists from the government have narrowed officials’ options for a response

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-protests-government-mahsa-amini-11669137860?mod=hp_lead_pos5&utm_source=pocket_saves

By Benoit Faucon

 and David S. Cloud

Nov. 22, 2022 1:11 pm ET



As antigovernment protests swept across Iran last month, its top leaders made a secret appeal to two of the Islamic Republic’s founding families, the moderate Rafsanjani and Khomeini clans that hard-liners had pushed out of power, said people familiar with the talks.

Iran’s national-security chief, Ali Shamkhani, asked representatives of the families to speak out publicly to calm the unrest. If that happened, he said, liberalizing measures sought by demonstrators could follow, the people said.

The families refused, the people said.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his inner circle face a quandary after two months of nationwide protests. Their purges of prominent rivals and reformists from the government in recent years have narrowed their options for putting down one of the most serious internal challenges to their rule in the clerical regime’s 43-year history.

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Support for the protests has been fueled by anger at an economy racked by sanctions and inflation, at laws requiring women to cover their heads in public, and at a government that has excluded moderates from its ranks, senior Iranian reformists have said. Moderates were once an integral part of Iran’s Islamic system of governance, and are now growing more aligned with protesters’ calls for the system to be torn down.

“A large part of society shares the dissatisfaction with the protesters,” Mohammad Khatami, a former president of Iran, warned this week in a speech released on a reformist social-media site. “Continuation of the status quo is further increasing the grounds for a societal collapse.”

The Iranian government didn’t respond to requests for comment.


A still from a video posted on Nov. 3 reportedly showed protesters throwing a small explosive device at a banner depicting Mr. Khamenei.

PHOTO: -/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES


A woman protested 22-year-old Mahsa Amini's death in Tehran, Oct. 1.

PHOTO: /ASSOCIATED PRESS

The presence of moderates and reformists in the government once provided a political pressure-release valve, but both factions have seen their role in Iranian politics shrink in recent years. Reformist politicians have sought for decades to loosen Mr. Khamenei’s hard-line grip on Iranian society, while moderates accepted his role but favored more social and political freedoms. Their dissenting voices could help absorb discontent without proving to be a threat to the system.

In recent years, the Guardian Council—a 12-member body of clerics and jurists partly appointed by Mr. Khamenei with sweeping powers to veto legislation and decide who is eligible to run for office—has purged the government and Parliament of almost all moderates and reformists, and even some conservative rivals.

Before the 2021 presidential elections won by Ebrahim Raisi, the council approved five conservatives, one centrist and one reformist, and disqualified four others. “We narrowed the competition day by day, and trusted political activists of the people gradually left the scene,” Majid Ansari, a former vice president under former centrist President Hassan Rouhani, said this month at a forum in Tehran.

“Ayatollah Khamenei made sure all reformists left the political system,” said Saeid Golkar, an authority on Iran’s security services who teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “He did political surgery to prepare for his succession.”

The protests erupted in September after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody, after she was arrested for allegedly violating strict laws on women’s dress in public. What began as nightly clashes in Tehran and other cities involving hundreds of mostly young people has given way to daily civil disobedience.

Businesses have closed their doors. Students have staged campus sit-ins. Women have publicly defied laws requiring headscarves and modest dress. Workers have gone on strike in key industries. Mourners at the graves of protesters killed by authorities have coalesced into pop-up antigovernment rallies.

In response, the government has used pellet guns and tear gas, arrested demonstrators en masse, cracked down on university students, shut down the internet and claimed that the riots were the work of foreign spies.

More than 430 protesters have been killed and 17,000 have been detained, according to estimates from the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Activists in Iran. Some now face the death penalty.

While authorities have stopped short of responding with widespread violence given many Iranians’ support for the protests, analysts say, the crackdown could still turn more deadly.

The ailing 83-year-old Mr. Khamenei has steered Iran’s tumultuous course for more than three decades after succeeding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the patriarch of the powerful Khomeini family and the only other person to hold the job of supreme leader.

Iranian officials have dismissed the possibility that the unrest could threaten the hard-line government Mr. Khamenei has built.


Mr. Khamenei at a meeting with members of the Iranian Expediency Discernment Council, a government advisory panel.

PHOTO: IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER'S OFFICE/ZUMA PRESS

“I don’t see signs of any senior official having the slightest doubt about the stability of the Islamic Republic,” said Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a hard-line adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team. “If they really worried about ending the riots quickly, they could have used a much heavier hand.”

Mr. Khamenei and other top officials have offered few public concessions to protesters. They have demanded Farsi-language satellite television channels cease beaming videos of the protests into Iran.

Iranian officials have also turned to the courts, filing charges against more than 1,000 people in Tehran alone. A defendant was sentenced to death last week for setting fire to a government building.

The Islamic Republic’s next steps to try to tame the protests are likely to include attempts to split off parts of the movement, using misinformation to portray the protests as the work of foreign spies and carrying out executions in hopes of deterring people, people who study Iran say.

Mr. Khamenei could dismiss Mr. Shamkhani, the national-security chief, or pressure President Raisi to step down for failing to halt the unrest, according to former Iranian officials.

Iran has threatened countries that it accuses without evidence of fomenting the unrest, including the U.S., the U.K. and Saudi Arabia. If other options fail, using live ammunition is likely to be intensified, say the Iran experts, though they say authorities might be reluctant to use it against young women, who often lead the demonstrations.

“The regime has just one method, which is aggressive suppression,” said Mostafa Pakzad, a Tehran-based consultant who advises foreign companies in Iran. But, he said, “the character of this uprising is spontaneous, leaderless and emotional” and therefore “very hard to dismantle by sheer aggression.”


Iranians protested in Tehran, Oct. 1.

PHOTO: /ASSOCIATED PRESS


Shops closed following riots in Tehran, Nov. 16.

PHOTO: WANA NEWS AGENCY/VIA REUTERS

The outreach to the Khomeini and Rafsanjani families indicates the government is searching for other measures to quell the demonstrations—and considering concessions that only months ago would have been considered unthinkable.

Few other Iranian families have deeper roots at the highest levels of the Islamic Republic. An ascetic Shia cleric whose return from exile helped bring down the monarchy in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the father of Iran’s revolution and its first supreme leader until his death a decade later. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani engineered Mr. Khamenei’s ascent to the post. He was the country’s president from 1989 to 1997, and remained a pragmatic insider until he died in 2017.

Younger members of the Khomeini and Rafsanjani clans have built careers in business and politics, often as reformists or moderates at odds with Mr. Khamenei. Mr. Rafsanjani’s youngest daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, and other members of the two families have been detained during the recent protests.

In late October, Mr. Shamkhani, the head of Iran’s National Supreme Security Council, invited Mr. Ansari, who is close to the Khomeini family, and Hossein Marashi, a relative of Mr. Rafsanjani’s wife, to a meeting in his Tehran office, the people told about the meeting said. Also in attendance, they said, was Behzad Nabavi, who founded the Islamic Republic’s intelligence service and is now close to the reformist former president Mr. Khatami.


Ali Shamkhani, head of Iran’s National Supreme Security Council, last year.

PHOTO: VAHID SALEMI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mr. Shamkhani, the security chief, expressed confidence in the Islamic Republic’s resilience, saying he had received information the U.S. wasn’t seeking regime change, the people briefed on the meeting said. If the families would ask protesters to stand down, he told them, liberalizing measures that reformist-minded members of these factions had long favored could follow, the people said.

Mr. Shamkhani arranged for them to meet a week later with President Raisi, who repeated the request for the support of the two families, the people said.

Mr. Marashi suggested to the Iranian leaders that they should reach an agreement with the U.S. on reviving a 2015 agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting international sanctions, the people familiar with the talks said. Reviving the deal—a goal of many moderates and reformists who favor engagement with the West—would ease Iran’s economic isolation and help defuse the protests, he said.

The talks have so far gone nowhere, the people said.

Officials involved in the nuclear talks have said that the two sides were close to a deal in August, but the negotiations have since deadlocked over Tehran’s demands for an end to an unrelated United Nations investigation of its nuclear activities. After the Iran protests broke out in September, Biden administration officials said the nuclear talks are no longer a priority.

Mr. Marashi said he couldn’t immediately comment when reached by phone and didn’t respond to subsequent requests. Messrs. Shamkhani, Ansari and Raisi—through his government’s website—didn’t respond to requests for comment. Mr. Nabavi couldn’t be reached.

Since the meetings, some members of the two families have publicly backed the protesters. Hassan Khomeini, a prominent reformist cleric and grandson of the republic’s founder, issued a public call for sweeping political change.

“The most rational way of running the country is majority-oriented democracy,” he told reformist website Bayan Farda on Nov. 8. “You should have hope in God and then trust in people,” he said, adding such views positioned him as loyal to his grandfather’s ideals. A reformists’ faction to which Mr. Marashi belongs is now calling for a referendum to decide on the regime’s future.

Other sidelined reformist officials have moved steadily closer to the protesters. Parvaneh Salahshouri, a former Iranian lawmaker who advocated against the mandatory hijab and was the leader of a small group of reformist female legislators, has become steadily more critical of the government since she decided not to run for re-election in 2021.


Parvaneh Salahshouri in her Parliament office in Tehran in 2019.

PHOTO: VAHID SALEMI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Be sure that God’s patience has run out with your cruelty,” she warned the government this month in a tweet. She has also criticized reformists, such as Mr. Khatami, saying their efforts to work within Iran’s government have failed.

One danger for the regime is that groups that have supported the government—including powerful Shiite clerics based in the holy city of Qom—could reconsider if they begin to doubt its ability to contain the unrest. Even more dangerous is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful branch of the armed forces that has evolved over decades into a semiautonomous institution with extensive commercial interests, could formally seize power and replace Iran’s theocracy with military-dominated rule.

Most Iranians oppose the Islamic Republic’s theocratic form of government, polls show. About 68% of respondents in a 2020 poll of Iranians said they believe that religious requirements should be excluded from state legislation, according to the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran, a nonprofit research foundation in the Netherlands. Only 14% agreed that laws should accord with religious teachings.

Even supporters concede that Mr. Khamenei’s push to exclude reformist and moderate voices from the government have left many Iranians feeling disengaged, with no outlet to voice their frustrations other than protests.

“In the days when people do not have significant participation in the minimum platforms created for political participation, such as elections, it is clearly necessary to take steps in the direction of designing mechanisms and processes to make the will of the people flow in the structures,” Mohammed Reza Ziaie, a student leader in the Basij militia, whose role is to defend the Islamic Republic’s system, told Mr. Raisi in a January public address.

Supreme Leader Khamenei has shown no sign of relenting.

“We brought together the republic and Islam; we brought together the presence of the people and the opinions of the people and God’s knowledge,” he said in a Nov. 2 recorded address. “We did this work with divine success.”


Protesters clashed with security forces in Mahabad, Nov. 16.

PHOTO: SALAMPIX/ABACA/ZUMA PRESS

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com and David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com




8. After Pushing Conspiracies, Tulsi Gabbard Lectures Special Ops Students on Avoiding Disinformation


Sigh....


After Pushing Conspiracies, Tulsi Gabbard Lectures Special Ops Students on Avoiding Disinformation

military.com · by Steve Beynon · November 22, 2022

Former Democratic congresswoman and conservative-media pundit Tulsi Gabbard gave a guest lecture to students at the Army's psychological warfare school last week on several topics, including disinformation, Military.com has learned.

Gabbard, who has long been criticized by members of both major political parties for peddling pro-Russian talking points including disinformation, was acting in her role as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. She also discussed psychological operations more broadly, including how to improve lawmakers' understanding of it, according to internal 1st Special Forces Command communications reviewed by Military.com.

On Thursday, Gabbard was speaking at an event at the John F. Kennedy Auditorium at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, discussing social media's impact on democracy, information warfare and disinformation, for students at the Army's 43-week psychological warfare school. Two soldiers who were there said she briefly expressed concerns over disinformation polluting American discourse and the need to get U.S. society back to a place "where people trust one another." No phones were allowed in the briefing.

Gabbard did not respond to a request for comment.

“LTC Gabbard spoke about her personal experiences and perspectives as a Civil Affairs Officer in the Army Special Operations community and her understanding of strategic level policy making. It was not about any one specific topic,” Maj. Rick Dickson, a spokesperson for the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School told Military.com in a statement. “There was a Q&A period after her remarks where students asked many different questions on a wide variety of topics.”

Psychological operations soldiers are a key asset for Special Forces, serving as a tool for the organization's mission of growing guerrilla armies. Psyops focuses on propaganda efforts targeting adversaries, media manipulation, messaging and other unconventional communications tactics on a battlefield.

Gabbard has long flirted with and outright promoted disinformation and conspiracy theories, sometimes while in uniform.

In March, she posted a video on TikTok and other social media sites repeating disinformation about U.S. support for biolabs in Ukraine, falsely implying that the labs worked on bioweapons and diseases like COVID-19 and that the Biden administration was trying to cover it up. That conspiracy theory was seen as a pretext for the war and was pushed by Chinese and Russian state mediaas well as QAnon.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, responded at the time on Twitter, saying Gabbard was "parroting Russian propaganda'' and that her "treasonous lies may well cost lives."

Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, is a civil affairs officer in the Reserve and assigned to 1st Special Forces Command, but served the bulk of her career in the National Guard.

Troops are generally forbidden from engaging in political activity while in uniform or on duty. The rules are easily skirted by reservists and Guardsmen, who spend the bulk of their time off duty and therefore outside some of the confines of Defense Department rules. For example, there are multiple members of Congress, including Gabbard when she served in the House, who also serve as part-time troops.

Yet there are no clear rules in the military on spreading disinformation, unwittingly or not. Gabbard is arguably one of the most high-profile part-time troops currently serving, and the reserve and National Guard have effectively no clear apparatus to discipline troops for their conduct off duty, other than drug use.

The Army as a whole has struggled to modernize its social media policies, and service officials have been gun-shy about the appearance of partisanship, paranoid that the wrong move could quickly ignite the ire of right-wing media and conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill, multiple sources with direct knowledge of senior service officials' thinking on the matter have told Military.com.

"Part of the Army's problem is they do this false equivalency of right and left disinformation," said Kris Goldsmith, an Army veteran and founder of Task Force Butler, which studies domestic extremism. "The fact they have someone that does Russian disinformation on her off-time on the most popular cable network is perfectly representative of the Pentagon not taking this issue seriously."

Gabbard was previously a congresswoman in a solid-blue Hawaii district and served on the House Armed Services Committee, basing a lot of her platform on being staunchly antiwar. She declined to run for another term in the House, amid a rocky relationship with her own party and a strong primary challenger in 2020.

In the days leading up to and following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian state media broadcasted translated clips of Gabbard on Fox News' Tucker Carlson program, a show she would go on to guest host. In those clips, Gabbard blamed NATO and the U.S. for provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that the Biden administration's support of the war effort would lead to increased fuel costs.

"These sanctions don't work," Gabbard said on Fox News in February. "What we do know is that they will increase suffering and hardship for the American people. And this is the whole problem with the Biden administration: They are so focused on 'how do we punish Putin' that they don't care and are not focused on what is actually in the best interests of the American people."

Gabbard also dipped her toe in presidential races, serving as a key surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders' White House bid in 2016 and running her own campaign in 2020 that failed to gain momentum. She has since turned to punditry on Fox News, inking a contributor deal last week, and is also relatively active on the podcast circuit.

-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.

military.com · by Steve Beynon · November 22, 2022


9. Rubio, Roy release 'Woke Military' investigative report


The 18 page report is here: https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/ee1d7a86-6d0c-4f08-bd15-24e5b28e54b7/3756824FA9C21B819BB97AAB16221530.woke-warfighters-report-3.pdf. It is very slickly produced and worthy of high PSYOP praise.


I do not find the report compelling or objective. It is focused on promoting a specific agenda and uses extensive biased language. It is certainly not a scholarly report.  While I am sure many of the anecdotes are true it is obvious that they are described with a specific agenda in mind. It would not be difficult for someone with a different agenda to spin each anecdote in another direction. I do not think this report (or similar reports that might be assessed as supporting so-called "wokism") is helpful in solving the extreme political divides that exist in our society.  


The question we should be asking is how to move forward despite our political divisions? What can we do to mitigate and live with the political divisions? No one seems to be writing reports about that. The only reports being written are those that attack the "other." And of course those who hate the other are complicit in sustaining the political divide and undermining our great American experiment.



Rubio, Roy release 'Woke Military' investigative report

americanmilitarynews.com · by Ryan Morgan · November 22, 2022

President Joe Biden and his administration are weakening the U.S. military with a “woke” political ideology, according to a new report published on Monday by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX).

The 18-page report, titled “WOKE WARFIGHTERS: How Political Ideology is Weakening America’s Military,” documents several instances of both uniformed and civilian military leaders promoting racially charged theories and promoting individuality among its LGBT members.

The report states the U.S. military is “the greatest fighting force in the

world” and its members “are driven by a love of country and a sense of service and honor that is increasingly rare today.”

“The United States and the world are better off because of these

brave men and women,” the report continues. “Unfortunately, President Joe Biden and his administration are weakening America’s warfighters through a sustained assault fueled by woke virtue signaling.”

The Republican report points to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s order in February of 2021 for a standdown to discuss extremism within the ranks of the military. The report states that the military expended more than 5,359,000 personnel hours on these standdown discussions on extremism. At the same time, the Biden Administration’s “Countering Extremist Activity Working Group” (CEAWG) found that “cases of prohibited extremist activity among service members were rare,” with only 100 cases among the more than 2.1 million personnel in the active and reserve components of the U.S. military.

Rubio and Roy’s report notes how the military has brought on diversity specialists — like Pentagon diversity advisor Bishop Garrison and Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) Chief Diversity Equity and Inclusivity Officer Kelisa Wing — who have made both racially and politically charged comments.

Garrison has promoted the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which argues that the true founding of the U.S. was when slavery began on the American continent and not when the American colonies issued the Declaration of Independence. In 2019, Garrison also publicly tweeted that support for former President Donald Trump is support for extremism and racism.

Wing came under scrutiny for her own racially charged tweets, including one where she referred to a white woman as having “CAUdacity,” a slang term blending the words “Caucasian” and “audacity” to describe the so-called audacity of white people.

The Rubio and Roy report further describes how U.S. military service academies have implemented “Critical Race Theory” and academy leaders have instructed their students to read “How to Be an Antiracist,” a book that promotes the idea that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”

The Republican report further criticizes the Biden administration’s military leadership for “proudly promoting and celebrating sex reassignment procedures, which can have months-long recovery periods, with complete recovery taking ‘up to one year’ for some procedures.” The Republican authors note that having a peanut allergy or skin diseases like eczema can be disqualifying conditions for service members, while the Biden administration is allowing other service members to undergo these invasive sex reassignment surgeries with lengthy recovery periods.

The report also criticizes military leadership in general for promoting LGBT individuality. The Republican lawmakers argue that the military is “a forge in which diverse members are made one to serve the needs of their unit and their country” and that “the appeal to self is corrosive to unit cohesion.”

Military leaders have repeatedly defended against accusations that the services are “woke” and undermined by these diversity efforts, and have even touted such efforts as key to strengthening the military. Last month, the Biden administration released its new national security strategy, which states “we will strengthen the effectiveness of the force by promoting diversity and inclusion.”

Last month, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth also defended against accusations that being “woke” is hurting military readiness.

“I think woke means a lot of different things to different people, but first of all I would say if woke means, you know, we are not focused on warfighting, we are not focused on readiness, that doesn’t reflect what I see at installations all around the country or overseas when I go and visit,” Wormuth said.

Wormuth defended against charges that wokeness is hurting the military just days after the Army concluded its worst year of recruiting on record, coming up 15,000 recruits short and missing their recruiting goal by a full 25 percent. Wormuth did not directly attribute the recruiting struggles to “woke” ideology in the ranks, but did urge the service’s leaders to keep “out of the culture wars” online.

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americanmilitarynews.com · by Ryan Morgan · November 22, 2022


10. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 22 (Putin's War) 



Maps/graphics:  https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-22


Key Takeaways

  • The Kremlin may be setting information conditions for a false-flag attack in Belgorod Oblast.
  • The Russian military has significantly depleted its arsenal of high-precision missiles but will likely still threaten Ukrainian infrastructure.
  • The Russian military is likely struggling to replenish its arsenal of high-precision weapons systems.
  • The Belarusian prime minister traveled to Iran to discuss economic cooperation and possible security ties.
  • Russian military movements suggest that Russian forces are likely reinforcing positions in eastern Zaporizhia and western Donetsk oblasts.
  • Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
  • Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
  • Crimean occupation officials demonstrated heightened unease—likely over Ukrainian strikes on Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in the peninsula and ongoing military operations on the Kinburn Spit.
  • The Kremlin continues to deflect concerns about mobilization onto the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).
  • Russian sources continue to tout the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families.


RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 22

Nov 22, 2022 - Press ISW


Download the PDF

 


understandingwar.org

Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Karolina Hird, Madison Williams, Yekaterina Klepanchuk, Nicholas Carl, and Frederick W. Kagan

November 22, 8:30 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 Kremlin appears to be setting information conditions for a false-flag attack in Belgorod Oblast, Russia, likely in an effort to regain public support for the war in Ukraine. Kremlin propagandists have begun hypothesizing that Ukrainian forces seek to invade Belgorod Oblast, and other Russian sources noted that Russian forces need to regain control over Kupyansk, Kharkiv Oblast, to minimize the threat of a Ukrainian attack.[1] These claims have long circulated within the milblogger community, which had criticized the Russian military command for abandoning buffer positions in Vovchansk in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast following the Russian withdrawal from the region in September.[2] Russian milbloggers have also intensified their calls for Russia to regain liberated territories in Kharkiv Oblast on November 22, stating that such preemptive measures will stop Ukrainians from carrying out assault operations in the Kupyansk and Vovchansk directions.[3] Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov also published footage showcasing the construction of the Zasechnaya Line fortifications on the Ukraine-Belgorod Oblast border.[4] Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin clarified that Wagner is building the Zasechnaya Line after having changed its name from Wagner Line because “many people in [Russia] do not like the activity of private military company Wagner.”[5] Private military companies are illegal in Russia.

Russian claims of an imminent Ukrainian attack on Belgorod Oblast are absurd and only aim to scare the general public to support the war. Ukraine has no strategic interest in invading Russia and no ability to do so at such a scale. Ukrainian forces are continuing to liberate occupied settlements in western Luhansk Oblast following their victory in northern Kharkiv Oblast.[6] Support for Russia’s nonsensical invasion is declining among Russian residents of border regions and the rest of the country as a result of mobilization and military failures. Russian opposition outlets reported that relatives of mobilized men have ignited protests in 15 Russian regions since the end of October, with the most notable ones taking place in regions bordering Ukraine.[7] A Russian opposition outlet, Meduza, citing two unnamed sources close to the Kremlin, reported that the Russian Presidential Administration carried out an internal survey in different regions where many expressed apathy toward the war.[8] While ISW cannot independently verify Meduza’s report, emerging calls for demobilization among relatives of mobilized men suggest that Russian propaganda is ineffective in countering the real-life consequences of the war on the society.[9]

These ridiculous speculations about a fantastical Ukrainian invasion of Russia may also be part of the Kremlin’s effort to acknowledge and appease the Russian pro-war nationalist community. Russian milbloggers have repeatedly accused the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) of failing to defend Russia, including the newly annexed territories.[10] The Kremlin, however, will unlikely be able to reinvade Kharkiv Oblast as demanded by these nationalist figures.

Prigozhin is also using fearmongering about a fictitious Ukrainian invasion threat and the construction of the Zasechnaya Line to solidify his power in Russian border regions and Russia. Belgorod Oblast officials previously halted the construction of the Wagner Line, and the line’s rebranding alongside other Prigozhin projects in St. Petersburg and Kursk Oblast signifies that he will continue to establish himself in Russia while ostensibly supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.[11]

The Russian military has significantly depleted its arsenal of high-precision missiles but will likely still be able to attack Ukrainian critical infrastructure at scale in the near term. Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov released figures on November 22 detailing that the Russian military has only 119 Iskanders missiles, 13 percent of its initial February 2022 arsenal.[12] Reznikov’s figures also show that Russian forces have significantly depleted other key high-precision weapons systems with only 229 Kalibr missiles (45 percent of the initial February 2022 stock), 150 Kh-155 missiles (50 percent of the initial February 2022 stock), and 120 Kh-22/32 missiles (32 percent of the initial February 2022 stock) remaining. Reznikov’s figures show that Russian forces have substantially depleted stocks of 3M-55 “Onyx”, S-300, Kh-101, Kh-35, and Kh-47M2 Kinzhal missiles as well.[13]

Ukrenergo head Volodymyr Kudrytsky stated on November 22 that Russian forces have damaged almost all thermal power plants, large hydropower plants, and Ukrenergo hub substations in Ukraine.[14] Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stated on November 18 that more than half of the Ukrainian power grid has failed as a result of Russian missile strikes.[15] DTEK CEO Maxim Tymchenko urged Ukrainians to leave the country, if possible, on November 19 to ease demand on the Ukrainian power grid, and YASNO CEO Serhiy Kovalenko stated on November 21 that regular power outages will likely last at least until the end of March 2023.[16] Russian forces will likely be able to continue to reduce the overall capacity of Ukrainian critical infrastructure in the near term given the current state of the Ukrainian power grid. The depletion of the Russian military’s high-precision missile arsenal will likely prevent it from conducting missile strikes at a high pace, however. ISW continues to assess that the Russian military will fail to achieve its goal of degrading the Ukrainian will to fight through its coordinated campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure.

The Russian military is likely experiencing problems in replenishing its arsenal of high-precision weapons systems. Ukrainian Air Force Command spokesperson Yuriy Ignat stated on November 21 that Russia is experiencing problems with the supply of Iranian missiles to the Russian Federation.[17] Ignat speculated that diplomatic resources, negotiations, or other countries’ influence may have impacted Iran’s ability or willingness to supply Russia with ballistic missiles.[18] ISW has previously assessed that Russia is increasingly dependent on Iran for the provision of high-precision weapons systems.[19] Ignat also reported that Russia lacks the necessary components produced abroad to support the manufacturing of the number of missiles it needs for its campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure.[20] Reznikov stated that Russia manufactured 120 Kalibr and Kh-101 missiles and 360 Kh-35 missiles since February 2022, allowing the Russian military to partially offset the heavy use of these weapons systems in massive strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.[21] Russia likely significantly strained the existing capacity of its military industry in producing these missiles.

Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko has traveled to Iran to discuss economic cooperation and possibly security ties. Golovchenko met with Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber and will likely meet Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other officials in the coming days.[22] Golovchenko’s visit to Tehran follows the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence reporting on November 17 that Iran may help Belarus produce artillery shells.[23]

Russian military movements suggest that Russian forces are likely reinforcing positions in eastern Zaporizhia and western Donetsk oblasts. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on November 22 that Chechen and Wagner Group formations deployed to Debaltseve, Donetsk Oblast, and that Russian forces are regrouping individual units in the area of Molchansk, Zaporizhia Oblast (just northeast of Melitopol).[24] Social media sources posted images on November 21 showing Russian trucks and vehicles in Melitopol moving from the south to the north throughout November.[25] Geolocated images show Russian military vehicles moving through Bezimenne and Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast carrying a notable amount of military equipment.[26] ISW has previously assessed that Russian forces have begun reinforcing positions in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast with personnel from Kherson Oblast and mobilized personnel.[27] Russian forces may be reinforcing positions in eastern Zaporizhia and western Donetsk oblasts to prepare for perceived threats of future Ukrainian operations or to support the effort to restart the Donetsk offensive.

Key Takeaways

  • The Kremlin may be setting information conditions for a false-flag attack in Belgorod Oblast.
  • The Russian military has significantly depleted its arsenal of high-precision missiles but will likely still threaten Ukrainian infrastructure.
  • The Russian military is likely struggling to replenish its arsenal of high-precision weapons systems.
  • The Belarusian prime minister traveled to Iran to discuss economic cooperation and possible security ties.
  • Russian military movements suggest that Russian forces are likely reinforcing positions in eastern Zaporizhia and western Donetsk oblasts.
  • Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
  • Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
  • Crimean occupation officials demonstrated heightened unease—likely over Ukrainian strikes on Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in the peninsula and ongoing military operations on the Kinburn Spit.
  • The Kremlin continues to deflect concerns about mobilization onto the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).
  • Russian sources continue to tout the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families.


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

  • Ukrainian Counteroffensives—Eastern Ukraine
  • Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and one supporting effort);
  • Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
  • Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
  • Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
  • Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)

Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line on November 22. Ukrainian officials reported that bad weather continues to slow down Russian operations on the Svatove-Kreminna line.[28] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian artillery units repelled Ukrainian forces attempting to advance in the direction of Novoselivske (23km northwest of Svatove).[29] Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Administration stated that Russian forces conducted defensive operations and continued artillery fire in the areas of Novoselivske, Stelmakhivka, Ploshchanka, and Makiivka, all west of the N26 and R66 highways.[30] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian assault near Stelmakhivka (16km northwest of Svatove), while the Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces stopped a Ukrainian attempt to seize the settlement.[31] Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Deputy Interior Minister Vitaly Kiselev shared video footage purporting to show the aftermath of a Ukrainian attempted offensive near Orlianka (22km east of Kupyansk).[32] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian assault on Kuzemivka (13km northwest of Svatove), and Ukrainian attacks in the direction of Holykove (17km north of Kreminna) and Chervonopopivka (6km northwest of Kreminna).[33] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued routine indirect fire along the line of contact in eastern Kharkiv and western Luhansk oblasts.[34]

Ukrainian forces continued to repel Russian assaults west of Lysychansk. Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai reported that Ukrainian forces repel Russian attacks on Bilohorivka (15km northwest of Lysychansk) daily.[35] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces are highly active in the vicinity of Verkhnokamianka (17km southwest of Lysychansk) and stated that Ukrainian forces are firing artillery at Russian equipment in this area.[36]


Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued to conduct offensive operations in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions on November 22. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults on Bakhmut; within 30km northeast of Bakhmut near Spirne, Bilohorivka, Yakovlivka, and Soledar; and within 4km south of Bakhmut near Opytne.[37] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults within 8km northeast of Avdiivka near Kamianka and Vesele, and within 37km southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske, Krasnohorivka, Marinka, and Novomykhailivka.[38] The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) People’s Militia posted a video on November 22 purporting to show the 100th Brigade of the DNR People’s Militia conducting an assault near Ukrainian positions within 16km southwest of Avdiivka, near Nevelske.[39] Several Russian sources claimed that Russian forces made advances in Marinka and that Ukrainian forces suffered heavy losses and are slowly retreating from positions in the city.[40] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces have also cut two of three supply roads into Marinka.[41] A Russian source claimed on November 21 that Russian aviation regularly strikes the positions of Ukrainian forces in Marinka.[42] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian advances in the area of Marinka are slow because the surrounding landscape is mainly comprised of open fields with little cover.[43]

Russian forces conducted defensive operations in western Donetsk on November 22. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are defending captured lines in western Donetsk Oblast.[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian counterattacks on Russian positions in Pavlivka (53km southwest of Donetsk City) on November 20 and 21.[45] A Georgia-based open-source intelligence group suggested that Russian forces may be waiting for drier weather to restart offensive operations in the directions of Hulyaipole, Vuhledar, and Marinka.[46] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued routine indirect fire along the line of contact in eastern Zaporizhia and Donetsk oblasts.[47]


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

Note: ISW will report on activities in Kherson Oblast as part of the Southern Axis in this and subsequent updates. Ukraine’s counteroffensive in right-bank Kherson Oblast has accomplished its stated objectives, so ISW will not present a Southern Ukraine counteroffensive section until Ukrainian forces resume counteroffensives in southern Ukraine.

Russian forces continued conducting defensive measures and establishing fortifications in Kherson Oblast south of the Dnipro River on November 22. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces also continued to shell Ukrainian positions on the right (west) bank of the Dnipro River.[48] A Russian source claimed that Russian artillery repelled a Ukrainian reconnaissance group that attempted to cross the Dnipro River by boat, but did not provide any evidence for this claim.[49] Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security also reported that Ukrainian forces are continuing to carry out unspecified operations on the Kinburn Spit, but specified that Russian forces are still holding positions at the spit.[50] Russian forces continued routine shelling in Southern Ukraine on November 22.[51]

The Russian MoD continued to accuse Ukraine of provoking a man-made disaster at Zaporizhzia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) on November 22. The Russian MOD accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the ZNPP on November 21, stating that Ukraine threatened to stage a catastrophe at the ZNPP.[52] The Russian MoD and another Russian source claimed that Russian forces destroyed the Ukrainian artillery systems in Marhanets, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, that were responsible for the shelling of ZNPP.[53] Dnipropetrovsk Oblast officials reported that Russian forces shelled Marhanets and surrounding settlements from the direction of Enerhodar on November 22.[54] ISW has previously assessed that these accusations are likely a continuation of Russian information and false-flag operations to consolidate control of the plant and an effort to portray Russian control of ZNPP as an essential condition for avoiding a man-made nuclear or radiological disaster.[55] Some Russian sources speculated that Russian occupation authorities will hand over the ZNPP to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Ukrainian authorities due to the perceived increased instability at ZNPP.[56] The Kremlin will likely continue to assert control over the ZNPP as a tool for international leverage, however.

Crimean occupation officials demonstrated heightened unease on November 22, likely over Ukrainian strikes on Russian GLOCs on the peninsula and ongoing military operations on the Kinburn Spit. Russian sources shared footage of Russian air defenses activating on November 22, claiming that Russian forces shot down multiple Ukrainian drones over Crimea.[57] Crimea occupation head Sergey Aksyonov subsequently announced that Crimea is raising its terrorist threat level to high (yellow) until at least December 7.[58] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian authorities are preparing for an evacuation of administration officials and military equipment in Armyansk (about 100km southeast of Kherson City) due to the threat of Ukrainian strikes on northern Crimea.[59] A milblogger even claimed that he helped conduct the evacuation, while another milblogger claimed that women and children are already evacuating from Armyansk.[60] Aksyonov denied evacuation claims, and some milbloggers claimed that Armyansk occupation authorities conducted evacuation exercises.[61] ISW is unable to confirm the veracity of these claims. The Ukrainian Resistance Center also reported that Russian forces are planning to expand a road on the Arabat Spit (45km from Dzhankoy) to transfer military equipment in an effort to relocate the GLOC from Armyansk.[62] ISW assesses that Ukrainian forces are unable to conduct an immediate attack on Armyansk, but these claims likely indicate that Russian authorities are exhibiting a level of worry close to panic.


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

The Kremlin continues to deflect mobilization concerns onto the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated on November 22 that the Kremlin is not discussing the possibility of a new mobilization wave but noted that he is “unable to speak for the Russian MoD.”[63] Lower-end Kremlin officials are also beginning to address the Kremlin regarding the duration of mobilization and its problems. A member of the Yabloko party of the Karelia legislative assembly, Emilia Slabunova, recorded a video appeal with another parliamentarian demanding that Russian President Vladimir Putin issue a decree legally announcing the end of mobilization.[64] Yabloko members added that Russian officials are continuing to mobilize men regardless of Putin’s, the Russian MoD’s, and Peskov’s announcements regarding the end of mobilization. Putin is unlikely to issue such an order, however, since ending the mobilization period officially would require demobilizing servicemen in accordance with the Russian mobilization law.[65] Putin is also unlikely to sign a decree that specifies that Russia will not mobilize additional men while maintaining already-mobilized men on the frontlines because the Kremlin is interested in continuing its crypto mobilization campaign.

Russian recruitment officials are continuing to carry out crypto mobilization procedures in Russia and occupied Ukrainian territories. Wagner Group financier Yevheny Prigozhin subtly implied that he “was near” Kuzbass, Kemerovo Oblast, when responding to a question about prisoner recruitment in the region.[66] Prigozhin later shared a video response reportedly from Kuzbass Wagner recruits claiming that they are currently undergoing training.[67] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeniy Balitsky published footage of the ”Sudoplatov” volunteer battalion in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast that had reportedly recruited residents of Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts, Crimea, the Urals, and unspecified Russian regions.[68]

The Kremlin continues its efforts to lure more men into service by promising unsustainable financial incentives that will have a long-term effect on the Russian economy. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin stated that participation in the “special military operation” in Ukraine counts as double the length of service, which will double the normal pension payments for veterans.[69] The Kremlin will likely face significant long-term economic challenges if it decides to uphold its pension provisions in the future, while consistently failing to pay Russian servicemen in the present. Russian sources reported that mobilized men from Sverdlovsk Oblast continued to complain of the lack of monthly payments.[70] A pro-Kremlin source shared an account of a wife of a contract serviceman from Smolensk Oblast noting that her husband had not received his one-time enlistment bonus.[71]

Russian Armed Forces are unable to properly train or provide for all mobilized men, triggering social tensions within Russian society. Mishustin announced on November 22 that the Russian Coordination Council approved the simplified procurement of war supplies for nine security services including Rosgvardia, the Federal Penitentiary Service, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.[72] While this provision aims to prioritize security services in repairing military equipment or allow for faster procurement of weapons, it is unlikely to resolve supply shortages triggered by Western sanctions and Russian industrial-military complex problems. Nizhny Novgorod Oblast’s Security Department Head Natalia Cherepanova stated that mobilized men from Nizhny Novgorod stationed in Kursk Oblast do not have enough equipment to enter the combat zone.[73] Samara Oblast airsoft instructors also stepped in to train mobilized men.[74] A Russia-based Council of Mothers and Wives movement demanded a meeting with Putin over mobilization and conscription concerns and demanded demobilization.[75]

The Russian Armed Forces are continuing to suffer losses among personnel due to poor training, lack of equipment, and diminishing morale. A Russian investigative outlet, 7x7 – Horizontal Russia, reported that at least 39 mobilized Russian men have died before reaching the frontlines due to health problems and suicide.[76] Other opposition outlets, citing Primorsky Krai mobilized men, stated that only 19 men out of 120 belonging to the 155th Separate Guards Marine Brigade survived the battle for Pavlivka.[77] The Guardian reported that Kherson City locals also noted that Russian forces constantly burned dead Russian servicemen at a landfill, which has likely had negative impacts on Russian morale.[78] Mobilized servicemen continued to show poor discipline as video footage from Yurga, Kemerovo Oblast showed mobilized men fighting with locals at a cafe.[79]

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

Russian occupation officials continued measures to strengthen law enforcement and repress local populations of occupied areas on November 22. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Russian forces in the Melitopol area of Zaporizhia Oblast are searching private garages on the grounds of searching for partisan affiliation and that Russian officials in Luhansk Oblast are arbitrarily detaining citizens under suspicion of harboring pro-Ukrainian sympathies.[80] The Ukrainian Resistance Center also reported that Russian officials seek to create a “police state” in occupied Ukraine and noted that over 52,000 Russian law enforcement personnel are now on occupied territory, with more on the way.[81] This figure is likely reflective of continued anxiety amongst occupation officials regarding the threat of Ukrainian counteroffensive advances and partisan challenges to occupation regimes.

Russian sources continue to tout the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families on November 22. A Russian milblogger circulated the fifth part of a Russian documentary series following the adoption of three children from Snizhne, Donetsk Oblast into a Russian family.[82] As ISW previously noted, This documentary series being circulated by Russian sources clearly depicts Ukrainian children being adopted into Russian families, which may constitute a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and be part of a wider ethnic cleansing campaign.[83] This documentary campaign is likely intended to propagate informational conditions to normalize the forced assimilation of Ukrainian children into Russian society.

Russian politicians continue to foster relationships with occupied areas of Ukraine to oversee the bureaucratic, administrative, and economic assimilation of these areas into the Russian Federation. Russian Deputy Prime Minister for Construction and Regional Development met with Kherson Oblast occupation Head Vladimir Saldo on November 22 to discuss the restoration of infrastructure, roads, and the economy in occupied Kherson Oblast.[84] First Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko met with Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin to visit state institutions in occupied Donetsk Oblast.[85] Occupation officials likely hope to leverage relationships with Russian politicians to lend legitimacy to their administrative efforts.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

[6] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/11/20/u-luganskij-oblasti-12-naselenyh-punktiv-pid-ukrayinskym-praporom-sergij-cherevatyj/

[7] https://t.me/svobodnieslova/946 ; https://verstka(dot)media/protesty-rodstvennikov-mobilizovannyh-karta/

[17] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/11/21/koly-rosiya-otrymaye-iranski-balistychni-rakety-ta-pochne-masovanu-ataku/

[18] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/11/21/koly-rosiya-otrymaye-iranski-balistychni-rakety-ta-pochne-masovanu-ataku/

[20] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/11/21/koly-rosiya-otrymaye-iranski-balistychni-rakety-ta-pochne-masovanu-ataku/

[22] https://www.mehrnews dot com/news/5638021

[62] https://sprotyv dot mod dot gov.ua/2022/11/21/rosiyany-buduyut-dorogu-na-arabatskij-strilczi-dlya-perekydannya-tehniky/

[65] https://meduza dot io/cards/tak-zavershena-mobilizatsiya-v-rossii-ili-vse-taki-net

[69] https://www dot interfax dot ru/russia/873626

[72] https://www.rbc dot ru/rbcfreenews/637cb1fe9a79477e578d5fee?from=newsfeed?utm_source=telegram&utm_medium=messenger

[74] https://zona dot media/article/2022/11/21/airsoft

[78] https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1594789591046840320?s=20&t=FZ... theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/21/russians-accused-of-burning-bodies-at-kherson-landfill ; https://t.me/hueviyherson/29586

[80] https://sprotyv dot mod dot gov.ua/2022/11/22/pid-melitopolem-okupanty-vlashtuvaly-rejd-po-garazhah-shukayut-pidpillya/; https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/11/22/rosiyany-zatrymaly-30-meshkancziv-bilovodska-za-pidtrymku-zsu/

[81] https://sprotyv dot mod dot gov.ua/2022/11/22/rosiyany-stvoryuyut-na-tot-policzejsku-derzhavu/

understandingwar.org



11. Tech war: US, Taiwan, Japan gallop ahead in advanced semiconductors while China remains stuck at mature-node chips





Tech war: US, Taiwan, Japan gallop ahead in advanced semiconductors while China remains stuck at mature-node chips

  • TSMC founder Morris Chang said this week that an expansion to the more advanced 3-nm process was planned for the company’s Arizona site
  • China’s huge domestic market, especially lower-end segments served by legacy technology nodes, could provide a cushion for Chinese chip makers


Che Pan in Beijing

+ FOLLOW

Published: 11:00pm, 22 Nov, 2022

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3200586/tech-war-us-taiwan-japan-gallop-ahead-advanced-semiconductors-while-china-remains-stuck-mature-node


By Che Pan South China Morning Post3 min

View Original


Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co

The chip technology gap between China and the West is likely to further widen as the US, Taiwan and Japan forge ahead with leading-edge projects while mainland Chinese foundries remain stuck at mature nodes due to US export controls, according to analysts.

The 5-nanometre Arizona plant developed by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is expected to hold an official opening ceremony next month and TSMC founder Morris Chang said this week that an expansion to the more advanced 3-nm process was planned for the Arizona site.

At home, TSMC’s next-generation 3-nm process is expected to begin mass production in Tainan, southern Taiwan, in the second half of this year. TSMC is developing the more sophisticated 2-nm process in Hsinchu, where its headquarters are located, while early stated 1-nm development is focused on a facility in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan.

Separately, eight Japanese heavyweights including Toyota Motor, Sony Group and telecoms giant NTT have formed a consortium to undertake 2-nm chip fabrication within the next five years, according to a report by Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

These forays by US allies into production of leading edge chips – used in high end smartphones and tablets – marks a sharp contrast to mainland Chinese wafer foundries that are being forced to stick with mature node chips due to US trade sanctions.

Analysts said the gap between China and global chip leaders is expected to widen further under the updated US restrictions that target advanced nodes, as foreign rivals will keep investing to push technology boundaries.

China’s top foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), is only able to mass produce 14-nm chips – suitable for cars and home appliances – as it grapples with the challenges posed by the latest US sanctions. SMIC warned investors this month of the negative impact from Washington’s latest moves after posting third-quarter revenue that was flat compared with the previous quarter.

However, China’s huge domestic market, especially lower-end segments served by legacy technology nodes, could provide a cushion for Chinese chip makers.

“China’s response to the latest US sanctions in the chipmaking sector could be a retooling focus on mature nodes or third-generation semiconductors,” said Arisa Liu, a senior semiconductor research fellow at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research.

Liu said that the Japanese chipmaking initiative, which is likely to source technology from US tech giant IBM, was “more symbolic” because of the high threshold to enter the advanced wafer foundry business, as well as the difficulties in aligning views from several companies.

01:57

China condemns new US law aimed at boosting domestic semiconductor manufacturing

The updated semiconductor export controls announced by the US Department of Commerce on October 7 sent a jolt through China’s chip industry, crushing its ambitions to achieve more self-sufficiency in a crucial sector that is at the heart of US-China tech rivalry.

Chip makers that apply for subsidies under the recent US CHIPS and Science Act, including TSMC and Samsung Electronics, will be barred from investing in advanced chip facilities in China.

TSMC has seen steadily increasing demand for its advanced capacity, defined as process nodes at 7-nm and below – which have become the workhorse for central processing units used in high-end smartphones and tablets. TSMC’s combined revenue from 5-nm and 7-nm nodes accounted for 52 per cent of its total revenue in the third quarter.

Che Pan

Che Pan joined the Post as a technology reporter in 2020, based in Beijing. Before this, he worked as a China economy reporter at Caixin Global, with a particular focus on the macro-economy, trade and real estate. He has a master degree in Financial Regulation and Risk Management.



12. Red line over Taiwan question reiterated in talks between Chinese, US defense chiefs


The Chinese interpretation of the talks between the Defense Chiefs. 


  •    

CHINA / DIPLOMACY

Red line over Taiwan question reiterated in talks between Chinese, US defense chiefs

Americans urged to keep promises and eliminate root cause of crisis

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202211/1280125.shtml

By Liu Xuanzun

Published: Nov 22, 2022 02:41 PM

   


Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Photo: from China's Ministry of National Defense

The defense chiefs of China and the US met face to face for the first time in Cambodia on Tuesday since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's provocative visit to Taiwan island in early August, which was responded with large-scale military exercises around the island by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). 


Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe drew the red line of the Taiwan question to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin once again after Chinese President Xi Jinping had done so to US President Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, last week.


Aside from urging the US to honor the commitments made by Biden so that the China-US relations can resume healthy, stable development, the talks released a positive signal that would hopefully lower the risk of an unpredictable military confrontation and put the two countries' worsening military relations back on track, analysts said.


Wei, who is attending the ninth ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus in Cambodia, held talks with Austin here on Tuesday at the latter's request.


The talks were a practical measure to implement the important consensus reached during the meeting of the two countries' top leaders, and were of very important significance to promote China-US military ties to return to the right track of healthy, stable development, said Senior Colonel Tan Kefei, a spokesperson at China's Ministry of National Defense, at a press briefing in Cambodia after Wei and Austin's talks.


It was a frank, deep, pragmatic and constructive strategic communication, in which Wei briefed Austin the main information and important achievements of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and the two sides deeply exchanged views over the relations between the two countries and the two militaries, the Taiwan question as well as international and regional affairs, Tan said.


Both sides believe that the two militaries should earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the two countries' top leaders, keep communication channels open, deal with contradictions and divergences properly, enhance crisis management and make the best efforts to maintain an overall stability of military-to-military relations, Tan said.


Wei told Austin that Xi and Biden reached a series of important consensuses during their talks at the 17th Group of 20 Summit, charting the course for the development of China-US relations. The two countries should adhere to mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, so that both sides can ensure China-US relations are heading toward the right direction together - no going off course, no stalling, and surely no collision.


China bears no responsibility for the situation China-US relations is facing now, as its main cause is the wrong strategic judgement by the US, Wei said.


China attaches great importance to the development of relations between the two countries and the two militaries, but the US side must respect China's core interests, the Chinese defense minister said.


He expressed the hope that the US could keep its words and promises, truly implement the consensuses reached by the two heads of state, and adopt rational and pragmatic policies toward China, and effectively eliminate the root of the cause of crisis, so as to push bilateral relations back to the track of healthy and stable development.


The US does not seek a new Cold War, does not seek to revitalize alliances against China, does not support "Taiwan independence," does not support "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan," and has no intention to have a conflict with China, Biden said in his meeting with Xi last week.


Wei-Austin meeting on Tuesday is the first time the two countries' defense chiefs have met personally since Pelosi's provocative visit to the Taiwan island in August, and the second time this year. The two had already met in Singapore at the International Institute for Strategic Studies' 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in June.


The meeting reportedly lasted about 90 minutes, longer than the June meeting which took about an hour, therefore allowing more topics to be discussed this time, experts said.


Right after Pelosi's reckless Taiwan visit, the PLA launched large-scale military exercises around the island, including launching conventional ballistic missiles over it, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced countermeasures including canceling the China-US Theater Commanders Talk, Defense Policy Coordination Talks and Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meetings.


Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday that a meeting between the two defense chiefs in itself is a positive signal, as Pelosi's provocative visit to Taiwan island saw the two countries' military ties falling to rock-bottom.


It is always better for the two militaries to ease tensions, and it would serve no good to anyone if an unexpected military conflict breaks out between China and the US, Song said, adding that hopefully the American side can also seize the situation, as they should realize there is no room for compromise for the Chinese on the Taiwan question, Song said.


Core of core interests

Wei reiterated China's firm stance on the Taiwan question to Austin, as heemphasized that the Taiwan question is the core of China's core interests and the first insurmountable red line in China-US relations. Taiwan is China's Taiwan, and the settlement of the Taiwan question is the Chinese people's own affair and brooks no foreign interference.


Similar phrases were first used by Xi in his meeting with Biden last week, as Xi stressed that the Taiwan question is at the very core of China's core interests, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-US relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations.


Wei also told Austin that China's complete reunification must be and can be realized, and the Chinese military has the backbone, confidence and ability to resolutely safeguard national unification.


Over some time, the US has been blurring, hollowing out and distorting its one-China policy, frequently selling arms to the island of Taiwan, assisting in training the island's troops and sending senior officials to the island, which further escalated tensions in the Taiwan Straits, Tan said.


"Every US escalation and breakthrough on the Taiwan question is bound to meet China's resolute and powerful countermeasure," Tan said.


Resolving the Taiwan question has always been an important objective in the PLA's development, and as demonstrated in the "island encirclement" drills in August, the PLA is fully capable of locking down the island from external military interference, a Beijing-based military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times on Tuesday.


The US must understand that interfering in the Taiwan question militarily is playing with fire and will not end up well for it, the expert said.


Wei and Austin also compared notes on the international and regional situation, and on issues including the Ukraine crisis, the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula.


These issues cover not only the Asia-Pacific region, but also Europe, as the world nowadays is not a peaceful place with the US deeply involved, observers said, 


The US should not be fanning the flames around the world or instigating instabilities for its own hegemony, analysts said.


But generally speaking, the meeting had good results as it was beneficial for both sides to improve understanding and avoid misjudgments, Tan said. For the next step, the two sides will keep communicating, implement the two countries' top leaders' important consensus together, and make efforts to put China-US military ties back on the right track, he said.


13. Fake Facebook and Instagram accounts promoting US interests had ties to US military, Meta says



There is no need for this self inflicted wound.


"So long as we remain amateurs in the critical field of political warfare, the billions of dollars we annually spend on defense and foreign aid will provide us with a diminishing measure of protection."

- Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, 1961.



Fake Facebook and Instagram accounts promoting US interests had ties to US military, Meta says | CNN Politics

CNN · by Sean Lyngaas · November 22, 2022

Fake Facebook and Instagram accounts promoting US interests had ties to US military, Meta says

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN

Updated 10:17 PM EST, Tue November 22, 2022

Link Copied!

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Staff/AFP/Getty Images

CNN —

People “associated with the US military” were likely behind a network of phony Facebook and Instagram accounts that promoted US interests abroad by targeting audiences in Afghanistan and Central Asia, Facebook parent firm Meta said Tuesday.

It’s a rare case of a US tech giant tying a coordinated online influence operation to Washington rather than a foreign government.

Meta said it removed roughly three-dozen Facebook accounts and two-dozen Instagram accounts that violated the platform’s policy against “inauthentic coordinated behavior.”

Meta did not tie the activity to a particular US military command. But the Pentagon opened a sweeping review in September into the units that engage in online influence operations, including US Central Command, The Washington Post previously reported.

CNN has requested comment from the Pentagon and Central Command, which oversees US military activity in the Middle East and Central Asia, on Meta’s findings.

The fraudulent Facebook accounts removed by Meta claimed, among other things, that the US was helping the Central Asian country of Tajikistan secure its border with Afghanistan and that Washington was key to the region’s stability, according to researchers from analytics firm Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory, which documented the activity in an August report.

The Afghanistan-related posts peaked “during periods of strategic importance for the US,” according to the research, including the months prior to the US military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

The people behind the accounts took steps to “conceal their identities” and the activity gained very little traction from actual Facebook and Instagram users, Meta said Tuesday.

One former US official focused on Russia issues lamented the apparently ineffective influence operation – or the fact that the US military was trying it at all.

“I get the impulse, which is prevalent in military circles, that ‘the only way to lose is not to play’ in the information domain,’” Gavin Wilde, who oversaw Russia malign influence and cyber issues at the National Security Council in 2018 and 2019, told CNN.

“However, if their methodology gambles away the transparency and credibility the US wants to claim as benchmarks of an alternative to the Russian or Chinese model, is the payoff really worth it?” added Wilde, now a senior scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.





CNN · by Sean Lyngaas · November 22, 2022



14. America Ignores The Pacific Islands At Its Peril


Conclusion:


Not all is lost, however. Rejuvenating the alliances that ensured victory in World War II – and may ensure victory in the new Cold War with China – is still possible. But in order to do so, America can no longer afford to take these archipelagos for granted. Our position in the Pacific depends on it.


America Ignores The Pacific Islands At Its Peril

19fortyfive.com · by Kyle Sajoyan · November 22, 2022

With last month’s release of its new National Security Strategy, the Biden administration has framed America’s unfolding strategic competition with China in distinctly historic terms. “We have entered a consequential new period of American foreign policy that will demand more of the United States in the Indo-Pacific than has been asked of us since the Second World War,” the document reads.

The symbolism is rife. The allusion to the deadliest conflict in human history underscores the gravity of China’s contemporary threat to not just the United States, but to the allies and partners who live in Beijing’s shadow. Many of these nations have historically trusted the United States with their security and for good reason. Washington, after all, was instrumental in toppling Imperial Japan during WWII and helping to rebuild economies thereafter. Today, however, the People’s Republic of China is waging a diplomatic and economic offensive to undermine these alliances – and Beijing has been alarmingly successful in doing so.

Take the Pacific Island nations, for example. This past April, the PRC scored a strategic coup when it signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands that dramatically expanded its standing and military access there. That, however, was just the beginning. Subsequently, in October, reports emerged that the country’s police officers were even receiving training and instruction in China. Additionally, Beijing has expanded its influence in the Pacific Island states through initiatives such as a multi-billion dollar resort development program in the Marianas and environmental diplomacy toward the Marshall Islands. Through these steps, and others, the PRC has steadily chipped away at the durability of America’s longstanding regional partnerships.

That the U.S. was unprepared or unable to prevent these inroads is concerning enough. But Washington’s reaction to Beijing’s advances is even more troubling. When the Solomon Islands and the PRC announced a joint port access agreement in August, America and Australia panicked. Senior Biden administration officials rushed to Honiara to undo the damage, while leaders in Canberra issued thinly veiled threats. These steps, however, only made matters worse, and President Mannasen Sogavare responded by denying U.S. naval vessels docking rights.

Similar rifts are emerging in America’s partnership with the Marshall Islands, for which the United States has long served as the chief financial benefactor. Decades of Cold War nuclear bomb testing have terraformed the archipelago. The U.S. has lagged in addressing the environmental and health crises currently gripping the islands – openings that Beijing is deftly exploiting.

What accounts for America’s slow and unserious response? Washington’s longtime dominance in the Pacific Island region undoubtedly plays a part. Simply put, given the historic position occupied by the United States – which protected the supply and communication links between U.S. and Australia, destroyed Tokyo’s war-making industrial capabilities, and liberated the Philippines more than half a century ago – policymakers in Washington have tended to take the Pacific Island states for granted.

That’s a mistake because those partnerships remain crucial to America’s regional priorities today. For instance, access to the South Pacific on the part of Australia, a key regional ally, will have to be protected with the Solomons’ help. Air bases in the Philippines have the range to strike targets in the Taiwan Strait and are consequently crucial to any potential scenario involving a Chinese invasion of the island. The Marshalls and Marianas, meanwhile, secure lines of supply and communication from Hawaii and the West Coast. Simply put, the U.S. cannot credibly project power into the Pacific without the partnership of these small island nations.

It’s a reality that U.S. officials don’t seem to understand. During her recent visit to the Solomons, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman lamented the absence of Prime Minister Sogavare from the main ceremonies – without recognizing that it was in fact America which, through its lack of dynamic engagement, had missed an opportunity to head off the CCP’s encroachment. But the United States now confronts a stark reality: when it comes to its regional position, heritage and hegemony are waning assets. And both are being progressively eroded by China’s inroads.

Not all is lost, however. Rejuvenating the alliances that ensured victory in World War II – and may ensure victory in the new Cold War with China – is still possible. But in order to do so, America can no longer afford to take these archipelagos for granted. Our position in the Pacific depends on it.

Kyle Sajoyan is a researcher at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.

19fortyfive.com · by Kyle Sajoyan · November 22, 2022



15. Jihadis issue vague threats against World Cup





Jihadis issue vague threats against World Cup | FDD's Long War Journal

longwarjournal.org · by Caleb Weiss & Joe Truzman · November 22, 2022

In online statements, both al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al Qaeda’s general command issued vague threats against the FIFA World Cup and its host Qatar. Islamic State supporters have additionally published their own call to arms against the small Arab state.

In all cases, however, the warnings serve as general rallying cries for supporters rather than any explicit threat against the football tournament.

Over the weekend, AQAP became the first jihadist group to issue a statement condemning the Qatari state for hosting the World Cup. In a brief communique, the al Qaeda branch chastised the Qatari state for “spreading obscenity and homosexuality” and promoting “infidels of all races” by hosting the games.

It goes on to say that “Qatar has panted for more than ten years to win this immoral and frivolous occasion, diverting efforts that could have been in the service of Islam, the issues of Muslims, or in service of its nation’s issues and problems.”

Instead, AQAP states, Qatar has “wasted billions of dollars, which were sufficient for millions of Muslims” in its efforts to “shelter infidels, Crusaders, and polytheists” and to “promote degenerates, homosexuals, and atheists.”

According to AQAP, Qatar and its Western allies are attempting to divide the Ummah [worldwide Islamic community] to create “fanaticism, strive, and division to make the loyalty [of the Ummah] be towards something not of Islam but of loyalty to the infidels.”

The regional al Qaeda branch thus warns Muslims to not attend the games and to suppress and shun them online. It also calls for Islamic scholars to issue fatwas against the World Cup.

This message was soon followed by a similar release by al Qaeda’s general command. Using similar language, AQAP’s parent organization also states that in allowing “the scum of the people of the Earth” to enter its borders, Qatar is desecrating the holiness of the Arab Peninsula.

It further goes on to accuse Qatar of “squandering the money of the Islamic Ummah” and for “opening the doors of Crusader corruption of generations of Muslims doctrinally, intellectually, and culturally.”

Al Qaeda’s global leadership provides a harsh rebuke of Qatar, saying that while it projects an image of a bastion of Islamic learning and culture, this is just a facade and its true nature is one of insidious corruption.

Al Qaeda’s leadership spends much of its bandwidth, however, on attacking FIFA and the World Cup itself. The general command says that the “World Cups are no longer mere sporting competitions, but rather an intellectual and philosophical tool to imbue pornography, corruption, and disbelief into the world.”

According to al Qaeda, Qatar and its Western allies want to use the tournament to help degrade the morals and holiness of the Arabian Peninsula.

Ending its message, al Qaeda says to its members and supporters that “your duty today is jihad, crying and complaining are not positive means to resist this danger.” It goes on to say that “whoever is able, let him strive against them [Qatar and the World Cup] with his hands, and if he is not able, then with his tongue, and if he is not able, then with his heart.”

Al Qaeda’s denouncements and chastising of both Qatar and the FIFA World Cup serve to act as a stochastic means to incite action against the games, rather than any direct threat. In doing so, it hopes to inspire people to target the World Cup on its behalf.

And not to be outdone, supporters of the Islamic State have also disseminated their own vague threats and warnings against the tournament.

For instance, one such infographic released by an outlet known as Quraish Media, encourages supporters to travel to the games in order to target Christians and Jews. It also provides advice on how to acquire weapons. The Islamic State itself has not yet officially commented on the games.

But much like with the statements from al Qaeda, the pro-Islamic State media acts more as a general incitement rather than a specific threat. The pro-Islamic State media does take it further than al Qaeda, though, as it does call for other supporters to kill Christians and Jews attending the games.

It is unclear how successful these calls to arms will be, though if the past is any indication, jihadi threats against major global sporting events will likely not amount to much.

Previous threats against other major global sporting events

Major international sporting events, particularly the World Cup and the Olympic games, have routinely been threatened and directly targeted over the past decade. Though attacks, or attempted plots, against such venues are not novel.

For instance, one of the earliest examples of militant groups targeting such major sporting events is the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. The attack, commonly known as the “Munich massacre”, was orchestrated by Black September, an affiliate of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. That attack left nine Israeli members of the country’s Olympic team dead.

In more recent years, al Qaeda-affiliated jihadist groups such as the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and the Caucasus Emirate, as well as the Islamic State, have also issued similar threats, or plotted attacks against, both the Olympics and the World Cup. Others have utilized such sporting events for other attacks.

According to a 2009 U.S. Treasury report, months before the 2008 Winter Olympic games in Beijing, TIP leader Abdul Haq al Turkistani instructed the organization’s military commanders to focus attacks on Chinese cities “holding the Olympic games.”

Additionally, the organization published a video titled “fire targeted at China” which threatened public transportation at the games. In the publication, Abdullah Mansour, a senior leader within the TIP, urged Muslims to avoid “Chinese people while in the same building, in the same shop, in the same bus or the same train.” But while the TIP plotted against the games, it failed to materialize any sort of attack.

In 2013 during the build up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, the Caucasus Emirate, al Qaeda’s then-active wing in the North Caucasus, issued a series of warnings and threats against the games. Though the organization failed to directly target the Olympics, it did launch a series of coordinated suicide bombings in Volgograd just months before the games began.

And as noted in a Combat Terrorism Center at West Point report, the Islamic State, as well as its supporters, released numerous publications threatening the 2018 World Cup in Russia, including threats against well-known football players such as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

This also includes a pro-Islamic State media outlet called Al ‘Adiyat publishing a video in June 2018. That video showed Islamic State fighters from the organization’s Caucuses branch (formed by the disintegration of the aforementioned Caucasus Emirate) issuing threats against Christians, Jews and “apostates” living in Russia. No known plots were thwarted against the games, however.

While the previously mentioned organizations have directly threatened major sporting events themselves, others have specifically targeted venues showing World Cup matches. On July 12, 2010, Shabaab, al Qaeda’s branch for all of East Africa, conducted two suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, that killed more than 70 people watching the final match of that year’s World Cup.

And on June 15, 2014, Shabaab targeted a resort in Mpeketoni, Kenya as locals and tourists watched a World Cup match, killing more than 50 people. In both the Mpeketoni and earlier Kampala attacks, however, Shabaab used large gatherings of people watching the World Cup as a means to inflict the most damage rather than as a means to attack the games by proxy.

International policymakers should take seriously the recent threats made by al Qaeda and the Islamic State’s supporters against this year’s World Cup in Qatar. However, these vague threats and warnings should be taken into context that though jihadi groups routinely plot and threaten such major global sporting events, actual attacks against them have so far failed to materialize.

Tangential attacks, such as the July 2010 suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, or the Dec. 2013 suicide bombings in Volgograd, Russia, in which the World Cup was used as an operational or ideological pretext, have been much more common than direct attacks against the games themselves.

Given that both al Qaeda and the Islamic State’s vast supporter network have so far settled on an approach more akin to stochastic terrorism for this year’s World Cup, relevant policymakers and security officials should also be considerate of the additional dangers and implications of such indirect incitement in planning or preparing for any such attack scenario.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.

longwarjournal.org · by Caleb Weiss & Joe Truzman · November 22, 2022



16. Iran Aids Russia’s Imperialist War Against Ukraine


Conclusion:


Ukraine is winning this war. But it has many months of tough fighting ahead, made even harder by Iran’s support for Russia. To emerge victorious, Kyiv will need continued military aid from the West, including air defenses. The United States and its allies should answer the call.


Iran Aids Russia’s Imperialist War Against Ukraine

b​y John Hardy ​algemeiner.com · by The Algemeiner

A view of a residential building in Kyiv destroyed by a Russian-manned Iranian drone strike. Photo: Reuters/Roman Petushkov

Tehran has agreed to help Moscow produce hundreds or even thousands of Iranian drones in Russia, according to new intelligence reports cited by The Washington Post and CNN. This agreement could boost Russia’s stocks of Iranian loitering munitions, commonly called “kamikaze drones,” which are helping Russian forces wreak havoc on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, and exacerbating Kyiv’s shortage of air defense systems and interceptors.

The Russian-Iranian agreement, reportedly reached in early November, is just the latest form of Iranian support for the Kremlin’s imperialist war against Ukraine. Since August, the Islamic Republic has supplied Russia with multiple types of drones, along with Iranian advisors to train Russian operators, helping Moscow compensate for its limited drone production capacity and dwindling supply of cruise missiles.

These drones include the Shahed-136 and its smaller cousin, the Shahed-131, which the Russians rebranded as the Geran-2 and Geran-1, respectively. The Russian military has reportedly fired at least 400 of these drones, and is seeking to acquire many more, along with Iranian short-range ballistic missiles. In return, Moscow has reportedly given Tehran captured US and British weapons to study.

Russia uses its Iranian-supplied loitering munitions primarily for long-range strikes against fixed targets. In addition to attacking military targets, Russia frequently employs these munitions in strike packages against Ukrainian critical infrastructure, particularly the electrical grid, but also water systems, as part of a campaign launched in early October.

Related coverage

November 22, 2022 9:48 am

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Russia’s strike campaign has “disabled” almost “half” of Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure, Ukraine’s prime minister said last week, following barrages that included at least 15 Iranian-supplied loitering munitions. In an address last Thursday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that “more than 10 million Ukrainians are without electricity.” And equipment shortages will likely render repairs increasingly difficult.

As temperatures drop across Ukraine, Moscow evidently hopes to erode its neighbor’s will to fight. Russia is unlikely to succeed in that respect. But these strikes will make life even harder for the Ukrainian people, while deterring the return of refugees and investment. This will exacerbate Ukraine’s reliance on economic and humanitarian aid from Western countries, where Vladimir Putin likely hopes that “Ukraine fatigue” will lead Western governments to curtail support for Kyiv. Iranian short-range ballistic missiles, which Ukraine will likely struggle to shoot down, could give a further boost to Russia’s strike campaign, especially if supplied large numbers.

In addition to harming the Ukrainian population, Iranian-supplied loitering munitions are taxing Ukraine’s air defenses.

While relatively easy to shoot down, the Iranian-supplied munitions are cheap and can be produced in large numbers, allowing the Russians to fire enough of them to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. Russia’s strike campaign has reportedly led Ukraine to pull air defense systems back from the battlefield, in order to defend cities and infrastructure. This, in turn, has reportedly granted greater latitude to Russian fighter planes flying combat air patrols, undermining the Ukrainian Air Force’s effectiveness.

At the same time, the Iranian loitering munitions are forcing Ukraine to expend comparatively expensive surface-to-air missiles, whose stocks have dwindled over nearly nine months of war. Interceptors for Kyiv’s Buk-M1 medium-range air defense systems, which Ukraine doesn’t produce domestically, are particularly scarce. Since the war’s early days, Ukraine’s Buk-M1s, along with its S-300 long-range systems, have hamstrung the Russian Air Force, forcing Russian aircraft to fly low when they venture near the front lines. This leaves them vulnerable to man-portable air defense systems, which the West has supplied in large numbers.

But if Ukraine runs out of these interceptors, the Russian Air Force could be freed up to provide Russian troops with more effective close air support, which has been lacking so far in the war. The United States and its allies have provided Ukraine with additional air defense systems and are looking to send more. Those that have arrived proven effective. But the West doesn’t have enough spare medium-range surface-to-air missile systems to replace Ukraine’s Buk-M1s.

To help fill that gap, Washington and its allies should try to provide Kyiv with additional MIM-23 HAWK medium-range surface-to-air missile systems, building on the six already provided or promised by Madrid.

Spain and fellow NATO allies Greece, Romania, and Turkey, along with soon-to-be NATO member Sweden, collectively have dozens more HAWK systems, according to the Military Balance 2021. American allies in the Middle East have even more, and South Korea also operates the system.

Washington, for its part, plans to provide Ukraine with HAWK missiles, following refurbishment necessitated by the decades they spent sitting in storage. If the HAWK launchers in US storage cannot be repaired, perhaps they could be scavenged for spare parts. The Pentagon should also make every effort to expedite delivery of the six NASAMS air defense systems promised to Kyiv, which recently received its first two. Ukraine’s stocks of missiles for those two systems will also need to be replenished in a timely manner.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces need more efficient means of defending against Iranian loitering munitions. As my colleagues Mark Montgomery and Bradley Bowman have argued, Washington should fulfill Kyiv’s request for Counter-Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar systems, while seeking to expedite delivery of the VAMPIRE counter-drone system.

Finally, the Biden administration should grant Kyiv’s longstanding pleas for ATACMS missiles for Ukraine’s Western-provided rocket artillery systems. These missiles could enable the Ukrainian military to strike a panoply of high-value targets currently beyond its reach, including bases from which Russia launches Iranian drones. The administration has refrained from sending ATACMS due to fear of Russian escalation, but Washington could mitigate that risk by requiring Kyiv to use the missiles only against Russian military targets on Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and the Donbas region.

Ukraine is winning this war. But it has many months of tough fighting ahead, made even harder by Iran’s support for Russia. To emerge victorious, Kyiv will need continued military aid from the West, including air defenses. The United States and its allies should answer the call.

John Hardie is deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute based in Washington, DC.

algemeiner.com · by The Algemeiner




17. No Room for Half-Measures in Aviation Cybersecurity





No Room for Half-Measures in Aviation Cybersecurity

fdd.org · by RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery CCTI Senior Director and Senior Fellow · November 22, 2022


November 22, 2022 | Policy Brief

No Room for Half-Measures in Aviation Cybersecurity

RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery

CCTI Senior Director and Senior Fellow

Jiwon Ma

Program Analyst

A Boeing-owned subsidiary, Jeppesen, confirmed in early November that a cyber incident had impacted flight planning and communication software, causing flight delays for airlines using their services. In the wake of Russian hackers’ headline-grabbing spamming of U.S. airports’ websites last month, the Jeppesen incident underscores the need for the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) to implement meaningful cybersecurity standards for the aviation industry.

Jeppesen’s cyber incident affected a number of widely utilized services, including the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMs), which alerts pilots and airlines about potential hazards on their planned routes. While Jeppesen officials said the incident did not affect aircraft safety, NOTAMs contain information considered “essential” to flight operations, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The aviation sector has faced increasing threats and cyberattacks since at least 2017. Last year, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) found that globally, the aviation sector suffers a ransomware attack every week. In addition to the financial costs they impose and the business interruption they cause, cyberattacks on the aviation sector could endanger flight safety when they disrupt or compromise essential safety systems.

Against this backdrop, the Biden administration has taken steps to address aviation cybersecurity. In September, the White House provided classified threat briefings to transportation industry executives, including representatives from 104 aviation entities. The administration urged these entities to adopt a more robust cybersecurity posture.

Last year, President Biden also signed a national security memorandum to improve the cybersecurity of the nation’s critical infrastructure. The memorandum tasked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) with creating Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs) to serve as voluntary baseline measures that all critical infrastructure — including entities in the aviation sector — should implement.

Not all of the administration’s efforts have been successful. TSA faced industry pushback when it released a rule in November 2021 requiring companies to report cybersecurity incidents to CISA within 24 hours. The International Air Transport Association — a global trade association of airlines — also criticized TSA for failing to consult industry prior to issuing the directive and align its definitions with international guidance from bodies like the International Civil Aviation Organization, of which the United States is a member.

Despite this negative feedback, TSA should continue to bolster efforts to secure the aviation industry from malicious cyberattacks. TSA must do a better job soliciting and incorporating industry feedback, but it also must continue to press forward developing and implementing meaningful cybersecurity standards in its new directives. Half-measures are not enough when the consequences of an attack may be catastrophic. Additionally, CISA can support TSA by soliciting and incorporating industry feedback on its CPGs. Combining these efforts could provide a flexible model for the aviation industry and other critical infrastructure operators to implement tailored security measures to address a range of cyber incidents.

RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is a senior director at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he is also a senior fellow. He directs CSC 2.0, which works to implement the recommendations of the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, where he previously served as executive director. Jiwon Ma is a program analyst at CCTI, where she contributes to the CSC 2.0 project. For more analysis from the authors and CCTI, please subscribe HERE. Follow them on Twitter @MarkCMontgomery and @jiwonma_92. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CCTI. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Issues:

Cyber

fdd.org · by RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery CCTI Senior Director and Senior Fellow · November 22, 2022



18. Canada Intensifies Sanctions on Iran, But Further Action Needed





Canada Intensifies Sanctions on Iran, But Further Action Needed

fdd.org · November 22, 2022

Latest Developments

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is investigating Iranian death threats against Canadians who have publicly criticized Tehran, the spy agency said last week. The announcement appears to reflect Ottawa’s increasing efforts to hold Iran accountable for its bloody suppression of anti-regime protests. Last Wednesday, Canada imposed its fifth round of sanctions this year against regime targets pursuant to the Special Economic Measures Act, bringing Ottawa’s total number of designations to 280. However, Ottawa has stopped short of perhaps the most impactful step it could take: designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization pursuant to Canada’s Criminal Code.

Expert Analysis

“If Canada’s goal is to have a real impact, to thwart the rampant human rights abuses of the Iranian people, to meaningfully deter threats from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards abroad, to stem the use of Canada for laundering money by regime cronies, and to begin to see cracks in the regime itself, sanctions need to have more teeth and be fully enforced.” – Toby Dershowitz, FDD Senior Vice President for Government Relations and Strategy

Iran’s Violent Repression of Protests Continues

Iranian security forces have killed at least 434 protesters, including 60 children, and arrested 17,473 people over the past two months, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported on Monday. Over the weekend, in a massive show of force, Iranian military forces penetrated Iran’s Kurdish regions with helicopters and armored vehicles, killing an unknown number of people. “I have witnessed hundreds of people being shot at [by the regime forces] and they have been severely injured,” said one Iranian. On Monday, the IRGC reportedly opened fire on protesters using machine guns.

Canadian Sanctions on Iran Pursuant to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

On November 14, Canada designated Iran under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act as a regime that has engaged in terrorism and systematic and gross human rights violations. Complementing Iran’s 280 other sanctions designations, this step renders tens of thousands of senior regime members, including many IRGC members, inadmissible to Canada. It also makes current and former senior Iranian officials residing in Canada eligible for investigation and removal from the country.

Canada Needs Stronger Measures against Iran

Canada has yet to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group pursuant to the Criminal Code — the toughest measure in Ottawa’s sanctions toolkit. Canada has also refrained from sanctioning Iran’s oil industry as well as financial institutions such as the Central Bank of Iran that hold accounts for the IRGC. In 2012, Canada did designate the IRGC Quds Force — but not the IRGC in its entirety — as a terrorist organization under the Criminal Code. In 2018, the House of Commons overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging the government to sanction the entire IRGC pursuant to the Criminal Code.

Related Analysis

Maximum Support for the Iranian People: A New Strategy,” by Saeed Ghasseminejad, Richard Goldberg, Tzvi Kahn, and Behnam Ben Taleblu

fdd.org · November 22, 2022





19. Officer sets out to rid the Army of label deterrents in upcoming book




Officer sets out to rid the Army of label deterrents in upcoming book

militarytimes.com · by Jonathan Lehrfeld · November 22, 2022

Whenever she gets on an airplane, Army Reserve Lt. Colonel Lisa Jaster enjoys grabbing a chocolate bar, a Coke Zero and a copy of Harvard Business Review.

For the Army officer — notably, the third woman and first female reserve soldier to graduate from the Army’s Ranger School — the tradition is a welcome treat.

As she flipped through the magazine during a recent trip, Jaster was struck by a pair of stories she read on the intersection of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the concept of “work life support.” Ultimately, she realized that talking about underrepresentation in an organization can have the power to actually make individuals feel more isolated.

“The work life support concept is, if we truly want to diversify, if we truly want to attract all potential, one of the best ways to do that is to support different lifestyles,” Jaster said in an interview with Military Times.

Now, Jaster is looking to reshape the conversation on what makes someone a qualified professional candidate in her upcoming book “Delete the Adjective,” a collection of vignettes she says depicts her trials and tribulations during her time at Ranger School and encourages people to not limit themselves with labels.

From her distinguished military career to the private sector, Jaster is no stranger to standing out in a crowded room.

After graduating from West Point in 2000, she was commissioned as an engineer officer and spent seven years active duty, a period that included deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Five years after leaving the service in 2007, Jaster joined the Army Reserve, working her way up through the ranks to her current role with Joint Staff.

The CrossFit and Brazilian jiu-jitsu-loving mom of two then set out to tackle something more challenging. Just as Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver — the first two women to complete the grueling Army Ranger School — did a few months before her, in 2015, Jaster also overcame gender and age norms to earn her Ranger tab from the elite infantry school at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Among other distinguished accomplishments, Jaster is a recipient of two Bronze Star and Meritorious Service medals.

Even during stints at Shell Oil Company and other engineering firms, Jaster said she regularly felt othered as one of very few women in a male-dominated field.

And while she always has been eager to inspire other women, Jaster never desired to be thought of solely by labels used in ways meant to diminish her accomplishments.

“I don’t want to be good for a female soldier, I just want to be a good soldier,” she told Military Times. “I don’t want to be fit for being middle age. I’m 45 years old. I just want to be fit.”

In spite of being thought of as different from her colleagues, or perhaps because of that thought process, Jaster eventually became a strong advocate for not letting others classify what someone else can accomplish.

“I want my peers who have never been in a women’s shoes to see that my experience wasn’t any different,” she said. “Being a woman at Ranger School didn’t make it any different than being a man at Ranger School. ... I want women who have never gone through something like this to see that, yes, it is really hard and it’s really frustrating but it was doable.”

Jaster’s upcoming book is scheduled to be released on Jan. 31 next year.

Observation Post is the Military Times one-stop shop for all things off-duty. Stories may reflect author observations.

About Jonathan Lehrfeld

Jonathan is a staff writer and editor of the Early Bird Brief newsletter for Military Times. Follow him on Twitter @lehrfeld_media


20. What’s the Harm in Talking to Russia? A Lot, Actually.



Excerpts:


Might these arguments against the reflexive call for negotiations mean that war continues for months and possibly even years? Perhaps. But it’s not yet clear that there is a viable diplomatic alternative. And even if there was, it should be Ukraine’s choice whether or not to pursue it. Ukraine and its people, after all, are paying the price in blood. If the United States and its allies are sending tens of billions of dollars in military and economic aid to Ukraine, this is only a tiny fraction of what Washington has recently spent on defense and other wars. Thanks to the Ukrainians’ excellent use of this aid, the military threat from the United States’ second-most important adversary has been dealt a serious blow. The cold, if cruel, reality is that the West’s return on its investment in Ukraine seems high.
The harshness of these realities, however, does not make current calls for a negotiated settlement intrinsically moral. If diplomacy means ramming through a settlement when the battlefield circumstances dictate otherwise, it is not necessarily the morally more justifiable or strategically wiser approach. Sometimes fighting—not talking—is indeed the better option.
“To everything there is a season,” Ecclesiastes says, including “a time of war, and a time of peace.” There will come a time for diplomacy in Ukraine. Hopefully, it will come soon. But it doesn’t seem to be today.

What’s the Harm in Talking to Russia? A Lot, Actually.

Foreign Policy · by Raphael S. Cohen, Gian Gentile · November 22, 2022

Analysis

Diplomacy is neither intrinsically moral nor always strategically wise.

By Raphael S. Cohen, the director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program at the Rand Corporation’s Project Air Force, and Gian Gentile, the deputy director of the Rand Corporation’s Army Research Division.

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a commission on military-technical cooperation with foreign states in 2017.

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a commission on military-technical cooperation at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, near Moscow, on July 6, 2017. ALEXEY DRUZHININ/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images

Give diplomacy a chance.” This phrase gets repeated in almost every conflict, and the war in Ukraine is no exception. A chorus of commentators, experts, and former policymakers have pushed for a negotiated peace at every turn on the battlefield: after the successful defense of Kyiv, once Russia withdrew to the east, during the summer of Russia’s plodding progress in the Donbas, after Russia’s rout in Kharkiv oblast, and now, in the aftermath of Russia’s retreat from Kherson. The better the Ukrainian military has done, the louder the calls for Ukraine to negotiate have become.

And today, it’s no longer just pundits pushing for a negotiated settlement. The U.S. House of Representatives’ progressive caucus penned a letter to President Joe Biden calling for a diplomatic solution, only to retract it a short time later. Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy has promised to scrutinize military aid to Ukraine and push for an end to the war. Even Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley has reportedly pushed for Ukraine to negotiate, although he subsequently made clear that the decision should be Kyiv’s alone.

And why not negotiate? Isn’t a diplomatic solution the best—indeed, the only—option for any kind of long-term settlement between Russia and Ukraine? And if so, what could possibly be the harm in exploring those options? Quite a lot, actually: Despite the way it is commonly portrayed, diplomacy is not intrinsically and always good, nor is it cost-free. In the Ukraine conflict, the problems with a push for diplomacy are especially apparent. The likely benefits of negotiations are minimal, and the prospective costs could be significant.

First, the argument that most wars end with diplomacy and so, therefore, will the war in Ukraine is misleading at best. Some wars—such as the U.S. Civil War and World War II—were fought to the bitter end. Others—like the American Revolution, the Spanish-American War, World War I, or the First Gulf War—were won on the battlefield before the sides headed to the negotiating table. Still others—like the Korean War—ended in an armistice, but only after the sides had fought to a standstill. By contrast, attempts at a diplomatic settlement while the military situation remained fluid—as the United States tried during the Vietnam War and, more recently, in Afghanistan—have ended in disaster. Even if most wars ultimately end in diplomatic settlements, that’s not in lieu of victory.

Pushing Ukraine to negotiate now sends a series of signals, none of them good.

At this particular moment, diplomacy cannot end the war in Ukraine, simply because Russian and Ukrainian interests do not yet overlap. The Ukrainians, understandably, want their country back. They want reparations for the damage Russia has done and accountability for Russian war crimes. Russia, by contrast, has made it clear that it still intends to bend Ukraine to its will. It has officially annexed several regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, so withdrawing would now be tantamount, for them, to ceding parts of Russia. Russia’s economy is in ruins, so it cannot pay reparations. And full accountability for Russian war crimes may lead to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top officials getting led to the dock. As much as Western observers might wish otherwise, such contrasts offer no viable diplomatic way forward right now.

Nor is diplomacy likely to forestall future escalation. One of the more common refrains as to why the United States should give diplomacy a chance is to avert Russia making good on its threats to use nuclear weapons. But what is causing Russia to threaten nuclear use in the first place? Presumably, it is because Russia is losing on the battlefield and lacks other options. Assuming that “diplomatic solution” is not a euphemism for Ukrainian capitulation, as its proponents insist, Russia’s calculations about whether and how to escalate would not change. Russia would still be losing the war and looking for a way to reverse its fortunes.

Diplomacy can moderate human suffering, but only on the margins. Throughout the conflict, Ukraine and Russia have negotiated prisoner swaps and a deal to allow grain exports. This kind of tactical diplomacy on a narrow issue was certainly welcome news for the captured troops and those parts of the world that depend on Ukrainian food exports. But it’s not at all clear how to ramp up from these relatively small diplomatic victories. Russia, for example, won’t abandon its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure heading into the winter as it attempts to freeze Ukraine into submission, because that’s one of the few tactics Russia has left.

At the same time, more expansive diplomacy comes at a cost. Pushing Ukraine to negotiate now sends a series of signals, none of them good: It signals to the Russians that they can simply wait out Ukraine’s Western supporters, thereby protracting the conflict; it signals to the Ukrainians—not to mention other allies and partners around the world—that the United States might put up a good fight for a while but will, in the end, abandon them; and it tells the U.S. public that its leaders are not invested in seeing this war through, which in turn could increase domestic impatience with it.

Starting negotiations prematurely carries other costs. As Biden remarked in June: “Every negotiation reflects the facts on the ground.” Biden is right. Ukraine now is in a stronger negotiating position because it fought rather than talked. The question today is whether Ukraine will ultimately regain control over Donbas and Crimea, not Kharkiv and Kherson. This would not have been the case had anyone listened to the “give diplomacy a chance” crowd back in the spring or summer.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that Kyiv will be in an even stronger bargaining position as time passes. The Ukrainians are coming off a string of successes—most recently retaking Kherson—so they have operational momentum. While Ukraine has suffered losses, Western military aid continues to flow in. Despite Russia’s missile strikes on civilian infrastructure, Ukrainian morale remains strong. By contrast, Russia is on the back foot. Its military inventories have been decimated, and it is struggling to acquire alternative supplies. Its mobilization effort prompted as many Russian men to flee the country as were eventually mobilized to fight in Ukraine. Moreover, as the Institute for the Study of War has assessed, “Russian mobilized servicemen have shown themselves to be inadequately trained, poorly equipped, and very reluctant to fight.”

By contrast, a negotiated settlement—even if it successfully freezes a conflict—comes with a host of moral, operational, and strategic risks. It leaves millions of Ukrainians to suffer under Russian occupation. It gives the Russian military a chance to rebuild, retrain, and restart the war at a later date. Above all, a pause gives time for the diverse international coalition supporting Ukraine to fracture, either on its own accord or because of Russian efforts to drive a wedge into the coalition.

Eventually, there will come a time for negotiations. That will be when Russia admits it has lost and wants to end the war. Or it will come when Ukraine says that the restoration of its territory isn’t worth the continued pain of the Russian bombardment. So far, neither scenario has come to pass. Indeed, the only softening of Russia’s position was Putin’s statement last month seemingly ruling out nuclear use—at least for the time being. Apart from that, the Kremlin seems intent on doubling down, even as its military continues to be slowly pushed out of Ukraine. That’s hardly an invitation to negotiate.

Might these arguments against the reflexive call for negotiations mean that war continues for months and possibly even years? Perhaps. But it’s not yet clear that there is a viable diplomatic alternative. And even if there was, it should be Ukraine’s choice whether or not to pursue it. Ukraine and its people, after all, are paying the price in blood. If the United States and its allies are sending tens of billions of dollars in military and economic aid to Ukraine, this is only a tiny fraction of what Washington has recently spent on defense and other wars. Thanks to the Ukrainians’ excellent use of this aid, the military threat from the United States’ second-most important adversary has been dealt a serious blow. The cold, if cruel, reality is that the West’s return on its investment in Ukraine seems high.

The harshness of these realities, however, does not make current calls for a negotiated settlement intrinsically moral. If diplomacy means ramming through a settlement when the battlefield circumstances dictate otherwise, it is not necessarily the morally more justifiable or strategically wiser approach. Sometimes fighting—not talking—is indeed the better option.

“To everything there is a season,” Ecclesiastes says, including “a time of war, and a time of peace.” There will come a time for diplomacy in Ukraine. Hopefully, it will come soon. But it doesn’t seem to be today.

Raphael S. Cohen is the director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program at the Rand Corporation’s Project Air Force.

Gian Gentile is the deputy director of the Rand Corporation’s Army Research Division.


Foreign Policy · by Raphael S. Cohen, Gian Gentile · November 22, 2022



21. The Greatest Risk in Mobile Nuclear Power? Failing to Take Advantage of the Decisive Edge it Offers the US Military



Energy (and electricity) is critical to warfighting. 


Excerpt:


In future large-scale ground combat, whether DoD can meet its energy needs will be a decisive factor, and Pele offers a way to give assured power to our most critical capabilities. It may also open the door for the development of follow-on reactors to provide a large-scale assured power supply and synthetic fuel to our expeditionary forces. While there are substantial risks with military nuclear power to its operators, there are similar or greater risks with every alternative energy source. These tactical risks pale in comparison to the broader operational and strategic risks that DoD and the United States would face if energy supply lines were cut in a future war. In this context, the one risk DoD cannot afford is forgoing the decisive military advantage Pele and follow-on systems could provide.


The Greatest Risk in Mobile Nuclear Power? Failing to Take Advantage of the Decisive Edge it Offers the US Military - Modern War Institute

Aaron Horwood, Andrew Thueme and Travis Knight | 11.23.22

mwi.usma.edu · by Aaron Horwood · November 23, 2022

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Liquid fuel logistics is both the lifeblood modern military operations and its tether. Without it, strategy is mere fantasy, as it enables everything a military force does. If a command of logistics is what separates professionals from amateurs, then liquid fuel logistics is where the battlefield most ruthlessly enforces this axiom.

But what if the US military can break free of that tether? The Strategic Capabilities Office’s Project Pele is an innovative, small, mobile nuclear reactor designed to provide assured energy to DoD’s most critical assets. The actual value of Project Pele is not just this single output, however. The project is a pathfinder for future larger mobile reactors and a catalyst enabling the development of synthetic liquid fuel production technology. Together these capabilities could free DoD from its traditional supply chains, fundamentally changing how it does logistics.

Unfortunately, specious claims in a report by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (NPPP) out of the University of Texas at Austin by the career antinuclear activist Dr. Allen Kuperman (and during an accompanying press conference with Dr. Edwin Lyman), an article in War on the Rocks by Jake Hecla, and a report from the RAND Corporation by a 1st Lt. Kyle Haak have badly misinformed the public risk analysis debate on Pele. There is ample room for debate about the best way ahead for DoD in its quest to solve a range of energy problems. Indeed, such debate is crucial. But it must be grounded in demonstrable facts.

According to the NPPP report and press conference, Pele meets no valid military need while it puts troops at unnecessary risk. Kuperman implies that the Army G-4 intentionally distorted Pele’s technical datamisrepresented casualty statistics, and mischaracterized the risk of shipping petroleum along lines of communication. Other inaccurate claims are that the Army will deploy Pele to forward “war bases” and intends to break federal laws in transporting Pele domestically. These critics further state that Pele will be vulnerable to terrorists and is a cash grab by defense contractors. Hecla argues that the technical risks have not been sufficiently examined. He questions tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) fuel safetyspecifically the risks expelled fuel fragments pose. Hecla further argues that Pele could be used as an area-denial weapon if captured. His final claim is that there will be difficulty in gaining public support. The core contention of Haak’s RAND report is that nuclear power offers no unique capability or cost savings compared to alternative energy sources. Many of these claims’ technical, policy, and historical aspects are deeply misleading. However, the fundamental flaw throughout all of these criticisms is that they remove Pele’s cost-benefit analysis from its military context. This is epitomized by Kuperman’s claim that DoD’s forward energy problems have already been fixed by including thermostats and insulation in temporary military structures.

This mistake comes from a cultural risk aversion. New energy solutions must be technically valid and historically grounded to overcome this culture. Military and scientific communities must compare all energy system alternatives across the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of a future conflict. The stakes are high: in a near-peer conflict, energy can start, define, and end a war.

Technical Corrections

Capacity factor is an energy-sector term related to the reliability or availability of a power source. The NPPP report claims that DoD’s projected initial 75 percent capacity factor is unrealistic; instead of operating eighteen-hour days for forty years, the report argues, it will likely operate for nine-hour days for ten years (a 38 percent capacity factor). In the report’s estimation, this increases Pele’s cost sixteen-fold and makes it seven times more expensive than average diesel generator costs.

But Pele has a planned three-year lifecycle, not forty. It will be operated at isolated or critical locations where fuel costs are commonly several times the average price and have to potential to be orders of magnitude greater. Some prototype reactors from the 1960s had capacity factors around 38 percent but modern nuclear reactors operate twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and have a capacity factor of 92–94 percent, shutting down only to refuel every few years. As Pele will not be refueled, DoD’s initial goal of a 75 percent capacity factor is conservative. Further, nuclear power excels compared to potential alternative energy sources, to the point that it requires two to three equally sized systems to match the long term output of a nuclear system.

The critiques of Pele are concerned that an attack could entomb the reactor and result in a meltdown. The NPPP report raises a further dubious concern that infiltrators could surreptitiously cover the reactor with insulating blankets. In such an event, however, Pele will fail to a safe state. Once the reactor shuts down, decaying heat and radiation will drop exponentially to a small amount. This heat will transfer to the surrounding environment without reaching the 1,800 degrees Celsius required for TRISO’s hermetically sealed containment to fail.

Hecla also takes issue with the ability of the silicon carbide layer of TRISO to survive military attacks. Any such data would be likely be classified but DoD will assuredly do extensive testing. However, some initial conclusions can be drawn from the fact that the Army’s helmets and body armor are made from silicon carbide. Also, when TRISO fuel is reprocessed, the silicon carbide layer requires an intense mechanical cracking process to be broken.

Another claim Hecla makes is that the dose from a pea-size TRISO fuel fragment at fifty centimeters would “impart a near-fatal dose in under an hour.” While eye-catching, this statement is both irrelevant and a flawed exaggeration. TRISO fuel fragments would be dangerous. But Hecla’s scenario would first require a successful attack in a rear area; then for personnel to be present in the exclusion zone explicitly designed to stop such an exposure. Additionally, the report he cites at best gives a rough approximation of this situation as its looks at other types of fuel at one hundred centimeters. In the worst-case first hour, using this method, the dose rate would be about 8 percent of a lethal dose at fifty centimeters and approximately 2 percent at one hundred centimeters. These values would continue to drop off exponentially as time goes by or the distance from the fragment increases.

Policy Problems

Critiques of Project Pele also get some of the fundamental facts with respect to policy wrong. Both the NPPP report and Hecla’s article claim, for instance, that current Pele designs do not include adequate military protection; this criticism is premature as Pele is only at the prototype development stage. Most protective measures for Pele will be external to the system itself. Moreover, the NPPP report claims that the drop in US casualties associated with moving fuel between 2005 and 2013 shows Pele is unnecessary. This drop in casualties did happen, but the problem of force protection for fuel convoys was only “solved” years into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by offloading the risk to local national contractors. This solution does not work in large-scale ground combat. Additionally, Kuperman claims Pele will deploy to forward to “war bases,” but DoD has made no claim that it would be deployed to forward areas; on the contrary, the department intends for Pele to provide assured power to critical rear areas.

The NPPP report repeatedly implies, without presenting evidence, that DoD plans to violate the law by transporting Pele by air. DoD will work with Congress and within our nation’s laws and agreements with foreign countries to transport Pele whether by land, sea, or air. The diplomatic concerns expressed by Hecla have merit, and of course should be accounted for. But they are also not unique to Pele or nuclear power. Changes to a nation’s security situation can rapidly overcome such diplomatic hurdles. For example, Germany’s security policy—even its strategic culture—underwent a seismic shift when Russia’s attack on Ukraine eroded the European security environment. Its rapid shift from blocking overflights of US weapon shipments to Ukraine in January to supplying Ukraine with heavy weapons is indicative of a remarkable strategic sea change. A similar change could, of course, see Pele moved by air, with the acquiescence of allied parties. If not, the claim that DoD would violate agreements with foreign countries—not to mention US law—simply has no backing.

Both the NPPP report and Hecla’s article claim that Pele is at risk of being seized and used in a radiological terrorist attackdestroyed by long-range precision fires, or used as an area-denial weapon. Each of those contentions has problems. Long-range precision fires could destroy a Pele reactor, but this cannot physically result in a nuclear explosion. Employing sufficiently effective long-range fires or seizing and holding a US military installation long enough to weaponize TRISO fuel requires substantial capabilities. Any highly capable state actor already has access to conventional area-denial weapons and radiological materials. At the same time, nonstate actors would find such an attack and fuel processing impractical and unwarranted, especially with more suitable radiological material commonly used in civilian settings, which are much easier targets.

While debris from a Pele reactor targeted in an attack would be dangerous, it should have little significant short-term environmental or human impacts as the debris would be contained within the reactor’s exclusion zone and by the TRISO particles. In the long term continued isolation and cleanup efforts would be relatively simple compared to traditional nuclear power plants.

Critics seem eager to characterize the dangers faced by Pele and any potential successors as unique; they are, however, no different from the risks faced by the Navy’s nuclear power program. More broadly, this risk of attack is not even unique to nuclear energy, as every fuel farm and ammo depot already represents a high-value target. Moreover, the explosive dangers of these targets can be orders of magnitude larger than those of a Pele reactor, they are often difficult to conceal or protect, they require substantial personnel to defend, their destruction can also have long-term environmental impacts, and it can be a struggle to establish effective exclusion zones in the event of an attack (or accident). Some examples of such incidents include the 1916 Black Tom attack, the 1917 Halifax Explosion, the 1943 SS El Estero incident, the 1947 destruction of Texas City’s port, and the 1989 Exxon Valdez and 2013 Deep Water Horizon oil spills.

The risks of each energy option outside of armed conflict must also be considered in any effective risk analysis. The average life-cycle risk of diesel generators results in between 470 and 613 more premature deaths than nuclear power on an MWe-to-MWe basis (megawatts electric). Even in terms of radioactivity, coal power plants release one hundred times the amount of radioactive material as a similar-sized nuclear plant. There are no perfect energy solutions for DoD, only trade-offs that must be rigorously analyzed, risks that must be mitigated, and informed decisions that must be made.

The Haak report claims that Pele offers no unique advantage to DoD. Economically this is wrong as he uses a price point of double the US average cost of fuel, which is well below the cost of fuel in remote locations currently incurred and orders of magnitude below what could be faced in a contingency operation. The more fatal flaw in this claim is that Haak ignores that Pele carries a three-year internal fuel supply, which is its primary advantage over conventional generators. Pele very real advantage can be seen when it is compared to the nearest historic analog—the Vietnam era T2 power tanker program. This program saw the conversion of eleven World War II–era T2 oil tankers into mobile power generators that were deployed across Vietnam to produce power in the same 1-5 MWe range as Pele. Each of these ships carried a two-year internal fuel supply consisting of 5,880,000 gallons of fuel and had a length of 524 feet and a beam of 68 feet. Pele, in contrast, is a system that fits within four standard twenty-foot shipping containers.

The Context of Military Risk

On the morning of October 24, 1944, near the island of Samar, the destroyers USS Johnston, USS Samuel B. Roberts, and USS Hoel counterattacked a Japanese force of four battleships, eight cruisers, and eleven destroyers. The Japanese ships sunk all three US ships with significant loss of life within their crews. Devoid of context, the actions of US Navy Task Unit 77.4.3, whose call sign was Taffy 3, are a senseless tragedy. When properly contextualized, this decision was a heroic act of self-sacrifice in the highest traditions of the US Navy.

At the tactical level, the three US vessels turned to interpose themselves between Taffy 3’s six escort carriers and the enemy, buying time for four of the escort carriers to escape. At the operational level, the fleet they fought and forced to withdraw was the main Japanese effort for the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Japanese Imperial Navy intended to attack the otherwise undefended US Army amphibious assault forces on nearby Leyte Island. At the strategic level, the successful Army landings were a turning point in the Pacific War; the invasion cut Imperial Japan off from its primary oil fields. While every reasonable effort should be made to protect individuals, the story of Taffy 3 clearly shows the intrinsic necessity for appropriately high individual risk tolerance in the military.

Why Energy Matters

In 1941 the Japanese faced an oil embargo that resulted in a rapid depletion of their oil reserves. This situation came to a head on December 7 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to buy the time and space necessary to seize oil fields across the pacific. Ironically the Japanese failed to destroy Pearl Harbor’s fuel storage sites and fleet oilers. Loss of the fuel storage sites would have forced the Pacific Fleet to withdraw to the West Coast, while the loss of the oilers would have tethered the Navy to its ships’ four to five days of internal fuel supply. Admiral Chester Nimitz stated, “Had the Japanese destroyed the oil, it would have prolonged the war another two years.”

In 1942 fuel continued to dominate the war as the Pacific Fleet had only eleven of seventy-two required oilers and faced fuel shortages. The fuel shortages were so dire that the Navy was forced to siphon fuel from the sunken battleships in Pearl Harbor at the end of the year. This problem was compounded as Nazi U-boats sank a quarter of the US oiler and tanker fleet in 1942. Fortunately, losses in the Pacific were minimal, as the Japanese did not prioritize commerce raiding. The Battle of Guadalcanal demonstrates the practical impact of all these problems. When the supporting aircraft carriers were forced to withdraw two days into the battle to refuel, it denied US ground forces the critical advantage of air support. By late 1943 the dynamic had flipped as US production rose and successful commerce raiding and seizure of oil fields began to starve the Japanese military.

With peer enemies investing deeply into antiaccess / area-denial capabilities, the ability to project liquid fuel globally is at risk. The difficulty Russia is having delivering fuel just a few dozen kilometers beyond its borders into Ukraine stands as a stark example of this new dynamic. In this environment, an expeditionary force may easily see its average fuel costs exceed the shockingly high costs of fuel in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. As the Army transitions to an all-electric force by 2050, a matching electrical generating capacity must be grown. A modern division’s planning factor of around half a million gallons per day translates to a generating capacity of about 214 MWe. This requirement is far more than what is currently available within DoD. The federal government put only 122 MWe into Puerto Rico in the forty-two days following Hurricane Maria. This 122 MWe was the bulk of the government’s portable generation capability, the majority provided by DoD. Other green energy technologies cannot meet this scale and remain mobile: a division would require, at a minimum, about 1.9 million solar panels or 353 giant windmills. Nuclear is the only energy option that is small enough to deploy rapidly, meet the scale of demand, and dramatically cut internal lines of communication.


The Navy asked and answered this same energy problem sixty years ago and today nuclear power gives the US Navy a decisive advantage. Its submarines and aircraft carriers can operate for decades between refuelings and have a stellar operational and safety record. Energy logistics will be vital in deterring or winning the next war with a peer competitor and this capability is not something that DoD can plan to build or acquire quickly once a conflict starts.

The debate on each option’s relative merits and costs must be informed and occur across DoD, Congress, and the public sphere. The consistently poor framing and substantial technical and policy errors of too much of the analysis surrounding Project Pele highlight clear biases, which only distract and detract from this complicated but critical conversation.

In future large-scale ground combat, whether DoD can meet its energy needs will be a decisive factor, and Pele offers a way to give assured power to our most critical capabilities. It may also open the door for the development of follow-on reactors to provide a large-scale assured power supply and synthetic fuel to our expeditionary forces. While there are substantial risks with military nuclear power to its operators, there are similar or greater risks with every alternative energy source. These tactical risks pale in comparison to the broader operational and strategic risks that DoD and the United States would face if energy supply lines were cut in a future war. In this context, the one risk DoD cannot afford is forgoing the decisive military advantage Pele and follow-on systems could provide.

Aaron Horwood is a nuclear engineering PhD candidate at the University of South Carolina who previously served as an active duty engineer officer in the US Army. His areas of study include military use of small modular reactors for military and disaster relief, small modular reactor survivability, TRISO fuel, radiological survey and modeling, logistics, maintenance, combat engineering, and program of instruction management.

Andrew Thueme is a civilian assistant professor at the US Army Command and General Staff College and retired US Army officer. He has extensive experience as an engineer officer from the platoon to the theater level, as well as extensive instructional experience at the National Training Center and the Command and General Staff College.

Dr. Travis Knight is the chair of the University of South Carolina Mechanical Engineering Department and the director of its nuclear engineering program. His area of expertise includes advanced nuclear fuels and materials, used fuel disposition, reactor design, space nuclear power and propulsion, and nuclear safeguards.

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

Image: Full-scale mockup of the Army’s ML-1 nuclear power plant in the early 1960s. (Credit: Office of History, HQ, US Army Corps of Engineers)

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mwi.usma.edu · by Aaron Horwood · November 23, 2022




22. Why Defense Budgets Will Stay High After the Ukraine War




Everyone is going to have to replenish stockpiles at a minimum.


Why Defense Budgets Will Stay High After the Ukraine War

The war is exposing how European nations were underinvesting in defense, and the critical role that renewable energy will play in transatlantic security.

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

Even after Russian forces retreat from Ukraine, Western governments should expect higher defense budgets, and to continue to contribute to Ukraine’s defensive capabilities to ward off another Russian invasion, military and government officials said at the recent Halifax International Security Forum. They should also invest more in renewable energy to blunt the economic impact of using less Russian oil and gas.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told Defense One that the United States will still need to deter a defeated Russia.

“A critical part of ending the war and beginning reconstruction is ensuring that we are providing for Ukraine’s security going forward,” Coons said. “If you look back at the example of the American Revolution, we signed a peace treaty in 1783. But we were back at war with Great Britain in less than 20 years. Every Ukrainian you talk to expresses his concern that even if the fighting stops, even if they reach a ceasefire, even if they reach a peace treaty, they will be concerned about the prospects that Putin will restart the war … I think they deserve investments in their future defense capabilities.”

One of the biggest lessons of the war, particularly for European NATO members, is that the military and security threat posed by autocratic governments like Russia—and China—is larger than what many were prepared for.

Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Romania, Italy, Poland, and Norway have all vowed to increase their defense spending since February. But for some of those countries, including Germany, that came after years of up and down spending and less stockpiling of things like artillery shells, ammunition, and rockets.

That’s why there is growing concern about getting Ukraine enough weapons to win the war, said Royal Netherlands Navy Adm. Rob Bauer, who leads NATO’s Military Committee. “This is about sort of going to a warlike economy in peacetime,” he said.

Bauer said NATO member states must budget more for weapons, both to replace their own stocks and to continue to support Ukraine. And Western leaders will have to have a frank discussion with their populations about the future costs of defense and security, he said.

“This is an effort of the whole nation, of all the nations, because it's not just the minister of defense ordering more stuff [from] the industry. This is about having a discussion on how we ramp up production,” Bauer said.

The weak links in the arms supply chain aren’t just a result of low government spending, but also of social attitudes and bias on the part of financial institutions to invest in defense companies, he said. “The defense industry in Western Europe, and in my own nation [the Netherlands] there was a discussion…that it was not ethical to invest in the defense industry, and therefore large financial investment investment groups like pension funds, for example, did not invest in defense.”

But Bauer cautioned that fixing the problem will take more than handing money over to defense contractors.

“It's an issue before the Ukraine war, because we wanted more security. That's why we had the 2% discussion,” he said, referring to the 2006 pledge from NATO members to devote at least 2% of their individual GDPs to defense spending. “People started to order extra capabilities, extra ammunition. But the industry did not increase the production capacity in accordance with the budget, and therefore the prices went up.” He called this “ridiculous.”

But a wartime footing doesn’t just mean more defense spending. It also means investing in renewable energy to sap Russia of the leverage it gains by supplying the world with oil and gas.

Yuliya Kovaliv, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, said, “We are on the edge of this sixth package of European sanctions, banning Russian oil, and the price cap is under the discussion. It is important to deprive Russia from these huge revenues.”

Kovaliv added that Russia has deliberately targeted her country’s renewable-energy supplies.

“When Russia invaded into Ukraine…the first thing they actually destroyed in Ukraine is 90 percent of the wind farms and 50 percent of the solar farms very intentionally … understanding that we were moving to diversification of the energy,” she said.

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker



23. Poland Is Building a Military Machine to Fight Russia (If It Has To)






Poland Is Building a Military Machine to Fight Russia (If It Has To)

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · November 23, 2022

The Polish government and its people have a lot of reasons to mistrust Russia. The two nations share a long and complicated relationship, with very little love between Warsaw and Moscow. While it was Poland that invaded Russian lands in the Middle Ages, by the 17th century, the tables turned, and the once mighty Poland was squeezed and partitioned by the powers of Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire.

Much of Poland, including Warsaw, thus fell under Russian control for more than a century until the nation was restored following the First World War. Even then, Poland was forced to fight for its survival. The newly independent nation was invaded by the Bolshevik Red Army, which was only pushed back after the 1920 Battle of Warsaw, known today as the Miracle on the Vistula.

Poland and Russia: Two Very Different Peoples

There are cultural differences. Both nations speak Slavic languages, but there is only about a 38% lexical overlap – compared with 56% for English and German. As for religion, Poland is a Catholic nation, while Russia is predominantly Eastern Orthodox.

Finally, the Soviet invasion of Poland at the start of the Second World War and Moscow’s effective control of Poland throughout the Cold War have left a deep and lingering distrust of the Kremlin. In fact, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Warsaw in 2002 was the first time a Russian leader had traveled to Poland since 1993.

Putin took time to visit the War Monument to the Soviet soldiers who were killed liberating the city, but he refused to visit the monument for the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, which was crushed by the German occupiers as the Soviet Red Army deliberately waited on the eastern bank of the Vistula River. Stalin no doubt wanted those ready to take charge of an independent Poland to be killed, and he essentially let the Germans do the dirty work.

In 2020, Putin made matters worse when he made the shocking claim that World War II was Poland’s fault.

Poland Won’t Be Invaded Again

The tables have turned again.

As Politico reported this week, Polish is taking stock of its fears of an invasion from the east and realizing that now is its time to take charge. With Germany, a shell of its former self, France and the United Kingdom fading as world powers, and Russia ensuring its own destruction with its costly war in Ukraine, Warsaw is charging ahead.

Just as the Jewish people have their vow, “never again,” there is a similar sentiment among the Polish people and its military. It will not be subjugated by a foreign invader.

“The Polish army must be so powerful that it does not have to fight due to its strength alone,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on the eve of Poland’s independence day.

Even before Russia launched its unprovoked and unwarranted invasion, Poland’s ambition was to become the strongest military power in Central Europe. It was already NATO’s military spending leader in Europe, and Warsaw has eyed a significant expansion of its armed forces that will see its troop strength grow from around 113,000 to 300,000 personnel. That number includes its regular army and the volunteer Territorial Defense Force that was created in 2017.

Poland has seen the U.S. Army’s M1A2 Abrams deployed to the country in the past, but soon Warsaw’s troops will be operating the main battle tank themselves.

Poland is now on track to become the U.S. military’s most important partner in continental Europe, and the Polish government has announced it will raise defense spending from 2.4% of GDP to 5%. By contrast, Germany – once the leading power in the region – is still debating whether it can increase its own defense spending from about 1.5% of its GDP to NATO’s agreed-upon 2% benchmark.

Aiding Ukraine, Defending the Baltic States

Warsaw has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters. That support is unwavering even after a stray missile last week was likely fired by Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems and crashed inside Poland, killing two civilians.

Of course, Poland is hardly the only nation openly hostile to Russia.

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also maintain a consistent pro-Ukraine policy and open hostility toward Moscow – likely due to the fact they were all under Russia’s control for decades. Along with Poland, these nations are seen as the wall that could stop Russian expansion into Europe.

Those nations don’t have the military power to fight Russia, but Poland does. Now Warsaw is showing it wants to be even stronger to ensure that men from the east never march through their land again.

A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,000 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · November 23, 2022





24. Formidable But Not Invincible – Why the United States Should Not Overreact to China and Russia



Excerpts:


The management of great-power frictions will remain a core component of U.S. foreign policy because the stakes of avoiding armed confrontations with Russia and China are so high. Beyond taking steps in the service of that imperative, the United States should continue working with its allies and partners to enhance democratic resilience against supply chain disruptions and economic coercion, shape next-generation technology standards, support the global South’s economic development, and build new coalitions to address transnational challenges—partnering with Russia and China where possible.
Even as it embraces selective competition, however, the United States should not adopt great-power competition as a foreign policy framework. Were it to do so, the United States would risk getting drawn into a global struggle with Russia and China that would undermine its geopolitical position. Going down that path would also compel those two countries to draw even closer together than they would have otherwise and limit the United States’ ability to make diplomatic inroads in regions such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Washington should instead make a decisive break with the inertia that for some eight decades has tethered its foreign policy to the actions of—and at times the search for—external competitors. It should accord principal priority to renewing its unique competitive advantages, demonstrating anew that it has an enduring capacity to strengthen its socioeconomic foundations at home and mobilize collective action abroad to meet the full array of planetary challenges.
Moscow and Beijing are formidable challengers. The good news is that their missteps give Washington an opportunity to pursue a foreign policy that is rooted less in answering their every maneuver than in articulating its own aspirations.


Formidable But Not Invincible

Why the United States Should Not Overreact to China and Russia

By Ali Wyne

November 23, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Ali Wyne · November 23, 2022

Just 30 years after the end of the Cold War and 50 years after the U.S. opening to China, the United States’ two principal challengers seem to be on the march and dictating Washington’s foreign policy decisions. Russia defied many observers’ expectations by invading Ukraine, and it shows no sign of relenting nine months into its brutal campaign. Meanwhile, following a visit to Taiwan by U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in August, China launched a spate of short-range conventional ballistic missiles—including, for the first time, over Taiwan—terminated its military dialogue with the United States, and stated that it would conduct regular patrols around Taiwan, raising anxiety that Beijing may soon move on Taipei.

Beyond the pressing concern that the United States could find itself in concurrent wars with two nuclear-armed powers, U.S. officials have a broader fear: that the global balance of power could be at a troubling inflection point. In the national security strategy that it released last month, the Biden administration warns that the “terms of geopolitical competition between the major powers will be set” over the coming decade. The administration is most concerned about “powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy,” particularly Russia and China.

Against this foreboding geopolitical backdrop, it may seem incongruous to venture that Washington has an opportunity to steady its long-term outlook. The key to seizing this chance lies in a counterintuitive conclusion: although Moscow and Beijing are formidable challengers, they are increasingly self-limiting ones. With its aggression against Ukraine, Russia has undercut its economic prospects, depleted its military assets, and strengthened the transatlantic project. The Chinese government, meanwhile, is tightening its grip on the private sector, provoking counterbalancing in Asia, and inducing greater diplomatic coordination in the West. If the United States’ initial mistake after the Cold War was to underreact to Russia and China, it must now avoid the opposite error.

SELF-INFLICTED HARM

Russia has offered a brutal corrective to observers who once dismissed it or even still do. Its invasion of Ukraine has destabilized energy markets, exacerbated food insecurity, and imperiled an already fragile global economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The more pronounced those consequences become, the harder it will be to sustain a unified response to Moscow’s aggression. Although Russia’s relationships with the West will remain irreparable so long as Vladimir Putin is president, Moscow has not been consigned to pariah status. Instead, most countries—including economic powerhouses China, India, and Brazil—have declined to sanction it for its invasion, and the value of Russia’s exports has actually increased since the war began. Russia’s growing partnership with Saudi Arabia further demonstrates that isolation from the West does not mean global ostracization.

But in affirming that it is an enduring power that can cause global upheaval, Russia has undercut itself economically, militarily, and diplomatically. While Russia has been able to blunt the effect of sanctions by imposing strict capital controls and taking advantage of high energy prices, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist, noted in July that the sanctions’ impact will deepen over time, steadily curtailing Russia’s access to capital and technology. And by compelling Europe to find alternatives to Russian oil and gas on an accelerated timeline, Moscow has dramatically weakened its energy leverage over the long term. The continent is bracing for difficult winters this year and next year, but Europe’s adjustment pains will not derail its energy diversification.


Russia will also struggle to rebuild its military power. Putin’s September order to mobilize Russian conscripts demonstrates how significant its personnel and materiel losses have been and how markedly momentum on the battlefield has shifted in Ukraine’s favor. In addition to using decades-old equipment to sustain its campaign, Russia is turning to Syria and Iran for military assistance. The Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank focusing on security, found that 27 of Russia’s key military systems rely heavily on some 450 microelectronic components made in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Maintaining those systems and the defense industrial base that underpins them will grow more difficult and costly as sanctions steadily restrict Moscow’s ability to procure semiconductors.

Russia’s hardest task, however, will be to repair the diplomatic damage that it has sustained. NATO is poised to admit Finland and Sweden, the EU has granted membership candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova, and even Central Asian countries that Russia presumes to be within its sphere of influence are reconsidering their orientations. Further afield, Japan and South Korea have both imposed sanctions against Russia, and India has redoubled its efforts to find substitutes for Russian energy and arms. Even China, Russia’s putative “no limits” partner, may be looking to modify its relationship. Chinese President Xi Jinping hinted at that possibility at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in September, when he informed Putin of his “questions and concerns” about Russia’s war.

Moscow has dramatically weakened its energy leverage over the long term.

Closer to home, China is eroding the United States’ military overmatch in Asia and increasing its centrality within the global economy (its GDP is forecast to be roughly 87 percent as large as the United States’ in 2027). It is also using geoeconomic statecraft and technological innovation to build its global influence. It, too, however, confronts serious economic, military, and diplomatic challenges.

A poor demographic trajectory, an economic model that faces diminishing returns, and a fixation on consolidating the Chinese Communist Party’s rule are all hampering China’s prospects for maintaining robust growth. And external headwinds could amplify internal ones. The economic woes of the Belt and Road Initiative are mounting as the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine make it even harder for many recipient countries to pay back loans that they have received from Chinese institutions to finance infrastructure projects. As it renegotiates a growing value of overseas loans—$52 billion in 2020 and 2021, up from $16 billion in 2018 and 2019—China has also offered “rescue loans” to countries including Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and Turkey to help them avoid balance-of-payments crises.

As China seeks to place its economy on a stabler footing, it must also contend with a more challenging security landscape. The leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States⁠—the members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad—have now convened four times, first in March 2021 and most recently in May of this year. Canberra has initiated a major review of its defense posture in hopes of enhancing its long-range strike capabilities and modernizing its navy. Washington and New Delhi have pledged to enhance their interoperability “across all domains of potential conflict,” inked an agreement to facilitate cooperation in space, and committed to new talks on artificial intelligence. And owing in part to shared anxiety over China’s deepening ties to Russia, Tokyo and Seoul are moving incrementally to build mutual trust. Finally, and critically, the United States, Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea are all significantly increasing their defense spending.

Like Russia, China will find that its biggest challenge is diplomatic. Washington is convinced that Beijing seeks to become the world’s preeminent power, and bipartisan support for strengthening ties between the United States and Taiwan is growing. The EU is steadily adjusting its stance toward China, as seen with its decision to pause the ratification of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, a deal seven years in the making that was intended to improve both European investors’ access to and European companies’ treatment in China’s vast consumer market. China’s failure to condemn Russian aggression in Ukraine has only deepened Europe’s anxiety—as well as that of NATO, which warns in its new strategic concept that China’s “stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security, and values.” And the Quad proceeds with clear momentum, having intensified efforts to articulate standards in critical technology domains such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, launched the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, and announced a Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Package.


Beijing is far more capable of offsetting external pressure than Moscow by deepening its relationships across the developing world. Even so, it has needlessly alienated advanced industrial democracies, calling into question its much-vaunted strategic acumen.

THE RISK OF OVERREACTION

The United States should not become complacent in response to Russia and China’s competitive missteps, but it must now guard against overreacting and contesting those two countries ubiquitously. At first glance, recent history would seem to furnish an obvious rejoinder to such caution: the United States waged, and won, a nearly half-century-long global struggle against the Soviet Union. As the Cold War progressed, psychological considerations increasingly supplanted material realities in driving U.S. foreign policy: fearing that any Soviet inroads that went unanswered could presage a systemic erosion of the United States’ competitive perch, Washington contested Moscow in countries as disparate as Angola, Lebanon, and Nicaragua. But the United States faced an economically outmatched competitor during the Cold War: the Soviet Union’s economy was always less than half as large as its own.

Today, by contrast, while the United States remains the world’s foremost power, it is in relative decline. Its share of global GDP decreased from roughly 30 percent in 2000 to just under 25 percent in 2020. In addition, its share of global goods exports diminished from approximately 12 percent to just over 8 percent during that period. And the share of global foreign exchange reserves denominated in U.S. dollars fell to its lowest level in a quarter-century in 2020. Meanwhile, China’s economy is already about three-quarters as large as the United States’, its exports reached a record high of $3.36 trillion last year, and the available evidence suggests that the rhetoric around decoupling China from the global economy outstrips the reality. Today’s geopolitical environment would accordingly be less forgiving of the indiscipline that Washington once exhibited. Although Russia and China are manageable by virtue of being self-limiting, they collectively have ample capacity to goad the United States and lock it into a reactive and self-defeating foreign policy.

There are other reasons why the United States should choose selective competition over universal struggle. Not every decision that Russia or China makes is intrinsically inimical to vital U.S. national interests—or necessarily taken with the United States in mind. Despite narratives that still suffuse much of American commentary—portraying Russia as the stealthy and ubiquitous opportunist and China as the patient and farsighted strategist—neither is immune to hubris and overstretch. And although an inexorably tightening China-Russia entente may seem like a fait accompli, U.S. foreign policy should entertain the possibility that strains between the two countries could eventually emerge. Moreover, Washington’s efforts to manage transnational challenges, such as climate change and future pandemics, will be limited if the United States bypasses Russia and China and solely engages like-minded countries.

Finally, beyond achieving little traction in the developing world, a foreign policy organized too tightly around contesting Russia and China would elicit significant concern even among U.S. allies and partners, few of which would take kindly to serving as instruments of a new Cold War—an outcome, President Joe Biden has often and properly stressed, that need not be inevitable. Perhaps the most crucial observation in the administration’s national security strategy reflects that judgment: “We will avoid the temptation to see the world solely through the prism of strategic competition and will continue to engage countries on their own terms.”

A DISCIPLINED APPROACH

Maintaining competitive equanimity is difficult for every power, but it is hardest for the world’s sole superpower—especially because the United States’ principal challengers contest the vision of international order that many U.S. officials and scholars had thought to be triumphant just three decades earlier. The traction that “great-power competition” has achieved in the U.S. policymaking community reflects that anxiety.

Paradoxically, however, the widespread resonance of that framework—largely transcending ideological divides—also reflects a sense of bureaucratic comfort. From the late 1930s to the late 1980s, the United States largely oriented its foreign policy around three external challengers: imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War proved a pyrrhic victory for Washington, for the existence of the Soviet threat had helped to define its role in the world for nearly 50 years. For roughly a quarter-century afterward, the United States struggled to settle on an anchoring construct, variously experimenting with “engagement and enlargement,” “the global war on terrorism,” and “the pivot to Asia.” A revanchist Moscow and a resurgent Beijing would seem to permit Washington to return to a familiar playbook, restoring clarity to U.S. foreign policy and maybe even cultivating greater cohesion among a divided American public.

But such hopes are questionable. Japan and Germany were defeated militarily during World War II. Today, however, in view of the possibility that great-power war with Russia or China could escalate to the nuclear level, the United States has a vital national interest in avoiding such a confrontation. And although Moscow and Beijing both confront numerous socioeconomic challenges, neither seems poised for a Soviet-style collapse. In addition, while even limited great-power cooperation might presently seem inconceivable, transnational challenges will continue to entangle the society and economy of the United States with those of Russia and China—no matter how vigorously Washington and its competitors attempt to decouple from one another. Finally, although competitive anxiety can spur internal renewal, the United States should neither use it as a crutch nor assume that great-power competition will ease political polarization at home.

In other words, the United States must consider not how it can achieve an illusory triumph over its competitors, but how it can sustain an uncomfortable cohabitation with them. That there is no ready blueprint for navigating this ambiguity means that, even as it continues to mine its history for guidance, Washington will have to develop a substantially new plan.


The United States should choose selective competition over universal struggle.

The management of great-power frictions will remain a core component of U.S. foreign policy because the stakes of avoiding armed confrontations with Russia and China are so high. Beyond taking steps in the service of that imperative, the United States should continue working with its allies and partners to enhance democratic resilience against supply chain disruptions and economic coercion, shape next-generation technology standards, support the global South’s economic development, and build new coalitions to address transnational challenges—partnering with Russia and China where possible.

Even as it embraces selective competition, however, the United States should not adopt great-power competition as a foreign policy framework. Were it to do so, the United States would risk getting drawn into a global struggle with Russia and China that would undermine its geopolitical position. Going down that path would also compel those two countries to draw even closer together than they would have otherwise and limit the United States’ ability to make diplomatic inroads in regions such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Washington should instead make a decisive break with the inertia that for some eight decades has tethered its foreign policy to the actions of—and at times the search for—external competitors. It should accord principal priority to renewing its unique competitive advantages, demonstrating anew that it has an enduring capacity to strengthen its socioeconomic foundations at home and mobilize collective action abroad to meet the full array of planetary challenges.

Moscow and Beijing are formidable challengers. The good news is that their missteps give Washington an opportunity to pursue a foreign policy that is rooted less in answering their every maneuver than in articulating its own aspirations.

Foreign Affairs · by Ali Wyne · November 23, 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

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com


V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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

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


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