Quotes of the Day:
“It is impossible for Westerners to understand the force of the people’s will to resist, and to continue to resist. The struggle of the people exceeds the imagination. It has astonished us too.”
- Pham Van Dong
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
"Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor. They condemn everything they don't understand. "
- Tallulah Bankhead
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 8 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. Top general details plan to train Ukrainians on rocket artillery
3. Ukraine to buy Polish howitzers as long war looms with Russia
4. The race to arm Ukraine highlights West’s worry of losing tech secrets
5. FDD | The Defense America Needs: Assessing Biden's Budget Proposal
6. Philippine forces report killing Daesh ‘spokesperson’
7. Strengthening the Cybersecurity of American Water Utilities
8. Analysis | Climate Change Is a Military Problem for the US by James Stavridis
9. Grow, Borrow, Recruit, and Reorganize: How the Military Can Get the Personnel It Needs for Digital War
10. Putin’s Jedi Mind Trick in Ukraine: How Truth Decay Shapes the Operational Environment
11. The US Government Is Waging Psychological Warfare On The Nation – OpEd
12. China losing, US gaining crucial ground in Thailand
13. Japan’s Kishida buckles on a war helmet
14. The Army is inviting social media influencers to DC to learn how to reach the youths
15. No Peace at Any Price in Ukraine
16. Journalists finally advised to stop referring to all veterans as former snipers, Special Forces
17. Inside the battle for Severodonetsk, where a Ukrainian unit of 60 was reduced to just 4 soldiers
18. Fuerzas Comando 22 Competition News Advisory
19. The US is heavily reliant on China and Russia for its ammo supply chain. Congress wants to fix that.
20. Rumours that Xi Jinping is losing his grip on power are greatly exaggerated
21. U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials Say
22. Russian propaganda efforts aided by pro-Kremlin content creators, research finds
23. Ukraine’s partisans are hitting Russian soldiers behind their own lines
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 8 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 8
Kateryna Stepanenko, Karolina Hird, Mason Clark, and George Barros
June 8, 6:30 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russian forces are escalating the use of psychological and information operations to damage the morale of Ukrainian soldiers. The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on June 8 that Russian forces are sending threatening messages to the personal devices of Ukrainian servicemen calling on them to betray their service oaths, lay down their arms, surrender, or defect to Russia.[1] The GUR reported that Russian forces are sending messages on a variety of platforms including SMS, Telegram, Viber, Signal, and WhatsApp and that the messages use location information to threaten to harm Ukrainian soldiers or their family members. Ukrainian military expert Dmytro Snegirov additionally noted that Russian propagandists are conducting informational and psychological campaigns to spoil the morale of Ukrainian troops by disseminating information that the battle for Severodonetsk will become the “next Mariupol.”[2] These information and psychological attacks likely seek to lower the morale of Ukrainian servicemen as operations on multiple axes of advance continue to generate high causalities on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.
Russian military commanders continue to face force generation challenges. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian military enlistment offices in Crimea are falsifying the results of mandatory medical exams administered during the summer conscription period to maximize the number of recruits.[3] Russian police also arrested a man who threw a molotov cocktail and set fire to a local Crimean administration building in protest of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, likely indicating growing discontent with Russian war efforts in Crimea.[4] ISW has previously reported that forced mobilization in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) is exacerbating social tensions and sparking protests in Donbas.[5] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that unspecified elements of the 106th and 76th Guards Airborne Assault Divisions refused to participate in combat in Luhansk Oblast and returned to Russia. The 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division previously participated in assaults on Kyiv, Izyum, and Popasna, which has likely led to the demoralization of troops.[6]
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces continued assaults against Ukrainian positions in Severodonetsk. Russian forces simultaneously seek to outflank Ukrainian positions in the region to avoid the necessity of making an opposed crossing of the Siversky Donets river.
- Russian forces are continuing operations around Sviatohirsk and west of Lyman to link up with operations southeast of Izyum and drive on Slovyansk.
- Russian forces are intensifying their operations in northwestern Kherson Oblast in response to recent Ukrainian counterattacks.
- Russian forces in Zaporizhia Oblast are focusing ground and artillery attacks near the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border and likely are seeking to strengthen control of the highway between Vasylivka-Orikhiv and Huliapole to support operations in northeast Zaporizhia.
- Russian-backed occupation authorities are attempting to set conditions for the political integration of occupied areas into the Russian Federation but are likely acting independently and in an incoherent manner due to the lack of a unifying occupation authority.
- Russian forces intensified psychological and information operations to degrade Ukrainian morale.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
- Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
- Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
- Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City;
- Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis;
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued efforts to gain control over the eastern outskirts of Severodonetsk on June 8. Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai denied Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s claims that Russian forces have seized Severodonetsk and noted that street fighting is ongoing in the city.[7] The Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Ambassador to Russia, Rodion Miroshnik, claimed that Russian forces took control over the Severodonetsk airport and stated that Ukrainian forces are continuing small-scale resistance at the Azot Chemical Plant on June 8, but ISW cannot independently verify these claims.[8] Ukrainian forces are continuing to conduct a flexible defense of Severodonetsk and are likely focusing on inflicting high casualties on Russian personnel rather than seeking to hold the entire city. Haidai clarified previous reports from June 5-7 that Ukrainian forces regained half of Severodonetsk during a counterattack on June 5, but stated that they then withdrew to previous positions following Russian ground, artillery, and air strikes on June 6.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian defenders repelled Russian ground assaults on Toshkivka and Ustynivka (both within 20 km southeast of Severodonetsk) that sought to secure positions on the western Siverskyi Donets Riverbank.[10] Russian forces likely seek to advance up the west bank of the Siverskyi Donets River to avoid conducting a challenging opposed river crossing from Severodonetsk.
Russian forces continued to conduct ground assaults and launch artillery and airstrikes west and east of Popasna to disrupt Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Lysychansk.[11] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian artillery continued to defend Ukraine’s GLOCs along the T1302 highway from Bakhmut to Lysychansk and pushed Russian forces out of Nahirne, less than 1 km away from the T1302, to further screen this key highway.[12] Russian forces are reportedly fighting near Berestove, a settlement just northeast of Nahirne on the T1302 highway.[13] Haidai noted that Ukrainian forces retain control of the T1302 highway.[14] Russian forces did not launch assaults west or east of Avdiivka and maintained heavy shelling in western Donetsk Oblast.[15]
Russian forces continued offensive operations southeast of Izyum on June 8. Russian forces have advanced to Sviatohirsk (approximately 27 km southeast of Izyum), but it is unclear if Russian forces have entirely seized Sviatohirsk. Geolocated videos showed Ukrainian forces conducting artillery strikes and firing portable anti-tank systems against Russian heavy artillery in the eastern part of Sviatohisrk on June 6-7.[16] NASA FIRMS data observed significant high-temperature anomalies in western Sviatohirsk over the past 24 hours, likely indicating Russian indirect fire against remaining Ukrainian forces in the settlement. A Russian journalist reporting from an unspecified location in Sviatohirsk claimed that Russian forces will soon capture the entire city on June 8.[17] Russian Telegram Channel WarJournal [Z] shared drone footage of a destroyed bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River in Sviatohirsk connecting to the southeastern settlement of Tetyanivka and claimed that Ukrainian forces destroyed the bridge, but ISW cannot independently verify these claims.[18] Russian Telegram channel Swodki also claimed that Russian forces seized Tetyanivka on June 8, but this claim is likely incorrect as Russian forces reportedly continued to shell Tetyanivka throughout the day.[19] Russian forces are likely attempting to secure Sviatohirsk to link up with other units advancing south from Izyum to further advance toward Slovyansk but may face Ukrainian resistance from the western Siverskyi Donets Riverbank. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are continuing to set conditions for offensive operations south of Izyum but did not launch ground assaults in the area.[20]
[Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Sviatohirsk and Bohorodychne for June 7]
Russian forces attempted unsuccessful assaults south of Lyman in an effort to secure access to the western bank of the Siverskyi Donets River on June 8. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces failed to advance to Raihorodok, approximately 12 km southwest of Lyman on the western Siverskyi Donets Riverbank, on June 8.[21] A drive on Raihorodok will support Russian efforts to reach Slovyansk, which is only 10 km from the settlement.
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Withdraw forces to the north and defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum)
There were no significant changes on the Kharkiv front in the past 24 hours. Russian forces continued to hold their defensive lines north of Kharkiv City and conducted artillery and MLRS attacks on Kharkiv City and the surrounding settlements on June 8.[22]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces conducted ground and artillery attacks along the Southern Axis but did not make any confirmed advances on June 8. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command stated that Russian forces are intensifying operations in Kherson Oblast, specifically along the Mykolaiv-Kherson Oblast borders.[23] Russian forces are likely escalating hostilities in this area in response to recent Ukrainian counterattacks south of Davydiv Brid, where territory is still contested.[24] Russian forces are reportedly attempting to curb Ukrainian efforts to regroup and strengthen units in Kherson Oblast and prevent further Ukrainian counterattacks.[25]
Russian forces concentrated their artillery fire and ground attacks in northeastern Zaporizhia near the Donetsk Oblast border on the Orikhiv-Huliapole line.[26] Spokesperson for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry Oleksandr Motuzyanyk noted that Russian forces deployed 30 T-62 tanks to “long-term” (likely meaning defensive) firing points in Vasylivka, which is a likely attempt to strengthen control over the T0812 highway that runs from Vasylivka to Orikhiv and Huliapole.[27] Russian forces additionally conducted MLRS attacks and reconnaissance operations in Mykolaiv Oblast.[28]
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)
Russian-backed occupation authorities continued to set political conditions for the integration of occupied Ukrainian territories on June 8. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast are conducting fake “social polls” in order to set conditions for a “referendum” on accession into the Russian Federation.[29] According to the report, citizens of Kherson Oblast are receiving calls from unidentified actors that pose a series of manipulative and leading questions in order to sway their opinions on Russia, the war, the occupation, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The GUR stated that the results of these manufactured “polls” will be used by occupation authorities to argue that Ukrainian citizens think favorably of Russia in order to make the case for annexation.
The Russian-appointed mayor of Melitopol, Galina Danilchenko, announced on June 8 that Melitopol is preparing for its own referendum on joining Russia.[30] The fact that a singular city, as opposed to an entire occupied region, is preparing for a referendum may indicate that occupied territories are pursuing ad hoc annexation and integration plans without a unifying occupational body to oversee the annexation of the entire region.
Occupation authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) continued to fail to provide the residents of Mariupol with basic social services or quality-of-life assurances. Advisor to the Mayor of Mariupol Petro Andryushchenko stated that DNR authorities are unable to provide water, humanitarian aid, or medical services to residents and that corruption amongst DNR collaborators is further complicating the situation.[31] Head of the DNR Denis Pushilin stated that his priority is restoring the school system in Mariupol despite continual administrative failures to provide even the most basic food and water services.[32] Pushilin additionally dismissed the chairman of the DNR‘s government on June 8, which is a likely indicator that DNR authorities have faced widespread internal challenges in efforts to occupy Mariupol and conduct the war as a whole.[33] ISW cannot currently assess the implications of this reported dismissal and will report further on any changes in the DNR’s governance structure.
[1] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/uvaha-voroh-rozsylaie-pohrozy-ne-piddavaites-na-provokatsii.html
[14] https://www dot rbc.ua/ukr/news/sergey-gayday-ugrozy-okruzheniya-nashih-sil-1654679877.html
[29] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/okupanty-provodiat-v-khersonskii-oblasti-propahandystske-psevdoopytuvannia.html
2. Top general details plan to train Ukrainians on rocket artillery
Most urgent security force assistance. Just think if we had begun this effort in 2014 or even in 2018 or 2019. Learn, adapt, anticipate.
Top general details plan to train Ukrainians on rocket artillery
Updated June 8, 2022 at 8:46 p.m. EDT|Published June 8, 2022 at 6:54 p.m. EDT
The U.S. military has devised a plan to train a platoon of Ukrainian soldiers at a time on how to use sophisticated multiple-launch rocket artillery, the Pentagon’s top general said Wednesday, raising the likelihood that more of the weapons could be sent to Ukraine.
The plan is contingent on an initial group of Ukrainian soldiers showing proficiency on it, said Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The transfer of additional rocket artillery to Ukraine from existing U.S. Army or U.S. Marine Corps stocks also would require explicit approval from the Biden administration.
“We’ve got to start this thing with a program that is rational and deliberate and gets them trained to a standard where they become effective,” Milley said, speaking to reporters as he returned to Washington from France. “It will do no good to just throw this weapon system into the battle. You’ve got to be trained on it to get the maximum effective use out of the weapon as a precision system.”
The comments came after the Biden administration last month approved the transfer of four M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, commonly known as HIMARS, to Ukraine, and after Britain said it would send three M270 multiple-launch rocket systems, which perform a similar function. The British also will train a platoon at a time under the plan, Milley said, allowing Ukrainian forces to build up their rocket artillery.
Ukrainian officials have said for days that they need dozens of rocket artillery systems to beat back Russian forces, who continue to make slow gains in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region after a full-scale invasion launched Feb. 24.
Milley said that the Russians have “demonstrated that they are outgunning and outranging Ukrainian artillery” so far in fighting in the eastern Donbas region, which has become the primary emphasis in Russian operations.
The United States already has shipped Ukraine dozens of M777 howitzers, artillery that commonly launches explosive 155mm rounds up to about 25 miles. Milley said Ukrainian forces have used those weapons to great effect, but the Ukrainians need “some longer-range artillery systems” that can reach farther distances.
Colin Kahl, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, left open the possibility that the United States could send additional HIMARS to Ukraine as he announced June 1 the first four systems had been approved. The United States first wants to get more information about how useful they are and how the Ukrainians are using them, he said. He predicted then that it would take about three weeks to train the first group of Ukrainian soldiers. Milley said Wednesday that it will take three or four.
The Biden administration approved the transfer of the first four systems after receiving assurances from Ukraine that it would not use them to launch cross-border attacks on Russia, Kahl said. The administration also decided to send munitions for them that have a range of about 45 miles, rather than the long-range Advanced Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) that can reach up to 186 miles.
Both the HIMARS and multi-launch system that the British are providing require a significant amount of training, Milley said. U.S. troops have developed an accelerated training program for Ukrainian soldiers who already have fired other kinds of artillery in part because they are not starting from scratch.
“The Ukrainians have very good artillerymen. Very good gunners. They’re excellent at artillery,” Milley said. “But they have been using Soviet-era systems, and then transitioning to different [Western] systems.”
On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces remained locked in a brutal fight to maintain territory in the city of Severodonetsk, a key battleground in the Kremlin’s bid to capture the Donbas region, as Kyiv and Moscow continue to spar over a U.N.-backed proposal to avert worsening global food shortages by securing safe corridors for millions of tons of Ukrainian grain.
Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai said Ukrainian troops were facing an onslaught of Russian shelling that is targeting Ukrainian-held supply lines in Severodonetsk, the largest city in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, where Moscow claims it now controls 97 percent of the territory.
“Fierce battles are taking place … Our defenders are fighting for every inch of the city,” said Haidai, who acknowledged that Ukrainian troops may need to “withdraw to stronger positions.”
Local officials have confirmed that Russian forces have captured most residential areas in the city as part of their advance, but Britain’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday reported that Ukrainian defenses “are holding” and said neither side has gained much ground over the past day.
Severodonetsk would be a significant symbolic win for Moscow, which claims it has recently restored rail and road links to the annexed Crimean peninsula via freshly captured Ukrainian cities, consolidating its gains in the country’s south.
Turkish and Russian foreign ministers met in Ankara on Wednesday for “substantial” talks on a U.N.-backed proposal for secure safe shipping lanes, designed to facilitate exports of some 20 million tons of grain trapped by a Russian blockade of the Black Sea ports.
The blockade has raised alarms over a potential global food shortage that could lead to famine in developing countries if shipments aren’t able to leave the ports, some of which have been littered with defensive Ukrainian mines and are under fire from Russian land and sea units.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said following the meeting that the proposal — which reportedly includes a plan for Turkey to assist in demining the Ukrainian ports and escorting commercial vessels — was “reasonable.” He also said it’s “entirely legitimate” for Russia to request relief from sanctions on its own exports as part of any deal. No immediate agreements have come of the talks.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday blamed Ukraine for the impasse and said Russia was willing to provide security guarantees if Kyiv agreed to remove mines from its Black Sea ports or “ensure passage through the minefields, as our Turkish friends are telling us.”
Lavrov denied the current global food shortage was linked to the war in Ukraine, while European Union leaders railed against what they say are Russian efforts to weaponize food supplies since the invasion began. Speaking in the European Parliament on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Union’s executive branch, said the blockade on Ukrainian grain was “a cold, callous and calculated siege by Putin on some of the world’s most vulnerable countries.”
Ukraine has made urgent calls for a deal on the shipping lanes, but remains wary of the U.N. proposal, which it says could allow Russia to exploit safe zones to carry out strategic attacks on southern cities, including Odessa, which is still under Ukrainian control.
The White House announced on Wednesday that President Biden will travel to Europe for Group of Seven and NATO summits later this month where he will meet with global leaders to discuss further efforts so support Ukraine, as well as the food and energy crisis caused by the conflict.
Foreign fighters from Britain and Morocco who joined the war in Ukraine against Russia have gone on trial this week, according to Russian media.
Two British men, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, as well as a Moroccan identified as Brahim Saadoun, appeared in a courtroom behind bars in footage on the Belarusian outlet Nexta. They were asked whether they had any objections to their indictments, and all answered no before taking a seat.
The men are accused of acting as mercenaries, according to Nexta. The trial is taking place in a pro-Russian separatist region of Donetsk, under the control of the prosecutor general’s office of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
Meanwhile, nuclear radiation detectors are back up and running at the Chernobyl site for the first time since the war began, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said.
“Dozens” of radiation detectors “are once again transmitting data,” after teams “succeeded in reviving a vital information link that was cut at the start of the conflict more than 100 days ago,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement Tuesday.
The detectors were set up after the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl to monitor radiation levels around the defunct plant in northern Ukraine.
The radiation monitoring network in the area stopped functioning on Feb. 24, the first day of Russia’s invasion after its troops occupied the Chernobyl site, the IAEA said. Russian forces held the Chernobyl zone for five weeks before withdrawing at the end of March amid an international outcry and fears of another nuclear disaster.
Kareem Fahim and Zeynep Karatas in Istanbul, Amy Cheng and Andrew Jeong in Seoul, Adela Suliman in London, Lateshia Beachum in Washington and Mary Ilyushina in Riga contributed to this report.
3. Ukraine to buy Polish howitzers as long war looms with Russia
Ukraine to buy Polish howitzers as long war looms with Russia
WARSAW, Poland — Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has announced his country is selling 155mm Krab self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine amid the country’s fight against Russia’s invasion.
“We are now signing one of the largest, if not the largest defense contracts for exports of the past 30 years,” Morawiecki said on June 7 during his visit to the plant of Polish defense company Huta Stalowa Wola, which makes the Krab. “This is a sale of weapons for Ukrainians … which will be very important weapons in the battlefield, most likely in Ukraine’s east.”
The arms are meant to strengthen Ukraine’s artillery forces by giving them the capability to strike targets at a distance of up to 40 km (25 miles), according to data from the manufacturer.
To make the Krab’s chassis, Huta Stalowa Wola bought a license for the technology used in the chassis of the K9 Thunder howitzer from South Korea’s Hanwha Defense.
The value of the contract and the number of the Krabs to be supplied to Ukraine was not officially disclosed. However, local daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna reported the deal covers about 60 howitzers and it is valued at some PLN 3 billion, or $700 million. The transaction marks Poland’s first export sale of the weapon.
Deliveries are expected to begin this year and be completed in 2023. To finance the purchase, Ukraine will use funds from its state budget, but also money it receives from the European Union, Morawiecki said.
Last month, Poland reportedly delivered a battalion of about 18 second-hand Krabs to Ukraine. The Polish government transferred these weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces as military aid.
Jaroslaw Adamowski is the Poland correspondent for Defense News.
4. The race to arm Ukraine highlights West’s worry of losing tech secrets
Yes this is a risk. We have to weigh the costs and benefits versus our interests. Is it in our interest to ensure Ukraine victory? Then we have to ask how much risk we can accept to ensure such victory? Do we deny aid potentially war winning because there is a possibility that some of our "high tech secrets" might be compromised?
The race to arm Ukraine highlights West’s worry of losing tech secrets
WASHINGTON — As a new generation of western-made arms travels to Ukraine’s front-line forces, donor nations are assessing the risk of revealing sensitive technology to Russia’s military if the equipment is captured.
Such considerations have become more prevalent as Soviet-age stocks used in the fight dwindle and Ukrainian leaders request weapons with longer ranges and better combat punch, according to British defense officials, who spoke on condition of not being named due to the sensitivity of the subject.
The British government is a key driving force in coordinating international military aid to Ukraine.
Any weaponry that includes seeker and guidance components for targeting, as well as encryption algorithms, could give clues to Russian forces about how these arms work and, potentially, how to defend against them, said a British Embassy official here.
Technology trophies routinely change hands in modern war, and there have been reports of Ukrainian forces turning the tables and gleaning insight from Russian equipment seized on the battlefield. What’s new is that capture risk calculations are becoming more deeply embedded in new donation decisions, as a generational shift in the quality of the weapons flowing into Ukraine gets underway.
“Nothing is limitless,” said another British Embassy official, referring to Soviet-era equipment being ground up in the war. “The amount of weapons being expended on a daily basis just to hold back Russia on the eastern flank in the Donbas is substantial.”
Earlier this month, U.S. and U.K. leaders announced the transfer of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and M270 Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems, or MLRS, to Ukraine. The weapons are considered crucial in defeating long-range artillery pieces used by the Russians to slice deeper into the Donbas.
Given the American and British weapons’ ranges of 70-80 km, the systems are considered far enough away from the frontline to mitigate immediate capture risks. But losing sophisticated, shorter-range weapons like the British Brimstone missile, which features onboard target recognition technology, would be more worrisome, according to officials.
Photos of a Brimstone purportedly captured intact by Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine first appeared on Twitter in mid-May.
Meanwhile, Western defense leaders are expected to meet in Brussels next week to coordinate new arms donations to Ukraine. A naval version of the Brimstone missile, which manufacturer MBDA has marketed for some time, is being considered by the British to fill a crucial gap in Ukraine’s coastal defenses.
That mission has taken on global significance because Russian ships are blocking Ukraine’s ports, leaving 22 million tons of grain meant for export languishing in silos near the coast, according to the U.S. State Department. Russian ships have reportedly left the area with stolen grain by the hundreds of thousands of tons, agency spokesman Ned Price told ABC News.
At the last donor conference on May 23, the Danes agreed to supply Ukraine with U.S.-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles. But more is needed to beef up Ukraine’s anti-ship capabilities to be able to punch through the Russian blockade, said the second British official.
“Especially when there has there been so much concern, even at the UN level, about the grain crisis,” the official said. “That’s significant, and it’s something we can’t let go of and need to focus on more.”
Sebastian Sprenger is Europe editor for Defense News, reporting on the state of the defense market in the region, and on U.S.-Europe cooperation and multinational investments in defense and global security. He previously served as managing editor for Defense News.
5. FDD | The Defense America Needs: Assessing Biden's Budget Proposal
FDD | The Defense America Needs: Assessing Biden's Budget Proposal
fdd.org · by Bradley Bowman CMPP Senior Director · June 8, 2022
June 7, 2022 | Foreign Podicy
The Defense America Needs: Assessing Biden’s Budget Proposal
Mackenzie Eaglen
American Enterprise Institute
About
The Pentagon sent its classified 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) to Congress on March 28. An unclassified fact sheet summarizing the strategy lists four priorities for the Department of Defense:
- Defending the homeland;
- Deterring strategic attacks
- Deterring aggression and prevailing in conflicts;
- Building a resilient Joint Force.
The problem is that America’s warfighters will not be able to accomplish those objectives if Washington does not provide our troops the resources, weapons, and training they need.
The Biden administration emphasizes concepts and words such as “integrated deterrence,” “campaigning,” and “building enduring advantages.”
But those words will mean little in practice if Washington doesn’t put its money where its mouth is by coordinating ends, ways, and means and taking urgent action to ensure our troops never confront better armed and prepared adversaries.
So, what’s actually in the Biden administration’s defense budget request?
As the armed services committees markup the annual defense bill this month and as appropriators get to work, which of the administration’s defense proposals should Congress accept, reject, and tweak?
Mackenzie Eaglen
Mackenzie is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on defense strategy and budgets, as well as military readiness. She has worked in both the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate and served as a staff member on the National Defense Strategy Commission and as a Presidential Management Fellow in the Department of Defense.
RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery
Mark is the senior director of FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, previously serving in the U.S. Navy for 32 years. Mark served as policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee under the leadership of Senator John S. McCain.
6. Philippine forces report killing Daesh ‘spokesperson’
Excerpts:
“The neutralization of the personality is a big blow to the organization,” Linao said, adding that Alimuden was a “spokesperson of ISIS (Daesh)” and “finance officer of the Dawlah Islamiyah Philippines conduit to ISIS (Daesh) central.”
Linao added that the suspected finance officer will no longer be able to “extort or generate more funds to buy bomb materials, improvised explosive devices, which would wreak havoc on the Filipino people, especially here in central Mindanao.”
Col. Christopher Panapan, provincial police commander, said Alimuden died of multiple gunshot wounds after his vehicle was intercepted by security forces on a highway.
Philippine forces report killing Daesh ‘spokesperson’
MANILA/DAVAO CITY: Philippine security forces said on Tuesday they had killed a Daesh spokesperson and “money man” in the southern province of Maguindanao.
The Western Mindanao Command, which oversees military operations in the country’s south, identified the suspect as Abdulfatah Omar Alimuden, alias Abu Huzaifah, a Philippine national and member of Dawlah Islamiyah, a militant organization that pledged allegiance to the Daesh in 2015.
Maj. Andrew Linao, spokesperson of the Western Mindanao Command, told Arab News that Alimuden was killed in an operation in Datu Saudi Ampatuan municipality on Monday.
“The neutralization of the personality is a big blow to the organization,” Linao said, adding that Alimuden was a “spokesperson of ISIS (Daesh)” and “finance officer of the Dawlah Islamiyah Philippines conduit to ISIS (Daesh) central.”
Linao added that the suspected finance officer will no longer be able to “extort or generate more funds to buy bomb materials, improvised explosive devices, which would wreak havoc on the Filipino people, especially here in central Mindanao.”
Col. Christopher Panapan, provincial police commander, said Alimuden died of multiple gunshot wounds after his vehicle was intercepted by security forces on a highway.
“Minutes after we arrived at the scene, we rushed him to the nearest hospital, but he was declared dead by doctors,” Panapan said, but did not confirm the suspect’s role or position within the militant group.
“He was reportedly holding a key position in the ISIS-EA (Daesh-East Asia) group,” he added. “We are digging more information about his role in their organization.”
Dawlah Islamiyah, also known as the Maute group, was one the organizations that along with another Daesh affiliate, the Abu Sayyaf, took control of the city of Marawi in the southern Philippines in 2017.
After five months of fighting and widespread destruction, the Philippine army reclaimed the city, killing the main leadership of both groups.
But following the battle, attacks increased in the country and Daesh became a major cause of concern.
In 2018, the US Department of State designated Daesh-Philippines on its list of foreign terrorist organizations amid concerns that the group, which originated in the Middle East, was expanding its operations in Southeast Asia.
At the same time, the Philippine military stepped up its crackdown on Daesh affiliates in the country.
The latest operation comes a week after a series of bomb attacks in Koronadal, South Cotabato province and Tacurong in Sultan Kudarat province, which the military has blamed on Dawlah Islamiyah.
Ramon Beleno III, head of the department of political science at Ateneo De Davao University in Davao City, told Arab News that the killing of the suspected Daesh finance chief “will result in difficulties for their group in seeking financial support.”
But it may also lead to a rise in attacks.
“They might retaliate,” Beleno said. “It’s like a house of ants. Once you ruin it, they will strike back.”
7. Strengthening the Cybersecurity of American Water Utilities
Strengthening the Cybersecurity of American Water Utilities
About
America’s critical infrastructure is only as strong as its weakest link, and in the United States, water may be the greatest vulnerability. The United States has approximately 52,000 drinking water and 16,000 wastewater systems, most of which service small- to medium-sized communities of less than 50,000 residents. Each of these systems operate in a unique threat environment, often with limited budgets and even more limited cybersecurity personnel to respond to these threats. Conducting federal oversight of, and providing sufficient federal assistance to, such a distributed network of utilities is inherently difficult.
To discuss the current state of cybersecurity in the water sector, the role of the Environmental Protection Agency in supporting the sector, and what can be done to address policy gaps to support water utilities, FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) and CSC 2.0 host an event with policymakers and experts. Representative Jim Langevin (D-RI), chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems, delivers opening remarks, followed by a conversation featuring Dr. Kevin Morley, manager of federal relations for the American Water Works Association; Ken Kopocis, former deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Water in the Environmental Protection Agency; and RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, CCTI senior director and former executive director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. Dr. Samantha Ravich, CCTI chair and former Cyberspace Solarium Commissioner moderates the discussion.
Following the planned sunset of the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, CSC 2.0 is continuing efforts to implement CSC recommendations, provide annual implementation assessments, and conduct research and analysis on cybersecurity issues.
Speakers
REPRESENTATIVE JIM LANGEVIN
Representative Jim Langevin (D-RI) is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, on which he chairs the Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems Subcommittee and serves on the Subcommittees on Seapower and Projection Forces and Strategic Forces. He is a senior member of the Committee on Homeland Security and serves on its Subcommittees on Intelligence & Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, & Innovation. Langevin was one of four legislators appointed to serve on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and he co-founded the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, which he still co-chairs, to increase awareness around the need for stronger cybersecurity. A national leader on securing our nation’s technology infrastructure against cyber threats, Langevin has authored or co-authored dozens of pieces of cybersecurity legislation. As co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Career and Technical Education Caucus, Langevin advocates to improve and increase access to training that gives students and workers the skills that best fit the needs of expanding industries. He has successfully fought for strong CTE funding under the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act and has worked to foster employer-educator partnerships and career training programs across a variety of career fields in Rhode Island.
KEN KOPOCIS
Ken Kopocis served as the deputy assistant administrator in the Office of Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Prior to the EPA, Ken served as a Congressional staff member for nearly 27 years, holding several senior positions on the staffs of both the Committee on the House Transportation and Infrastructure and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Areas of legislative and policy experience included water pollution control and water infrastructure; water resources development, conservation and management; hazardous waste cleanup; transportation; and emergency and disaster response.
RADM (RET.) MARK MONTGOMERY
RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow at FDD and senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, where he leads FDD’s efforts to advance U.S. prosperity and security through technology innovation while countering cyber threats that seek to diminish them. Mark also directs CSC 2.0, an initiative that works to implement the recommendations of the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, where he served as executive director. Previously, Mark served as policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee under the leadership of Senator John S. McCain, coordinating policy efforts on national security strategy, capabilities and requirements, and cyber policy. Mark served for 32 years in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer, retiring as a rear admiral in 2017.
DR. KEVIN MORLEY
Dr. Kevin Morley is manager of federal relations for the American Water Works Association (AWWA). Over the past 20 years he has worked closely with multiple organizations to advance security and preparedness in the water sector. This includes establishing the Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network (WARN) and guiding the development of several ANSI/AWWA standards that represent minimum best practice for water sector risk and resilience management, including cybersecurity guidance. He is a leading expert on §2013 of America’s Water Infrastructure Act (AWIA) of 2018. Kevin is a member of the President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council and a past Disaster Resilience Fellow for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He received his PhD from George Mason University for research on water sector resilience and developing the Utility Resilience Index (URI). He holds a MS from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and a BA from Syracuse University.
DR. SAMANTHA RAVICH
Dr. Samantha Ravich is the chairman of FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation and a distinguished advisor to CSC 2.0, having served as a commissioner on the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission. She also serves as a member of the U.S. Secret Service’s Cyber Investigation Advisory Board. Previously, she served as vice chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Working Group of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, and the Republican co-chair of the congressionally mandated National Commission for Review of Research and Development Programs in the United States Intelligence Community. Samantha was deputy national security advisor for Vice President Cheney, focusing on Asia and Middle East Affairs as well as on counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation. She is an advisor on cyber and geo-political threats and trends to numerous technology, manufacturing, and services companies; a managing partner of A2P, a social data analytics firm; and on the board of directors for International Game Technology (NYSE: IGT).
8. Analysis | Climate Change Is a Military Problem for the US by James Stavridis
Excerpts:
To face not only the opening Arctic but also rising sea levels, violent weather and drought-induced humanitarian crises, the DOD needs a dedicated environmental think tank to generate ideas for things such as new military nuclear-energy systems, storm-hardened materials, pop-up housing and easily transportable food stocks. All of these should be designed to be moved globally via military air and naval capability.
The US national security establishment must also cultivate greater international cooperation on climate challenges. The US Coast Guard is especially well positioned to interact with other navies on fisheries enforcement, controlling pollution and dumping activities, and plastics removal.
The Defense Department should also work with other US agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (which houses the Coast Guard) on responding to national and international natural disasters. The Departments of State and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency all have strong environmental programs that could be synchronized with the DOD efforts. A joint interagency task force exists for counter-narcotics. Why not create one to work collectively on climate-related challenges?
As governments and private corporations put more energy and attention into climate protection, the US national security establishment must also face what may be the threat of the century.
Analysis | Climate Change Is a Military Problem for the US
The US military has its hands full at the moment with a vicious war in Ukraine and US-China tensions over issues from human rights to sovereignty over the South China Sea. But it cannot delay taking action to address climate change, the most persistent strategic threat we face.
As a young naval officer, I took for granted the many beautiful home ports at which our fleet was berthed. Now, rising sea levels are threatening many of them. Both Norfolk, Virginia – the largest naval base in the world – and Mayport, Florida, stand to see significant loss of waterfront berths by mid-century. Climate change puts our strategic base network at risk.
It also raises demands on scarce naval resources, as it brings more unpredictable, highly destructive storms. As a naval commander, I’ve participated in many humanitarian relief efforts in response to natural disasters, including massive hurricanes in the US Southeast and Caribbean, wildfires in the American West, tsunamis in the Pacific and storms in Central America. These disasters are only becoming more frequent.
At the same time, climate change poses a new national security challenge by expanding ocean geography. The Arctic (or the High North as our Canadian friends more eloquently call it) has been largely frozen over most of the year throughout recorded history. Now, the ice is breaking up, shipping lanes are opening for much of the year, and rich hydrocarbon deposits are becoming accessible. Thus, the Artic is becoming a broader venue for great-power competition between Russia and NATO countries, including the US, Canada, Denmark, Iceland and Norway, and soon perhaps Sweden and Finland.
Climate change also heightens tensions between the developed world and developing countries in Latin America, Africa and South Asia by creating drought conditions in already fragile agrarian societies.
“Climate change is one of the most destabilizing forces of our time, exacerbating other national security concerns and posing serious readiness challenges,” said Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro. Both the Navy and the Army have recently released well-thought-out white papers on the subject, laying out the problems ahead.
What’s most needed, however, are concrete ideas to address them.
First and foremost, the Defense Department must reduce its own carbon footprint. It needs to shift from hydrocarbon fuels to renewable energy sources for day-to-day transportation operations; harden its facilities, especially coastal ones, to withstand violent storms, erosion and rising sea levels; and increase its use of recycled products while reducing use of plastics. As the largest global organization in the world, these steps alone would have a measurable impact in lowering emissions.
A second urgent step is to apply the Defense Department’s considerable research and development capability to climate challenges. To manage its emerging Arctic responsibilities, for example, the Pentagon must develop hardened seagoing vessels (cruisers and destroyers, for example) capable of surveillance and combat operations in the North; train ground and air forces for the harsh conditions of the Arctic coastline; consider a significant increase in icebreaker ships, some of them nuclear-powered; and set up logistics systems appropriate for the region.
To face not only the opening Arctic but also rising sea levels, violent weather and drought-induced humanitarian crises, the DOD needs a dedicated environmental think tank to generate ideas for things such as new military nuclear-energy systems, storm-hardened materials, pop-up housing and easily transportable food stocks. All of these should be designed to be moved globally via military air and naval capability.
The US national security establishment must also cultivate greater international cooperation on climate challenges. The US Coast Guard is especially well positioned to interact with other navies on fisheries enforcement, controlling pollution and dumping activities, and plastics removal.
The Defense Department should also work with other US agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (which houses the Coast Guard) on responding to national and international natural disasters. The Departments of State and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency all have strong environmental programs that could be synchronized with the DOD efforts. A joint interagency task force exists for counter-narcotics. Why not create one to work collectively on climate-related challenges?
As governments and private corporations put more energy and attention into climate protection, the US national security establishment must also face what may be the threat of the century.
More from other writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
• Heat Waves, Wheat and India’s Chapati Crisis: Andy Mukherjee
• Saving the Planet Is More Important Than Saving Birds: Tyler Cowen
• Headed for the Beach? Enjoy It While It Lasts: Francis Wilkinson
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A retired U.S. Navy admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, he is vice chairman of global affairs at the Carlyle Group. He is the author most recently of “To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision.”
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
9. Grow, Borrow, Recruit, and Reorganize: How the Military Can Get the Personnel It Needs for Digital War
GBRR. (Grow, Borrow, Recruit, and Reorganize) I always like to do the acronym check.
Excerpts:
Integration of AI in the military will increase the ability to perceive, decide, and act beyond human cognition alone. The future of information warfare will require more AI as the fog of war increases and information overloads human decision-making. An emphasis on human-machine teaming for decision-making could lower risk and reduce conflict. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines must be creative problem solvers, forward-thinking about what machines can and cannot or should not do. These skills become increasingly important as AI automates previously analog processes. Service members who can harness machine-generated data from various sensors can integrate that information quickly to solve particular problems. If a service member can understand, modify, and react on the fly with data-enabled action from available sensors, this integration into problem solving becomes a force multiplier.
But service members’ working effectively with AI and other new technologies requires rethinking what qualities are essential for success in the military. The NSCAI final report stated that lack of talent in government was the biggest impediment to the United States being prepared for AI this decade; and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks recently said that the US military needs to adapt to how war is changing. It must begin to address this reality immediately. Growing, borrowing, and recruiting talent, and pairing that with necessary organizational changes, will help DoD produce a more capable future force. With a proper production model, the military will be AI-ready to meet, or surpass, the NSCAI commission recommendations.
Grow, Borrow, Recruit, and Reorganize: How the Military Can Get the Personnel It Needs for Digital War - Modern War Institute
Editor’s note: This article is part of the series “Compete and Win: Envisioning a Competitive Strategy for the Twenty-First Century.” The series endeavors to present expert commentary on diverse issues surrounding US competitive strategy and irregular warfare with peer and near-peer competitors in the physical, cyber, and information spaces. The series is part of the Competition in Cyberspace Project (C2P), a joint initiative by the Army Cyber Institute and the Modern War Institute. Read all articles in the series here.
Special thanks to series editors Capt. Maggie Smith, PhD, C2P director, and Dr. Barnett S. Koven.
“Americans have not yet grappled with just how profoundly the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution will impact our economy, national security, and welfare.”
That’s how former Google chairman Eric Schmidt and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, the chair and vice chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), opened their letter introducing the commission’s final report, released last year. Despite regular news stories about how various government entities are endeavoring to include AI and other technologies into their existing operations, the military is in a similar place to the rest of American society. Recently, two scholars working with the military on AI, Brandon Leshchinskiy and Andrew Bowne, said total cultural change was necessary for the military to embrace future warfare. They specifically argued that the military could not continue to apply incremental fixes to a problem that required greater creativity. At the heart of the new and creative solutions this challenge requires is managing talent.
Both the Department of Defense and the individual services have taken steps to address the problem. For example, the US Army Cyber Center of Excellence focuses on the development of doctrine. The military created the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to assist senior leaders with the operational preparedness relating to the impacts of AI. Additionally, West Point’s applied statistics and data science major allows students to gain an education aligned with the requirements identified by the NSCAI, as do the scholarships for the National Digital Reserve Corps (NDRC), under the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). A pilot program for cyber officers in ROTC was announced in May 2022. Ultimately, the ideal in the future is a United States Digital Service Academy (USDSA) to address critical gaps for the military over the long term. The creation of the NDRC and USDSA—both NSCAI recommendations—allows service in the government to be part-time. But none of these ideas address the very real short- and medium-term needs of the military to confront increasingly digital warfare. To do so, the Department of Defense should take action in four key areas: growing, borrowing, and recruiting talent, and reorganizing to produce the workforce needed to meet the demands of digital war.
Grow
Akin to what other industrialized democracies are doing, the federal government needs to grow digital talent through a long-term approach with school-aged children. There is precedent for such federal action. After the Great Depression, poverty and malnutrition were widespread. Following European models, state and federal governments provided basic food assistance to help young children learn and grow. The school lunch program was designed to address poverty but had a secondary effect of creating a healthy population of conscripts for World War II capable of handling the rigors of combat with stronger bones, greater muscle mass, and a healthier immune system. Local and state models can feed into successful nationwide programs. Growing digital fluency and skills related to AI and automation at a very young age requires investment now, in creative ways analogous to those of almost a century ago.
American school systems are starting to introduce digital literacy programs―planting seeds before children move on to learning about AI and machine learning. Because of COVID-19, many schools were forced to adopt new principles involving expanded use of technologies, even if they were unprepared initially. That change may prove advantageous in the years to come, as future cohorts of military recruits will already be socialized to the kind of workplace automation that the Pentagon has had to implement of late.
Other models to grow talent include high school magnet programs and application-based secondary education programs. After four years, high school students graduate with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in technical career fields like engineering, graphic design, computer science, biomedicine, and cybersecurity. Magnet programs are an inexpensive way to foster nationwide pathways for students to benefit from careers in STEM with head starts into leadership and management of digital literacy that benefits national security. It goes beyond an early childhood education and creates a career path in early adulthood. The military could—quickly and with relatively few resources—tap into such programs to seek out potential digital talent who might not be thinking about a military career.
Borrow
In the short term, the government can borrow digital talent from industry. This would bring into government service people working on the front lines in the ever-changing field of AI, including biotech, robotic engineering, algorithm coding, gaming design and development, technology acquisition, and cybersecurity management. Some of this is currently done with short-term contracted workers that are not federal employees and compete directly with the military for talent.
There is precedent in this area, as well. The US Civil Air Patrol, chartered in 1941, relies on volunteers to train cadets and others on aviation basics, aviation safety, search and rescue, and emergency services. Civil Air Patrol mobilizes civilian aviation resources to assist in national security when needed through federal incentives at the state and local level. Currently, there are fifty-six thousand members in fifteen hundred units, commonly found in US Air Force–style uniforms providing a range of local disaster assistance, including by aiding local law enforcement and emergency response personnel with everything from lost hikers to downed aircraft.
In 2016, the Marine Corps established a Cyber Auxiliary made up of civilian volunteers. In simulated environments, auxiliary members fulfill training, education, advising, and mentoring roles alongside Marines. Auxiliary members are not permanent members of staff. These organizations are called in a time of need and possess qualifications and expertise based on civilian experience. This helps their skills stay sharp and relevant.
Recruit
Recruiting paid talent willing to learn, take on responsibility and commit to the military in a digital service role is the most desirable pathway for achieving a more digitally capable military. Talent competition is fierce. The military also has many barriers for entry—such as security clearance eligibility, citizenship, physical fitness and health standards, background checks, or contract timelines—making the pool of candidates limited. NSCAI commissioner Mignon Clyburn summed up the problem this way: (1) academia offers autonomy; (2) industry pays more; (3) hierarchy in government is not as attractive for tech talent; and (4) government agencies struggle to recruit talent.
The future AI-literate military may not look like the one produced by traditional military recruitment. Examples of populations the military might consider in the age of AI-assisted warfare include cyber sleuths, white-hat hackers, or open-source analysts like those from Bellingcat. Other populations might range widely, from meme makers to social media influencers to tech support teleworkers. Passionate experts who contribute digital talent with refined and semiprofessionally produced videos, reports, and demonstrations in high school or university classrooms, garages, and basements often create enticing professional media content. Social media entrepreneurs contributing to content distribution and analysis can benefit the military regardless of age, location, and physical capability.
Further, nontraditional skills and ways of thinking within digital spaces are often self-taught. The military will have to recruit personnel capable of passing relevant skills tests regardless of professional degree or credentials. For example, recruiting from hackathons and national conventions that reward successful penetration testing could be a source of talent. Recruiting highly talented individuals like “hacktivists” may also require considering those who have operated in the gray zones of cyberspace. Admittedly, recruiting such individuals might mean rethinking security clearances and the military’s expected deference to age and rank, but not recruiting such talent may prove the most significant problem over time.
Reorganize
Finally, once talent is grown, borrowed, and recruited, the US government must produce a force capable of being employed. Future graduates from new, digital-focused programs like the NDRC and the USDSA require a mission to address the problems forecasted in DoD’s future operating environment. Currently, for example, even with a degree from the data science major at West Point mentioned above, available commissioning branches remain a limitation. If a newly commissioned officer goes into the fields of infantry, armor, or military police instead of cyber, intelligence, electronic warfare, or signal, the talent in which the military has invested and so desperately needs could be easily wasted.
In the Army, specifically, some existing career fields—in cyber, signal, and intelligence, for example—are relevant to the fields of digital talent. But more are necessary. New jobs for digital talent should include data scientist; database procurement and fielding specialist; statistician; computer scientist; computational specialist; software developer; algorithm coder; electronic modeling specialist; supply chain security specialist; financial security specialist; human-machine observer controller/trainer; battle-systems integrator technician; and data/knowledge management technician. These jobs would span the enlisted, officer, and warrant officer ranks. Similar to the structure created by the Army Medical Department, a digital regiment, corps, or department would facilitate professional adherence to certification, licensure, and professional development. These do not yet exist. These changes would likely require other military career paths to decrease, disappear, or change to make room for new personnel without growing end strength, but these are the bold decisions leaders must make to be prepared for future challenges.
Looking Forward
Integration of AI in the military will increase the ability to perceive, decide, and act beyond human cognition alone. The future of information warfare will require more AI as the fog of war increases and information overloads human decision-making. An emphasis on human-machine teaming for decision-making could lower risk and reduce conflict. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines must be creative problem solvers, forward-thinking about what machines can and cannot or should not do. These skills become increasingly important as AI automates previously analog processes. Service members who can harness machine-generated data from various sensors can integrate that information quickly to solve particular problems. If a service member can understand, modify, and react on the fly with data-enabled action from available sensors, this integration into problem solving becomes a force multiplier.
But service members’ working effectively with AI and other new technologies requires rethinking what qualities are essential for success in the military. The NSCAI final report stated that lack of talent in government was the biggest impediment to the United States being prepared for AI this decade; and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks recently said that the US military needs to adapt to how war is changing. It must begin to address this reality immediately. Growing, borrowing, and recruiting talent, and pairing that with necessary organizational changes, will help DoD produce a more capable future force. With a proper production model, the military will be AI-ready to meet, or surpass, the NSCAI commission recommendations.
Major Megan O’Keefe is an information operations officer in the US Army and a 2022 graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, School of Advanced Military Studies, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Airman 1st Class Jared Lovett, US Air Force
10. Putin’s Jedi Mind Trick in Ukraine: How Truth Decay Shapes the Operational Environment
To borrow and adapt a phrase, "it's information, stupid."
Conclusion:
Moscow’s falsehoods justifying imperial aggression and war crimes have penetrated cultural and geographic boundaries. It is only a matter of time before other authoritarian powers adopt similar tactics to excuse similar actions. To address this challenge, the United States and its allies should come to view truth decay as a multi-domain mechanism for shaping the operational environment to accommodate military aggression—a non-kinetic means to a kinetic end.
The United States must build and maintain the ability to blunt not merely harmful narratives but also their physical manifestations, which, as we have seen, can take the form of war quite rapidly and unexpectedly. This might require improving individual best practices for seeking and validating information, structural policy reforms, or even increases to defense budgets. A tall order, no doubt, but if the last few months are not enough to wake the world from its post-Cold War dream of eternal peace between major powers, one shudders to think what will.
Putin’s Jedi Mind Trick in Ukraine: How Truth Decay Shapes the Operational Environment
In a fiery March speech that referenced 18th century Russian Orthodox saint Admiral Fyodor Ushakov, Vladimir Putin added holy war to the long list of justifications for his assault on Ukraine.[1] Even to those paying close attention, the Kremlin’s official narratives are hard to follow. Considering Ukraine’s deft maneuver in the information space, many in the West are tempted to dismiss what Putin is doing there as almost absurd—but they should not.[2]
Though hyperbolic or even outright false, Moscow’s tropes are gaining traction, and not just in nationalist cliques orbiting Moscow and St. Petersburg.[3] Much in the same way Putin’s invasion of his neighbor took most by surprise, a lack of appreciation for how these sentiments might mature could set the West up for an even greater failure to deter in the future.[4] China’s growing sympathy for Kremlin narratives contributes to global truth decay and arms revisionist powers with potential justifications for military aggression.[5] The free world’s response to this malignant growth in the information environment must not be limited to that domain, because its side effects certainly will not be.
Flooding The Environment
Beginning in November 2021, Kremlin officials dismissed a mass gathering of their forces on Ukraine’s border as nothing of any consequence.[6] When Moscow sent troops into Belarus the next month, it described the movement as simply the initial phase of joint military exercises to be held in February.[7] Until the day Russia invaded on February 24, 2022, Moscow laughed off accurate White House intelligence reports of a possible assault on Kyiv.[8] Perhaps more alarming, so did most experts and commentators in Europe, Australia, and the United States, which in turn discouraged many of Ukraine’s metropolitan citizens from evacuating.[9] But Russia did invade, and thousands have died since.
A convoy of Russian armored vehicles moves along a Crimean highway in January 2022. (AP)
In that short period, Moscow’s narratives justifying the invasion have evolved at an alarming rate. Russia’s history of disinformation is well documented, but what the world has seen over the last few months is unique in its volume.[10] Putin began by using a worn historical narrative to insist that Ukraine has no independent identity and is therefore inherently Russian, both ethnically and geographically.[11] Historians picked apart his claims, but the Kremlin’s fantasies only intensified.[12]
The ensuing deluge of allegations from the Kremlin was impressive: Ukraine is committing genocide against its ethnic Russian population; Ukraine is in possession of weapons of mass destruction and intends to use them against Russia; Ukraine’s leaders are Nazis; Ukraine is bombing its own cities and using social media influencers as actors; Ukraine staged the Bucha massacre; and perhaps the pièce de résistance, Ukraine and the United States are training infected birds in secret Cold War-era labs to wage biological warfare on Russia.[13]
Some of these Kremlin-backed narratives amount to flat out denial that Russia is doing what the world is watching it do. Like the old Jedi mind trick of Star Wars fame, Putin seeks to wave his hand and convince the world of its lying eyes. This collection of shaky conspiracy theories is unfortunately gaining credibility in some circles, and the Kremlin’s deception teams know their audiences. Tall tales are picked up by international media outlets, parroted by cooperative or even sympathetic states like China, and given a veneer of legitimacy as the world remains transfixed on the conflict, desperately seeking off ramps.[14] In addition to the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times accusing the United States of being the “initiator of the Ukraine crisis,” some western media outlets continue to boost erroneous claims made by Kremlin officials, such as the biolab conspiracy.[15]
Growing the Mass Base
Pairing the above narratives with a bold military action that soaks up international media attention amplifies their digital signature enormously. For proof this technique works, look no further than the global media coverage of issues that only months ago were restricted to fringe European blogs or Russian state media. Millions in the west and parts of Asia now have strong opinions about Ukraine joining NATO, biolabs in Ukraine, or the alleged Nazis who control Kyiv (a caricature of the Ukrainian Army’s Azov Battalion).[16] One Arizona lawmaker, who has since been censured, Tweeted that “Zelensky is a globalist puppet for [George] Soros and the Clintons” and sanctions on Russia are “just as wrong” as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.[17] Although certainly not mainstream, the existence of these beliefs is alarming.
In his writings on the foundations of Leninism and strategic leadership, Joseph Stalin stated that the object of strategy is “to gain time, to disrupt the enemy, and to accumulate forces in order to later assume the offensive.”[18] Theorists from Mao Zedong to Stalin purport that these forces can be both active and passive, the latter contributing to what they characterize as a mass base of support.[19] One of Mao’s first commands for his self-defense units was to locate and expunge enemy propaganda—the units consisted of noncombatants who shaped the information environment.[20] In 2022, we see Russian officials and their allies in Beijing doing their best to ensure sympathizers perform the same functions, as Kremlin-backed anti-American propaganda spreads throughout Asia.[21] But Russia is hardening its narrative control domestically as well.
Recent polling by the independent Moscow-based Levada Center indicates that 83% of Russian adults still support Putin’s foreign policy—a 12% increase between February and March 2022.[22] Visible manifestations of this backing in Russia often appear in the form of the “Z” invasion symbol, which has been spotted on store windows, vehicles, billboards, the sweaters of youth flash mobs, and even donned by Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak and olympic gold medalist Angelina Melnikova.[23]
Russian Gymnast Ivan Kuliak Wears The Symbol Of Russian Invasion Of Ukraine On His Chest While Competing At 2022 Doha World Cup. (WOGymnast.com)
Pockets of enduring support for Moscow in parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are often overlooked in English language reporting.[24] Some generals in Myanmar, for instance, have gone so far as to call Putin’s invasion “the right thing to do.”[25] Former president of South Africa Jacob Zuma still believes Putin is a “man of peace,” while certain African newspapers condemned the western world’s response to the invasion more than the invasion itself because of the crippling effect sanctions have had on the global supply chain.[26] These passive support nodes could influence the broader strategic landscape as much as NATO’s unity in the face of Russian aggression. Rest assured, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang are watching and learning.[27]
Making the Trick Stick
Intrigues swirling around Russia’s war are reminiscent of the environment that coincided with Putin’s rise to power and the Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999. Arkady Ostrovsky explained how the ambiguous circumstances surrounding the attacks set off a “desperate search for conspiracies” in which many came to believe that any event was “orchestrated by someone behind the stage.”[28] One of the first actions Putin took as prime minister was to systematically dismantle NTV, a Russian news organization that challenged his policies.[29] The eventual proliferation of online western news media throughout Russia softened this blow initially.
Yet Moscow has for some time sought to pass legislation that installs a “national Internet,” and the war in Ukraine may present the perfect opportunity for Putin to close this loophole and exert absolute control over Russia’s information architecture.[30] He has already restricted access to major social media platforms upon which millions rely for their news, forcing some clever individuals to reach Russian citizens with stories of the war through Yelp restaurant reviews.[31] The unfortunate side effect of Putin’s war and Beijing’s apparent support for it is a global bifurcation of perceptions of truth.[32] As western sanctions continue to pummel the Russian economy, the ensuing social and economic nosedive could make this fissure a key battleground for strategic shaping activities.[33]
Countermeasures
Suggested responses to disinformation generally occupy two tracks: collective solutions through policy formulation and advocacy for individual responsibility. Controversy aside, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s short-lived Disinformation Governance Board, inconveniently coined the DGB, would have had trouble producing its desired effects.[34] A federal institution charged with debunking false narratives that often rely on the assumption that federal institutions are dishonest could face challenges.[35] Any such board would likely end up validating more opinions than it persuaded. For this reason, community outreach and professional advocacy for responsible methods of seeking information remain the preferred approach to countering disinformation in liberal democracies.
Researchers at the RAND Corporation recently developed a scorecard that may be of some use in this regard.[36] The device uses subcategories such as volume of traffic, ad content, and degree of user anonymity to assign a point system that can help educators, researchers, and individuals assess the likelihood that they are being subjected to malign propaganda narratives. Potential software solutions exist as well. Examples include automated content authenticity tools that assist in countering online propaganda, such as those developed by VAST-OSINT CEO Doowan Lee.[37] Policies aimed at the defense and intelligence communities, which are at times tasked to go on the offense in the information environment, demand more concrete reforms.
The initial fact sheet for the 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy emphasizes improving the Pentagon’s resilience and response to non-kinetic threats and disruptive activities.[38] According to Gen. Richard Clark, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), his organization still lacks the tools and funding required to “push back inside the information space.”[39] Policy options for pursuing these priorities include the creation of an information warfare directorate in the National Security Council, inserting language into National Defense Authorization Acts that expands authorities related to information warfare and irregular warfare activities, and reassessing limitations placed on the intelligence community’s interagency cooperation in the information space through Executive Order 12333.[40]
Where Truth Decay Ends
Considering the above suggestions, it is important to remember that truth decay is simply a means to what are often violent ends. These means are a force multiplier that generate combat power in domains external to the information environment. As first-hand accounts from Ukraine indicate, Russia’s stranglehold on information is one of the last mechanisms propping up the fighting spirit of its army—however beleaguered that spirit may be.[41]
The war on Ukraine has rightly triggered a flood of calls for a return to stronger conventional defense in the United States and even among NATO members that have historically been soft on military spending.[42] I have made such arguments, as have scholars and practitioners such as Matthew Kroenig, Mark Gunzinger, and John Tirpak.[43] On its face, the Pentagon’s proposed 2023 budget of $773 billion appears massive, but when adjusted for inflation it is on par with budgets of the 1990s, a time when the average American could not call to mind a single foreign policy concern.[44] Today the concerns are many, competitors’ budgets are often larger than they appear, and the Pentagon has an ever-widening list of modernization initiatives to prioritize.[45]
Regarding NATO allies, as Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas made clear, spending 2% of GDP on defense must be “an absolute minimum requirement” for membership.[46] Further research is needed to determine how much of this spending should be allocated to building resilience to non-kinetic threats, and to placing allied defense and intelligence agencies into a more aggressive posture in the information environment.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (Twitter)
In Conclusion
Moscow’s falsehoods justifying imperial aggression and war crimes have penetrated cultural and geographic boundaries. It is only a matter of time before other authoritarian powers adopt similar tactics to excuse similar actions. To address this challenge, the United States and its allies should come to view truth decay as a multi-domain mechanism for shaping the operational environment to accommodate military aggression—a non-kinetic means to a kinetic end.
The United States must build and maintain the ability to blunt not merely harmful narratives but also their physical manifestations, which, as we have seen, can take the form of war quite rapidly and unexpectedly. This might require improving individual best practices for seeking and validating information, structural policy reforms, or even increases to defense budgets. A tall order, no doubt, but if the last few months are not enough to wake the world from its post-Cold War dream of eternal peace between major powers, one shudders to think what will.
Michael P. Ferguson is an officer in the U.S. Army with operational experience throughout Europe, Africa, and Central Asia. He holds a Master of Science in Homeland Security from San Diego State University. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.
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Header Image: Vladimir Putin, 2018 (Wikimedia)
Notes:
[3] Jeff Seldin, “US Fears Russian Disinformation About Ukraine Bioweapons Gaining Traction,” Voice of America News, 10 March 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/us-fears-russian-disinformation-about-ukraine-bioweapons-gaining-traction-/6479764.html; One of Russia’s most influential troll farms is headquartered in St. Petersburg, where paid internet trolls earn about $430 a month to comment on and boost pro-Kremlin videos and narratives. David Gilbert, “Inside Cyber Front Z, the ‘People’s Movement’ Spreading Russian Propaganda,” Vice News, 4 April 2022, https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kbjny/russia-cyber-front-z-telegram.
[5] Chris Buckley, “Bristling Against the West, China Rallies Domestic Sympathy for Russia,” New York Times, 4 April 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/asia/china-russia-ukraine.html; The notion of truth decay, introduced in 2018 by RAND scientists, is a product of societal information overload and the resulting decreased trust in objective truth: Luke J. Matthews, et al., “Individual Differences in Resistance to Truth Decay,” RAND Corporation, 2022, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA112-17.html.
[9] Harlan Ullman, “Why Putin Won’t Invade Ukraine,” The Atlantic Council, 16 February 2022, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/why-putin-wont-invade-ukraine/; Harun Yilmaz, “No, Russia Will Not Invade Ukraine,” Al Jazeera, 9 February 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/2/9/no-russia-will-not-invade-ukraine; Frank Gardner, “Ukraine Crisis: Five Reasons Why Putin Might Not Invade,” BBC, 21 February 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60468264; Sara Meger, “Why Russia Isn’t About to Invade Ukraine Soon,” Pursuit, 15 February 2022, https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-russia-isn-t-about-to-invade-ukraine-soon.
[10] Some researchers call this technique a “firehose of falsehood”: Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, “The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model,” RAND Corporation, 2022, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html; For a brief history of Russian disinformation see: Michael P. Ferguson, “Welcome to the Disinformation Game: You’re Late,” The Strategy Bridge, 29 August 2018, https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/8/29/welcome-to-the-disinformation-gameyoure-late; Michael P. Ferguson, “The Evolution of Disinformation: How Public Opinion Became Proxy,” The Strategy Bridge,
[13] Emma Farge, “Russia Says ‘Real Danger’ of Ukraine Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Required Response,” Reuters, 1 March 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/russias-lavrov-says-there-is-danger-ukraine-acquiring-nuclear-weapons-2022-03-01/; Anton Troianovski, “Why Vladimir Putin Invokes Nazis to Justify His Invasion of Ukraine,” New York Times, 17 March 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/world/europe/ukraine-putin-nazis.html; James Clayton & Shayan Sardarizadeh, “Twitter Blocks Russian Claims on Hospital Attack,” BBC, 10 March 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60700642; Andrew Curry, “’The Russians Must Know it’s a Lie.’ Ukrainian Bat Research Spun into a False Tale of Bioweapons,” Science Insider, 16 March 2022, https://www.science.org/content/article/russians-must-know-it-s-lie-ukrainian-bat-research-spun-false-tale-bioweapons; Daniel Villarreal, “Russian Conspiracy Theory Says U.S. Training Birds to Spread Bio Weapons,” Newsweek, 11 March 2022, https://www.newsweek.com/russian-conspiracy-theory-says-us-training-birds-spread-bio-weapons-1687399.
[18] Joseph V. Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism (Peking, China: Foreign Language Press, 1975), 85.
[19] Mao Tse-Tung, Guerrilla Warfare, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Praeger, 1961), 71-73; Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, 86-87.
[20] Mao, Guerrilla Warfare, 80.
[28] Although Moscow blamed the bombings on Chechen terrorists no one ever took credit for them, and the FSB’s involvement in a “civil defense exercise” involving allegedly fake bombs at the same time has led many to question the Kremlin’s narrative. Arkady Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War (New York: Viking Press, 2015), 257-258.
[29] Ibid., 262.
[30] Walter Laqueur, Putinism: Russia and its Future with the West (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 153-154.
[31] Adam Satariano and Valerie Hopkins, “Russia, Blocked From the Global Internet, Plunges Into Digital Isolation,” New York Times, 7 March 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/technology/russia-ukraine-internet-isolation.html; Jacob Gronholt-pedersen, “Keyboard Army Using Restaurant Review to Take on Russian State Media,” Reuters, 3 March 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/keyboard-army-using-restaurant-reviews-take-russian-state-media-2022-03-02/.
[43] Michael P. Ferguson, “Sun-Tzu’s Trap: The Illusion of Perpetual Competition,” The Modern War Institute, 10 February 2022, https://mwi.usma.edu/sun-tzus-trap-the-illusion-of-perpetual-competition/; Matthew Kroenig, “Washington Must Prepare for War with Both Russia and China,” Foreign Policy, 18 February 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/18/us-russia-china-war-nato-quadrilateral-security-dialogue/; Mark Gunzinger and Kamilla Gunzinger, “Ukraine Makes Clear the US Must Reconsider its One-War Defense Strategy, Defense News, 14 March 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2022/03/14/ukraine-makes-clear-the-us-must-reconsider-its-one-war-defense-strategy/; John A. Tirpak, “Next National Defense Strategy Should Return to Two-War Force Construct,” Air Force Magazine, 15 June 2021, https://www.airforcemag.com/next-national-defense-strategy-should-return-to-two-war-force-construct/.
11. The US Government Is Waging Psychological Warfare On The Nation – OpEd
This is exactly why we are so risk averse when it comes to information and include activities. We are afraid of criticism and being embarrassed by such criticism. I am sure there are people calling the heads of those in 4th PSYOP who created the excellent video in a reaction to these false allegations and spin that is the article below. Please protect the 4th PSYOP Group against fearful overreaction.
Actually there is a lot that is accurate in the article below except that it is not being done by our government (if only we were that good) but instead the revisionist, rogue, and revolutionary powers conducting psychological warfare, legal warfare, media warfare in order to subvert the US. And of course Mr. Whitehead is either deliberately supporting such subversion or is a useful idiot.
The US Government Is Waging Psychological Warfare On The Nation – OpEd
By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead
No, this is not a conspiracy theory.
Psychological warfare, according to the Rand Corporation, “involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups.”
For years now, the government has been bombarding the citizenry with propaganda campaigns and psychological operations aimed at keeping us compliant, easily controlled and supportive of the police state’s various efforts abroad and domestically.
The government is so confident in its Orwellian powers of manipulation that it’s taken to bragging about them. Just recently, for example, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the branch of the military responsible for psychological warfare, released a recruiting video that touts its efforts to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.
This is the danger that lurks in plain sight.
Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare may be the most devastating in terms of the long-term consequences.
Yet don’t be fooled into thinking these psyops (psychological operations) campaigns are only aimed at foreign enemies. The government has made clear in word and deed that “we the people” are domestic enemies to be targeted, tracked, manipulated, micromanaged, surveilled, viewed as suspects, and treated as if our fundamental rights are mere privileges that can be easily discarded.
Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government has been subjecting the American people to “apple-pie propaganda” for the better part of the last century.
Consider some of the ways in which the government continues to wage psychological warfare on a largely unsuspecting citizenry.
Weaponizing violence. With alarming regularity, the nation continues to be subjected to spates of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.
Weaponizing surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns. Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence. When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies. Add pre-crime programs into the mix with government agencies and corporations working in tandem to determine who is a potential danger and spin a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies, and you having the makings for a perfect dystopian nightmare. The government’s war on crime has now veered into the realm of social media and technological entrapment, with government agents adopting fake social media identities and AI-created profile pictures in order to surveil, target and capture potential suspects.
Weaponizing digital currencies, social media scores and censorship. Tech giants, working with the government, have been meting out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship, muzzling whomever they want, whenever they want, on whatever pretext they want in the absence of any real due process, review or appeal. Unfortunately, digital censorship is just the beginning. Digital currencies (which can be used as “a tool for government surveillance of citizens and control over their financial transactions”), combined with social media scores and surveillance capitalism create a litmus test to determine who is worthy enough to be part of society and punish individuals for moral lapses and social transgressions (and reward them for adhering to government-sanctioned behavior). In China, millions of individuals and businesses, blacklisted as “unworthy” based on social media credit scores that grade them based on whether they are “good” citizens, have been banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train.
Weaponizing compliance. Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on COVID-19, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.
Weaponizing entertainment. For the past century, the Department of Defense’s Entertainment Media Office has provided Hollywood with equipment, personnel and technical expertise at taxpayer expense. In exchange, the military industrial complex has gotten a starring role in such blockbusters as Top Gun and its rebooted sequel Top Gun: Maverick, which translates to free advertising for the war hawks, recruitment of foot soldiers for the military empire, patriotic fervor by the taxpayers who have to foot the bill for the nation’s endless wars, and Hollywood visionaries working to churn out dystopian thrillers that make the war machine appear relevant, heroic and necessary. As Elmer Davis, a CBS broadcaster who was appointed the head of the Office of War Information, observed, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”
Weaponizing behavioral science and nudging. Apart from the overt dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, there’s also the covert dangers associated with a government empowered to use these same technologies to influence behaviors en masse and control the populace. In fact, it was President Obama who issued an executive order directing federal agencies to use “behavioral science” methods to minimize bureaucracy and influence the way people respond to government programs. It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from a behavioral program that tries to influence how people respond to paperwork to a government program that tries to shape the public’s views about other, more consequential matters. Thus, increasingly, governments around the world—including in the United States—are relying on “nudge units” to steer citizens in the direction the powers-that-be want them to go, while preserving the appearance of free will.
Weaponizing desensitization campaigns aimed at lulling us into a false sense of security. The events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the lockdowns, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have conspired to acclimate the populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.
Weaponizing fear and paranoia. The language of fear is spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure. Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government and control a populace, dividing the people into factions, and persuading them to see each other as the enemy. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes. All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.
Weaponizing genetics. Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring. It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences. For example, neuroscientists observed that fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As The Washington Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
Weaponizing the future. With greater frequency, the government has been issuing warnings about the dire need to prepare for the dystopian future that awaits us. For instance, the Pentagon training video, “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” predicts that by 2030 (coincidentally, the same year that society begins to achieve singularity with the metaverse) the military would be called on to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security. The chilling five-minute training video paints an ominous picture of the future bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots. “We the people” are the have-nots.
The end goal of these mind control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state.
The facts speak for themselves.
Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.
When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Our backs are against the proverbial wall.
“We the people”—who think, who reason, who take a stand, who resist, who demand to be treated with dignity and care, who believe in freedom and justice for all—have become undervalued citizens of a totalitarian state that views people as expendable once they have outgrown their usefulness to the State.
Brace yourselves.
12. China losing, US gaining crucial ground in Thailand
Our complicated relationship with our treaty ally, Thailand.
But as Bonaparte said, never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake.
Excerpt:
Eight years on, though, China has clearly not received all that it has sought, and as Beijing transitions from less soft and more hard diplomacy under ambassador Han, the Thais are overtly looking back to the US – and its regional ally Japan – for new diplomatic balance and choice, according to multiple Thai officials who spoke to Asia Times on condition of anonymity.
The root of Thailand’s emerging disconnect with China is the unbuilt train, which has been on Bangkok’s drawing board for over a decade but beyond a few symbolic shovelfuls to please Beijing has made scant progress in actually connecting to the Lao border.
China losing, US gaining crucial ground in Thailand
Thai-China relations are in quiet but certain decline while US reaffirms its strategic and economic commitment to the kingdom
BANGKOK – When Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai returned one late April evening from a high-level meeting in Anhui, China, the top Thai envoy was greeted at Bangkok’s airport by an unexpected host: Beijing’s ambassador to Thailand Han Zhiqiang.
The diplomatic role reversal, where China’s envoy welcomed the kingdom’s foreign minister on Thai soil, sent what one Thai government insider saw as a clear and strong signal: That Beijing would be watching closely the Thai government’s next moves after Don’s discussions in China.
In Anhui, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pressed Don for faster progress on a long-slow-moving train project designed to link Thailand to China via Laos, where Beijing recently finished a high-speed line that without Thai connectivity represents a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) white elephant dead-end in Southeast Asia, the insider said in recounting the talks.
Wang also discouraged Thailand from joining the US-sponsored Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a then-inchoate trade initiative that has since been formally launched with 13 regional partners as an alternative to China-led pacts and schemes, according to the same Thai government source.
China made significant diplomatic, economic and security inroads into Thailand after military coup-makers led by soldier-cum-politician Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha toppled an elected government and installed a junta regime in 2014, a lurch from democracy that sent relations with long-time ally the United States into a tailspin.
Eight years on, though, China has clearly not received all that it has sought, and as Beijing transitions from less soft and more hard diplomacy under ambassador Han, the Thais are overtly looking back to the US – and its regional ally Japan – for new diplomatic balance and choice, according to multiple Thai officials who spoke to Asia Times on condition of anonymity.
The root of Thailand’s emerging disconnect with China is the unbuilt train, which has been on Bangkok’s drawing board for over a decade but beyond a few symbolic shovelfuls to please Beijing has made scant progress in actually connecting to the Lao border.
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha (2nd-R), Wang Xiaotao (3rd-L), deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission of China, and then-Chinese Ambassador to Thailand Lyu Jian (2nd-L) at a 2017 ceremonial ground-breaking ceremony for the still-unbuilt line. Image: cn.com
Privately, Thai officials say they are concerned the BRI link would balloon the kingdom’s already high and rising trade deficit with China, which has surged by nearly 50% during the pandemic. The officials have also looked on warily as China has taken control of key strategic assets in Laos in debt-equity swap settlement of delinquent train loan payments.
But as Bangkok’s tarrying on the train is by now more clearly unstated policy than mere bureaucratic torpor, some observers, diplomats and officials perceive China’s slow but deliberate “encirclement” of the kingdom in an increasingly hard power play to get its way with the Thais.
Beijing’s pressure points on Thailand’s borders have proliferated as its regional influence has spread. These include not least the string of dams Beijing has built on the Mekong River, an upstream chokehold on water flows that Beijing often applies without forewarning to downstream Thailand, resulting variously in flooding and drought of riparian Thai populations.
Thailand’s National Security Council, meanwhile, has expressed private concerns to certain envoys who spoke to Asia Times about China’s building of physical infrastructure on the Mekong in Laos in the form of riverboat fueling stations, which the council believes Beijing is using as justification for boosting its security patrols closer and closer to Thailand’s river border.
Foreign gunboats are deeply emotive in Thailand, dating back to the colonial era when Britain and France used naval pressure to carve up kingdom lands. Perceptions that China is doing the same to press its wider demands are taking certain hold, seen in Bangkok’s strong resistance to China’s plan to blow up rocky Mekong rapids to allow larger vessels to travel the waterway.
Chinese-run casinos in Lao border areas have also raised Thai antennae, as at least one includes an extra-long runway supposedly for VIP private jet access but that could also be used for military purposes. The casinos are known havens for human, drug and wildlife trafficking, vice that is giving China another cause to up its security presence in the Thai-Lao-Myanmar border area.
The encirclement narrative is rounded out in Cambodia, where China has secured a secretive 25-year access agreement at the Ream Naval Base that opens onto the contested Gulf of Thailand, and neighboring Myanmar, where Beijing has accelerated progress on another BRI-related rail line since last year’s military coup and may or may not have urged its aligned United Wa State Army insurgent group to muscle ever closer to the northern Thai border.
A sense of “encirclement” is closing in on Thailand. Map: Twitter
“I think they have that [encirclement] sense, but whether or not they fully appreciate that circumstance and it’s widely shared in the entire establishment, [I’m] not sure,” said one Bangkok-based senior diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “[But] when you look at it geographically, it looks like an encirclement and Thailand is the odd one out.”
The envoy said Thailand thus looks increasingly like a “democratic oasis” in the region, as China consolidates its sway over neighboring authoritarian regimes in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. That’s all raising questions in Bangkok-based diplomatic circles about how far Thailand may be willing to recalibrate its great power diplomacy away from China and towards the US.
Thailand’s renowned “bamboo in the wind” diplomacy, on any well-informed compass, is now perceptibly bending back to the West. That’s particularly apparent on the strategic front.
A pending US-Thai joint vision statement, earlier set to be announced during US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Covid-canceled visit to Bangkok in March, would have raised eyebrows in Beijing with its dusted-off reference to the Vietnam War-era 1962 Rusk-Thanat Communiqué, which not only facilitated US modernization of Thailand’s military and infrastructure but also included a guarantee to defend the kingdom against aggressor neighbors.
So, too, would have the recent first-ever US-Thai joint parachute drop exercise wherein 200 troops traveled non-stop from America’s Washington state to Thailand with a refueling in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a maneuver that at least one envoy familiar with the drill said showed how bilateral interoperability was improving in a South China Sea-like setting.
The true state of US-Thai military ties has been in question ever since Australian academic Greg Raymond published in 2018 a survey of over 1,800 Thai mid-ranking military officers who broadly indicated preference for China over the US – though some have since raised critical questions about the survey’s methodology, including in regard to the possible influence pro-China local research partners may have had on soldier replies and their interpretation.
Fast forward four years, it’s China-Thai military ties that are in doubt with the sinking of a US$1 billion submarine deal that has been hounded by political controversy ever since the previous coup government set it in motion. The deal is on the rocks due to Germany’s recent refusal to deliver to China the sub’s MTU396-type engine because it would be on-sold to a third party, i.e. Thailand. Whether the US pressed the Germans to withhold the technology is unclear.
Diplomats monitoring the development have noted the Thai side’s firm refusal of China’s offer to switch the German engine for a perceived as inferior Chinese-made one. The sub deal’s provision to allow Chinese technicians to set up shop at Sattahip Naval Base had strained US-Thai ties, as the US Navy makes frequent port calls to the base with sometimes sensitive wares that would have been exposed to prying Chinese eyes.
Royal Thai Navy top brass hold a press briefing at the force’s headquarters in Bangkok on August 24, 2020, to defend the purchase Chinese submarines. Photo: AFP / Apichit Jinakul / Bangkok post
Some now wonder if the Chinese sub deal’s potential cancellation will free up funds to procure instead US-made F-35 stealth fighters. As with the sub deal, the political opposition has gainsaid the air force’s request for eight F-35 trainers, priced at 2.7 billion baht each, included in the 2023 draft budget.
If procured, the jets would significantly improve US-Thai interoperability; reports indicate a US Air Force inspection team will soon assess Thailand’s readiness to operate the fifth-generation jets.
The bigger money question, though, concerns how much Thai policymakers and executives see a role for China in the kingdom’s post-Covid economic recovery. Bilateral trade relations took a certain hit when China closed its border to Thai durian and lychee imports, nominally in the name of Covid prevention but perhaps also coercively for the lack of progress on the train line.
China’s Covid-closed borders and a more inward-looking “dual circulation” economic strategy likely means the waves of Chinese tourists that buoyed Thailand’s pre-pandemic tourism boom, where Chinese arrivals accounted for around 28% of the nearly 40 million tourists who visited the kingdom in 2019, won’t return in similar mass numbers anytime soon, if ever.
Those who sense the bamboo is blowing back in America’s favor note that Thailand’s exports to the US surged during the pandemic, jumping 40% year on year from 2020 to 2021 while netting a $26.6 billion trade surplus, while the kingdom’s deficit with China soared from $20.8 billion in 2020 to $29.8 billion in 2021, rising by nearly 50%.
The same economic observers note that US investment in Thailand still dwarfs China’s, particularly in jobs-creating manufacturing – though Chinese telecom giant Huawei has made big inroads on 5G-related infrastructure, which has contributed to the surging trade deficit in the form of telecom equipment imports that are cheaper than those made by rival Western firms.
Those long-standing and still-strong trade ties with the US likely explain why Thailand defied Wang’s cajoling in Anhui and opted instead to be among the first 13 nations to join the IPEF, which was officially launched by Biden in Japan. Prime Minister Prayut traveled to Tokyo just days later, where he made what some heard as an IPEF-inspired call for more Japanese investment in Thailand’s hopeful and crucial electric vehicle (EV) industry.
If the innately non-confrontational Thais had their diplomatic druthers, the US and China would refrain from jousting for power and influence from inside the kingdom. Outgoing US ambassador Michael Desombre’s outspoken criticism of China’s policies, blasted in a Thai language op-ed critique of China’s maneuvers on the Mekong, rubbed many Thai officials the wrong way.
They have reportedly favored Thai-speaking US chargé d’affairs Michael Heath’s more even-keeled approach, which those familiar with the de facto top envoy’s diplomacy say has focused on rebuilding ties while not pressing the Thais to take geopolitical sides – even as Chinese ambassador Han openly snipes at the US on his embassy’s social media channels.
Chinese Ambassador to Thailand Han Zhiqiang reportedly received his marching orders from President Xi Jinping. Photo: Screengrab / Nation TV
While Han was clearly dispatched to Thailand to make progress on various stalled fronts – whispers say at Chinese President Xi Jinping’s personal behest – the envoy’s tougher tack hasn’t won him many allies or advocates at Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
There, many see his go-go style as pushy, if not tone-deaf, compared to Thai-speaking chargé d’affairs Yang Xin, who served as top envoy for nearly two years while the ambassadorship was curiously left vacant.
But if China is losing and the US winning back Thailand, then Beijing’s vaccine diplomacy is partly to blame. China sought to steal a pandemic march on the US by heavily promoting its Sinovac vaccine at a time when Thailand was for still unclear reasons late in line to procure US-made mRNA vaccines. (Thailand’s China-linked CP Group owns a 15% stake in Sinovac Biotech.)
An eventual US government donation of Pfizer vaccines arguably turned the tide on the kingdom’s lethal Delta wave last August, scoring Washington a public relations coup with its superior medical technology as questions swirl then and now, far and wide around Sinovac’s effectiveness against emergent Covid strains.
While China continues to donate Sinovac supplies, now seemingly more for diplomatic photo ops than actual disease control, Thai medical teams are quietly incinerating the unused stocks as Thais largely eschew Sinovac for Pfizer and Moderna, according to a Thai government source familiar with the burning.
“China sees us as a customer; the US views as a partner,” said another top-level Thai official. “That’s always been the difference.”
13. Japan’s Kishida buckles on a war helmet
Japan’s Kishida buckles on a war helmet
Leader is shedding Japan’s pacifist past by doubling defense spending, forging new strategic deals and possibly attending a NATO meet
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was hardly considered a neo-samurai when he took office in October 2021. But nearly eight months into the former diplomat’s tenure, his pivot to security matters is unmistakable.
On June 10, Kishida will be the star speaker at Singapore’s Shangri-la Dialogue, East Asia’s leading defense forum. He is also, according to press reports, likely to attend a NATO leaders’ summit in Madrid later this month.
Moreover, the Japanese leader has kicked off negotiations on a defense agreement with the distant UK, signed one with Australia and inked an unprecedented arms sales deal with Thailand.
All this may surprise those familiar with Japan’s customarily cautious defense actions and its restraining pacifist constitution – not to mention Kishida’s own reputation as a more dovish leader than his two predecessors.
Kishida’s arrival in the hot seat followed the resignations of the hawkish Shinzo Abe and his chosen successor, the short-lived Yoshihide Suga, widely considered Abe’s right-hand man.
Yet at a time when the yen is plummeting to new lows, the economy seeks to clamber out of its Covid-era trench and the country cautiously prizes open its borders, Kishida is diving deep into national, regional and even international security affairs.
New global uncertainties that are exacerbating long-term strategic trends, combined with intra-party pressures at home, are likely Kishida’s driving impetus, experts say.
An unlikely warrior
Though he was briefly acting defense minister in 2017, Kishida is no warrior. His highest-profile posts, pre-premiership, were related to diplomacy and policy.
He was Tokyo’s foreign affairs minister from 2012-2017 – the longest incumbent to ever hold that position – and chaired the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) Policy Council from 2017-2020.
His family hails from Hiroshima, and Kishida invited then-US president Barack Obama to visit his home city. He has authored a distinctly unwarlike book, “A World Without Nuclear Weapons,” and been accommodating of both China and Russia.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida points to his party’s strong electoral performance. Photo: Screengrab / Getty
Kishida’s “Kochikai” faction of the ruling LDP has “…a pro-China tradition, and Kishida would look to carefully balance the Sino-Japanese relationship and the Japan-US alliance,” Akimoto wrote.
Moreover, during his tenure as foreign minister, Kishida had struck up close personal relations – extending to drinking games – with his veteran Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
But it is Kishida who is now overseeing a seismic increase in defense spending by the world’s third-largest economy.
Tokyo’s defense expenditures in 2022 budget totaled 5.4 trillion yen ($40.9 billion), or approximately 1% of national GDP. Under Kishida’s plan, that will be doubled – a factor which may prompt a rush of global arms merchants to Tokyo.
The Mainichi newspaper, in an editorial yesterday, slammed Kishida’s Cabinet for approving a fiscal plan to double defense outlays to NATO-member level within five years.
“It is necessary to consider the development of defense capabilities in response to changes in the security environment,” the newspaper admitted, while adding: “Rather than just focusing on a number, there must also be careful discussion of how increased spending will mesh with Japan’s existing defense-only posture.”
Kishida is well placed to escape immediate domestic criticism. On Friday, he will be in Singapore as the star of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, a defense forum that customarily invites ministerial-level guests.
This year’s event features such high-profile presenters as China’s Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe and United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
In his keynote speech, Kishida is expected to put forth Tokyo’s vision for the Indo-Pacific, which, according to Japanese media, will include maritime cooperation with 20 nations.The last Japanese premier to address Shangri La was Abe in 2014.
Kishida’s Defense Minster, Nobuo Kishi, will hold a sideline chat on Sunday with China’s Wei – the first in-person meeting between the two. According to Japanese media, Kishi will raise Tokyo’s concerns over Chinese maritime activities in the East China Sea.
These concerns are likely to include reference to the disputed, but Japanese-controlled Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, and possibly to recent Chinese carrier drills off of Okinawa.
The Senkaku Islands are hotly contested by China and Japan. Photo: AFP / The Yomiuri Shimbun
But Kishida’s defense outlook extends beyond the Indo-Pacific. According to the Japan Times, quoting unnamed government sources, he will be the first Japanese premier to attend a NATO leaders summit, set for Madrid, Spain, on June 29-30.
Some reports have speculated that Kishida might hold his first-ever meeting with newly inaugurated South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who has stated his interest in improving strained ties with Japan and upgrading trilateral cooperation with the US.
All the above follows Kishida’s May trip to the UK, where he and British counterpart Boris Johnson signed off on the start of negotiations on a Reciprocal Access Agreement, or RAA.
The agreement would permit upgraded defense cooperation in terms of personnel, equipment exchanges and bilateral drills. The UK’s BAE Systems also looks likely to work on Japan’s next-generation fighter project.
The model for the Japan-UK RAA would appear to be the Japan-RAA Kishida signed with Canberra in January. Earlier in May, Kishida inked an agreement with Thailand under which Tokyo can sell military gear to Bangkok, and invest in its military-industrial sector.
Not so pacifist anymore
Kishida’s flurry of security engagements is raising new questions about Japan’s pacifist credentials well beyond its borders.
Crabtree noted three dynamics that Kishida’s address tomorrow will likely touch upon: “Japan’s changing strategic outlook, the regional repercussions of the war in Ukraine, and the best way to manage the Asia-Pacific’s many pressing security challenges.”
Those security challenges almost certainly include China’s rapidly increasing military strength and regional assertiveness.
In May, Tokyo’s defense minister noted that Chinese carrier Liaoning’s air group had conducted over 100 sorties some 160 kilometers off an island in the Okinawan archipelago – the closest such drills Chinese forces have ever conducted to Japan.
Another threat is North Korea, currently engaged in a series of missile tests, and expected in some quarters to soon conduct yet another nuclear weapons test, which would mark its seventh.
Outside the region, Moscow’s assault on Ukraine has led to widespread fears – so far, unfounded – that it could presage a Chinese assault on Taiwan. “Ukraine may be East Asia tomorrow,” warned Kishida in London in May. “Collaboration among countries sharing universal values becomes ever more vital.”
Fears of a possible Chinese invasion of Japan have been amplified by media.
“This gets reported in Japanese news – not specialist TV, but news shows – that have extended segments on Taiwan: How would the Chinese physically go about it, would Japan be drawn in,” said Lance Gatling, the Japan-based head of Nexial Research Defense and Aerospace Consultants.
“Since the Biden administration came in, the Japanese have become very aware that what they took for granted under previous administrations might be at risk – they are erratic,” said Gatling. “They have given all these arms to Ukraine, but there is supposed to be an increased focus on Asia. It is ugly all round.”
Pressure rising in Japan
Faced with these perceived threats, one Japanese academic says Kishida is neither a hawk nor a dove but a politician blown by political winds that cannot be ignored.
“He is your typical LDP guy, he is not a dove or a hawk, he will do what is necessary, and given what is happening now, it is necessary to put some pressure on China so they will not underestimate us,” Haruko Satoh, an expert on regional relations at the Osaka School of International Public Policy, told Asia Times.
“I think this is the moment when, if the Japanese prime minister for dovish reasons did not do anything, it would be odd,” she said.
Japanese Special Defense Force personnel marched in a parade in Asaka, Japan, in a file photo. Image: AFP Forum via EPA
Kishida has backed the Western stance on Russia – where, in terms of public perception, he may be pushing on an open door. According to an April poll by the Asahi newspaper, 88% of the public approved of his accusation that Russia was committing war crimes in Ukraine.
Certainly, there are domestic political pressures. The Mainichi alleged that Kishida’s defense spending plan is a result of “pressure from former prime minister Shinzo Abe and other ruling party figures.”
Since leaving office, Abe and several associates have been publicly agitating for Japan to adopt a clear stance on the defense of Taiwan, an issue magnified by the Ukraine conflict.
Under Abe, the constitution was reinterpreted to grant Japan’s Self Defense Forces wider leeway. Japan also expanded its armory of expeditionary assets, ranging from converting helicopter destroyers to light aircraft carriers and standing up a force of marines, while Abe was in power.
“Abe is being very, very noisy trying to challenge and undermine Kishida,” said Satoh.
With Upper House elections upcoming, likely to be held on July 10, Kishida and Abe need to bury any hatchets in the party’s electoral interest. But regardless of internal machinations, the shifting geopolitical realities surrounding Japan mean that Kishida is unlikely to change course.
His country’s heavy reliance upon seaborne energy imports, China’s rise as a naval power in the East and South China Seas and Russia’s storm upon Ukraine are all galvanizing issues, reckons one expert.
“I think the average Japanese is much more attuned to these issues than the average American or European,” said Gatling.
“This is what I expected 20 years ago,” he said, referring to the current security consciousness. “The Russia-Ukraine war has energized some folks who say, ‘Now we can no longer kick this can down the road.’”
Follow this writer on Twitter at @ASalmonSeoul
14. The Army is inviting social media influencers to DC to learn how to reach the youths
Of course it is us old guys (digital aliens) who will pan this. But we must get comfortable in the information age whether we like it or not.
And byt the way, social media influencers are conducting a kind of psychological operations. Just saying.
The Army is inviting social media influencers to DC to learn how to reach the youths
“Every soldier is a brand ambassador."
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While the Army is still far off from having an official TikTok page, the service is slowly but surely warming up to social media. So much so, in fact, that it’s inviting “influencers” to Washington, D.C., to learn how they do what they do.
For an event coinciding with the Army’s 247th birthday next week, the service has invited 13 social media influencers to Washington, over the weekend. While they’re in the capital, they’ll take a tour of the National Museum of the U.S. Army and attend the Army Birthday Festival, as well as sit down and chat with Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston and Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Hendrex, the top enlisted leader for Training and Doctrine Command.
Master Sgt. Faiza Evans, the project lead for the visit who hand-picked each of the influencers, said part of the motivation behind the trip was to learn from influential soldiers. While the Army is on social media, the official accounts often don’t reach nearly the number of people that, say, a viral TikTok might.
“We understand and we know that people are more distrusting of institutions,” Evans told Task & Purpose on Wednesday. “And if the Army as an institution, in order for us to gain trust, in order for us to gain support or really get what we’re doing out there, we talk about People First — empower the people that we have to tell their Army story.”
Sgt. Lixing Dai monitors his smartphone during an evening workout class, January 30, 2020. (Thomas Alvarez/Idaho Army National Guard)
The military has long had a love-hate relationship with social media. While the services have increased their social media presence in the digital age, the medium also continues to deliver problems. If it’s not rogue social media managers or someone posting horny tweets on an official military installation page, it’s service members making jokes about sexual harassment or the Holocaust.
TikTok specifically was seen as a national security threat just three short years ago. In 2019, the Army began instructing soldiers not to use TikTok on government-owned phones, and in December identified it as a cyber threat because of its ties to the Chinese government. Since then, more and more soldiers have started using TikTok to show the ins and outs of Army life. And it’s become a hugely popular platform among young people — the very people that the service is trying to recruit.
In 2021, 63% of Americans between 12 and 17 years old used TikTok on a weekly basis, compared to 57% of the same demographic using Instagram, CNBC reported.
Social media is rapidly evolving with access to information at any given time allowing people to rapidly digest and share information. The U.S. Army views personal websites and social media positively and it respects the right of Soldiers to use them as a medium of self-expression. (Sgt. Laurissa Hodges/U.S. Army)
But that doesn’t mean the Pentagon has gotten on board. Evans said TikTok still isn’t an approved platform and still isn’t allowed on government phones. When she was searching for influencers, in fact, she said she couldn’t even get on TikTok while at work to find them. But at least one person invited by the Army is popular on the app — @infantryguru, a sergeant major with over 600,000 followers.
In a video he posted this week, @infantryguru said he was invited to talk about “Army branding and social media.” He clarified in the comment section that the “majority” of people invited are “E7 [sergeant first class] and below and a few officers.”
@infantryguru
♬ Top Gun Maverick: Top Gun Anthem Trailer Version – Geek Music
Evans said that while she didn’t know @infantryguru was on TikTok when she found him on Instagram originally, she hopes that eventually, the military can find a secure way to engage on the platform. There’s “a lot of conversation on TikTok,” she said, “and we’re not part of that conversation.”
“I think any time we’re not able to communicate in a space where there’s a conversation had, especially around the Army and our soldiers are communicating in those spaces, I think it’s a missed opportunity if we’re not involved in that conversation as well,” she said.
With the influencers converging on D.C., Evans said the Army hopes to get real-time feedback on specific initiatives. Grinston said he wanted to hear from them about concerns they may have, and Hendrex wants to solicit feedback on ideas coming out of TRADOC. In a statement to Task & Purpose, Grinston called the visit a “good opportunity” to meet the soldiers “out there telling the Army story,” and that he wants to ensure they “know we support what they do.”
Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael A. Grinston discusses Army initiatives during a town hall with Soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division on Schofield Barracks, Oahu, Hawaii, May 18, 2022. (Sgt. Rachel Christensen/U.S. Army)
But ultimately Evans said the Army wants to learn how to better communicate with its audience — especially with Generation Z, who is the Army’s prime recruiting target, and who is very online. Gen Z is more social media-savvy than previous generations and, like every generation, has different priorities and concerns than those that came before them. The military can’t reach them in the same way they reached Millennials during the Global War on Terror, for example, and the Army specifically has had to reimagine its marketing strategy to meet them where they are.
And really, what better way to learn how to reach them than by talking to the people who already are?
“If we’re going to be a progressive Army, if we’re going to move forward and learn to communicate in these different spaces, we have to be able to use our influential soldiers,” she said. “Every soldier is a brand ambassador … And we want to learn from our soldiers who are communicating effectively. This is only going to make us better.”
The latest on Task & Purpose
Haley Britzky joined Task & Purpose as the Army reporter in January 2019. She previously worked at Axios covering breaking news. She reports on important developments within the service, from new uniforms to new policies; the realities of military life facing soldiers and their families; and broader cultural issues that expand outside of the Army, touching each of the military services. Contact the author here.
15. No Peace at Any Price in Ukraine
Excerpts:
The United States, Europe, and Ukraine’s other friends have a responsibility to help Ukraine prevail commensurate with that possibility. The goal now for the West is to thwart an adversary—not to convince or pressure Ukraine to give up. That means sending more arms to Ukraine and putting more economic pressure on Russia.
Such a plan does not rule out negotiations. Zelensky and his government have not done so. In fact, they showed more commitment to negotiations in the early weeks of the war than the Kremlin did. The time for negotiations may come—which is why the job now is to put Ukraine in the most favorable position possible in anticipation of that moment so that it has the best options available.
As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight for their homeland and all of Europe, it is the West’s duty to support them. Peace may sound like an appealing talking point, but Ukrainians know that it cannot come at any price. Western policymakers should listen.
No Peace at Any Price in Ukraine
It’s Too Soon for a Lasting Diplomatic Settlement
June 8, 2022
As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its fourth month, calls are growing in Western Europe and the United States for a diplomatic push to end the war. In late May, Italy proposed a four-point peace plan for Ukraine that would culminate in sanctions relief for Russia. Not long after, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, speaking at Davos, called on Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and to begin negotiations immediately. And at the beginning of June, French President Emmanuel Macron repeated his call to not “humiliate” Russia. In the halls of power, a consensus seems to be emerging: give Moscow land in exchange for peace.
In Ukraine, however, the opposite view has taken hold. Speaking directly to Kissinger’s comments, President Volodymyr Zelensky retorted that “those who advise Ukraine to give away something to Russia . . . are always unwilling to see ordinary people.” He is joined in this view by most Ukrainians—82 percent of whom, according to a May poll, oppose any territorial concessions. Not surprisingly, a population attacked so brutally and unjustly is decidedly uninterested in rewarding the bully with pieces of its homeland.
Zelensky and the Ukrainian people are right: pressuring Ukraine into a negotiated settlement with territorial concessions would not lead to long-term peace and stability in Europe. Rather, it would reward Russian military aggression in the short term, create a new swath of instability in the heart of Europe, and effectively condone Russian war crimes. A peaceful settlement sounds reasonable in theory. But in practice—in this war, at this moment—it would yield no lasting peace.
THE PROBLEM WITH PEACE
For starters, proposals that Ukraine give up territory to Russian control create a moral hazard. The war in Ukraine is not akin to an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century conflict in which a province might be handed from one country to another without catastrophic consequences for most of the people who live there. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war is a war of national extermination. He has made no secret of his aim to destroy Ukraine’s cultural and national identity. In the parts of Ukraine they occupy, Russian forces have established “filtration camps” where they question Ukrainians and deport them against their will to Russia. They have committed mass killings and rapes. They have destroyed Ukrainian culture, targeting historical sites, looting museums, and burning books. These tactics are reminiscent of the Stalinist methods employed against Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940, when the Soviets occupied the Baltic states and sought to erase national identity through mass deportations and forced Russification. Russia’s crimes in Ukraine today are not excesses of war committed in the heat of battle but expressions of national policy.
Those who call on Ukraine to give up territory therefore need to own up to the consequences. Millions of people would never return to their homes. Thousands of civilians would be killed, tortured, and raped. Children would be taken from their parents. The Ukrainians remaining under Russian occupation would be stripped of their national identity and placed under permanent, hostile submission. Professors, teachers, writers, journalists, civic leaders, local activists, and anyone else with what Putin has termed a “Nazi” (read: Ukrainian) identity would probably be harassed and perhaps imprisoned or deported. Accepting further Russian occupation of Ukraine would mean accepting these inevitable moral and ethical consequences. The atrocities would not stop if the fighting ended. To the contrary, surrendering territory to achieve a peace dictated by Moscow would vindicate such tactics and lock in their consequences forever.
JUST A BAND-AID
Advocates of a diplomatic settlement are also unrealistic about its long-term implications for European peace, security, and deterrence. Underlying their proposals is the assumption that a negotiated settlement now would lead to a permanent solution in which Ukraine gives up the territory now under Russian occupation—namely, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, and perhaps Kherson and other territories—and an independent rump state would develop freely to pursue its ambitions of European integration. The idea is to emulate past settlements in which territory was partitioned and stability ensued, such as the division of Germany in 1945 and the Korean armistice of 1953.
But Ukraine is a profoundly different case. Since his February 24 speech that launched the war, Putin has made explicit in word and deed that he intends to destroy Ukrainian independence writ large. A settlement that surrenders some Ukrainian territory to Russia is unlikely to end Russia’s desires to deny Ukraine true nationhood. The Soviet Union accepted West Germany as a sovereign country during the Cold War, but Putin would never do the same for Ukraine, which he fundamentally does not see as an independent nation.
The Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, for their part, would in no way resemble East Germany. The Soviets sought to make that country the beacon of state socialism. They wanted it to be communist and under their control, not eliminated or Russified. Even if Russia wanted to rebuild the Donbas or any other part of Ukraine it occupies, it doesn’t have the resources to do so. If ceded to Russia, these territories—already leveled to the ground—would remain no man’s lands: zones of lawlessness and human rights abuses.
A divided Ukraine would not resemble the Korean armistice, either. In that case, on the northern side of the 38th parallel, millions of people suffer under a totalitarian dictatorship while to the south, 50 million South Koreans enjoy freedom, well-being, and a measure of security. But as long as Russia occupies parts of Ukraine, it will seek to undermine any independent Ukrainian government through force, political subversion, and economic pressure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war is a war of national extermination.
Another important difference: to the extent that both the German and Korean solutions worked, they did so thanks to U.S. security guarantees and U.S. troops. West Germany was made a member of NATO, South Korea signed a U.S. defense treaty, and both countries hosted tens of thousands of U.S. troops. In the case of Ukraine, extending NATO membership to the country could in theory back up a territorial settlement. Absent NATO membership, one could imagine a different set of reassurances that could also provide the security underpinnings for long-term stability for a sort of West Ukraine. The United States might, for example, station troops in Ukraine on a long-term basis, and it (and perhaps other countries, as well) might offer a security guarantee on the level of NATO’s Article 5 or the U.S.–South Korean bilateral defense arrangements. But such guarantees remain unlikely.
Western Europe seems no more willing to provide Article 5 guarantees to Ukraine than it did at the 2008 Bucharest summit, where members settled on Ukrainian NATO membership as a long-term objective but laid out no meaningful path to achieve it. Based on our conversations with officials in the Biden administration, even the United States does not seem ready to offer Ukraine security guarantees akin to what it offered West Germany or what it offers South Korea; instead, it is planning to continue to offer only arms and intelligence. Moreover, the Kremlin is likely to insist that any settlement with Ukraine include Ukrainian commitments to give up NATO membership in favor of some sort of neutrality, along with a pledge not to base foreign troops. In any case, those urging Ukraine to surrender territory seldom back up their preferred settlement by insisting that the country be welcomed into NATO or given hard security guarantees by the United States. These omissions inspire little confidence that such proposals are realistic.
At best, Russian-occupied Ukraine would be the site of another so-called frozen conflict, but even that concept is a misnomer and illusion. Frozen conflicts imply a stable permanency, but they are anything but that. As was the case with Luhansk and Donetsk, where the invasion began, gray zones often become launching pads for greater aggression. Moscow’s occupation of Crimea, another so-called frozen conflict, has allowed Russian forces to impose an economic blockade, cutting off vital agricultural exports from Ukraine and igniting a global food crisis. Creating more such gray zones in Ukraine might produce a tenuous short-term stop to the fighting, but as recent history has shown, they would also enable the Kremlin to use these territories to destabilize Ukraine and Europe and rebuild its strength.
BAD INTENTIONS
The diplomatic solution proposed by Italy, to its credit, does not insist on a unilateral Ukrainian surrender of territory. The four-part framework includes a cease-fire and demilitarization; Ukrainian neutrality plus security guarantees; autonomy for Crimea and the Donbas, with both remaining as part of Ukraine; and withdrawal of Russian forces combined with lifting of sanctions. Judging by its public statements in the early weeks of the war, Ukraine might accept something like these terms if they could be realized.
But they are not likely to be. For one thing, in 2013, the Kremlin already had a good deal in Ukraine: the country was officially neutral, its security relations with the West were minimal, and Putin’s man, Viktor Yanukovych, was its president. Evidently, that wasn’t good enough for Putin: he forced Yanukovych to reject a modest trade agreement with the European Union and thus precipitated a democratic uprising. In the years since, Putin’s appetite has only grown. Predictably, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has already dismissed the Italian proposal.
Even if the Kremlin announced tomorrow that it accepted a diplomatic framework as the basis for negotiation, there would be good reason to remain skeptical of its chances. The Italian deal, for example, is similar to the now defunct Minsk agreements, which started with a cease-fire, included local control for the Donbas, and ended with restoration of Ukraine’s eastern international boundary. Russia did not take Minsk seriously as anything but a platform to escalate demands. It is unlikely to treat a diplomatic proposal any better today.
Anyone who still has faith in Moscow’s intention to take such frameworks seriously should study its behavior in Syria, where the Russians treated every arrangement as an opportunity to advance its position on the ground. For any negotiations to work, all parties at the table must want a solution, be sincerely engaged in the process, and abide by the ultimate compromise. Putin has shown an inclination to do none of that so far, and he is unlikely to change his behavior as long as he sees any pathway to a win in Ukraine.
TOO EARLY FOR AN ENDGAME
Western policymakers must accept a harsh truth in Ukraine: the war is likely to grind on for some time. At this point in the conflict, the West should think less about what Ukraine should give to Russia and how to avoid humiliating Putin and more about what it can do to put Ukraine in the best possible position. The ultimate argument of those who wish Ukraine to unilaterally surrender land is that the country cannot prevail in the war—that as The New York Times editorial board put it, regaining territory “is not a realistic goal.”
But those who doubt Ukraine’s capabilities should consider how much the country has accomplished so far. Just as initial assumptions of a quick Russian victory were wrong, current assumptions of a slow but unstoppable Russian advance may be off, too. Ukrainian offensives to regain territory in the south and east of the country may prove difficult. But Russia, with its limited forces, may not be able to hold all the territory it has taken. Nobody knows what the fortunes of war may bring. In private conversations with the two of us, senior U.S. military and civilian officials have shared mixed views of how the battle is likely to go and acknowledged that they are uncertain themselves. Uncertainty is a questionable basis on which to make weighty decisions that have baleful consequences for millions of people—decisions such as urging Ukraine to give up territory or pressuring it to stop fighting. At this stage, there is no basis to allow Putin to win at the negotiating table what he has failed to achieve on the battlefield.
The goal for the West is not to convince or pressure Ukraine to give up.
Ukrainian military success is not inevitable. But it is possible. Putin will not be impressed by firm speeches from Western leaders. What he may well respect, however, is a defeat on the ground, which could convince him to negotiate a settlement that he could portray through his propaganda machine as a victory. Putin is counting on the West to lose patience in a long war and capitulate as energy and food prices rise. And although the Russian people are famed for their ability to endure hardship, they were promised a quick “special military operation”—not years of conflict that make it difficult to live normal lives. Their patience will wear thinner if Russia loses on the battlefield.
The United States, Europe, and Ukraine’s other friends have a responsibility to help Ukraine prevail commensurate with that possibility. The goal now for the West is to thwart an adversary—not to convince or pressure Ukraine to give up. That means sending more arms to Ukraine and putting more economic pressure on Russia.
Such a plan does not rule out negotiations. Zelensky and his government have not done so. In fact, they showed more commitment to negotiations in the early weeks of the war than the Kremlin did. The time for negotiations may come—which is why the job now is to put Ukraine in the most favorable position possible in anticipation of that moment so that it has the best options available.
As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight for their homeland and all of Europe, it is the West’s duty to support them. Peace may sound like an appealing talking point, but Ukrainians know that it cannot come at any price. Western policymakers should listen.
16. Journalists finally advised to stop referring to all veterans as former snipers, Special Forces
Go figure.
Journalists finally advised to stop referring to all veterans as former snipers, Special Forces
"Sharpshooter" doesn't mean what you think it means.
BY MAX HAUPTMAN | PUBLISHED JUN 8, 2022 3:30 PM
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Better late than never.
A new update to the Associated Press style guide wants journalists to be more specific when writing about service members and veterans.
“Don’t use the term military training broadly,” the official account for the AP Style Book tweeted on Tuesday. “Be specific: She pointed to her six months as a Marine captain in Iraq, not she pointed to her military training.”
Don't use the term military training broadly. Be specific: She pointed to her six years as a Marine captain in Iraq, not she pointed to her military training. Police said the suspect was a cook at Eglin Air Force Base, not police said the suspect had military training.
— APStylebook (@APStylebook) June 7, 2022
You’ve probably seen it before – military terminology being misinterpreted to make someone seem like the ultimate badass trained warrior.
When Marine veteran Michael Foy was charged with participating in rioting at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, he was described in a government brief as a “former Marine trained in combat.” Another way to describe Foy would be an equipment mechanic who “served from 2015 to 2019 with the 2nd Maintenance Battalion out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, earning the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon.” In other words, a fairly routine enlistment.
A 2021 op-ed by Carroll County Times took issue with the characterization of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed on Jan. 6 at the riot at the Capitol Building, as a decorated Air Force veteran, writing that “While honorable, her service was not particularly remarkable,” and that aside from an Army Achievement Medal, her decorations were service awards.
“While not without meaning, these are the same awards her peers also received for also going where they were supposed to when told to go there; a veteran who does not acquire one or more of these is a rarity,” reads the op-ed.
When Bryan Riley killed four people in Florida, he was described as an “ex-Marine sharpshooter,” who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. In reality, Riley’s “military occupational specialty was 3531 Motor Vehicle Operator.” This isn’t meant to denigrate other jobs in the military, but to point out that Riley qualifying as a “sharpshooter” is fairly anodyne in the context of the Marine Corps. With the qualification being between “marksman” and “expert,” it essentially means that Riley was an average shooter, not a highly-qualified sniper as the term suggests.
The military-civilian divide is nothing new. There are millions of veterans who may not feel seen or represented by the broader culture. For many, the nuance and word choices are important, since no one was a Marine Captain in Iraq for six months. And describing someone like Justin Copeland, who was arrested twice for desertion, as a skilled military veteran is a misnomer.
Don't use the term military training broadly. Be specific: She pointed to her six years as a Marine captain in Iraq, not she pointed to her military training. Police said the suspect was a cook at Eglin Air Force Base, not police said the suspect had military training.
— APStylebook (@APStylebook) June 7, 2022
But part of bridging that divide is understanding what life is like for everyone in the military, and that means understanding just what a particular ribbon or weapons qualification means.
Much like Task & Purpose likes to note the various uniform anachronisms in movies, accurately describing someone’s military service is important to providing the necessary context to their actions. By providing broader context for military service, we might be able to bridge that divide a little bit.
The latest on Task & Purpose
Max Hauptman has been covering breaking news at Task & Purpose since December 2021. He previously worked at The Washington Post as a Military Veterans in Journalism Fellow, as well as covering local news in New England. Contact the author here.
17. Inside the battle for Severodonetsk, where a Ukrainian unit of 60 was reduced to just 4 soldiers
Excerpts:
Russia has expended an exorbitant amount of men, equipment, and tactical energy on the city, making it something of an outlier in regional terms. No other site, aside from the strategically and economically important hub of Mariupol, has thus far received this type of attention. This could interfere with advances on other avenues of approach and hamper efforts on other fronts.
With military resources being spent by the task force charged with capturing the city, it is likely many other units will see a curious lull in their shipments of arms, ammunition, and other support. One thing is certain; the city of Severodonetsk will cost both sides immensely in both men and equipment before a winner is revealed.
Inside the battle for Severodonetsk, where a Ukrainian unit of 60 was reduced to just 4 soldiers
“The situation in the east is very difficult. We are losing 60 to 100 soldiers every day and something like 500 wounded in combat.”
BY MICHAEL GODWIN | PUBLISHED JUN 8, 2022 4:01 PM
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After being humiliated by the Ukrainian army outside of Kyiv several weeks ago, Russia has renewed its invasion strategy, focusing now on the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, comprising approximately 20 percent of the nation’s sovereign territory. The Russian-supported Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics’ militaries are both stalled, with little to show for the immense casualties they had reportedly suffered. Ukrainians have been fortifying their territory in the east with trenches and fire bases since their initial conflict with Russian-backed separatists, creating a very difficult and dangerous situation for the advancing Russians.
The city of Severodonetsk has recently made headlines, as it has become a hotly contested urban center. The second-largest city in the partly occupied Luhansk Oblast, it was home to over 100,000 people, a small airport, and a large manufacturing sector. Since the invasion in February 2022, it is estimated that less than 15,000 civilians remain in the city.
From the beginning, Russia had concentrated on this city, using the 4th Guards Tank Division to begin the encirclement. Throughout May, Russian air and artillery forces reduced much of the city, causing both military and civilian casualties on the Ukrainian side. By May 6, the mayor of the city had announced that the Russian and LPR forces had “virtually surrounded” them.
A woman walks in front of a damaged apartment building after a missile strike in the city of Soledar, in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on June 4, 2022. Russian artillery is slamming Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region with fierce fighting over the city of Severodonetsk, but the local governor says there was some progress in pushing back invading forces. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)
However, things were not so simple. Villages and towns to the north and south of the city slowly fell to the combined Russian and LPR advance. The larger town of Rubizhne to the northwest was taken in a separate battle, with Russian forces pushing out elements of the Ukrainian 128th Mountain Assault Brigade.
But, as Russian forces attempted to cross the Siverskyi Donets River, roughly an entire 1,000-man Battalion Tactical Group was eliminated, and the crossing attempt was halted. While several other attempts to cross were made, the combined Russian and LPR forces also failed to make significant headway in cutting off the Ukrainian defenders. As the Russian military settled in to bombard Severodonetsk with artillery and air strikes, the surrounding towns of Borivske, Kreminna, Novotoshkivske, Nyzhnie, Orikhove, Popasna, Rubizhne, Toshkivka, Troitske, Voronove, Voevodivka and Zolote in Severodonetsk region were under their control.
As the battle for the city proper began, Chechen units initiated the assault by taking the Mir hotel on May 27th. Russian conscripts and LPR militia troops followed suit, coming from Rubizhne in the north and Smolyaninov in the east. Thick, heavy, and bloody fighting ensued between the Ukrainian defenders, mostly remnants of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade and 53rd Mechanized Brigade.
In a matter of 48 hours, Russian forces had made their way into the center of the city. At the end of May, Ukraine confirmed that 70 to 80 percent of the city was under Russian control. In the early days of June, Ukraine had begun to bolster its defenses and simultaneously prove that the city was not cut off from resupply. Russian forces had claimed to have surrounded the city, but the arrival of troops from the International Foreign Legion units disproved that assertion
With the arrival of Ukrainian reinforcements, the city has become a major tactical focal point in the war. Control of the city, while still strategic, is an immense propaganda goal for the Russians, as it is the last major city center in the Luhansk Oblast in Ukraine’s possession. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) stated, “Severodonetsk itself is important at this stage in the war primarily because it is the last significant population center in Luhansk Oblast that the Russians do not control. Seizing it will let Moscow declare that it has secured Luhansk Oblast fully but will give Russia no other significant military or economic benefit.”
While Ukrainian resistance has been staunch, the casualties for the defenders have been high. According to one text conversation from Niel Hauer on Twitter, a Ukrainian unit of 60 men had been reduced to 4. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to American news outlet Newsmax, stating “The situation in the east is very difficult. We are losing 60 to 100 soldiers every day and something like 500 wounded in combat.”
An elderly woman sits inside her damaged house after a missile strike in the city of Soledar, in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on June 4, 2022. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)
Russia has been taking heavy casualties as well. While their numbers are far more concealed by censorship and propaganda, the assault forces are reportedly taking “fearful casualties,” according to the ISW study, which also explained that Russian forces have likely expended the majority of their combat strength attempting to take the city. They state, “Moscow will not be able to recoup large amounts of effective combat power even if it seizes Severodonetsk, because it is expanding that combat power frivolously on taking the city.”
Additionally, Russian supply has reportedly been unreliable and assault elements are likely being kept from receiving the supplies necessary to carry out more attacks. According to a Ukrainian intelligence report, Russian commanders are refusing to risk more vehicles and supplies. The reports says that the officer corps in charge of taking the city has “forbid drivers to evacuate the wounded and bring food and fuel to the advanced units.” These commanders are reportedly exhausting their men with little to no rest or rotation between combat operations against Ukrainian defenders.
Russia has expended an exorbitant amount of men, equipment, and tactical energy on the city, making it something of an outlier in regional terms. No other site, aside from the strategically and economically important hub of Mariupol, has thus far received this type of attention. This could interfere with advances on other avenues of approach and hamper efforts on other fronts.
With military resources being spent by the task force charged with capturing the city, it is likely many other units will see a curious lull in their shipments of arms, ammunition, and other support. One thing is certain; the city of Severodonetsk will cost both sides immensely in both men and equipment before a winner is revealed.
+++
Mike Godwin is a freelance journalist who focuses on defense and security matters in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, as well as NATO. He is a combat veteran of the United States Army and currently lives in Tbilisi, Georgia where he runs his own journalism and OSINT brand, MikeReports.
18. Fuerzas Comando 22 Competition News Advisory
Fuerzas Comando 22 Competition News Advisory
Article by Sgt. 1st Class Victor Aguirre
Special Operations Command South Public Affairs Office
TEGUCIGLAPA, Honduras – Honduras will kick off Furezas Comando 2022 opening ceremony at Campo Marte at 2 p.m. June 13, 2022. Over 20 countries will compete in a Special Operations Forces skills competition to earn the Best Special Operations in the Americas between June 13-23.
FC22 supports U.S. Southern Command’s initiative to enhance multinational and regional cooperation, trust, and confidence through persistent and consistent engagements with allies and partners in the Western Hemisphere.
Media planning to attend the opening ceremony on June 13, 2022, on June 23 at Campo Marte, Tegucigalpa, D.C., must coordinate attendance through the Honduran MIlitary Public Affairs Office at proyeccionesmilitarestv.hn@gmail.com no later than June 12, 2022.
DVIDS Subscriptions allow you to receive an email when a feature page, such as Fuerzas Comando, receives new videos, images, news, and other media. Please follow the link below to register with DVIDS and start receiving your email notifications. To learn more about DVIDS, please follow https://www.dvidshub.net/about.
19. The US is heavily reliant on China and Russia for its ammo supply chain. Congress wants to fix that.
Damn. Yes, we need to get this fixed. Though I expect someone might be able to provide "the rest of the story."
The US is heavily reliant on China and Russia for its ammo supply chain. Congress wants to fix that.
WASHINGTON — The United States has relied almost entirely on China — and to a lesser extent Russia — in recent years to procure a critical mineral that is vital to producing ammunition.
The mineral antimony is critical to the defense-industrial supply chain and is needed to produce everything from armor-piercing bullets and explosives to nuclear weapons as well as sundry other military equipment, such as night vision goggles.
The House Armed Services Committee took its first stab at addressing China’s grip on the antimony supply chain in draft legislation it released Wednesday. A report accompanying the bill would require the manager of the national defense stockpile to brief the committee on the status of antimony by October while providing “a five-year outlook of these minerals and current and future supply chain vulnerabilities.”
“The committee is concerned about recent geopolitical dynamics with Russia and China and how that could accelerate supply chain disruptions, particularly with antimony,” the report noted.
The draft legislation would also require the Defense Department to instate a policy of recycling spent batteries to reclaim “precious metals, rare earth minerals and elements of strategic importance (such as Cobalt and Lithium) into the supply chain or strategic reserves of the United States.”
The House’s readiness subcommittee is expected to approve the draft text on Thursday, and the Armed Services Committee is set to advance the legislation as part of its annual defense authorization bill later this month.
After Japan cut off the U.S. supply of antimony from China during World War II, the United States began procuring the mineral from ore in an Idaho goldmine. However, that mine ceased production in 1997.
“There is no domestic mine for antimony,” according to a 2020 report from the U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency. “China is the largest producer of mined and refined antimony and a major source of imports for the United States.”
The report noted that China is “losing market share with Russia, the world’s second-ranked producer,” with Tajikistan gaining ground in the global market as the world’s third-largest supplier of antimony.
Lawmakers’ recent interest in shoring up the national defense stockpile of strategic minerals marks a significant about-face for Congress, which had repeatedly authorized multimillion-dollar sales of the reserve over the past several decades to fund other programs.
At its peak during the beginning of the Cold War in 1952, the stockpile was valued at nearly $42 billion in today’s dollars. That value has plummeted to $888 million as of last year.
The Defense Department submitted its own legislative proposal to Congress last month, asking lawmakers to authorize $253.5 million in the defense authorization bill to procure additional minerals for the stockpile.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, led seven Republicans in April in asking the defense appropriations subcommittee to provide an additional $264 million in funding for the stockpile for FY23.
“The current stockpile is inadequate to meet the requirements of great power competition,” the lawmakers wrote. “The [national defense stockpile] is no longer capable of covering the Department of Defense’s needs for the vast majority of identified materials in the event of a supply chain disruption.”
Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered the intersection of U.S. foreign policy and national security in Washington since 2014. He previously wrote for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.
20. Rumours that Xi Jinping is losing his grip on power are greatly exaggerated
I was talking to a friend from CHina yesterday and he was pretty convinced that Xi's power is declining.
Rumours that Xi Jinping is losing his grip on power are greatly exaggerated
The writer is CEO of China Strategies Group and a former top China analyst at the CIA
As China enters its version of the political silly season, the commentariat says President Xi Jinping is in trouble. “Elites”, “reformers” and “angry entrepreneurs” despise his policies and megalomania, and they want to weaken or expel him when his term ends this autumn. Factional rivals also are constraining Xi, and leadership infighting explains policy outcomes or their absence. Even his premier, Li Keqiang, supposedly is overcoming a decade in political purgatory to subtly court nervous foreign businesses and right Xi’s mistakes in maintaining zero-Covid and cracking down on entrepreneurs and the property sector.
But this proposition is unconvincing because it ignores how Xi has bent China’s one-party system to his advantage. Factional models work when contending camps of roughly equal power exist. Deng Xiaoping and his colleagues in the 1980s, or the messy handover between former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, come to mind. In Xi’s case, the evidence is sparse that other Chinese Communist party magnates are overturning — or even meaningfully questioning — his decisions. That is because Xi always had a plan.
From 2012, he started framing party history into three eras — Mao Zedong’s, Deng’s and Xi’s “New Era” — which he canonised in 2017 by enshrining his personal ideological “thought” in the party constitution. New catchphrases in a party resolution on history last year emphasised the incontestability of his supremacy. A final upgrade this year truncating his clunky 12-word ideological concept to “Xi Jinping Thought” and granting him other unique accolades would make Mao his only match.
Xi’s pursuit of ideological exaltation is about more than theoretical laureates, however. It sets him above potential rivals by making his words and deeds the party’s “line”. Criticising them is then an attack on the party, a risk few cadres will take. This principle was on vivid display last month when the party’s top policy body resoundingly endorsed zero-Covid despite obvious unease over the mess in Shanghai.
Apotheosising Xi’s “three eras” airbrushed Jiang and Hu from party history, making them political artefacts. Last year’s resolution went further, letting Xi describe his “thought” as akin to Mao’s while downgrading Deng’s. In short, ideology still matters in Leninist China, and Xi harnesses it to make himself unassailable.
Factional explanations depict Xi as a unidimensional statist and ideologue who wants to reprise Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Constraints by rivals must therefore explain regime policies that do not match the caricature. So, when Li preaches relief for industries previously in the government’s crosshairs, he is challenging Xi, not playing the loyal tactical commander of a cratering economy that Occam’s razor would suggest.
Of course, Xi’s stifling of debate and China’s sealed borders make authoritative insights scarce. But claims that Xi and his detractors are locked in a struggle like that dividing Mao from Liu Shaoqi and Deng in the 1960s lack credibility. During real crises, like the run-up to the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, typically monolithic state media aired contending viewpoints, telegraphing leadership strife. They even briefly removed Jiang from an official photo just before he surrendered his last title in 2004. There are no such indicators now.
Jiang’s career offers a final warning against counting Xi out early. Jiang’s opponents hoped disclosing “secret files” would retire him, but they instead showed the losing side often arranges dubious leaks to foreigners when party infighting runs high. Their campaign started with The Tiananmen Papers, allegedly secret documents that portrayed Jiang’s appointment as general secretary as unconstitutional. Then came China’s New Rulers: The Secret Files, which cited “confidential reports” from the party’s personnel office to preview a new top line-up without Jiang that was wrong in almost every detail.
Jiang retained influence for a decade more, but found in the end that he could not rule by fiat from behind the scenes. Xi is determined to avoid that mistake by using his ideological coronation, anti-corruption campaigns targeted at enemies and demolition of party procedures to stay in office, maybe for life.
21. U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials Say
Do we not have advisors and liaison officers in Ukraine working closely with our counterparts? Oh that's right we do not want any "troops" in Ukraine. No boots on the ground so we do not provoke escalation by Putin.
U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials Say
Intelligence agencies know far more about Russia’s military, even as the United States ships billions of dollars in weapons to the Ukrainians.
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The gaps in information on the state of Ukraine’s military forces and the government’s strategy in the Donbas have created blind spots for the United States.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
By
June 8, 2022
WASHINGTON — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has provided near-daily updates of Russia’s invasion on social media; viral video posts have shown the effectiveness of Western weapons in the hands of Ukrainian forces; and the Pentagon has regularly held briefings on developments in the war.
But despite the flow of all this news to the public, American intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures, according to current and former officials.
Governments often withhold information from the public for operational security. But these information gaps within the U.S. government could make it more difficult for the Biden administration to decide how to target military aid as it sends billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine.
U.S. officials said the Ukrainian government gave them few classified briefings or details about their operational plans, and Ukrainian officials acknowledged that they did not tell the Americans everything.
Of course the U.S. intelligence community collects information about nearly every country, including Ukraine. But American spy agencies, in general, focus their collection efforts on adversarial governments, like Russia, not current friends, like Ukraine. And while Russia has been a top priority for American spies for 75 years, when it came to the Ukrainians, the United States has worked on building up their intelligence service, not spying on their government.
The result, former officials said, has been some blind spots.
“How much do we really know about how Ukraine is doing?” said Beth Sanner, a former senior intelligence official. “Can you find a person who will tell you with confidence how many troops has Ukraine lost, how many pieces of equipment has Ukraine lost?”
Even without a complete picture of Ukraine’s military strategy and situation, the Biden administration has pushed forward new capabilities, like the rocket artillery systems President Biden announced last week. Ukraine is awaiting the arrival of more powerful Western weapons systems as both sides in the war suffer heavy losses in the eastern Donbas region of the country.
Pentagon officials say they have a robust process for sending weapons in place, which begins with a request from the Ukrainians and includes a U.S. assessment of what kind of equipment they need and how quickly it can be mastered.
Some European agencies say it will be difficult if not impossible for Ukraine to reclaim the land that Russia has taken since it invaded in February, but U.S. intelligence agencies are less pessimistic, officials said. Still, there are cracks in Ukraine’s defenses, and questions about the state of Ukraine’s military forces and strategy in the Donbas have created an incomplete picture for the United States.
Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, testified at a Senate hearing last month that “it was very hard to tell” how much additional aid Ukraine could absorb.
She added: “We have, in fact, more insight, probably, on the Russian side than we do on the Ukrainian side.”
One key question is what measures Mr. Zelensky intends to call for in Donbas. Ukraine faces a strategic choice there: withdraw its forces or risk having them encircled by Russia.
The government’s more candid public statements may be a precursor to a conversation with its population about the strategic choices to be made in Donbas, analysts have said.
“Probably there’s a debate going on about whether to withdraw all the defenses that might be trapped if they stay,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international affairs at Columbia University. “If there’s going to be a deliberate withdrawal, Zelensky is going to have to explain that in some way that doesn’t seem to cast aspersions on Ukrainian arms. He’s going to have to tell some sort of story to the Ukrainian people if they do decide to pull those troops out, and explaining the losses they could suffer if they stayed is a logical way to do that.”
A key question for the United States in Ukraine is what measures President Volodymyr Zelensky intends to pursue in the Donbas.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
There is another reason for the incomplete intelligence about Ukraine. Cloud cover has limited the utility of overhead satellites.
The United States provides regular, near real-time intelligence updates to Ukraine about the location of Russian forces, information that the Ukrainians use to plan operations and strikes and strengthen their defenses.
But even in high level conversations with Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or Lloyd J. Austin III, the secretary of defense, Ukrainian officials share only their strategic goals, not their detailed operational plans. Ukraine’s secrecy has forced U.S. military and intelligence officials to try and learn what they can from other countries operating in Ukraine, training sessions with Ukrainians and Mr. Zelensky’s public comments, American officials said.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Developments
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Ukraine, the officials said, wants to present an image of strength, both to the public and to its close partners. The government does not want to share information that could suggest a weakening of resolve, or give the impression that they might not win. In essence, Ukrainian officials do not want to present information that might encourage the United States and its other Western partners to slow the flow of arms.
At the behest of the United States, Ukraine has spent years tightening the protection of its military and intelligence services from Russian spies. Briefing other countries of their plans and operational situation could reveal weaknesses Moscow could exploit if the Russian military learned of them.
Public information about Ukrainian casualties, equipment losses and morale is incomplete, and much more is reported about Russian losses and morale than about Ukraine’s.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
(Of course, the Ukrainians are not always as careful with American operational plans. Mr. Zelensky once announced publicly that Mr. Austin and Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, were coming to Kyiv for a visit, a fact U.S. officials had tried to keep secret.)
There are good reasons for Ukraine not to speak candidly about their forces or their military strategy, Dr. Biddle said.
“I’m not sure it’s in the interest of the American public or Ukrainian public to have Ukrainians be upfront about their losses if the result is it strengthens the Russian war effort,” Dr. Biddle said. “But that means we don’t really know both sides of the story.”
The United States has better estimates of Russian casualties and equipment losses, a senior U.S. official said. The Defense Intelligence Agency, for example, estimates that the number of Ukraine’s soldiers killed in action is similar to Russia’s, but the agency has a far lower level of confidence in its estimate of Ukrainian losses.
The picture American officials have presented of a grinding war, with neither side making decisive progress, appears to be accurate, Dr. Biddle said. Nevertheless, the public information about Ukrainian casualties, equipment losses and morale is incomplete.
But there may be a potential cost if the intelligence community cannot present a fuller picture to the public or Congress about Ukraine’s military prospects, Ms. Sanner said. If Russia advances further, the failure to understand the state of the Ukrainian military could open the intelligence community to accusations that it failed to deliver a full picture of Ukraine’s prospects in the war to policymakers.
“Everything is about Russia’s goals and Russia’s prospects for meeting their goals,” Ms. Sanner said. “We do not talk about whether Ukraine might be able to defeat them. And to me, I feel that we are setting ourselves up for another intel failure by not talking about that publicly.”
Eric Schmitt in Washington and Michael Schwirtz in Ukraine contributed reporting.
22. Russian propaganda efforts aided by pro-Kremlin content creators, research finds
Information is business and business is good.
Russian propaganda efforts aided by pro-Kremlin content creators, research finds
A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that the creators, who make videos in a variety of languages, have flourished since Russia invaded Ukraine.
NBC News · by Brandy Zadrozny · June 8, 2022
A small network of pro-Kremlin content creators have seen their audiences grow dramatically in recent months while spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine, evading social media platforms’ efforts to curb Russian propaganda and paving a path to Western audiences, according to research published Wednesday.
The creators are self-described “independent journalists” whose reports are often made from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine and amplify Kremlin talking points and downplay or deny reported Russian atrocities. Researchers say the on-the-ground reports — which come in English, French, German and other languages — have proved effective at circumnavigating commitments from European governments and U.S.-based social media platforms to stop the spread of Russian propaganda.
Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, many tech platforms took steps to curb the amplification of false Russian narratives.
Facebook, Instagram and YouTube blocked Russian state-controlled media in Europe and throttled recommendations of those accounts. Facebook and YouTube have banned Russian state-controlled media outlets from advertising. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube apply labels and links to fact checks on content that violates their policies against disinformation about the war.
Most of these efforts focused on official Russian government and state media accounts. That plan, while partially effective, misses a major vector of Kremlin disinformation, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank that produced the research.
“The current strategy is too focused on explicit affiliation with the Kremlin, state media accounts and outlets, journalists with explicit affiliations, and embassies and consulates,” said Melanie Smith, ISD’s director of digital analysis. “It misses a large volume of content coming from actors who can reach huge audiences very quickly and spread pro-Kremlin disinformation without the state actually having to be directly involved.”
Content creators and social media influencers have emerged in the past year as one of the newer avenues for disinformation. Some YouTubers exposed a plot to use creators to spread Covid disinformation, while The Associated Press reported in March that China’s government had found success with its own network of English-language creators.
The war against Ukraine has been a boon to once small-time, Kremlin-friendly content creators, some of whom have been active for years. The researchers identified a group of 12 of the most influential of these creators, who post to social sites including YouTube, Telegram, Facebook and Twitter.
Those creators have seen their audiences grow since Russia invaded Ukraine, most notably on YouTube and Telegram. Some of the creators profit from crowdfunding, ads attached to their YouTube videos despite policies barring monetization, and chat functions that allow users to donate during livestreams.
Telegram and YouTube did not respond to requests for comment.
Among the dozen most influential Western propagandists identified by ISD is Alina Lipp, a German creator who claims backing Ukraine is akin to supporting Nazism and reported the debunked claim that Ukrainians perpetrated a false flag massacre at a maternity hospital in Mariupol. Lipp’s following (mostly on Telegram, but also YouTube) grew from about 2,000 in February to over 160,000 in May. Lipp did not respond to a request for comment.
ISD also named Eva Bartlett, a Canadian activist who previously pushed conspiracy theories alleging Syrian rescue workers known as the White Helmets were staging fake attacks during the Syrian civil war. Bartlett isn’t employed by RT, the Russian state-controlled news network, but she has written op-eds on RT’s website, makes videos with RT correspondents and shares archived versions of RT content to get around the platforms’ blocking of Russian state media. Facebook has labeled Bartlett’s posts with a disclaimer that she “may be partially or wholly under the editorial control of the Russian government.” Bartlett did not respond to a request for comment.
Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean American who previously posted misogynistic content, now makes pro-Russian videos from inside Ukraine, including denying Russian involvement in what Ukrainian officials say was the killing of more than 400 people in the city of Bucha.
Human rights organization Amnesty International reported that Russian troops engaged in torture and “extrajudicial killings” there. Lira’s YouTube following has tripled since the invasion to 153,000. Lira did not respond to a request for comment.
The most popular of the pro-Kremlin influencers identified by researchers is Patrick Lancaster, a Missouri-born Navy intelligence veteran and self-described independent crowdfunded journalist embedded with the Russian army. Since December, Lancaster’s YouTube channel has grown from 57,500 subscribers to more than 500,000, with daily dispatches from Russian-occupied Ukraine. His videos are often breathless reports with graphic footage of dead bodies, violence for which Lancaster claims Ukraine is responsible. The scene in at least one video was reportedly staged. Lancaster often appears on Russian state media and on the Texas-based conspiracy theory radio show “Infowars.”
Below Lancaster’s YouTube videos, he posts, “I show what the western media will not show you.” He did not respond to a request for comment.
Human rights organizations have documented numerous cases of apparent war crimes perpetrated by the Russian military against Ukrainian civilians. The United Nations estimated that more than 9,300 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, but said the actual count is “considerably higher.”
Smith said the creators have proven particularly difficult to moderate and a powerful tool for spreading propaganda.
“Some of the disinformation that we see spread quickly isn’t being fact-checked because they’re reaching an audience that is deemed to be smaller or less important than that reached by RT and Sputnik, but the talking points are the same and the evidence being presented is the same,” Smith said. “These are independent people who can speak freely within the bounds of the policies of the platforms. And sometimes, that spills over into incitement of violence, denying war crimes and spreading very blatant pieces of disinformation about the context of what’s happening and about how people are being victimized.”
NBC News · by Brandy Zadrozny · June 8, 2022
23. Ukraine’s partisans are hitting Russian soldiers behind their own lines
Resistance operating concept. The gift that will keep on giving. Living to fight another day.
Ukraine’s partisans are hitting Russian soldiers behind their own lines
In Russian-occupied cities like Melitopol, covert resistance continues
The russians took the strategic rail-hub city of Melitopol on the third day of the war, their route apparently greased by Ukrainian turncoats. Controlling the city, a crucial segment of Vladimir Putin’s land bridge to Crimea, has proven somewhat trickier. Every few days brings a surprising report: an armoured train destroyed and a grenade attack on a command post (May 18th); railway tracks and a radar station blown up (May 22nd); a pro-Ukrainian rally (May 29th); and a collaborator’s house hit by an explosion (May 30th). Ukraine claims its partisans have killed more than 100 Russian soldiers behind enemy lines in Melitopol. “Our people are doing everything to make sure the land burns under the feet of the occupiers,” says the town’s mayor, Ivan Fedorov, now safe in Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Melitopol is the unofficial capital of Ukraine’s resistance. Since mid-March the war maps produced by the American-based Institute for the Study of War show it covered in stripes, meaning it is territory where partisans are active. But it is far from the only place that has seen such operations. In neighbouring Kherson, a Russian-controlled airbase has been blown up nearly two dozen times. In Enerhodar, Andrii Shevchyk, the collaborationist mayor, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt. In Izyum, hungry Russian soldiers were purportedly given spiked pies by a seemingly friendly old lady, according to a telephone conversation between a Russian soldier and his girlfriend that was intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence; eight of them reportedly ended up dead. When Russians abandon tanks or petrol trucks, Ukrainian farmers tow them away. Reports of explosions at arms dumps trickle in from the occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Fires and explosions at military facilities inside Russia itself are, apparently, becoming more common. In many cases, the evidence points to poor fire safety. But Ukrainian special forces do appear to be targeting supply chains in Russia’s border provinces. On at least one occasion a helicopter struck an oil-storage facility in the Russian city of Bryansk. Officials in Kyiv refuse to comment on the operations. Speaking off the record, a tight-lipped senior intelligence officer says it would be better to speak to a priest: “This is God’s work. God is punishing the Russian Federation. Maybe not directly. Maybe not with his own hands. Maybe he has to use helicopters.”
Ukraine’s underground resistance in occupied territories is co-ordinated by a unit of its armed forces called the Special Operations Forces (sso). The division was formed in 2015 after attempts at partisan activity failed disastrously in the early stages of the war in the Donbas. A former operative in the unit, who asked to remain anonymous, says the work is split into three parts: military action, support operations and psychological warfare. “Say the task is to stop the enemy from moving more reserves to Melitopol,” he explains. “The sso assigns special forces the task of blowing up a bridge, it asks partisans to damage the railway, and it gets psy-ops [psychological operations] to print leaflets to say we’re on the watch. So in the end, only half the troops dare to come.”
The source says his colleagues spent considerable time preparing potential partisans—“simple local people, but with a secret”—in the years leading up to the war. He refuses to go into detail about the training, but says the basics could be found in “Total Resistance”, a classic guerrilla instruction manual written in 1957 to prepare the Swiss for potential occupation by Warsaw Pact countries. A website published by the sso offers life hacks for Ukraine’s underground warriors. This includes advice about how to organise clandestine resistance (stick to a need-to-know basis), prepare an ambush (ensure clear escape routes), and cope with being arrested (keep calm and hope for the best).
Vladimir Zhemchugov ran dozens of partisan operations for Ukraine in his native Luhansk in 2014-15, before he was maimed by a mine and captured. He says the current resistance mixes professional soldiers and volunteers “60-40, in that order”. Mr Zhemchugov, who now helps train volunteers, says Ukrainian authorities had laid down the basic structure for an insurgency in a few rushed months before the war. A network of secret arms dumps, safe houses and potential sympathisers now exists across the country; in some cases, criminal networks were co-opted. But the preparation was less thorough than it could have been. It was apparently undermined by officials who later switched to support Russia. “The security services and police proved to be our weakest link.”
As in 2014, when war erupted in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s security services appear to have got their hands on secret military databases. In Kherson, Russian officers are visiting the homes of Ukrainians who served in the army. Those who haven’t managed to switch addresses are detained, beaten, tortured or worse. “This work isn’t always good for one’s health,” says the sso source. “The risks are real and it isn’t a walk in the park.” Russia also appears to be stepping up efforts to stamp out Ukrainian resistance, increasing arrests and demonstrative punishments. But intercepts released by Ukrainian security services suggest some Russian soldiers are fearful. “Every fucking night we’re fighting with diversionary groups who come into the village,” one soldier tells his friend in a call. “Some of us have had enough. We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
Mr Fedorov, Melitopol’s mayor, was abducted by occupying forces before being released on March 16th in a prisoner exchange. He said Ukraine’s resistance would continue to attract new recruits despite the risks. Only one in ten of Melitopol’s residents had switched to the other side, and that wasn’t a critical mass, he suggested. But the true strength of Ukraine’s resistance will be tested only in a new phase of the war: provided enough Western weapons arrive, Kyiv hopes to launch a counter-attack to retake the south. The tight-lipped intelligence officer predicts Ukraine’s underground army will prove to be a big asset. He suggests Vladimir Putin’s troops will be forced to beat an ugly retreat. “The Russians will be able to write another ‘War and Peace’. I’ve always been very fond of Tolstoy.” ■
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
