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Quotes of the Day:


"Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way."
- Allan W. Watts [1915-73]

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- Alice Walker







1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 17, 2023

2. US reaction to balloon ‘absurd and hysterical’, says top Chinese diplomat

3. Russia’s emerging new offensive in Ukraine, explained by an expert

4. US Grid Is A Magnet For Terrorists: How Can We Solve This?

5. S. Korea, U.S. to hold 'Freedom Shield' exercise next month

6. In wake of Ukraine war, U.S. and allies are hunting down Russian spies

7. Does China Want to Rule the World? It's Not That Simple

8. California lawmaker leads delegation to Taiwan amid high U.S.-China tensions

9. Trump-Era Officials Were Aware of Suspected Balloons in U.S. Airspace

10. Taipei Fears Washington Is Weakening Its Silicon Shield

11. Disinformation Is Not the Problem and Information Is Not the Solution

12. Kamala Harris Says Russia Has Committed Crimes Against Humanity

13. Former Ukrainian President: We Need Weapons, Sanctions, and NATO Membership

14. Trading Books for a Rifle: The Teacher Who Volunteered in Ukraine

15. China’s Newest Action TV Show Is a Propaganda Hit




1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 17, 2023


Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-17-2023


Key Takeaways

  • The Kremlin will likely subsume elements of Belarus’ defense industrial base (DIB) as part of Moscow’s larger effort to reequip the Russian military to support a protracted war against Ukraine.
  • Lukashenko confirmed that Belarus has implemented more Union State integration programs - marking progress in the Kremlin’s decades-long pressure campaign to formalize the Russian-Belarusian Union State.
  • The Kremlin’s gains in Belarus underscore that Putin’s imperialistic ambitions transcend Ukraine and that containing the Russian threat requires the West’s sustained attention.
  • The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed the names of the four military district commanders, finalizing a complete turnover of the Russian military’s initial command since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
  • Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to be mounting an informational counteroffensive against the conventional Russian military establishment.
  • Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
  • Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut, in the Donetsk City-Avdiivka area, and in western Donetsk Oblast.
  • Russian and Ukrainian military activity near Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast indicates that Russian forces are likely deployed to positions close bank of the Dnipro River.
  • The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) reported that Russian forces have likely suffered up to 200,000 casualties since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a variety of laws on February 17 to integrate occupied territories into Russian legal, economic, and administrative structures.


RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 17, 2023

Feb 17, 2023 - Press ISW


Download the PDF

understandingwar.org

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 17, 2023

Riley Bailey, George Barros, Karolina Hird, Nicole Wolkov, Layne Philipson, and Frederick W. Kagan

February 17, 5:45pm ET

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

The Kremlin will likely subsume elements of Belarus’ defense industrial base (DIB) as part of Moscow’s larger effort to reequip the Russian military to support a protracted war against Ukraine. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stated during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on February 17 that Belarus’ aerospace industry is ready to produce Su-25 ground attack aircraft for the Russian military with the support of Russian technology transfers.[1] Lukashenko also stated that the Belarusian state-run Minsk Automobile Plant began producing components to support Russian KAMAZ (a Russian heavy-duty truck producer) products and expressed willingness to help Russia produce electronic components to substitute for lost Western imports.[2] Lukashenko additionally stated that Belarus is implementing 100 percent of unspecified defense and security cooperation agreements that Belarus and Russia agreed to “three months ago.”[3]

Additional Su-25s and truck parts are likely not critical material for the success of Russia’s long-term war effort. The Kremlin may commandeer Belarusian factories and retool them to produce critical materiel that the Russian military needs, Lukashenko’s statements notwithstanding. The Russians might also seek to repurpose Russian factories currently involved in or tooled for the production of Su-25s and trucks to produce more urgently needed materiel. ISW previously assessed that Russian forces began using Belarusian training grounds and trainers to train mobilized Russians to compensate for Russia‘s degraded training capacity.[4] The Kremlin appears to be similarly incorporating elements of Belarus’ DIB to augment Russian defense output as Putin seeks to reinvigorate Russia’s DIB to support a protracted war with Ukraine.[5]

Lukashenko confirmed that Belarus has implemented more Union State integration programs - marking progress in the Kremlin’s steady pressure campaign to formalize the Russian-Belarusian Union State across decades. Lukashenko stated on February 17 that Russia and Belarus implemented 80 percent of the 28 Union State programs including programs on customs and tax – a significant achievement in the Kremlin’s campaign to formalize the Union State.[6] Lukashenko has historically resisted implementing the Union State integration programs by stalling specifically on complex customs and tax harmonization issues since at least 2019.[7] Lukashenko’s statement that Belarus has finally ratified Union State programs on customs and tax issues therefore marks a significant Russian gain. Lukashenko stated that the remaining unimplemented Union State programs concern humanitarian issues.[8]

Lukashenko is likely paying for his rejection of Putin’s larger demand for Belarusian forces to join the invasion against Ukraine by making smaller concessions that he has stonewalled for years, as ISW assessed.[9] Lukashenko’s belated concessions and continued refusal to commit Belarusian forces to the Russian invasion indicate Lukashenko’s determination to keep Belarusian forces from directly participating in the Russian war.

The Kremlin’s gains in Belarus underscore that Putin’s imperialistic ambitions transcend Ukraine and that containing the Russian threat requires the West’s sustained attention. Putin will very likely make significant gains in restoring Russian suzerainty over Belarus regardless of the outcome of his invasion of Ukraine. ISW has long assessed that the West sometimes ignores Putin’s activities that appear trivial, but that seemingly trivial activities that fly under the radar are essential to Putin’s strategic gains in the long run.[10] Putin’s gains in Belarus indicate that he is reaping the benefits of such long-term campaigns. Russia and Belarus formed the Union State structure in 1999. The Kremlin significantly intensified its political and economic pressure campaigns to integrate Belarus through the Union State structure no later than 2019.[11] Putin and Lukashenko initially ratified the package of 28 Union State integration programs - which are now mostly implemented - in November 2021.[12] Western shortsightedness about the Kremlin’s slower-developing, long-term efforts helps enable Putin’s strategic advances.

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed the names of the commanders of Russia’s four military districts, finalizing a complete turnover of the Russian military’s initial command since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian MoD confirmed on February 17 that it appointed Lieutenant General Andrey Mordvichev as Central Military District (CMD) commander and that it had previously appointed Colonel General Sergey Kuzovlev as Southern Military District (SMD) commander, Lieutenant General Yevgeny Nikiforov as Western Military District (WMD) commander, and Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov as Eastern Military District (EMD) commander.[13] The Russian MoD confirmed ISW’s previous reporting that Muradov, Nikiforov, and Kuzovlev were the commanders of their respective military districts.[14] Mordvichev reportedly replaced Colonel General Aleksandr Lapin as CMD commander when the Russian military appointed Lapin the Chief of Staff of the Russian Ground Forces on January 10.[15] Lapin appears to be the only previous Russian military commander in Ukraine who retains a significant position at the MoD, as General Alexander Dvornikov, who was previously in charge of Russian forces in Ukraine, Colonel General Aleksandr Chaiko, the former Eastern Military District commander who oversaw the Russian military’s failed offensive to capture Kyiv, and initial WMD commander Colonel General Aleksandr Zhuravlev appear to hold no significant positions.

The formalization of military district commanders is likely part of an effort to distance the Russian military from past failures and to prepare the Russian military for a renewed large-scale offensive in Ukraine. The formalization of military district commanders also accompanies the MoD’s likely attempt to delineate clearer areas of responsibility for each military district in Ukraine. The appointment of these commanders does not represent the restoration of the pre-war MoD leadership bloc or an expansion of the ultranationalist siloviki faction’s power, despite reported connections that Nikiforov has to Wagner Financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and tenuous connections that Mordvichev may have with Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov.[16] The Kremlin likely appointed figures relatively neutral in the struggle between Wagner PMC financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin and the MoD to these positions to appease both parties while also likely setting up potential scapegoats for any future failures in Ukraine to protect recently appointed theater commander and Russian Chief of the General Staff, Army General Valery Gerasimov, from potential criticism.

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to be mounting an informational counteroffensive against the conventional Russian military establishment. Following a video posted on February 16 of Wagner Group troops stating that they have been cut off from artillery supplies Wagner fighters released another video on February 17 showing a room full of bodies of deceased Wagner fighters.[17] The fighter in the video claims that Wagner is losing hundreds of personnel a day because the Russian MoD is not providing them with the weapons, ammunition, and other supplies that they need.[18] Several Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels also amplified a #GiveShellstoWagner post that explicitly tags the Russian MoD and claims (falsely) that Wagner is the only formation currently advancing in Ukraine and that Wagner elements therefore need immediate support.[19] The escalation of Wagner’s direct accusations against the Russian MoD represents a new informational counteroffensive by Prigozhin that seeks to continue to undermine the Russian MoD and obscure Wagner’s attrition-based operational model by blaming the Russian MoD for its failures.

Prigozhin has likely launched an intensified informational campaign against the Russian MoD in response to the MoD’s likely role in barring the Wagner Group from continuing its prison recruitment campaign and Prigozhin’s overall declining influence.[20] Prigozhin‘s declining prominence and the end of the Wagner Group‘s prison recruitment campaign are likely constraining the Wagner Group‘s operational capabilities in Ukraine, and it appears that the MOD continues to sideline Wagner Group forces from decisive efforts.[21] Prigozhin appears to be courting ultranationalist figures, fellow siloviki such as Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov, and select Russian milbloggers to aid him in his effort to regain prominence but will likely find these figures’ support to be unreliable.[22] Prigozhin became such an influential figure in the pro-war ultranationalist community by directing veiled and outright criticism at the conventional Russian establishment and by promoting the Wagner Group as an elite force that could secure tactical gains that the regular Russian military could not.[23] Prigozhin will likely try to emulate this path to renewed prominence, but it is unclear if he will be able to do so.

Key Takeaways

  • The Kremlin will likely subsume elements of Belarus’ defense industrial base (DIB) as part of Moscow’s larger effort to reequip the Russian military to support a protracted war against Ukraine.
  • Lukashenko confirmed that Belarus has implemented more Union State integration programs - marking progress in the Kremlin’s decades-long pressure campaign to formalize the Russian-Belarusian Union State.
  • The Kremlin’s gains in Belarus underscore that Putin’s imperialistic ambitions transcend Ukraine and that containing the Russian threat requires the West’s sustained attention.
  • The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed the names of the four military district commanders, finalizing a complete turnover of the Russian military’s initial command since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
  • Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to be mounting an informational counteroffensive against the conventional Russian military establishment.
  • Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
  • Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut, in the Donetsk City-Avdiivka area, and in western Donetsk Oblast.
  • Russian and Ukrainian military activity near Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast indicates that Russian forces are likely deployed to positions close bank of the Dnipro River.
  • The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) reported that Russian forces have likely suffered up to 200,000 casualties since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a variety of laws on February 17 to integrate occupied territories into Russian legal, economic, and administrative structures.


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.

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

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1- Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and continue offensive operations into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line on February 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attacked near Hrianykivka (55km northwest of Svatove), Synkivka (45km northwest of Svatove), and Stelmakhivka (15km northwest of Svatove). One Russian source claimed that Russian forces took full control of Hrianykivka, while other sources stated that fighting is ongoing near the settlement and that Russian forces took control of unspecified positions in the Kupyansk area about 45km northwest of Svatove.[24] A Russian milblogger emphasized that Ukrainian forces northwest of Svatove in the Kupyansk area are focusing on defensive preparations for Russian offensive actions and predicted that Russian forces may attack towards Lyman Pershyi and Vilshana, both about 45km northwest of Svatove.[25] Russian forces also continued offensive operations around Kreminna on February 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported Russian ground attacks near Kreminna itself and near Dibrova (5km southwest of Kreminna) and Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna).[26] Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai remarked that Russian forces have concentrated all of their efforts on the Kreminna area.[27] Russian milbloggers reported positional battles along the Balka Zhuravka gully west of Kreminna, near Yampolivka (17km west of Kreminna), and in the Serebrianska forest area (8km south of Kreminna).[28] One Russian milblogger also claimed that Ukrainian forces are bracing themselves for a Russian offensive in Siversk, 20km southwest of Kreminna.[29]


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

Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut on February 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults on Bakhmut itself and near Fedorivka (20km north of Bakhmut), Rozdolivka (19km northeast of Bakhmut), Paraskoviivka (9km north of Bakhmut), and Ivanivske (5km west of Bakhmut).[30] Geolocated footage published on February 17 of a Ukrainian armored fighting vehicle firing at Russian positions in northeastern Bakhmut shows Russian forces have made minor advances toward Bakhmut’s city center.[31] Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner assault detachments advanced into Paraskoviivka from three sides on the night of February 16 and are engaging in heavy fighting around the settlement.[32] Russian milbloggers offered conflicting claims on Wagner Group positions near Ivanivske. One milblogger claimed that Wagner forces advanced to the outskirts of Ivanivske, while another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces pushed Wagner forces away from the highway.[33]

Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area on February 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults along the outskirts of Donetsk City near Sieverne and Vodyane (on the northwest outskirts) and Marinka and Novomykhailivka (on the southwestern outskirts).[34] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted ground attacks on Vodyane, Novomykhailivka, and Pervomaiske (on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk city).[35] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces expanded their control within Marinka and pushed Ukrainian troops out of unspecified lines.[36]

Russian forces continued ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on February 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City).[37] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted ground attacks near Novosilka (65km southwest of Donetsk City) and Prechystivka (35km southwest of Donetsk City) and attempted to advance south and east of Vuhledar.[38]


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

Russian and Ukrainian military activity near Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast indicates that Russian forces are likely deployed to positions close to the bank of the Dnipro River. Geolocated footage published on February 17 shows Ukrainian forces striking a Russian tank under a bridge near the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station.[39] A Russian milblogger amplified footage on February 17 showing Russian forces launching an anti-tank guided missile from a position at the Nova Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station and striking reported Ukrainian positions in Vesele (on the west bank of the Dnipro River) on an unspecified date.[40]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a drone attack against Crimea on February 17. Sevastopol occupation head Mikhail Razvozhaev claimed that Russian air defenses shot down a Ukrainian drone near the Balaklava Thermal Power Plant in the vicinity of Sevastopol, Crimea.[41]

Russian forces continued routine fire west of Hulyaipole and in Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts on February 17.[42] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces struck Kherson City and its suburbs.[43] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces are conducting drone reconnaissance and isolated strikes with loitering munitions in Kherson Oblast.[44]

Ukrainian forces continue to strike Russian logistics on the east (left) bank in Kherson Oblast. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces conducted airstrikes on Russian military concentration areas in Hola Prystan and Pishchanivk and destroyed five ammunition depots and an observation post in Kherson Oblast, some of which were on islands close to the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River.[45]



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

The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) reported that Russian forces have likely suffered up to 200,000 casualties since the start of its invasion of Ukraine.[46] The UK MoD reported on February 17 that Russian military servicemembers and paramilitary company personnel have suffered 175,000 to 200,000 causalities in Ukraine, with 40,000 to 60,000 of those killed.[47] The UK MoD reported that Wagner Group fighters have likely experienced a casualty rate of up to 50 percent and that the Russian military’s casualty rate has significantly increased since the start of partial mobilization in September 2022.[48] Western officials reported on February 2 that Russian forces sustained almost 200,000 casualties since the beginning of the invasion.[49] Many more Russian forces may have died in Ukraine than the UK MoD suggests, as independent Russian outlet Meduza recently reported that over 32,000 Wagner Group convict recruits alone are dead or missing.[50] The high Russian casualty rate, especially the high ratio of deaths to injuries, continues to have deleterious effects on the Russian military's combat effectiveness and is likely prompting Russian officials to continue crypto-mobilization efforts.

Russian sources amplified advertisements for a Donetsk People‘s Republic (DNR) effort to train commanders, possibly in support of efforts to integrate ad-hoc DNR formations into the Russian Armed Forces. The advertisement calls for candidates to enter the Donetsk Higher Combined Arms Command School to acquire the necessary skills to fill command positions for motorized rifle platoons.[51] The DNR People’s Militia may have started this effort because of significant losses among its cadre of commanders as well as to support ongoing efforts to integrate ad-hoc DNR formations into traditional Russian military formations.[52] Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu previously proposed the creation of new mechanized maneuver divisions, and the DNR People’s Militia may be training commanders for motorized rifle platoons as part of an effort to form new Russian military formations partially from existing DNR formations. ISW previously reported that the reported subordination of Russian mobilized personnel to DNR units resulted in widespread discontent, and a Russian source claimed on February 17 that the Russian military transferred these mobilized personnel to conventional Russian formations following their publicized complaints.[53] ISW assesses that efforts to integrate existing ad hoc DNR formations rapidly into conventional Russian military formations will likely produce integrated units with command-and-control issues and degraded combat effectiveness.

Russian officials reportedly continue measures to support the Russian MoD’s crypto-mobilization effort while also trying to assuage domestic discontent over mobilization. Russian sources claimed on February 15 that universities in Tomsk and Novosibirsk cities are preparing lists of students to be mobilized and issuing mobilization orders to students.[54] Another Russian source claimed that the Omsk City draft commission ruled in favor of a lawsuit delaying the mobilization of 2,608 residents working in 12 non-defense-related companies.[55] A Russian source reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree extending social support to all widows and widowers of combat veterans.[56] Russian officials will likely continue piecemeal efforts to grant benefits to Russian servicemembers and mobilize further personnel through crypto-mobilization measures as the Kremlin continues to avoid starting a second mobilization wave.

An investigative report shows that the Russian military likely relied on a Russian subsidiary of the French firm Auchan for the basic provisioning of Russian forces in Ukraine. Russian opposition outlet The Insider published a report jointly with French outlet Le Monde and Dutch-based open-source group Bellingcat on February 17 detailing how the Russian subsidiary of Auchan collected basic goods in Russian stores under the guise of “humanitarian aid” drives and sent them to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.[57] Russian officials reportedly directly organized deliveries from some Auchan stores in Russia to the Russian military.[58] Auchan stores also reportedly aided Russian military recruitment offices in recruiting mobilized personnel from among their employees following the start of partial mobilization.[59]

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a variety of laws on February 17 to integrate occupied territories into the Russian legal, economic, and administrative structures.[60] Putin signed decrees establishing sick leave, maternity and child care benefits, and support for veterans and disabled persons in occupied territories.[61] Putin also ordered that those seeking pensions in occupied territories submit applications with the appropriate documents, noting that applicants will not be required to translate their application portfolios into Russian.[62] Putin’s decree established a transitional period until 2027, during which time the retirement age in occupied territories will rise from 60 years old to 65 years old, the latter of which is the legal age for retirement in Russia.[63] The mandate allows those receiving pensions in accordance with Ukraine’s retirement age will maintain the right to regional payments.[64] Russian officials will likely continue efforts to increase the legal integration of occupied areas into the Russian system by passing such decrees, which will streamline occupational control of occupied Ukraine.

Russian officials and occupation authorities continued efforts to integrate schools in occupied territories into the Russian education apparatus. Putin also signed a law on February 17 to recognize academic degrees and titles achieved in occupied territories as legitimate in Russia.[65] Putin’s decree will not require teachers in occupied territories to obtain certification until September 1, 2024, and that education and scientific organizations in occupied territories must operate in accordance with Russian legislation.[66] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation deputy Vladimir Rogov claimed on February 17 that Russian universities in Rostov, Volograd, and Voronezh Oblasts will increase the number of state-funded seats for residents of occupied territories.[67] Rogov noted that students must pass Russia’s Unified State Exam, a series of exams Russian high-school students must pass to enter college or university.[68]

Russian officials and occupation authorities continue to exploit assets from captured Ukrainian cities for economic and military benefits, intensifying the process of institutionalized corruption in occupied territories. Kherson Occupation Head Vladimir Saldo stated on February 17 that the Russian Commission of the State Council for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises met in Moscow to discuss the development of small- and medium-sized businesses in occupied Kherson Oblast.[69] Saldo stated that the Commission discussed a number of potential support measures for occupied Kherson Oblast, including closing criminal cases of economic crimes initiated before the illegal annexation of occupied Kherson Oblast into Russia.[70] Saldo stated that the Commission also discussed organizing small-business development institutions in all regions, providing immediate preferential agricultural machinery lease programs, and carrying out explanatory work on the adaptation of small businesses to Russian legislation.[71]

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

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

See the topline text.

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

[1] https://president.gov dot by/ru/events/peregovory-s-prezidentom-rossii-vladimirom-putinym-1676619522; http://kremlin doc ru/events/president/news/70530

[2] https://president.gov dot by/ru/events/peregovory-s-prezidentom-rossii-vladimirom-putinym-1676619522; http://kremlin doc ru/events/president/news/70530

[3] https://president.gov dot by/ru/events/peregovory-s-prezidentom-rossii-vladimirom-putinym-1676619522; http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70530

[6] https://president.gov dot by/ru/events/peregovory-s-prezidentom-rossii-vladimirom-putinym-1676619522; http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70530

[8] https://president.gov dot by/ru/events/peregovory-s-prezidentom-rossii-vladimirom-putinym-1676619522; http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70530

[13] https://ria dot ru/20230217/komanduyuschie-1852680114 dot html; https://tass%20dot%20com/defense/1577923

[15] https://ria dot ru/20230217/komanduyuschie-1852680114 dot html;

[17] **GRAPHIC** https://t.me/razgruzka_vagnera/10

[18] **GRAPHIC** https://t.me/razgruzka_vagnera/10

[50] https://meduz dot io/news/2023/01/23/rus-sidyaschaya-iz-50-tysyach-zaklyuchennyh-zaverbovannyh-chvk-vagnera-na-fronte-ostalis-tolko-10-tysyach-ostalnye-libo-pogibli-libo-dezertirovali

[54] https://activatica dot org/content/eab70ce5-16e1-4d2f-82fd-27c069665f0e/v-novosiberske-ishut-studentov-dlya-raznosa-povestok-o-mobilizacii; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-feb-15-16 ; https://t.me/mob...

[57] https://theins doc ru/politika/259454

[58] https://theins doc ru/politika/259454

[59] https://theins doc ru/politika/259454

[60] http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170006http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170007http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170004http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170003http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170005https://t.me/pushilindenis/3190

[61] http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170006http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170007http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170004http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170003http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170005https://t.me/pushilindenis/3190

[62] http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170006http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170007http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170004http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170003http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170005https://t.me/pushilindenis/3190

[63] http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170006http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170007http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170004http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170003http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170005https://t.me/pushilindenis/3190

[64] http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170006http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170007http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170004http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170003http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170005https://t.me/pushilindenis/3190

[65] http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170006http://duma dot gov.ru/news/56425/

[66] http://publication dot pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302170006

[71] https://t.me/SALDO_VGA/405; https://khogov dot ru/press-center-news/%d0%b2%d0%be%d0%bf%d1%80%d0%be%d1%81%d1%8b-%d1%80%d0%b0%d0%b7%d0%b2%d0%b8%d1%82%d0%b8%d1%8f-%d0%bc%d0%b0%d0%bb%d0%be%d0%b3%d0%be-%d0%b8-%d1%81%d1%80%d0%b5%d0%b4%d0%bd%d0%b5%d0%b3%d0%be-%d0%b1%d0%b8/

understandingwar.org





2. US reaction to balloon ‘absurd and hysterical’, says top Chinese diplomat



Excerpts:

Wang also said China was preparing to table a position paper on Ukraine that would underline the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty. It would also state that nuclear war must never be fought, but Wang said that hyping security threats elevated the risk of miscalculation. He said China opposed the cold-war mentality and blocs.
The paper would say “legitimate security concerns had to be taken seriously”, he said, in a reference to Moscow’s concerns about the possible expansion of Nato into neighbouring Ukraine.
Wang accused unnamed forces of being responsible for cutting short previous negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, suggesting those forces had deeper motives than protecting Ukraine.
The US in particular has been pressing China to withdraw, or at least make conditional, its support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, saying the invasion is a clear violation of the principles of the UN charter on which China set such store.


US reaction to balloon ‘absurd and hysterical’, says top Chinese diplomat

Wang Yi also says China is preparing to outline position on Russian war against Ukraine

The Guardian · by Patrick Wintour · February 18, 2023

China’s most senior diplomat has described the shooting down of a balloon by the US as “absurd and hysterical”, as well as an abuse of the use of force.

Speaking on stage at the Munich security conference on Saturday, Wang Yi said: “It does not show the US is strong; on the contrary it shows it is weak”. The foreign affairs director said he believed the shooting down was part of an attempt to divert attention from the domestic problems of the Biden administration.

He asked the US: “There are many balloons in the sky. Do you want to down each and every one of them?”

China has insisted the balloon was a civilian non-military instrument that had been blown off course.

Beware: we could be entering a dangerous new era of US-China relations | Christopher S Chivvis

Read more

Wang also said China was preparing to table a position paper on Ukraine that would underline the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty. It would also state that nuclear war must never be fought, but Wang said that hyping security threats elevated the risk of miscalculation. He said China opposed the cold-war mentality and blocs.

The paper would say “legitimate security concerns had to be taken seriously”, he said, in a reference to Moscow’s concerns about the possible expansion of Nato into neighbouring Ukraine.

Wang accused unnamed forces of being responsible for cutting short previous negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, suggesting those forces had deeper motives than protecting Ukraine.

The US in particular has been pressing China to withdraw, or at least make conditional, its support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, saying the invasion is a clear violation of the principles of the UN charter on which China set such store.

China has refused to impose sanctions on Russia, and is increasingly becoming one of the primary consumers of Russian energy, something that helps Moscow fund its weapons production. Wang insisted China was deeply concerned by the length of the war, adding: “We do not sit idly by. We do not add fuel to the fire. We stand on the side of peace and dialogue.”

He hinted at the possibility of weaning Europe away from the US position on Ukraine. “Our friends in Europe should think calmly about how to bring peace in [Ukraine] and how to manifest its strategic autonomy.”

Wang also criticised the US ban on exporting microchip technology to China, describing it as “100% protectionism, 100% selfish, 100% unilateralism”. It was in clear breach of the World Trade Organization rules and could not be further away from fair competition, he said.

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Asked if he could reassure the audience that an attack on Taiwan was not imminent, he declined, saying Taiwan was part of Chinese territory. “It has never been a country and it will not be a country in the future,” he said, and warned against outside interference in Taiwan.

“Any increase in China’s strength is an increase in the hope of peace for humanity,” he said.

The uncompromising tone of the diplomat’s remarks left in the balance the possibility of a meeting between Wang and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on the sidelines of the conference. A meeting planned for earlier this month between the senior diplomats was cancelled in the wake of the balloon incident, and talks have been under way to see if there is a basis for the meeting to be rescheduled.

Wang has met the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, at the conference and he spoke with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris.

The Guardian · by Patrick Wintour · February 18, 2023



3. Russia’s emerging new offensive in Ukraine, explained by an expert


Excerpts:

Michael Bluhm
Does either side have the upper hand?
Robert Hamilton
I don’t think either side has the upper hand. I’m not sure either side has the capacity to achieve a military victory in the near or medium term — months and maybe even a couple years. It’s unlikely that either side can achieve a conventional military victory and control all of Ukraine inside its internationally recognized borders.
Achieving military victory requires the other side to agree that you have achieved a military victory and stop fighting. In this war, both sides have ways to continue fighting, even if they’re defeated conventionally. If the Russians were able to win conventionally, for instance, you would see an insurgency break out that the Russians would struggle to handle. If the Ukrainians were able to win, then the Russians could undertake airstrikes and ballistic-missile strikes. They have nuclear capability.
We’ve entered a period where things are not frozen, but neither side is likely to have the kind of victory that would put the end of the war within sight.
...
Michael Bluhm
Ever since Russia performed so poorly at the start of the war, there has been a lot of reporting about the weak state of the Russian military. How would you evaluate its condition now?
Robert Hamilton
That’s a great question. The Russian military has probably lost the capability to do a combined-arms, operational-maneuver offensive — that means armored and mechanized forces exploiting a breakthrough, supported by infantry, reconnaissance to the front and to the flanks, and long-range artillery fire to reduce enemy points of strength before the armored and mechanized forces hit.
They weren’t able to do that in the beginning of the war, but the Russian military is learning through this war. It has learned how to do certain things, but I don’t think a combined-arms offensive maneuver is one of them.
You have to have knowledge of how to fight, equipment, soldiers, leaders, and logistics. Logistics is a massive shortcoming of the Russians. It has been since the start of the war. They’re very tied to railroads. They’re heavily dependent on artillery, which requires a massive amount of cargo-carrying capacity because artillery shells take up a lot of room.
All this means that they don’t have the capacity to logistically support a big offensive breakthrough, even if they had the capability in knowledge, equipment, and leadership. They couldn’t logistically support a drive deep into Ukraine. It’s impossible.


Russia’s emerging new offensive in Ukraine, explained by an expert

Putin’s new offensive is now underway. Can Ukraine withstand the Russian assault?

By Michael Bluhm  Feb 17, 2023, 7:00am EST

Vox · by Michael Bluhm · February 17, 2023

Ukrainian soldiers look toward Russian positions while atop an anti-aircraft gun on February 14, 2023, near Bakhmut, Ukraine.John Moore/Getty Images

The war in Ukraine may be entering a critical new phase with the launch of a major offensive by Vladimir Putin’s armies.

For weeks, reports from the ground have been spreading about an imminent Russian offensive, as Moscow shipped troops and materiel to Ukraine. And in the past few days, fighting has intensified, as Putin’s forces have launched a wave of attacks on the ground and in the air in the hope of breaking through Ukrainian lines.

What do we know about the offensive so far? What are Russia’s plans and goals? How strong are the countries’ respective militaries now? And what does this push from Russia mean as the war approaches its first anniversary?

To answer these questions and others, I spoke with Robert Hamilton, a research professor at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. Hamilton is a retired colonel and 30-year veteran of the US Army, and he now analyzes conflict and security issues in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

A transcript of our conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.

Michael Bluhm

Where do things stand on the ground in Ukraine now?

Robert Hamilton

We’ve been in a period of stalemate since early fall. There haven’t been dramatic territorial gains by either side.

Offensive maneuvers get more difficult in the late fall when the rains come, and things repeatedly freeze and thaw. The ground and the roads get hard to maneuver on.

The lines have moved hundreds of meters in one direction or another, mostly in the central Donbas region, which includes the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

There’s been very little movement in the north on the Kharkiv front or in the south around Kherson since the big Ukrainian territorial gains last fall in the north and smaller but significant gains in the south.

Michael Bluhm

Does either side have the upper hand?

Robert Hamilton

I don’t think either side has the upper hand. I’m not sure either side has the capacity to achieve a military victory in the near or medium term — months and maybe even a couple years. It’s unlikely that either side can achieve a conventional military victory and control all of Ukraine inside its internationally recognized borders.

Achieving military victory requires the other side to agree that you have achieved a military victory and stop fighting. In this war, both sides have ways to continue fighting, even if they’re defeated conventionally. If the Russians were able to win conventionally, for instance, you would see an insurgency break out that the Russians would struggle to handle. If the Ukrainians were able to win, then the Russians could undertake airstrikes and ballistic-missile strikes. They have nuclear capability.

We’ve entered a period where things are not frozen, but neither side is likely to have the kind of victory that would put the end of the war within sight.

Michael Bluhm

What’s happening with the Russian offensive?

Robert Hamilton

The big Russian winter offensive that Ukrainians have been warning about has been underway for about two weeks.

This is partially if not largely the Wagner Group doing this — the Russian mercenary organization that recruited extensively from Russian prisons last summer and fall. They’re using these former prisoners on the front lines in the central Donbas in human-wave attacks. They’re poorly trained, poorly armed, and poorly led — if they’re led at all — and they’re pushed forward to the Ukrainian lines. And the Ukrainians are mowing these guys down.

Wagner is using these human-wave attacks to find the stronger and weaker points in the Ukrainian lines. Then the Russian army — again, the Wagner group, mostly — is sending in better-trained, better-equipped, and better-led Wagner forces to exploit the weaker areas.

It’s working — but very slowly and at an incredibly high cost. Russian casualty figures are around 5,000 a week. Those casualty figures can’t be sustainable over the long term. It seems like these human-wave attacks are the first stage of the big Russian winter offensive.

The Russians are gaining tens to hundreds of meters a day along the front line in the central part of the Donbas region, but I don’t see that it could lead to a major breakthrough, and I don’t see that it’s sustainable over the long term.

Michael Bluhm

Where exactly is the offensive taking place?

Robert Hamilton

It looks like it’s confined to that central part of the Donbas. There was some talk very early in the winter that there would be another drive on Kyiv out of Belarus. I’ve seen nothing that points to that. It comes down to what the Russians are capable of.

#Ukraine likely still has a window of opportunity to initiate large-scale counteroffensives over the next few months. Its ability to do so likely rests heavily on the speed and scale at which the West provides it the necessary materiel, particularly tanks & armored vehicles. https://t.co/PEXljB8XXw
— ISW (@TheStudyofWar) February 16, 2023

The Russians are gaining territory along the lines around the city of Bakhmut, which has been in the news a lot because it has become a focal point for both sides. Strategically, it’s neither negligible nor significant. It allows access to larger cities farther west in the Donbas, such as Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which are more important.

Bakhmut has huge symbolic significance for both sides. The Russians have been unable to take it for several months, and both sides have pushed more and more forces into the area. Ukraine is determined to hold it, just to deny the Russians the PR victory of saying that they captured it.

Michael Bluhm

What comes next?

Robert Hamilton

I don’t know. The Russian Defense Ministry had a partial mobilization of 300,000 persons last summer. A lot of reports say the number of recruits was closer to 180,000 to 200,000. We don’t know how many of them have been sent to Ukraine.

For the follow-up attacks, you need mobile forces: tanks, armored personnel carriers, and mobile artillery. But they lack leadership. So many capable Russian military leaders have been killed that there are not a lot of capable people with combat experience who can lead these units.

I don’t know how Russia is going to follow up these gains with armored and mechanized maneuver forces. I don’t see the potential for the Russians to be able to do that on a large scale.

Michael Bluhm

Ever since Russia performed so poorly at the start of the war, there has been a lot of reporting about the weak state of the Russian military. How would you evaluate its condition now?

Robert Hamilton

That’s a great question. The Russian military has probably lost the capability to do a combined-arms, operational-maneuver offensive — that means armored and mechanized forces exploiting a breakthrough, supported by infantry, reconnaissance to the front and to the flanks, and long-range artillery fire to reduce enemy points of strength before the armored and mechanized forces hit.

They weren’t able to do that in the beginning of the war, but the Russian military is learning through this war. It has learned how to do certain things, but I don’t think a combined-arms offensive maneuver is one of them.

You have to have knowledge of how to fight, equipment, soldiers, leaders, and logistics. Logistics is a massive shortcoming of the Russians. It has been since the start of the war. They’re very tied to railroads. They’re heavily dependent on artillery, which requires a massive amount of cargo-carrying capacity because artillery shells take up a lot of room.

All this means that they don’t have the capacity to logistically support a big offensive breakthrough, even if they had the capability in knowledge, equipment, and leadership. They couldn’t logistically support a drive deep into Ukraine. It’s impossible.

Michael Bluhm

At the beginning of the war, the West implemented stringent economic sanctions on Russia. Russia has still been able to sell oil and natural gas, though at lower volumes than before the war. How are the problems in Russia’s economy affecting its ability to fight the war?

Robert Hamilton

The Russian economy has proven to be a little more sanctions-proof and resilient than a lot of people expected.

The sanctions impacted the military most on the very high-end semiconductor chips required for precision weapons. Before the sanctions, Russia had been able to get these chips. But those sanctions appear to be airtight. No one but Taiwan, the Netherlands, and the US can make those chips.

As the Russians draw down their stocks of precision long-range missiles, they’re not able to replenish them. They could use lower-end semiconductors, but then the weapon is not as precise. For months, the Russians have been using S300 surface-to-air missiles in surface-to-surface mode, which means they’re using missiles meant to knock down airplanes to attack ground targets because they’re running out of precision surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.

Michael Bluhm

What are Putin’s goals for the offensive?

Robert Hamilton

For his domestic population, I think Putin would consider victory to be Russian control of all four provinces that he annexed last summer. I don’t know if that ends the war for him. Given how poorly the Russian military has performed to this point, I think that would count as something Putin could go back to the Russian people with and call a victory.

Many reports say that Putin has ordered Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces by the spring. What they’re doing on the ground implies that they have some objective of moving the lines to the administrative borders of those two regions. Then they can declare a success in the war, if not victory.

Michael Bluhm

Are there other outcomes that Putin could sell as a win?

Robert Hamilton

Capturing Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, in central Donbas. In 2014, those two cities were briefly under Russian separatist control. The Ukrainian military then came in and liberated them. Those two cities are important — they have a lot more military-strategic importance than Bakhmut. They’re bigger, and they’re more important symbolically.

Michael Bluhm

What is the condition of the Ukrainian military?

Robert Hamilton

One of the most interesting things about this war is we have a better understanding of the state of the Russian military now than we do of the state of the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainians have been very tight-lipped with their operational security. They tell us only what we need to know to help them. We don’t have a good understanding of their casualty rates.

The leadership style of Ukrainian armed forces surprised a lot of people. It was able to fight in a decentralized, less hierarchical model, where initiative is rewarded and small-unit leaders understand their commander’s intent and make decisions without asking for permission to take every step.

The Ukrainian military is battered, but its morale is unbroken, and its leadership is still mostly alive and very effective. They captured much Russian equipment early in the war; they don’t have a problem with the amount of equipment. Western equipment, then, has been important to Ukraine not in terms of numbers but in raising their capabilities.

Ukraine is in a better position with equipment than Russia — and will be in a better position as Western equipment continues to arrive.

Michael Bluhm

What are Ukraine’s goals in the short term?

Robert Hamilton

There’s no appetite for a diplomatic settlement. They believe that the deal they’ll get through fighting is better than the deal they’ll get through negotiation.

Ukrainians think — correctly, in my view — that they’re having success on the battlefield, and more Western aid and equipment is coming. What’s the point of giving Putin a diplomatic victory now when you’re more likely to have greater success later through military means?

Michael Bluhm

There has been some public debate about Ukraine’s strategy for responding to Russia’s offensive. Some say Ukraine should be patient, try to let Russia wear itself out attacking, and then counter-attack. Others say Ukraine should push back the Russians now as strongly as they can. What do you think they will do, and what do you think they should do?

Robert Hamilton

The former option is likelier and wiser. The Russians are expending a lot of manpower and resources on attacks that are gaining tens to hundreds of meters of front-line territory a day.

Russia is expending a lot of energy and resources — and losing a lot of capability in this grinding, attritional offensive underway now. I think they should let Russia continue to expend energy, capability, and resources in ways that don’t do the Ukrainian military a whole lot of damage in operational or strategic capability.

The Ukrainians may end up having to abandon Bakhmut. They’ll fall back to their defensive line around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. They’re well dug in there. Their military headquarters were there before the war. They’ve been fighting there since 2014; they know the area very well.

It’s going to be months before the capabilities that the West is offering are integrated into the Ukrainian forces. Their moment of peak capability will come in the mid to late summer, which is a good time for an offensive. The Russians may expend so many resources that they’ll be incapable of further decisive offensive operations right when the Ukrainians reach the peak of their capability.

Michael Bluhm

What do you see as the most likely outcomes of the Russian offensive?

Robert Hamilton

The most likely scenario is the Russian offensive will continue in a similar fashion to these last two weeks. It may gain more ground, but I don’t see a massive breakthrough where Ukrainian lines dissolve and the Russians drive deep into central Ukraine. I don’t think they have the capacity to do it.

The attritional offensive will stall out, and then you’re likely to see a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer or early fall that won’t have the capability to end the war. Unless the Russian army dissolves and leaves the battlefield, I don’t think the Ukrainians have the capability to end the war by regaining all Ukrainian territory inside its internationally recognized borders.

Michael Bluhm is a senior editor at the Signal. He was previously the managing editor at the Open Markets Institute and a writer and editor for the Daily Star in Beirut.

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Vox · by Michael Bluhm · February 17, 2023



4. US Grid Is A Magnet For Terrorists: How Can We Solve This?



Apply CARVER and see why the grid makes an important target.

https://sofrep.com/gear/green-berets-and-the-carver-matrix/

US Grid Is A Magnet For Terrorists: How Can We Solve This?

Forbes · by Ariel Cohen · February 17, 2023

This stock image shows multiple power lines on overhead towers.

Getty Images

Many people take the security of our national grid for granted. They should not.

Since the days of the Soviet threat during the Cold War, the US grid was in the scope of foreign militaries. In addition to China and Russia, Iran and North Korea drew contingency plans to destroy our sources of electricity. Yet, it is not only foreign governments that target our electric lifelines.

Recently an avowed Neo-nazi and Atomwaffen founder Brandon Russel was charged after an attack on electrical substations near Baltimore in an attempt to destroy the city’s power grid and further their racist mission. Their hope? A blackout would start a “race war”. Repugnant, deluded, or otherwise, he is not the first one to identify civilian energy infrastructure as an easy target to attack for advancing political or financial aims. Energy infrastructure is ubiquitous and vulnerable, and its disruption offers immediate and tangible results to the perpetrators. This vulnerability means we should expect more similar attacks.

... [+]Karl B DeBlaker/AP

Brandon Russel’s case is not isolated. Other prominent incidents include the gunfire attack in North Carolina on electrical substations which left thousands of households and businesses without power for several days last December. Investigators found gates were broken and evidence of gunfire damage to equipment at two substations in the county.

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The US government already issued emergency legislation in May 2021 after Colonial Pipeline was hit by a ransomware cyber-attack. The FBI officially confirmed that the ransomware attack was caused by a cyber-criminal gang called DarkSide (believed to be based in Russia and its former Soviet states), who infiltrated Colonial's network and locked the data on some computers and servers. The pipeline carries 45% of the East Coast's supply of diesel, petrol, and jet fuel. Domestic prices for regular unleaded gasoline immediately rose six cents per gallon during that week to $2.967 per gallon.

The grid will be more important as EVs proliferate. If the grid is brought down, mobility would disrupt, halting commutes and delivery of goods and services. We cannot afford enemies, foreign or domestic, to bring us to our knees by bringing our grid down.

... [+]Getty Images

Geopolitical and not just subversive or economic motives also often motivate attacks on energy infrastructure. One need only look at the intentional multibillion-dollar damage done by Russian military attacks on Ukraine's power stations, transformers, and grid. In a tragically common story, last week Russia unleashed a new wave of missile strikes on energy infrastructure across Ukraine, causing power outages and restricting water supplies. Missiles hit the critical city of Zaporizhzhia, where Europe's largest nuclear power plant is located, increasing the risk of a catastrophic accident that could compromise the nuclear plant's safety systems.

The simultaneous vulnerability and centrality of energy infrastructure make it too tempting a target for state or non-state actors not to target. The stresses of changing geopolitical, meteorological, and cyber events in conjunction with frequently delayed maintenance make these networks even weaker.

Green energy’s rise and reliance on large-volume energy storage and transfers will only amplify these vulnerabilities as time goes on. Disregarding all other logistical, financial, or technological constraints, consider the chokepoints for power lines for a series of conventional energy plants versus a massive solar panel farm in the Nevada desert. By virtue of this hypothetical project’s location and delivery requirements, it would have only a few chokepoints distributing huge loads of energy over long distances vulnerable to sabotage.

While companies such as Brookfield Renewable (BEP) and Xcel Energy (XEL) join established companies such as Tesla or General Electric in addressing grid vulnerabilities, the investment will remain a trickle until either prospective profit increase or government support arrives. In the former case, it will likely be only at a point of a dire crisis, as companies do little preventative work.

A closer look at the US national grid reveals that it is currently made up of many geographically diffused power generators (nuclear reactors, dams, coal and gas thermal plants, solar parks, wind turbines, etc…) with more than five million miles of power lines carrying electricity all over the U.S. The grid’s increasing interconnectivity combined with generation centralization is increasing vulnerability while decreasing grid redundancy and resiliency. This invites sabotage.

... [+]AFP via Getty Images

The US grid continues to deteriorate and grid failures are becoming more and more common. Green energy transformation is an argument for increasing grid resiliency and redundancy. The grid failures in neglected regions, like California, are widely known and reported. US municipalities and utilities such as AEP Texas Central Company, Central Maine Power, and Florida Power and Light Co. need to ramp up their energy grid maintenance. This needs to be augmented with the wholesale integration of high-volume batteries (when technology makes them economical) and an increase in the number of high-volume cross-regional transfer lines.

The regionalized grid system in the US will likely have to become interconnected to accommodate increased volumes of green energy, further underscoring the necessity of these grid-wide changes. Currently, the US is lacking in every department. Even if we find a carbon-free panacea for all energy generation tomorrow, we would be unable to use it due to the early 20th-century grid’s deficiencies.

Long-term moves towards resiliency may do little to stop immediate Brandon Russells imitators, but it will help stop the next generation of would-be domestic terrorists. A recent Department of Homeland Security intelligence briefing suggests that “domestic violent extremists will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure in the United States”. There are two ways to combat this. The first would be the impractical physical securitization of every piece of energy infrastructure in the United States, covering millions of miles and hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment.

The second is to build up cyber security, grid resiliency, and grid redundancy through responsible private/public partnership, investment, and public works. And while we are at it, we need to harden the grid against Electro-Magnetic Pulses (EMP) – the massive surge of magnetic energy that often disrupts electric infrastructure and electronics when released through nuclear blasts and possibly other manmade means.

Existing investment through the Department of Energy’s TRAC program is a good start, but nowhere near enough. Investing in the next generation of power lines and energy transformers is just as important as solar panels or electric vehicles. Aiding the green energy transformation, deterring domestic terrorism, and protection against EMP intersect so neatly upon one policy solution: investing in a 21st century safe and secure US power grid.

Forbes · by Ariel Cohen · February 17, 2023


5. S. Korea, U.S. to hold 'Freedom Shield' exercise next month


I suppose Freedom Shield is the name for Key Resolve and Foal Eagle.


S. Korea, U.S. to hold 'Freedom Shield' exercise next month | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 송상호 · February 17, 2023

SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and the United States will hold a regular springtime combined military exercise next month under "realistic" scenarios reflecting North Korea's nuclear and other threats, Seoul's defense ministry said Friday.

In a briefing to the National Assembly's defense committee, the ministry said the 11-day Freedom Shield (FS) exercise is scheduled to proceed without a break, alongside concurrent large-scale field drills, including the Ssangyong amphibious landing exercise. It is to be preceded by a four-day crisis management exercise.

The exercise is aimed at ensuring the allies' joint crisis management capabilities to deter war and defuse any security crisis, and practicing operational command and war execution procedures under a combined defense construct, the ministry said in a press release.

The allies plan to apply "realistic" scenarios reflecting the North's rhetorical threats and potential challenges from its reservist forces based on lessons drawn from the ongoing war in Ukraine, according to the ministry.

In the briefing, the ministry pointed out that there is still a possibility of Pyongyang conducting what would be its seventh nuclear test as the regime focuses on increasing the quantity of its nuclear force and advancing related technologies.

The ministry also raised the possibility that the North would engage in various "tactical and strategic" provocations in order to "drive a wedge between the South and the United States and sow division among South Koreans."


This file photo, released Aug. 23, 2022, shows South Korean and U.S. troops engaging in a combined military exercise at a wartime command bunker, called CP-TANGO. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

sshluck@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 송상호 · February 17, 2023



6. In wake of Ukraine war, U.S. and allies are hunting down Russian spies



(And I hope Chinese, Iranian, and north Korean spies as well).


In wake of Ukraine war, U.S. and allies are hunting down Russian spies

Officials caution that Russia retains significant capabilities despite exposure of multiple operatives in Europe

By Greg MillerSouad MekhennetEmily Rauhala and  Shane Harris 

February 17, 2023 at 1:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Greg Miller · February 17, 2023

Among the slumbering passengers on an overnight flight from Miami to Munich last month were two travelers on opposing sides of an espionage takedown.

In one seat was a German citizen who would be arrested upon arrival and charged with treason for helping Russia recruit and run a Kremlin mole in the upper ranks of Germany’s intelligence service. Seated nearby was an FBI agent who had boarded the flight to surreptitiously monitor the suspected operative, according to Western security officials, and make sure that he was taken into custody by German authorities.

The Jan. 21 arrest of Arthur Eller — based largely on evidence that the FBI had assembled during the suspect’s stay in Florida — was the latest salvo in a shadow war against Russia’s intelligence services.

Over the past year, as Western governments have ramped up weapons deliveries to Ukraine and economic sanctions against Moscow, U.S. and European security services have been waging a parallel if less visible campaign to cripple Russian spy networks. The German case, which also involved the arrest of a senior official in the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, followed roll-ups of suspected Russian operatives in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Poland and Slovenia.

The moves amount to precision strikes against Russian agents still in Europe after the mass expulsion of more than 400 suspected Russian intelligence officers from Moscow’s embassies across the continent last year.

U.S. and European security officials caution that Russia retains significant capabilities but said that its spy agencies have sustained greater damage over the past year than at any time since the end of the Cold War. The magnitude of the campaign appears to have caught Russia off-guard, officials said, blunting its ability to carry out influence operations in Europe, stay in contact with informants or provide insights to the Kremlin on key issues including the extent to which Western leaders are prepared to continue stepping up arms deliveries to Ukraine.

If so, the fallout may add to the list of consequences that Russian President Vladimir Putin — a former KGB officer in East Germany — failed to anticipate when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

“The world is quite different for the Russian services now,” said Antti Pelttari, director of Finland’s foreign intelligence service. Because of the expulsions, subsequent arrests and a more hostile environment in Europe, he said, “their capability has been degraded considerably.”

A trip to Florida

Russia has sought to compensate for its losses by relying more heavily on cyberespionage, Pelttari and other European officials said. Moscow has also tried to take advantage of border crossings and refugee flows to deploy new spies and replenish its depleted ranks, officials said.

But these new arrivals would be without the protection and advantages of working out of Russian embassies, officials said, and may lack the experience, sources and training of those who were declared persona non grata.

In a possible sign of Russian desperation, officials said, Moscow has attempted to send spies who were expelled from one European capital back to another, probing for vulnerabilities in coordination across the continent’s patchwork of security services.

“We have no illusions that the Russians will keep on trying” to reconstitute networks in Europe, said a senior Western security official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations. The official said his country and others have shared the identities of those they expelled with other members of the European Union. Of those Russian attempts to reinsert spies, the official said, “none that we are aware of were successful.”

The German case has heightened anxieties about lingering vulnerabilities in Europe, showing that even amid the post-Ukraine crackdown, Moscow was getting a steady stream of classified files from inside one of Europe’s largest intelligence services, Germany’s BND. Berlin has downplayed the damage in conversations with allied services, but the accused mole had access to highly sensitive data, security officials said.

A month before Eller’s arrest in Munich, German authorities had also arrested Carsten Linke, 52, who was in charge of a unit responsible for internal BND security with access to the personnel files of agency employees, officials said. He had previously spent years working at a sprawling facility in Bavaria responsible for technical collection operations targeting global information networks.

Germany only discovered the penetration with the help of an allied Western service that BND officials have refused to identify. In September, a joint operation revealed that Russian intelligence agencies had gained possession of classified BND documents, setting in motion a mole hunt that quickly focused on Linke.

A lawyer for Linke did not respond to requests for comment.

The severity of the breach prompted the United States, Britain and other governments to curtail intelligence-sharing with Berlin, officials said.

“Every single service is doing their own damage assessment,” said a senior intelligence official in Northern Europe. “You think, ‘What information did we share with them? Was that information available to [Russia’s agent]?’”

The Germans also confronted other difficult questions, including whether Linke had an accomplice. German officials began scrutinizing his relationship with Eller, a 31-year-old gem and metals trader who was born in Russia and lived in the same region of Bavaria where Linke had spent much of his career.

German media reports have said that Linke and Eller met in 2021 at a social event. But in recent interviews with The Post, officials said there are indications that the two were introduced by a member of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party, raising the prospect that Linke may have been motivated by radical political views.

Eller’s work seemed to require near-constant travel — 110 trips last year alone, according to a person familiar with the investigation — with records showing that he had frequently traveled to Moscow.

Eller was “pretty fast identified as a possible co-conspirator,” said a senior German security official involved in the investigation. But by early November, he had departed to Florida with his wife and young daughter for a lengthy visit with his wife’s relatives in Miami, the person familiar with the investigation said.

Eller returned to Germany in December as part of an international business trip. When Linke was arrested on Dec. 21, Eller received a call from a contact in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) — the main successor to the KGB — warning him that he was in danger and urging him to fly to Moscow, the person said.

Instead, Eller departed again for Florida on Christmas Day, the person familiar with the case said. Remarkably, German authorities made no attempt to prevent him from leaving. “The evidence we had gathered was not enough to arrest him,” the German security official said.

A crash investigation by the FBI changed that.

After learning that Eller was under scrutiny in the BND breach, the bureau kept him under near-constant surveillance. Agents monitored Eller’s movements and communications, while German authorities provided a stream of information about their own unfolding investigation, officials said.

Eller’s hectic travel schedule came to an abrupt halt on Jan. 12, when he sought to board another flight to Munich and was intercepted at the Miami airport by FBI agents, said the person familiar with the case. A senior FBI counterintelligence official described the contact as an “overt approach,” a potentially risky maneuver that paid off unexpectedly.

Eller agreed to undergo questioning by FBI agents at a nearby facility, and to surrender devices including a laptop and cellphone, according to the person familiar with the investigation. He cast himself as affiliated with the BND, the person said, and proceeded to reveal startling details, including that he had carried classified BND files to Russia and returned with envelopes that he believed contained large sums of cash for Linke, and that he had been in contact with officers from the FSB.

Eller’s attorney declined to comment. It is not clear why Eller volunteered so much information, but he has been casting himself as a victim of Linke’s manipulation, according to the person familiar with the case. That person said Eller claims he thought he was working for the BND, and Eller has said his cooperation with the FBI reflected his desire to help investigators. Agents also spoke with Eller’s wife and her brother in Florida, the person familiar with the investigation said.

German officials reject any characterization of Eller as being duped. Eller admitted to the FBI and German investigators that “he had been the one who asked Linke to commit the espionage acts,” the senior German security official said.

A senior U.S. official said the Justice Department weighed whether to file charges against Eller but officials saw no evidence that he had committed a serious crime in the United States and opted to have him return to Germany, where the case against him was stronger. Eller was ordered to leave the country, and FBI agents escorted him to the gate for his departure, according to the person familiar with the investigation, who said that Eller’s laptop and phone were not returned to him.

Armed with the information gleaned by the bureau, German authorities were waiting at the Munich airport on Jan. 21 with an arrest warrant issued two days earlier.

Linke is accused of abusing his BND authority to help Eller cross German border checks with classified files and cash. The person familiar with the investigation said that a separate BND official, apparently acting on orders from Linke, would assist Eller through the Munich airport by helping him bypass customs inspections.

Investigators have uncovered at least four payments that Eller brought to Linke, totaling about $100,000, officials said. Other aspects of the case remain a mystery, including the purpose of repeated trips Eller made between New York and Moscow. Attempts by The Post to reach Eller’s wife or her relatives in Florida were unsuccessful.

Brazilian covers

While the German case centers on a European accused of betraying his country for the Kremlin, others have involved Russian nationals seeking to infiltrate the West.

Among them are so-called “illegals” sent abroad not as diplomats — with accompanying legal protections — but under more elaborate cover arrangements designed to conceal any connection to Russia.

Authorities in the Netherlands last year confronted a passenger who presented a Brazilian passport when he arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, having accepted a position as an intern at the International Criminal Court. In reality, he was a Russian military officer named Sergey Cherkasov who had been sent overseas more than a decade earlier by Russia’s GRU spy agency, its main military intelligence service, according to officials and court records.

Cherkasov had spent years living in Brazil and constructing an identity as Victor Muller Ferreira using fraudulent documents. He went on to earn degrees at Trinity College in Dublin and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington before securing an internship offer from the international court now investigating allegations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Turned back by the Netherlands, Cherkasov is now serving a prison sentence in Brazil after being convicted of charges including document fraud. Russia has denied he was a spy, but has sought his return by claiming he is a wanted drug criminal and asking Brazil to extradite him.

In October, authorities in Norway arrested an accused Russian spy under similar circumstances. The suspect had posed as a Brazilian researcher focused on Arctic security issues at a university in northern Norway, credentials that enabled him to gain access to European experts and officials. Like Cherkasov, Mikhail Mikushin was a Russian “illegal” who had spent years abroad developing an elaborate cover for his GRU assignment, according to Norwegian authorities.

The pace of arrests and exposures has been driven in part by increased cooperation among European services, officials said, as well as a post-Ukraine shift in mind-set in countries, including Germany, long criticized by some of their European neighbors as too complacent about the threat from Moscow.

“February of 2023 is not the same as February of 2021 or 2019,” said a senior Western intelligence official. After’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “there just isn’t as much tolerance or as much space” in Europe.

Senior officials described whack-a-mole-like efforts to keep Russian services from restocking European embassies with spies. In a speech last year, Ken McCallum, director of Britain’s MI5 domestic service, said the British government had “refused on national security grounds over 100 Russian diplomatic visa applications” since 2018, when Britain expelled 23 suspected Russian spies in retaliation for the poisoning of a defector in Salisbury, England.

As a result of such pressure, Western officials said they have also seen signs that Russia’s intelligence services are making decisions they would have avoided in the past — making operatives more vulnerable to detection.

“Our work has revealed Russian agencies raising their risk tolerances,” said the senior FBI counterintelligence official, though he declined to provide specifics. In some cases, he said, “their actions to me show desperation.”

The crackdown has also been fueled by U.S. intelligence. Seeking to take advantage of Moscow’s vulnerability, the CIA and FBI have stepped up flows of intelligence to services across Europe to root out Russian penetrations, officials said. Even before the arrests in Germany, authorities in Sweden, Norway and other countries had cited contributions from U.S. intelligence in their arrests of GRU illegals and disruptions of related networks.

The full impact of the damage to Russia’s spy networks in Europe is difficult to assess.

Security officials in Finland and Sweden, for example, said they have been surprised at how little effort Russia put toward disrupting those countries’ applications to join NATO.

“It was remarkably quiet in the springtime” as Finland submitted its paperwork, said Pelttari, the Finnish spy chief.

To some, it was a sign that Russia’s capabilities had been degraded and that its services were preoccupied with the Ukraine war effort, which has exposed major failings by the FSB and other agencies. But officials said it may also reflect recognition by Moscow that public support for joining NATO was so overwhelming that seeking to shift opinion or disrupt the process was a lost cause.

Russia was suspected of involvement in other cases that raised anxieties in Europe last year, although evidence of direct links to Moscow has so far proved elusive.

Norwegian authorities made multiple arrests in cases of suspicious surveillance activity involving drones last year, raising fears that Russia was targeting critical infrastructure. But those who were detained have since been released, and authorities now believe many were innocent hobbyists.

Mail bombs sent late last year to government officials and other targets in Spain, including one that injured a Ukrainian Embassy official, triggered fears that Russia was mobilizing a network of far-right militants to sow terror. Last month, however, Madrid announced the arrest of a 74-year-old Spaniard who opposed his country’s support for Ukraine but appears to have acted alone. A statement issued by Spain’s investigating magistrate said there was “no indication that the person under investigation belongs to or collaborates with any terrorist gang or organized group.”

There are more recent signs, however, that Russia’s spy agencies continue to meddle in Europe.

Over the past month, Lithuania has endured a wave of online operations targeting Ukrainian refugees. The first involved “phishing” emails that were sent out to local agencies, nonprofits and even hotels with attachments seeking the names and addresses of Ukrainians they had encountered.

The messages were falsely sent under the guise of Lithuania’s migration authority, prompting a scramble by public officials to disavow the emails and reassure Ukrainians there was no government effort to track them.

A follow-on email campaign involved phony messages purportedly from the Ukrainian Embassy asserting that Lithuania was helping to locate military-aged males to send back into the conflict. Lithuania’s security services attributed the attack to an unidentified “Russian cyber actor.” Data on refugees could be used to harass them or even blackmail those with relatives trapped in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.

But a senior Lithuanian official said the more likely goal was to sow distrust between refugees and host governments. The messages were intended to make Ukrainians worry “that they are not safe and secure here,” the official said, with a possible secondary goal of “tying up the resources of our institutions.”

Cate Brown in Washington and Gabriela Sá Pessoa in São Paulo, Brazil, contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Greg Miller · February 17, 2023


7. Does China Want to Rule the World? It's Not That Simple


Excerpts;

The mood in the West is now one of suspicion toward globalization. The U.S., through the CHIPS act, is busily trying to achieve semiconductor independence. But that will take some time, and in the meantime the world will be very wary of China achieving control of the world-beating microchip industry in Taiwan. This, more than fealty to the democracy on the archipelago, may be driving U.S. policy there.
That policy appears to essentially amount to preserving the current limbo of a status quo, no more. That's because U.S. understands that no Chinese government can brook Taiwan's formal independence—since the temporary loss of Taiwan to Japan is a symbol of the Asian giant's "century of humiliation." And moreover, it is far from clear whether the U.S. has the firepower needed to genuinely project power in the South China Sea. There is certainly no yearning for a fight.
Of course, even if China's growth somehow motors on, and its economy surpasses America's or Europe's, that alone will not mean it calls the shots.
A mark of a true superpower is to boast technological innovation, not just industry, espionage, and replication. That, from China, is yet to be seen. And the ultimate mark of a superpower is soft power, which requires a global cultural affinity that has neither been China's forte nor its evident desire.
That seems to be the question: does China want maximal economic advantage, or maximal geopolitical influence? Understanding that and responding wisely may be the key to global peace.


Does China Want to Rule the World? It's Not That Simple

Newsweek · by Dan Perry · February 17, 2023

What was the Chinese leadership thinking in flying an easy-to-spot low-tech balloon over U.S. nuclear installations? Did they want to get caught? Was one branch of a fragmented autocracy trying to embarrass another?

Maybe the CIA or NSA or another agency knows the answer. But whatever IT MAY BE, it's not addressing the right question. What we should be asking is what does China want?

It's widely assumed that China seeks global primacy sometime soon, perhaps by the middle of the 21st century (by the Gregorian calendar, to be clear). But do they?


Chinese parade participants wearing Communist-style costumes take part in a parade to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, at Tiananmen Square. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

This is more than a vulgar game of nations grasping for advantage in material resources and a near monopoly on violence, this is an ideological clash. Our era is one of fevered competition between liberal democracy and authoritarianism (whether it pretends to be democratic, the way Turkey and even Russia and Iran feebly do, or not).

Liberal democracy went through a spasm of arrogance around the time of the West's victory over the Soviet Union. Three decades later it's clear what we got wrong: it was a victory over communism (an economic system that is antithetical to human nature), but not over authoritarianism (a political system that, alas, is not).

Today liberal democracy is even attacking itself from within. In the United States, the Trump administration represented an assault on the system that appears to have infected the Republican Party as a whole; in Europe, Poland and Hungary have installed authoritarian regimes democratically, each for its own reasons; Israel now may follow in their footsteps, at great peril to itself.

All over the world, the political divide has shifted from one based on socioeconomic class to one based on education. While there is a correlation, they are very different. By attaching even somewhat to intelligence—the thing that humans see as rendering them unique among the creatures of the earth—it becomes radioactive. A pincer movement has emerged: many among the working class never really signed on to the finer points of liberal democracy, like minority rights, while many so-called elites are concluding that democracy doesn't work, because mobility is low and the less educated have more kids.

With that as a background, arrogance about democracy's superiority is misplaced. It is best left to glad-handing politicians and other liars. The developing world is watching, and many there see democracy as under evident duress.

The fact that even some democratic countries are leaning toward elements of autocracy gives the Chinese Communist Party something of a leg to stand on when it argues that its system is better. That in some way, despite the cruelty and the lack freedom, it is not a brutish tyranny but one that's strangely meritocratic.

The theory is that the party, at 96 million members, is huge enough to represent the people, accounting for about 10 percent of the adult population. And that advancement through its ranks is not just a function of mindless servility but also a reflection of genuine merit that yields a competent ruling class.

Do Western democracies yield a competent ruling class? I'm not sure we can handle the truth on that one.

I have argued in these pages that there is nothing antithetical in Chinese culture to democracy—as evidenced in the robust democracy that thrives among the almost 25 million people of Taiwan. That said, though, there is no evidence that the CCP is about to fall anytime soon. They would have to upset the average person on the street more than they are doing at present for a revolution to succeed.

What has enabled the party to pacify the people of mainland China—along with a monopoly on violence—has been the very strong economic growth it posted over the past four decades, averaging 9.5 percent annually, more than triple that of the West. It is the very same thing that keeps China's ambitions of global primacy from being absurd: based on economic growth alone, it seems potentially within reach.

How soon? Well, because of the low baseline after the crushing ordeal of Mao's communism, phenomenal growth has only brought China to a level at which it accounts for the same proportion of the global economy as of the global population—just over a sixth.

The US, with a paltry 4 percent of the world population, accounts for twice as much of the global output as China does. Might it eventually be outstripped? That depends on whether China's growth (which has slowed in recent years but remains far higher than the West's) can continue.

Which brings us, like most narratives these days, to one Vladimir Putin. I have credited him with helping the world understand – through his epic blunder in invading Ukraine—that authoritarianism is a dangerous avenue to idiocy unchecked. But Putin has done more: he has also proven useful to those who want to arrest the rise of China.

China's growth has been fueled by infrastructure investment and urbanization, but mainly by its status as the factory of choice for the West. Because of China's cheap labor costs, the European Union's trade with it approaches $1 trillion annually; the U.S. imports more than a half trillion dollars' worth—more than from any other country and fourfold the imports from any country outside of North America.

Putin's war laid bare Europe's energy dependence on Russia (whose natural gas accounted for 40 percent of the EU's pre-war usage). This dependence exposed Europe to energy blackmail and weakened its position in trying to defend Ukraine. Russia was also able to cause food shortages and supply chain problems all over the world.

This realization has dealt a huge blow to globalization. Instead of free trade bringing the world together and encouraging an exporting of the West's political model (as the U.S. and especially Germany had long assumed), we got dependence on bad-faith players which could either produce cheap goods (in some cases in sweatshops or through versions of slave labor) or just were lucky enough to ride a commodity boom.

The mood in the West is now one of suspicion toward globalization. The U.S., through the CHIPS act, is busily trying to achieve semiconductor independence. But that will take some time, and in the meantime the world will be very wary of China achieving control of the world-beating microchip industry in Taiwan. This, more than fealty to the democracy on the archipelago, may be driving U.S. policy there.

That policy appears to essentially amount to preserving the current limbo of a status quo, no more. That's because U.S. understands that no Chinese government can brook Taiwan's formal independence—since the temporary loss of Taiwan to Japan is a symbol of the Asian giant's "century of humiliation." And moreover, it is far from clear whether the U.S. has the firepower needed to genuinely project power in the South China Sea. There is certainly no yearning for a fight.

Of course, even if China's growth somehow motors on, and its economy surpasses America's or Europe's, that alone will not mean it calls the shots.

A mark of a true superpower is to boast technological innovation, not just industry, espionage, and replication. That, from China, is yet to be seen. And the ultimate mark of a superpower is soft power, which requires a global cultural affinity that has neither been China's forte nor its evident desire.

That seems to be the question: does China want maximal economic advantage, or maximal geopolitical influence? Understanding that and responding wisely may be the key to global peace.

Dan Perry is managing partner of the New York-based communications firm Thunder11. He is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press. Follow him at twitter.com/perry_dan

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Newsweek · by Dan Perry · February 17, 2023



8. California lawmaker leads delegation to Taiwan amid high U.S.-China tensions



Looking forward to seeing the PRC/CCP response. Perhaps our Congressional delegation should travel by balloon to Taiwan. (note attempt at sarcasm).



California lawmaker leads delegation to Taiwan amid high U.S.-China tensions

BY TRACY WILKINSONJENNIFER HABERKORN

FEB. 17, 2023 3 PM PT

Los Angeles Times · by Tracy Wilkinson · February 17, 2023

WASHINGTON —

Despite heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over the recent downing of a Chinese balloon, a U.S. congressional delegation led by California Rep. Ro Khanna plans to visit Taiwan this weekend — a move sure to be seen by China as a provocation.

Khanna (D-Fremont) and a group of Democratic and Republican lawmakers were headed to Taiwan on Friday night, aides familiar with planning for the trip told The Times. The group plans to meet with the president of Taiwan in a mission “to bolster ties between Silicon Valley and the Taiwanese semiconductor industry,” Khanna’s office said.

China considers Taiwan to be a renegade province that should be answerable to the government in Beijing.

Many Taiwanese prefer independence. The island enjoys a large degree of self-rule, with a relatively democratic government and close ties to Washington and other Western nations.

“I look forward to learning more about Taiwan’s semiconductor industry and the economic ties between Taiwan and my district of Silicon Valley,” Khanna said in a prepared statement before the trip.

Taiwan is one of the world’s leaders in the production of semiconductors, and Khanna said its work “is critical to [his] district.”

Beijing has long viewed any overtures to Taiwan by U.S. officials or other countries as a threat.

On Thursday, China imposed trade and investment sanctions on major U.S. corporations, including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, as punishment for selling weapons to the island.

The two companies are among the suppliers of a $1.1-billion U.S. military package for Taiwan, which receives most of its arms from Washington.

When Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), then speaker of the House, similarly traveled to Taiwan in August, China reacted with exceptional fury.

Because she was second in line to the presidency and a member of President Biden’s political party, her actions were seen by many in China as having extraordinary official meaning and weight. (She was, however, not the first speaker of the House to visit Taiwan.)

China responded by dispatching warships into the Taiwan Strait and other waters surrounding the island and fighter jets over the region that launched long-range missiles as part of what China called an “exercise.”

Since the Pelosi trip, a couple of lower-profile congressional delegations have made the same trek, but with less reaction from Beijing.

State Department diplomats routinely warn members of Congress of the sensitivities and potential fallout from any trip to Taiwan, but lawmakers have the final say about whether to travel.

Administration officials have defended the right of U.S. politicians to visit Taiwan and have criticized Chinese reactions.

“China should not use any visit as a pretext to intensify its actions around Taiwan,” a senior State Department official said Friday.

The timing of Khanna’s delegation is, nevertheless, especially fraught.

On Feb. 4, U.S. fighter jets off the South Carolina coast shot down a massive Chinese balloon that had traversed the continental United States on what Washington says was a spy mission.

In the days that followed, as anxiety over Chinese espionage skyrocketed, the U.S. shot down three more “unidentified aerial objects” flying over the far northern U.S. and Canada. The Biden administration now says the latter three vessels were probably benign and not Chinese spy instruments.

The incident worsened already tense relations between Washington and Beijing. The first balloon prompted Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to cancel a crucial trip to the Chinese capital for high-level meetings aimed at beginning to restore a working relationship between the two governments.

China, meanwhile, has responded with angry accusations.

“The overreaction by America — and its moves to heighten the issue — have exacerbated the situation” and “caused new wounds in China-U.S. relations,” Xu Xueyuan, the charges d’affaires at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, wrote in an opinion column in Friday’s Washington Post.

China has maintained that the balloon, whose payload was said to measure the length of three buses, was a weather instrument that strayed accidentally into U.S. airspace.

The new House speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), is also said to be thinking of a visit to Taiwan. As more members of Congress of lower rank make the trip, pressure builds for him to seize the mantel of a cause dear to political conservatives.

Khanna is also a member of the new House Select Committee on China, which focuses on potential threats posed by the world’s second-largest economy, especially for Taiwan.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war. The U.S. has traditionally maintained a “One China” policy — a deliberately ambiguous recognition of the People’s Republic of China, with whom it has diplomatic relations — without abandoning Taiwan’s claim to independence.

The U.S. has not formally recognized Taiwan as independent. But Biden has thrown doubts over the One China policy in recent statements by expressing a willingness to defend Taiwan militarily if China were to attack.

Khanna said he hoped his visit, possibly to be followed by a trip to China, might ease tensions.

“While I am [in Taiwan], I also plan to affirm the One China policy,” he said Friday. “And make clear we want to do everything we can to deter a military conflict.”

Los Angeles Times · by Tracy Wilkinson · February 17, 2023



9. Trump-Era Officials Were Aware of Suspected Balloons in U.S. Airspace



Excerpts:


The Pentagon has previously said that unidentified objects crossed the continental U.S. briefly at least three times during the prior administration, and at least once at the beginning of the Biden administration.
Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.) said recently that his office was informed about incursions near Florida and Texas, likely during the Trump era, but it remains unclear what type of systems were on those balloons—or if these incursions occurred in territorial waters or overflew land. It is also unclear if those incursions are separate from the ones observed by the former intelligence officials.
The incidents raise questions about how these suspected Chinese balloons arrived in the U.S., particularly those detected on the East Coast. The U.S. officials said intelligence analysts have developed a theory that China could be launching them from the Caribbean or parts of Latin America, where Beijing’s influence has grown in recent years, although no definitive conclusions have been reached. 
At Congress’s behest, the Pentagon last year established the classified All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, after Navy pilots reported seeing mysterious objects, in some cases, spotting them daily for months at a time. The Navy pilots, who saw these objects high in the skies over the East Coast, reported their findings to Congress and the Pentagon.


Trump-Era Officials Were Aware of Suspected Balloons in U.S. Airspace

Some in Pentagon suspected China links but didn’t reach definitive conclusions

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-era-officials-were-aware-of-suspected-balloons-in-u-s-airspace-e9a15e9f?utm_source=pocket_saves


By Vivian SalamaFollow

Updated Feb. 17, 2023 11:25 pm ET

Pentagon intelligence analysts reached their assessment about the objects in the summer of 2020, the former officials said. Some of the officials who collected and analyzed the data are career government employees who have served under various administrations.

The assessment “never got to be assertive” in concluding that the objects were linked to Chinese surveillance, said one of the officials familiar with the issue.

The new revelations offer details into when and how the intelligence community pieced together what little is known about the suspected Chinese balloon program. It also raises questions about the extent to which these assessments were shared more broadly.

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Concerns about China’s balloons became public in recent weeks after a high-altitude object was spotted over American airspace. The U.S. military shot the balloon down on Feb. 4 off the South Carolina coast; three more highflying objects were later shot down over Lake Huronover Alaska and over Canada’s Yukon territory.

The U.S. military Friday night ended its search for airborne objects that were shot down near Deadhorse, Alaska, and over Lake Huron on Feb. 10 and 12, according to a statement posted on Twitter. U.S. Northern Command said the decision came after the U.S. and Canada conducted systematic searches, “and did not locate debris.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, in response to a request for comment, cited Beijing’s previous denials that the balloon shot down Feb. 4 was intended for surveillance. President Biden on Thursday said the other three objects were likely tied to private companies or related to recreation or scientific research, and were shot down as a precautionary measure.


The Navy recovered debris from a suspected surveillance balloon shot down over the Atlantic earlier this month.

PHOTO: U.S. NAVY/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

The suspected balloons detected during the Trump era were smaller and flew at a much lower altitude and for a much shorter duration than the one downed on Feb. 4. They were detected over Navy sites in Coronado, Calif., Norfolk, Va., and Guam, the officials said, adding that unlike the Chinese balloon shot down off the coast, these unidentified aerial objects didn’t travel across the country.

The data on these prior suspected balloons was collected at the time from a variety of Defense Department sources, including intelligence assets. Agencies often share that type of information, but they aren’t required to do so, particularly when dealing with a highly specialized issue such as unidentified aerial phenomena, the officials said.

Biden administration officials said this month that at least three objects during the Trump era and a previous one during the Biden presidency went undetected until after leaving American airspace. Mark Esper, who served as defense secretary from 2019 to 2020, told The Wall Street Journal that he doesn’t recall ever being briefed on Chinese balloons or anything related to these incidents. 

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed that intelligence analysts within the Pentagon had been tracking these incidents but said that leadership wasn’t briefed on the matter. The Biden administration offered to brief former senior Trump administration officials about the incidents after several of them said they weren’t aware of the events. 

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How should the U.S. respond to the discovery of the surveillance balloons? Join the conversation below.

On Wednesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed Trump administration officials about the Chinese balloon program, including former national security advisers Robert O’Brien and John Bolton, former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the former director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe. The Biden administration is working to schedule briefings with several other former officials as well, current and former U.S. officials said.

Mr. O’Brien, who was among those previously unaware of the incidents, told The Wall Street Journal that the balloon downed in the Atlantic Ocean on Feb. 4 was unprecedented. One of the biggest takeaways from his briefing, he said, was how different in nature these recent balloons were from the Trump-era objects.


Robert O’Brien was national security adviser under the Trump administration.

PHOTO: LEAH MILLIS/REUTERS

The Pentagon has previously said that unidentified objects crossed the continental U.S. briefly at least three times during the prior administration, and at least once at the beginning of the Biden administration.

Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.) said recently that his office was informed about incursions near Florida and Texas, likely during the Trump era, but it remains unclear what type of systems were on those balloons—or if these incursions occurred in territorial waters or overflew land. It is also unclear if those incursions are separate from the ones observed by the former intelligence officials.

The incidents raise questions about how these suspected Chinese balloons arrived in the U.S., particularly those detected on the East Coast. The U.S. officials said intelligence analysts have developed a theory that China could be launching them from the Caribbean or parts of Latin America, where Beijing’s influence has grown in recent years, although no definitive conclusions have been reached. 

At Congress’s behest, the Pentagon last year established the classified All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, after Navy pilots reported seeing mysterious objects, in some cases, spotting them daily for months at a time. The Navy pilots, who saw these objects high in the skies over the East Coast, reported their findings to Congress and the Pentagon.

It is unclear if those sightings, which date back as far as the Obama presidency, were different from the ones being investigated by intelligence officials under the current or previous administrations.

Write to Vivian Salama at vivian.salama@wsj.com




10.  Taipei Fears Washington Is Weakening Its Silicon Shield



Will Rep. Ro Khanna's trip to Taipei work to shore this up?   Or will this result in the loss of a major economic justification for the defense of Taiwan?


Taipei Fears Washington Is Weakening Its Silicon Shield

New U.S. policies are eroding Taiwan’s dominance of the global chip industry. Will that jeopardize the island’s security?

By Aidan Powers-Riggs, a writer and analyst based in Washington.

Foreign Policy · by Aidan Powers-Riggs · February 17, 2023

Last December, at the unveiling of a new semiconductor plant in Arizona, U.S. President Joe Biden triumphantly declared that “American manufacturing is back, folks.” Yet to some in attendance, the event was not a cause for celebration.

The Arizona plant belongs to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). TSMC founder Morris Chang is a revered figure in Taiwan for making the island a technological powerhouse—but he is also one of the most outspoken critics of Biden’s plan to reinvigorate the U.S. semiconductor industry. In recent months, Chang has sounded the alarm that Taiwan’s chip sector is being “hollowed out” at the expense of its security. But unable to resist lush financial incentives and diplomatic pressure from Washington, TSMC and Taiwanese authorities approved the new Arizona plant.

Chang’s concerns reflect a brewing Taiwanese anxiety about the U.S. policies reshaping the global semiconductor industry. The new measures—which include billions of dollars in federal subsidies and an expanded basket of export controls—are intended to secure U.S. supply chains and keep U.S. technologies out of China’s hands. But to officials in Taiwan, the moves paint a worrying picture for the future of an industry they believe has helped keep the threat of a Chinese invasion at bay.

Last December, at the unveiling of a new semiconductor plant in Arizona, U.S. President Joe Biden triumphantly declared that “American manufacturing is back, folks.” Yet to some in attendance, the event was not a cause for celebration.

The Arizona plant belongs to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). TSMC founder Morris Chang is a revered figure in Taiwan for making the island a technological powerhouse—but he is also one of the most outspoken critics of Biden’s plan to reinvigorate the U.S. semiconductor industry. In recent months, Chang has sounded the alarm that Taiwan’s chip sector is being “hollowed out” at the expense of its security. But unable to resist lush financial incentives and diplomatic pressure from Washington, TSMC and Taiwanese authorities approved the new Arizona plant.

Chang’s concerns reflect a brewing Taiwanese anxiety about the U.S. policies reshaping the global semiconductor industry. The new measures—which include billions of dollars in federal subsidies and an expanded basket of export controls—are intended to secure U.S. supply chains and keep U.S. technologies out of China’s hands. But to officials in Taiwan, the moves paint a worrying picture for the future of an industry they believe has helped keep the threat of a Chinese invasion at bay.

Led by TSMC, Taiwanese foundries supply more than 60 percent of semiconductors and 92 percent of the world’s most cutting-edge chips. This dominance has made the island a strategically valuable chokepoint in the semiconductor supply chain. A recent study commissioned by the U.S. State Department found that a disruption to Taiwan’s chip industry caused by a hypothetical Chinese blockade would cause a staggering $2.5 trillion in annual losses to the global economy.

While this uniquely concentrated supply chain is causing unease in foreign capitals and corporate boardrooms, to Taiwan’s leaders, it is one of the island’s most important geopolitical assets. Taiwan’s chip industry has come to be known as a “silicon shield”—the idea that global reliance on Taiwan’s chipmakers keeps the island safe from a Chinese military invasion.

The silicon shield theory holds that semiconductors offer Taiwan a dual layer of protection. First, because China’s own technology sector remains heavily dependent on Taiwan’s foundries, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders will be forced to consider both the economic and military costs of an invasion—a consideration that may tip the cost-benefit calculations in favor of restraint. Despite a growing ecosystem of world-class technology design firms (including Baidu and Alibaba) and a massive government program pushing domestic production, China has failed to establish a competitive chip-manufacturing base. Until Chinese firms find an alternative to Taiwanese suppliers, the fate of Beijing’s economic development objectives remains tied to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

The second layer lies in the dependence of third parties—including major economies such as the United States, Japan, and the European Union (EU)—on Taiwan’s semiconductor industry. These countries have an important material stake in preserving Taiwan’s autonomy. In addition to moral, strategic, and political rationales to defend Taiwan, the need for advanced chips helps ensure that protecting Taiwan’s foundries—and, by extension, the island’s sovereignty—remains a vital interest for much of the world.

Some analysts suggest that China’s reliance on TSMC serves less as a protective shield and more as a lure, potentially incentivizing CCP leaders to assert control over the company to gain dominance over the strategic technology supply chain. But in reality, TSMC’s manufacturing capabilities rely on a variety of critical inputs that are predominantly supplied by U.S. and U.S.-allied firms. Even if Taiwan’s chipmakers survived an invasion, their continued operation would be severely compromised as Washington and its allies would almost surely respond by withholding inputs.

It is impossible to measure exactly how much—if any—influence the silicon shield truly has on Chinese President Xi Jinping and the CCP’s strategic planning toward Taiwan. The more important point is that Taiwanese officials and industry leaders clearly believe in the theory.

In a 2021 article in Foreign Affairs, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen explicitly named the island’s semiconductor industry as “a ‘silicon shield’ that allows Taiwan to protect itself and others from aggressive attempts by authoritarian regimes to disrupt global supply chains.” Taiwan’s economy minister, Wang Mei-hua, has likewise alluded to the importance of semiconductors in deterring conflict, stating that the industry “appears to be connected to our national security.” And Taiwanese industry leaders also hold this view. Chang recently told 60 Minutes that “because our company provides a lot of chips to the world, maybe somebody will refrain from attacking.”

Read More

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during an event on Micron's plan to invest in chips manufacturing.

Biden Short-Circuits China

The latest U.S. moves undermine China’s ability to import, manufacture, and export the semiconductors that run the world.

A closeup of a silicon wafer on display at Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institution on September 16, 2022 in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

The Battle Over Semiconductors Is Endangering Taiwan

TSMC is an economic boon, but its success makes China covet the industry while its natural resource consumption reduces resilience.

The Biden administration is aware of the importance of semiconductor manufacturing to U.S. national security. In November 2022, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo referred to chips as “ground-zero” in the emerging U.S. strategic competition with China. The dilemma for both U.S. and Taiwanese policymakers is that key facets of the U.S. semiconductor strategy are directly in conflict with Taiwan’s efforts to protect its silicon shield. These misaligned interests threaten to undermine the close cooperation between the two required to effectively deter Chinese coercion.

Washington seeks to incentivize the return of semiconductor fabrication to the United States, which has seen its share of global chip manufacturing fall from 37 percent in 1990 to 12 percent today. Last August, Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which provides $52 billion in federal subsidies for global chip manufacturing firms to build fabrication facilities (also known as fabs) on U.S. soil, among other things. The subsidies have already sparked a boom in investment in U.S. chip manufacturing from leading firms such as Intel, Samsung, TSMC, and Micron.

The underlying objective of U.S. re-shoring—reducing the vulnerability of the semiconductor supply chain to potential shocks—necessarily comes at the cost of Taiwan’s dominance over chip manufacturing. Raimondo has repeatedly made clear that a major goal of the CHIPS Act is to reduce the United States’ “untenable” reliance on Taiwan’s chipmakers, arguing instead that “we’ve got to make those in America, period.”

While TSMC’s absolute fabrication capacity is projected to grow significantly over the next decade thanks to increasingly favorable business environments in the United States, EU, and Japan, the share of advanced chips produced within Taiwan will likely gradually decline. For many in Taiwan, this receding dominance undermines the core logic of the silicon shield: As the United States and its major strategic partners grow less reliant on Taiwan’s fabs, protecting the island may no longer be a critical economic security imperative.

Perhaps of greater risk to Taiwan in the short term is the second facet of U.S. semiconductor policy: the unprecedented expansion of export controls targeting China’s advanced chip sector. Announced by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) on Oct. 7, 2022, these new controls restrict China’s ability to purchase or manufacture high-end chips using a regulatory mechanism called the foreign direct product rule (FDPR). FDPR provides the U.S. government with extraterritorial jurisdiction to prevent even non-U.S. companies from doing business with China if their products contain U.S.-origin technology.

Given that TSMC relies heavily on U.S. inputs in its manufacturing process, the new rules allow Washington to block the firm from fabricating advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips for Chinese buyers. These services make up just a fraction of TSMC’s business, but for China’s emerging AI and supercomputing industries, the loss of access to TSMC’s cutting-edge chips will likely prove devastating.

The more Chinese firms lose access to advanced chips produced in Taiwan, the less reliant China will be on TSMC. With its advanced chip supply already limited, Chinese leaders may calculate that the cost of losing access to Taiwanese fabs is no longer a relevant concern. Experts have suggested that U.S. pressure may even be approaching Beijing’s “unknown red lines.” The rules are also likely to add urgency to China’s long-standing effort to develop a self-sufficient chip industry that no longer relies on Taiwanese or Western chokepoints.

Taiwan’s precarious geopolitical position and dependence on the United States for military support mean that its leaders are relatively restrained in their public criticisms of U.S. policy. Governments of other U.S. partners—including SingaporeJapanSouth Korea, and the Netherlands—have been less coy about their irritation with Washington’s hard-line approach. But even in lieu of public admonitions, actions by Taiwan’s government and industry show a clear line of resistance.

In a statement following the U.S. Congress’s passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, Taiwan’s economy minister declared that “Taiwan’s key position in semiconductors will not be shaken.” This sentiment is reflected in Taiwan’s hesitancy to allow its most advanced technologies to move overseas. While TSMC has acquiesced to intense pressure from U.S. industry to build the advanced fab in Arizona, by the time the plant begins full-scale production in 2024, it will be a generation behind the firm’s more cutting-edge fabs in Taiwan.

Taiwan’s government has also stepped in to protect its companies from “unreasonable” information requests from the U.S. government. In 2021, for example, the island’s economy ministry supported TSMC’s decision not to share sensitive information with Washington after the White House requested details about the global semiconductor shortage.

Still, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party has come under fire domestically for allowing the “de-Taiwanization” of the island’s chip sector. As the opposition Kuomintang party looks to build on its recent electoral success and reclaim power in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections, candidates may capitalize on the issue to contrast themselves as defenders of Taiwanese industry and strategic independence. Chinese media outlets have already sought to play up these nascent signs of discontent in Taiwan, an effort that is likely to continue to intensify as the elections near.

U.S. officials should publicly acknowledge Taiwanese concerns and emphasize that the United States aims to augment, not fully replace, Taiwan’s role in the global semiconductor supply chain. The Biden administration can also highlight its efforts to support Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities and ongoing U.S.-Taiwan trade talks to demonstrate its continued commitment to Taiwan’s security and prosperity. At a moment when the fragile cross-strait equilibrium is facing unprecedented challenges, neither the United States nor Taiwan can afford to allow rifts to grow in their relationship.

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Foreign Policy · by Aidan Powers-Riggs · February 17, 2023




11. Disinformation Is Not the Problem and Information Is Not the Solution


It seems to me that some of the "best" (or perhaps effectively influential) stories are conspiracy theories.


Excerpts:


The reason we are having trouble getting on top of disinformation is because we are mislabeling and therefor misunderstanding the phenomena. We are not dealing with simply wrong information. We are dealing with weaponized information in story form. If it wasn’t it wouldn’t be dangerous.
There is nothing inherently seductive about information, whether true or false. That is why we use storytelling. Stories play a special role in human cognition. Our brains are receptive to stories, especially stories about ourselves, or stories that we see ourselves in, or project ourselves into. And we are particularly receptive to stories that speak to our preferred identities especially when we feel our identity is under threat and the story gives us a way out – a way to respond to the threat.
The root cause of vulnerability to disinformation goes much deeper than amount or degree of exposure to false information. Narrative identity is what is at play.



Disinformation Is Not the Problem and Information Is Not the Solution - HS Today

hstoday.us · February 6, 2021

The “facts based approach” to domestic extremism proposed by the Biden administration suggests an awareness, shared by many, that disinformation has played a role in radicalization of the variety we saw on display at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But disinformation is not the start point of radicalization.

Disinformation does not “work” on everyone. And yet the same factors that make an audience vulnerable to recruitment by ISIS make an audience vulnerable to recruitment by the Proud Boys. We ought to focus on understanding the factors that create an audience ripe for recruitment. Why are some people vulnerable to radicalization and others not? Why do some people believe and trust information that is demonstrably not based in fact?

The reason we are having trouble getting on top of disinformation is because we are mislabeling and therefor misunderstanding the phenomena. We are not dealing with simply wrong information. We are dealing with weaponized information in story form. If it wasn’t it wouldn’t be dangerous.

There is nothing inherently seductive about information, whether true or false. That is why we use storytelling. Stories play a special role in human cognition. Our brains are receptive to stories, especially stories about ourselves, or stories that we see ourselves in, or project ourselves into. And we are particularly receptive to stories that speak to our preferred identities especially when we feel our identity is under threat and the story gives us a way out – a way to respond to the threat.

The root cause of vulnerability to disinformation goes much deeper than amount or degree of exposure to false information. Narrative identity is what is at play.

Truth cannot effectively counter disinformation because raw data is not inherently influential. But if raw data (whether true or false) is storified, mythologized, narrated, then it can have influence. That is because stories tell us what we crave – they tell us meaning. Whether the information is true or false – stories tell us the meaning of the information.

This is not new phenomena. Humans have a long history of finding or creating meaning in the absence of facts. The Illiad, by Homer, for example, has had profound influence in western cultures even though it is not history. It is a myth. Nonetheless, the story of the heroic quest of the rugged individual gives people a way to frame their own challenges. It gives people a way to view their own battles with obstacles and hurdles in a heroic light. That frame of reference has been repeated for centuries and can be seen in modern popular culture in movies, novels, and in the way we understand our daily lives. The lack of truth value of the narrative is irrelevant to the meaning it imparts to our own experiences. Just because it is not true doesn’t make it less meaningful.

And when disinformation is well received, that is because the disinformation held deeper meaning for the audience than the truth.

An affective narrator speaks to two essential things:

  1. The meaning of the information, and
  2. The identity of the audience

Then meaning and identity are tied together to produce a story that tells what the information means to the audience. A story designed to influence will tell an audience what to make of the information, how to understand it, and how they fit in.

Just as the power of stories, myths, narratives, does not rely on truth, facts, or accuracy of information for its effect, so too if disinformation is storified, mythologized, narrated, it will give people a way to understand their own experiences in a way that is, in fact, impervious to the truth.

That is the problem we face. The problem is more profound than disinformation. We are dealing with weaponized narrative and a “facts-based approach” will prove impotent against it.

hstoday.us · February 6, 2021



12. Kamala Harris Says Russia Has Committed Crimes Against Humanity



Can a mechanism be established that will have any ohope of holding Russians, especially the leadership, accountable?



Kamala Harris Says Russia Has Committed Crimes Against Humanity

Vice president’s address in Munich comes days before the one-year anniversary of Russian invasion of Ukraine

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kamala-harris-says-russia-has-committed-crimes-against-humanity-94f65c82?mod=hp_lead_pos1


By Annie LinskeyFollow

Updated Feb. 18, 2023 9:36 am ET


Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday said that the U.S. has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity, speaking days before the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“From the starting days of this unprovoked war, we have witnessed Russian forces engage in horrendous atrocities and war crimes,” said Ms. Harris, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, a global security and foreign-policy forum. “We have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt: These are crimes against humanity,” she said to applause from the gathered officials.

Ms. Harris accused the Russians of “widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population,” citing civilian deaths in a Mariupol theater, an attack on a maternity hospital, mass deportations of Ukrainian children and widespread evidence of rape, torture and execution-style killings of civilians in the near yearlong war. Ms. Harris said people who committed war crimes would be held to account.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement Saturday morning saying that he has determined that Russian forces and officials have committed crimes against humanity. “We reserve crimes against humanity determinations for the most egregious crimes,” Mr. Blinken said, adding that the finding “underlines [the] staggering extent of the human suffering inflicted by Moscow on the Ukrainian civilian population.”

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The U.S. has provided about $30 million to fund an effort aimed at documenting and prosecuting war crimes in Ukraine since March 2022, according to the White House. The White House is seeking additional funding for this effort.

While symbolically significant, the determination doesn’t trigger specific consequences since the U.S. lacks a federal statute on the broad designation of crimes against humanity. The U.S. code does have laws against individual war crimes.

President Biden has previously accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of committing war crimes in Ukraine, demanding that he be tried as a criminal after revelations surfaced in April about atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Bucha. He also said that Mr. Putin “cannot remain in power.”

Moscow has denied accusations of reprisals against civilians in Ukraine, despite widespread evidence of such actions presented by Ukrainian authorities. 

Ms. Harris also said that the U.S. is troubled that China has “deepened its relationship” with Russia over the past year. She added that any step by Beijing to provide lethal support to Moscow will “undermine a rules-based order.”

The address from Ms. Harris comes as Ukrainian forces are straining to hold back a Russian advance on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and preparing for an expected wider Russian offensive in coming weeks as the weather warms. 

European leaders at the Munich conference have continued to pledge support for Ukraine, but some are signaling that they don’t intend to supply Kyiv with new weapons systems. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sought more urgent military aid such as aerial defenses and ammunition. 

Ms. Harris said the U.S. will continue to back Kyiv for “as long as it takes.” She said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is “stronger now than ever before” and said the U.S. commitment to defend NATO allies is “ironclad.”

Ms. Harris is expected to meet with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Later she plans to meet with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson along with Finish Prime Minister Sanna Marin. On Friday, Ms. Harris met with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) spoke at the conference and said top Republicans are committed to providing money and weapons to Ukraine. Congress has authorized $113 billion in military and economic aid for Ukraine since Russia invaded the country on Feb. 24, 2022. 

Ms. Harris addressed the same conference last year, speaking just five days before Russia’s forces crossed into Ukraine. 

President Biden is expected to travel to Poland next week and meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda. Mr. Biden plans to give an address in Warsaw about the war and will meet with leaders of several other Eastern European countries. 

—William Mauldin contributed to this article.

Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com


13. Former Ukrainian President: We Need Weapons, Sanctions, and NATO Membership





Former Ukrainian President: We Need Weapons, Sanctions, and NATO Membership

Newsweek · by Jason Nichols · February 16, 2023

The winning formula for Ukraine is simple: Supplies of weapons, economic sanctions against Russia, helping to strengthen Ukraine's resilience, the de-Putinization of Russia, and the accession of Ukraine to the European Union and NATO. Only all the elements of this formula combined would guarantee permanent security for Europe and the whole world.

Napoleon is credited with once saying that to wage war, he needed three things: first, money; second, money; and third, money. Money is the fuel that powers the deadly military machine of Russia that kills Ukrainians. To bring this machine to a stop it will take more than military action. There must be powerful financial punches—indeed an economic crisis—and even social upheaval.

The price for aggression must constantly rise, becoming ever more unbearable. This is the way to change the Russian bear's behavior, drive it backwards, and spoil its appetite. Putin cannot be stopped by half-steps and half-measures. He will always look for gaps, loopholes, and allies of convenience.


A woman pushes a baby stroller while walking in a cemetery of damaged civilian cars in the town of Irpin, near Kyiv, on Feb. 16. DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images

The new restrictions on Russian oil and oil products, imposed in December and February respectively, took off so successfully that they have invoked images first used to describe the Soviet Union: the rusty "gas station of Europe" and "Upper Volta with missiles."

Contrary to the prophecies of Russian propaganda, Europe has not frozen this winter. Gas prices have fallen. The selling price of Russian oil is gradually getting closer to its production price. With the collapse of oil and gas revenues, the Russian Federation's budget deficit soared to $25 billion in January. This kind of tailspin has not happened since 1998, a symbolic year of economic disaster for Russia.

This positive trend needs to be solidified. Further restrictive measures and the closing of all loopholes are both needed. One example is the need to disrupt a shadow fleet of tankers carrying Russian oil. The volume of oil carried by these vessels increased from less than 3 million barrels per day in November to more than 9 million in January.

There is also a need to restrain liquified natural gas from Russia. A formula equivalent to the $60 price cap on oil would cost Russia billions, and a full embargo would cost far more. The liquid natural gas market is now competitive enough for the world not to notice the lack of Russia's contribution. The United States, Qatar, and others would fill this niche.

The Suez Canal must also be closed to Russian cargo. Doing so would add three to four weeks for a tanker to get from Russia's western ports to India and China, huge consumers of Putin's oil and coal. The longer these routes are, the more transportation costs, the greater Russia's losses, the fewer Ukrainians will die.

It is also necessary to close the southern branch of the Druzhba oil pipeline, hugely important to Moscow. I am convinced that Ukraine is ready to accept losses to its revenues from Druzhba, and even from the gas transportation system. What might cost Kyiv $1 billion will cost Moscow $16 billion: 10 billion for gas and 6 billion for crude oil.

I am convinced that if all these suggestions were introduced in the upcoming EU sanctions packages, they would have significant impact by the end of the third quarter of 2023. It would drain away the liquid part of the Russian gold and currency reserves, which have already dwindled.

The Russian economy is highly dependent on imports. The exhaustion of gold and currency reserves would force the government to further reduce imports, leading to the absence of many vital goods on shelves and the curtailment of many industries. In short, it would kill Russian imports, which means it would kill the economy. Inflation and a sharp drop in living standards would strike directly at the heart of the Russian people. Putin needs his people to at least stay quiet—if not supportive—if he wants to remain in power. But without Putin the world would definitely be a better place.

I appeal to those who are deciding on new packages of sanctions. Look at Bakhmut, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine keep repulsing powerful attacks by the Russian military, as well as the Wagner Group's literal armed criminals. Call Dnipro to mind, where many civilians were killed by Russian missile attacks. Remember Bucha, Mariupol, and other places where Russia carried out war crimes. Understand that there will be more such examples if the financing of the Russian military machine is not stopped.

Deprive Putin of money, help us with weapons, add on sanctions from hell, de-Putinize Russia, and welcome Ukraine to the EU and NATO. Only all the components of our winning formula together would guarantee permanent security for the European continent and the whole world.

The time has come to win this war.

Petro Poroshenko served as president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Newsweek · by Jason Nichols · February 16, 2023



14. Trading Books for a Rifle: The Teacher Who Volunteered in Ukraine





Trading Books for a Rifle: The Teacher Who Volunteered in Ukraine


Photographs by Lynsey AddarioWritten by Andrew E. Kramer

Lynsey Addario traveled to Ukraine five times last year and followed Yulia Bondarenko’s journey on four of those trips, reporting from the Kyiv, Kharkiv and Cherkasy regions. Andrew E. Kramer, The Times’s Ukraine bureau chief, wrote this article from Kyiv.

Feb. 18, 2023

The New York Times · by Lynsey Addario · February 18, 2023


When Russian troops rushed Kyiv, a woman joined its defense.

She was a middle-school teacher, and had never held a gun.

She left her classroom to defend her city.

The Times followed her journey.


Photographs by

Written by Andrew E. Kramer

Lynsey Addario traveled to Ukraine five times last year and followed Yulia Bondarenko’s journey on four of those trips, reporting from the Kyiv, Kharkiv and Cherkasy regions. Andrew E. Kramer, The Times’s Ukraine bureau chief, wrote this article from Kyiv.

Feb. 18, 2023

Just over a year ago, Yulia Bondarenko’s days were full of lesson plans, grading and her students’ seventh-grade hormones.

When Russian missiles shattered that routine and Russian troops threatened her home in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Ms. Bondarenko, 30, volunteered to fight back, despite her lack of experience, the grave risk to her life and Ukraine’s apparently impossible odds.

“I never held a rifle in my hands and never even saw one up close,” Ms. Bondarenko said. “In the first two weeks, I felt like I was in a fog. It was just a constant nightmare.”

For weeks, she had followed the ominous news of Russian troops massing on Ukraine’s border and decided on Feb. 23 to enlist as a reservist. The next day, the largest land war in Europe since World War II began.

As explosions shook Kyiv, Ms. Bondarenko took the subway to report for duty, uncertain the recruiting office would take her without finished paperwork or a fitness exam.

But in the chaotic swirl of volunteers, officers asked no questions. They handed her a rifle and 120 bullets, and assigned her to a unit expecting to fight in urban combat if the Russian Army broke into the capital. She was only one recruit in a huge influx of volunteers who swelled the size of Ukrainian forces — from about 260,000 soldiers to about one million today — and whose lives were transformed by the war.

In a recent interview, Ms. Bondarenko recalled the intense stress of those early days. Unaccustomed to the sounds of artillery, she said, she expected to be hit after every blast. She thought she would die.


Yulia Bondarenko, left, waiting for weapons training in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

A military trainer showing Ms. Bondarenko how to use her weapon.

An exercise in trench fighting.

Step by step, she learned how to be a soldier. Fellow volunteers showed her how to load, aim and fire her Kalashnikov rifle. They practiced trench fighting and other tactics.

The State of the War

During the weekslong battle for Kyiv, Ms. Bondarenko and about 150 other volunteers, almost all men, lived in a shopping mall, rotating through shifts at checkpoints in the city. She and two other women changed in a bathroom away from the men.

It was so cold at night she slept hugging one of the other female soldiers. Slowly, sleeping bags, mats and warm uniforms turned up — and the unit eventually made it to a barracks.

Ms. Bondarenko and her fellow soldiers at the base.

The brigade was in bed before midnight before the soldiers left for eastern Ukraine.

The brigade just before its departure for the east.

Not all of the new recruits needed training. Eight years of fighting against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine has schooled a generation of Ukrainian soldiers — about 500,000 — in trench warfare on the plains, the type of combat dominating the war today. Many veterans returned to active service when the full-scale invasion began.

In the weeks after Ukraine fended off Russia from the capital, and as Russian troops retreated in the spring, the fighting shifted to the east. Ms. Bondarenko was offered a chance to resign or take a position in a desk job or as a cook.

She overcame her fears and chose to stay with the infantry, living in the barracks and training for campaigns to come.

Ms. Bondarenko finishing paperwork at a base south of Kyiv in August.

Brushing her teeth at the base in August.

Ms. Bondarenko on a patrol in August.

Like other recruits without experience, Ms. Bondarenko learned on the job: how to find trip wires and explosive traps, to duck for cover from shells, to provide battlefield first aid.

At first, she worried about her abilities. Bookish and shy, she never had any interest in the military, and knew nothing of weapons or wars. But on patrols and at the firing range, handling supplies and learning tactics, her confidence grew.

“It was pleasant when the guys said, ‘It’s working out with you,’” she said. “And they said, ‘I would go into battle with you.’”

Her brigade was stationed in a village south of Kyiv, where soldiers formed relationships with residents: They frequented a shop for snacks, and Ms. Bondarenko grew close to a local math teacher.

But at spring’s end, they had to say goodbye. They were heading toward the northeastern Kharkiv region, toward the front.

Ms. Bondarenko after saying goodbye to a math teacher near her unit’s base.

At the base south of Kyiv.

With other soldiers, Ms. Bondarenko helped with logistics for her unit from a home in the Kharkiv region.

In the northeast, the unit came under near constant Russian shelling over the summer. Ms. Bondarenko helped handle logistics and supplies to keep Ukraine’s forces fighting.

Patriotism, and learning the history of Moscow’s repression of Ukrainians, had motivated her to enlist in the first place, she said.

She had moved to Kyiv from a village in central Ukraine for university studies, arriving shortly before mass street protests toppled a pro-Russia president in 2014. During the political awakening that followed, she re-evaluated her family’s history and found injustices from Russia’s long rule in Ukraine.

During Soviet times, she said, a hydroelectric dam had flooded her village, Khudyaki, but the authorities did nothing to relocate residents. Villagers had to salvage what they could from their homes and rebuild on higher ground.

“When I became older, I understood how history was taught incorrectly in schools,” she said.

Even as green new soldiers swelled its ranks, Ukraine adopted dozens of new, Western-donated weapons. By the fall, it had gained strength. Ukraine counterattacked and, upending long-held ideas of the balance of military force in Europe, defeated the Russian Army on the battlefield in two successful offensives, in Kharkiv and Kherson regions.

Over the New Year’s holiday, Ms. Bondarenko was given a respite. She returned to Kyiv, where she got to indulge in joys from before the war: a new haul of books delivered to her apartment; coffee with friends; time with her sister and 4-year-old niece.

Ms. Bondarenko and two childhood friends in Kyiv.

Sorting through the newly arrived books at her apartment.

Ms. Bondarenko with her sister and niece.

She also used her leave to visit her 67-year-old mother, Hanna Bondarenko, at her village in central Ukraine, where she had grown up speaking Ukrainian in contrast to the Russian spoken in Kyiv’s cafes. But her anger at Russia had simmered as Moscow fomented fighting over the past eight years, and she had long switched to speaking Ukrainian in public.

When Russia invaded, her mother said, she at least felt a sense of relief that her daughter would not be drafted. “I was happy I didn’t have a son because I didn’t have to worry about him going off to war,” she said. “I never imagined my daughter would sign up.”

Her daughter said she tried to stave off some feelings while her unit was deployed. She feels guilt about her mother’s fears for her, and misses teaching and her boyfriend. She keeps a box of letters from former students at home.

“When I am away on the base or in the field, I try to shut down emotionally,” she said.

The backpack she carried held a small part of her life as a teacher: books. Some were children’s books that she sometimes read to cheer up fellow soldiers.

Ms. Bondarenko and her mother peeling potatoes at home.

Packing up her belongings to return to Kyiv.

Ms. Bondarenko and her mother, about to part.

But she said that she needed to serve her country, meaning that, before long, she had to make another round of goodbyes. Parting with her boyfriend in Kyiv, she said, she thought of his daily fears and their hopes for the future.

The relationship, she said, “shows me that even in the dark, there can be light.”

Of the many volunteers she has met over the past year, many were deployed to eastern Ukraine, where fighting is raging, and Ms. Bondarenko knows some who have been killed.

She has not yet fired her rifle in combat, but if her platoon is sent to the front, she said, she feels ready to fight.

“I am an infantry soldier now,” she said.

Another goodbye, with her boyfriend.

The New York Times · by Lynsey Addario · February 18, 2023


15. China’s Newest Action TV Show Is a Propaganda Hit




China’s Newest Action TV Show Is a Propaganda Hit

Private partnerships are upping the Communist Party’s entertainment game.

By Alex Colville, a contributor to The Economist and former culture editor at The World of Chinese in Beijing.

Foreign Policy · by Alex Colville · February 18, 2023

On the surface, The Knockout is just like any other cop drama. Filled with police chases, nuanced characters, excellent acting, and thrilling suspense, it’s the hottest new release on Chinese TV and follows a group of intrepid out-of-town officials as they hunt down corrupt local bureaucrats. It has earned an impressive 8.5 points on Douban, China’s user-based reviewing platform, and has dominated hot search feeds on Weibo and Baidu over the past few weeks. Co-producer iQiyi, a commercial online streaming platform with a reputation for creating hit TV shows, saw its stock price rise by almost 10 percent after release. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV says the series gleaned a cumulative total of 319 million viewers on cable TV.

Not bad for propaganda. At base, The Knockout is a tribute to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, co-produced by private studios and supervised by the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (in charge of China’s justice and law enforcement systems).

It’s part of a broader campaign to popularize propaganda in Chinese film and TV. Over the past decade, the government has managed to harness the power of commercial studios and A-list talent to create increasing quality. Propaganda films have now topped the box office highest-grossing list in China each year for the past six years, and in 2022, the top three TV dramas with the highest TV ratings were all of this genre. In part, this comes from clipping the competition—the number of foreign productions imported into the Chinese market has fallen dramatically since 2019—but also from creating shows the public actually wants to watch.

On the surface, The Knockout is just like any other cop drama. Filled with police chases, nuanced characters, excellent acting, and thrilling suspense, it’s the hottest new release on Chinese TV and follows a group of intrepid out-of-town officials as they hunt down corrupt local bureaucrats. It has earned an impressive 8.5 points on Douban, China’s user-based reviewing platform, and has dominated hot search feeds on Weibo and Baidu over the past few weeks. Co-producer iQiyi, a commercial online streaming platform with a reputation for creating hit TV shows, saw its stock price rise by almost 10 percent after release. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV says the series gleaned a cumulative total of 319 million viewers on cable TV.

Not bad for propaganda. At base, The Knockout is a tribute to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, co-produced by private studios and supervised by the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (in charge of China’s justice and law enforcement systems).

It’s part of a broader campaign to popularize propaganda in Chinese film and TV. Over the past decade, the government has managed to harness the power of commercial studios and A-list talent to create increasing quality. Propaganda films have now topped the box office highest-grossing list in China each year for the past six years, and in 2022, the top three TV dramas with the highest TV ratings were all of this genre. In part, this comes from clipping the competition—the number of foreign productions imported into the Chinese market has fallen dramatically since 2019—but also from creating shows the public actually wants to watch.

In Chinese, these propaganda productions are dubbed “main melody.” It’s a term that means mainstream thinking, the zeitgeist—or today, what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants that zeitgeist to be. Reform-minded cadres in the late 1980s wanted media to reflect main melody public views. But after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the party reasserted itself as the one that set the tone for mainstream thinking. Main melody was its melody.

Since the early 2000s, main melody productions have been market-based shows singing mainstream tunes and glorifying the social and political lines that the CCP wants the public to value and imitate. It’s a broad list, from encouraging good behavior in public places to honoring the CCP’s past struggles, strengthening trust of current policies, or kindling patriotism and cultural confidence.

Until the late 1990s, main melody was the only melody. These films dominated cinemas, stoking patriotic fervor over China’s potential and implying that only the party could release it. But media commercialization meant competition for eyeballs—there was suddenly more choice on TV, and all sorts of commercial films were being imported from the West, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Today, online streaming and short-video apps heighten that competition even further.

"The Knockout" television show.

The cast of iQiyi’s The Knockout.

They offered viewers high-quality alternatives to old main melody formats, beginning to change tastes. “In hindsight,” writes journalist Zeng Yuli, by the early 2000s main melody productions looked ham-fisted, leaning into “grand narratives and hero tropes, with mundane plots in place of story, and slogans in place of dialogue.”

Government initiatives attempted to turn the tide. Since 2011, cinemas have had a 5 percent tax placed on all revenues, creating a special fund to subsidize publicity and promotion for main melody films. But a plethora of these are produced each year with an emphasis on box-ticking over quality. Zhou Xiaolan, a professor at South China Normal University, writes that some studios’ very survival has relied on government subsidy, their films tailored for government rather than audiences’ approval. There are still many truly awful main melody films released each year, playing out to nearly empty theaters.

But that’s increasingly being challenged by private enterprise. Although private studios created a handful of successful main melody productions in the 2000s, today “CCP and government agencies are learning to work very closely with commercial enterprises like iQiyi to produce and distribute state propaganda,” said David Bandurski, the director of the Hong Kong-based China Media Project. These partnerships have been responsible for many popular main melody productions over the past three years.

Private companies such as Bona Film Group, Tencent Pictures, and iQiyi are profit-driven, producing main melody shows that aim for audience engagement, tapping into what has previously drawn crowds: Hollywood-style action films, big stars, eye-catching special effects, and heart-warming patriotism. The Battle at Lake Changjin 2 (co-produced by Douyin, Alibaba Pictures, and the People’s Liberation Army’s own movie studio) had all the explosions and bombastic action sequences of a blockbuster U.S. war film and became the highest-grossing film in China last year. And with a marketing department flush with government funding, good-quality main melody films like Lake Changjin 2 can easily score big at the box office.

The CCP is also encouraging studios to update main melody content, detoxifying a film category that many Chinese still think is dry and boring. Bandurski points out that official media periodically claim that a new state production like The Knockout has broken the mold to overcome viewer hesitance. The show is just the latest in a string of anti-corruption dramas released over the past decade—most notably 2017’s In the Name of People—each held up as innovative and exciting, praised for winning viewers with realism, suspenseful plots, and 3D characters. “It shouldn’t surprise us to see propaganda about propaganda overcoming itself as propaganda,” Bandurski said.

Some productions are banking on star attraction to draw crowds. Take Wang Yibo, a 25-year-old K-pop star with a large fanbase and 9 million followers on Weibo. In 2019, he became virtually a household name due to his role in the fantasy TV series The Untamed (with 10 billion views on Tencent Video by 2022). He has since appeared in main melody productions celebrating the CCP and China’s armed forces, including as an undercover CCP army officer, a police officer in the anti-drugs unit, and a trainee pilot in the eagerly anticipated Born to Fly, a Top Gun-esque caper from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force showing off China’s latest fighter jets.

Then there’s relatability. CCTV’s The Age of Awakening (2021), about the foundation of the CCP, wowed younger audiences by showing the love lives of party figures—a highlight being the first general secretary, the young and fiery Chen Duxiu, romantically kissing his new wife on a rainy street corner. It lent a human connection for a generation relatively uninterested in party history, earning 9.3 on Douban.

Everyday characters and scenarios keep audiences engaged and open, the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. It’s really hard not to laugh in some scenes in the anthology film My People, My Homeland (2020)—co-produced by China Film Co., wholly owned by the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA). There’s Zhang Beijing (played by comedy legend Ge You), a proper Beijing local who likes his drink and karaoke who goes to farcical lengths to get his uncle treated for a serious illness. The uncle is not covered for health insurance as he is a migrant worker. Watching it “makes you laugh all over the first second and makes you cry the next second,” says one upvoted Douban comment, adding that “the problem of rural medical insurance is too worrying.” A problem that’s coincidentally solved by the party at the end of the story, issuing Zhang’s uncle with new health insurance.

Many successful state-backed productions are now praised for being “true to life.” It’s hard not to become invested in the grinding struggles of the townspeople and party chiefs of Minning Town (2021), tasked with creating a new settlement out of the dust of 1990s Ningxia. “Guided” by the NRTA, it’s unsparing in its depiction of the area’s abject poverty. “Reality is its foundation,” reads one of the most upvoted netizen reviews on Douban. The next logical step is to think how hard the local party leaders must have worked to lift them out of such poverty.

The Knockout is more of the same. One critic wrote that he was “very glad The Knockout was not filmed in a grand and stiff manner,” full of sights of scenes of everyday life and “delicately presented” corruption, as with its villain Gao Qiqiang, the corrupt local government official who hides under a humble “man of the people” guise. In the past, the baddies were obvious in Chinese TV—clearly evil, with no redeeming qualities lest the audience be enticed to imitate them. But Gao enters the story sympathetically as a bullied fishmonger working hard for his family before he turns to a life of crime. It brings the story to the viewer’s doorstep—this could be any of your local party officials.

It’s all to win us over to the core message. The relentless determination of central party officials to weed out local corruption for the people, or else, as the anti-corruption team’s leader says, “we are not true members of the Communist Party.” Through this “the Party wants to reassure the masses that China’s system is sound—and any bad guys will get caught,” notes Trivium China, a policy think tank based in Beijing.

It’s difficult to know if The Knockout is going to change any minds—people watching propaganda aren’t obliged to buy its messaging. But no doubt the show is helpful to Xi now, reminding people of his anti-corruption campaign, which is still a highly popular policy in China. It comes after Xi called for “unity” in his New Year’s address and urged war readiness for China’s military and after a rough end to his zero-COVID policy, all amid provincial governments battling a debt crisis.

No doubt blaming domestic problems on local governors is convenient, when policies from the center (such as permitting rampant local borrowing and ordering extortionate zero-COVID spending) are part of the reason China is in this rut in the first place. Maintaining people’s faith and trust in the party is more essential now than it ever was.

Foreign Policy · by Alex Colville · February 18, 2023






De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com


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

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

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

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