Quotes of the Day:

"War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim." 

- Herman Melville

“For every prohibition you create you also create an underground.” 

- Eric Reed Boucher (known professionally as Jello Biafra, is an American singer, spoken word artist and political activist)

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." 

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 1, 2023

2. A world where China is Number One

3. With eye on China, Japan to deepen ties with NATO at key leaders' summit

4. Opinion | A slow Ukrainian counteroffensive can’t prompt a Western retreat

5. Has Laos Ensnared China In A ‘Creditor Trap?’ – Analysis

6. Judge to Decide Whether Taint of C.I.A. Torture Extended to Guantánamo

7. Brazil Worries It Has Become a Haven for Russian Spies Infiltrating the West

8. Uniforms? Check. Motto? Check. Now the Space Force needs an identity.

9. Opinion | Hong Kong’s downfall is a warning to the world

10. Opinion | Russia’s biggest problem isn’t the war. It’s losing the 21st century.

11. The FBI has formed a national database to track and prevent 'swatting'

12. Cyber Command to expand 'canary in the coal mine' unit working with private sector

13. Noes the West should give China

14. China Has Begun To Retreat From Southeast Asia

15. CIA thinks the U.S. should get away from China quick

16. Chinese military convoy attacked by rebels in Myanmar, claims junta

17. Elon Musk sets new daily Twitter limits for users

18. Probe into ex-US Navy Seal complete, says Selangor's top cop

19. The Tao of Deception by David Ignatius: Part 2

20. The Tao of Deception: Part III

21. How climate change inflames extremist insurgency in Africa

22. Chinese authorities monitor Tibetans to prevent communication with outside world

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 1, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-1-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in at least four sectors of the frontline on July 1.
• US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley acknowledged that Ukrainian counteroffensive operations will take longer than some Western observers had expected.
• Russian officials and sources celebrated claims that Russian forces defeated small-scale Ukrainian landings in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on July 1 as if they had won a major victory.
• The exaggerated Russian praise for defeating a small Ukrainian landing suggests either that the Russian military command sincerely fears a Ukrainian attack on east bank Kherson Oblast or that it is desperate for an informational victory following the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion or both.
• Russian forces are likely responding to Ukrainian operations around Bakhmut by pulling forces from elsewhere in Ukraine.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the Russians might initiate an intentional radioactive leak at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) as part of a potential Russian strategy to freeze the war.
• Russian propagandists are likely conducting an information campaign to destroy the Wagner Group’s reputation as a uniquely effective fighting force in support of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) effort to dismantle the Wagner Group and integrate former Wagner fighters into MoD structures.
• Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
• Ukrainian forces continued to conduct ground attacks around Bakhmut.
• Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks in and transfer airborne (VDV) elements to the Bakhmut area.
• Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
• Russian forces continued to counterattack recently-liberated Ukrainian positions on the administrative border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Russian security procedures on the Kerch Strait bridge are likely slowing down Russian logistics from Russia to occupied Crimea.
• Iran may be sending materiel and personnel to Russia to help construct a factory in the Republic of Tatarstan that will reportedly make Iranian combat drones.
• Ukrainian and Western sources continue to report on the abductions of Ukrainian children and adults in the occupied territories.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 1, 2023

Jul 1, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 1, 2023

Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Nicole Wolkov, George Barros, Angelica Evans, and Frederick W. Kagan

July 1, 2023, 5:15 pm ET 

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

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

Note: The data cutoff for this product was 12:30 pm ET on July 1. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the July 2 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in at least four sectors of the frontline on July 1. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian assaults in the Bakhmut area and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front.[1] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces made marginal gains near Rozdolivka (18km north of Bakhmut) and unspecified gains near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut).[2] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations along the administrative border between Zaporizhia and Donetsk oblasts and made gains southwest of Velyka Novosilka.[3] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations south and southwest of Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast, with one milblogger claiming that Ukrainian forces made gains up 1.5km deep and 6km wide in the direction of Robotyne (12km south of Orikhiv).[4] Other milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces are still at least 1.5km north of Robotyne as of July 1, consistent with ISW’s current assessment of the control of terrain in the area.[5]

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley acknowledged that Ukrainian counteroffensive operations will take longer than some Western observers had expected. Milley stated that Ukrainian forces are deliberately working through difficult minefields and advancing from 500m to 2,000m a day.[6] Milley reiterated that he expects Ukrainian counteroffensive operations to last up to 10 weeks and urged people to realize that the Ukrainian counteroffensive will be a long and likely costly operation.[7] Russian sources are increasingly claiming that Ukrainian forces are currently conducting assaults in southern Ukraine with smaller infantry groups and fewer armored vehicles than during earlier counteroffensive operations.[8] Russian sources also claim that Ukrainian forces are conducting reconnaissance-in-force operations in southern Ukraine in even smaller groups, some of them allegedly with seven to nine personnel.[9] These claims about Ukrainian operations suggest that Ukrainian forces are not currently attempting the kind of large-scale operations that would result in rapid territorial advances. Ukrainian officials have routinely indicated that Ukrainian forces have yet to commit a substantial portion of their forces to counteroffensive operations and have yet to launch the main phase of the counteroffensive.[10]

Russian officials and sources celebrated claims that Russian forces defeated small-scale Ukrainian landings in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on July 1 as if they had won a major victory. Kherson Oblast Occupation Head Vladimir Saldo claimed that servicemen of the Russian “Dnepr” Group of Forces cleared areas near the Antonivsky Bridge on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River after special forces elements conducted a surprise landing on Ukrainian forces’ rear positions overnight.[11] Saldo claimed that elements of a “Storm” detachment, the 61st  Naval Infantry Brigade (Northern Fleet), the 126th Coastal Defense Brigade (22nd Army Corps, Black Sea Fleet), the 127th Reserve Brigade (likely a new reserve unit), and the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (49th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District [SMD]) participated in the operation that decisively repelled Ukrainian forces from their position near Antonivsky Bridge. Saldo also claimed that Ukrainian forces no longer have any “bridgeheads” on the eastern bank, and a Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces were able to advance to the dacha areas near the Antonivsky Bridge after launching an Iskander ballistic missile at the bridge on June 30.[12] A Crimean-based Russian blogger also claimed that elements of the 7th Guards Mountain Air Assault (VDV) Division using T-72 tanks also participated in an attack against Ukrainian positions near the Antonivsky Bridge.[13] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces eliminated a Ukrainian sabotage group that attempted to land on the island north of Oleshky (9km southeast of Kherson City) - likely referring to the Antonivsky Bridge area.[14] The Russian MoD also demonstratively awarded servicemen of the 80th Arctic Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) - a unit within the Russian “Dnepr” Group of Forces - for destroying Ukrainian military equipment in Kherson Oblast.[15] The Russian MoD also published an interview with the commander of the 80th Arctic Motorized Rifle Brigade who claimed that Russian forces fully restored their positions along the coast of the Dnipro River and along the islands and repelled all Ukrainian attempts to cross the river.[16] Russian sources notably did not provide any evidence that Russian forces regained control over coastal areas and many Russian sources reported that clearing operations near the dacha areas adjacent to the Antonivsky Bridge are still ongoing as of July 1.[17]

The exaggerated Russian praise for defeating a small Ukrainian landing suggests either that the Russian military command sincerely fears a Ukrainian attack on east bank Kherson Oblast or that it is desperate for an informational victory following the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion or both. Russian sources previously claimed that a grouping of around 70 Ukrainian servicemen held positions near the Antonivsky Bridge and that the Russian “Dnepr” Group of Forces’ military command had been consistently ordering Russian forces to eliminate the Ukrainian “bridgehead” despite significant personnel and equipment losses.[18] The Russian “Dnepr” Group of Forces is reportedly headquartered in Rostov-on-Don likely within the SMD headquarters.[19] Wagner forces notably surrounded the SMD headquarters during the armed rebellion on June 24, and the Russian MoD is likely trying to recover the headquarters' reputation. A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger also expressed concern that Ukrainian forces will continue to conduct small unit sorties across the Dnipro River and will launch a large-scale attack to reach Oleshky to break through to southwestern Kherson Oblast.[20] ISW makes no effort to forecast Ukrainian operations, but the milblogger’s statements suggest that the Russian military command may be increasingly concerned over a potential Ukrainian landing on east bank Kherson Oblast.

Russian forces are likely responding to Ukrainian operations around Bakhmut by pulling forces from elsewhere in Ukraine. Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty reported on July 1 that Russian forces recently transferred an unspecified Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) regiment from the Lyman direction (the area west of Kreminna) to the Bakhmut direction.[21] Geolocated footage published on June 30 shows the 137th Guards Airborne Regiment (106th Airborne Division) operating south of Rozdolivka (18km north of Bakhmut).[22] A Russian milblogger also claimed that elements of the 98th VDV Division are now operating in the Bakhmut direction.[23] ISW has previously observed elements of the 237th Air Assault Regiment (76th VDV Division) and the 331st Airborne Regiment (98th VDV Division) operating in the Lyman direction, although ISW has not seen any visual confirmation of elements of either formation near Bakhmut recently.[24] Cherevaty reported that Russian forces replaced the VDV regiment in the Lyman direction with unspecified territorial defense forces, indicating that Russian forces may be redeploying more elite units to the Bakhmut area and replacing the elite units with inferior formations.[25] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar previously stated that Russian forces transferred some of their most-combat capable units from the Kherson direction to the Bakhmut and Zaporizhia directions in the week following the start of Ukrainian counteroffensives on June 4.[26] Cherevaty stated that Bakhmut continues to offer Russian forces more propaganda value than military benefits and suggested that Russian forces may be concentrating elite forces in the Bakhmut area to preserve the perceived informational victory resulting from the capture of Bakhmut on May 21.[27]  If Russian reinforcements already sent to Bakhmut are insufficient to hold Russian gains in the area the Russian command may face difficult choices about whether to risk creating serious vulnerabilities in Kherson or Luhansk oblasts or to begin drawing forces away from southern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the Russians might initiate an intentional radioactive leak at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) as part of a potential Russian strategy to freeze the war. Zelensky stated in an interview with Spanish news outlet El Mundo published on June 30 that Russian forces may attempt to remotely detonate the ZNPP if Ukrainian authorities are able to pass control of the ZNPP to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).[28] Zelensky stated that Russian forces may cause a radiological incident to halt maneuver warfare and buy more time for Russia to recruit more personnel and produce more military equipment.[29]  Zelensky also reported that about 5,000 Russian forces remain at the ZNPP with military equipment. ISW continues to assess that Russia remains unlikely to cause a radiological incident at the ZNPP since Russia would not be able to control the impacts of the incident, which would degrade Russia’s ability to operate and govern in occupied southern Ukraine.[30]  Russian forces could conduct various possible man-made radiological incidents at varying levels of severity; however, ISW continues to assess that the consequences of a Russian radiological incident would outweigh any benefit for Russian forces at this time.[31] Russia is likely continuing to use the threat of a radiological incident to constrain Ukrainian counteroffensive actions and degrade Western military assistance support for Ukraine.

Russian propagandists are likely conducting an information campaign to destroy the Wagner Group’s reputation as a uniquely effective fighting force in support of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) effort to dismantle the Wagner Group and integrate former Wagner fighters into MoD structures. Russian state TV channel Rossiya-1 aired a segment on June 30 trivializing the Wagner Group’s effectiveness in Ukraine, calling into question the “constructed myth about the Wagner Group’s [high level of] effectiveness.”[32] The segment implied that there is a popular misconception in Russia that Wagner forces are extraordinarily effective and argued that regular Russian forces are more effective than the Wagner private military company (PMC). Rossiya-1 argued that regular Russian forces captured a geographically larger and more important city of Mariupol (in 71 days) much faster than Wagner Group forces were able to capture Bakhmut (in 224 days). Many Russian milbloggers – including Wagner-linked milbloggers – decried the report as a shameless rewriting of history and part of a “vile agenda” designed to “consign [Wagner PMC] feats to oblivion.”[33] The Kremlin media apparatus is likely targeting Russian public perception of the Wagner PMC to decrease the group’s popularity as the MoD may seek to effectively disband the Wagner Group in Ukraine and reorganize its elements within the Russian MoD.[34] This segment is likely a supporting effort within Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assessed campaign to destroy Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s personal reputation.[35]

Key Takeaways:

• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in at least four sectors of the frontline on July 1.
• US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley acknowledged that Ukrainian counteroffensive operations will take longer than some Western observers had expected.
• Russian officials and sources celebrated claims that Russian forces defeated small-scale Ukrainian landings in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on July 1 as if they had won a major victory.
• The exaggerated Russian praise for defeating a small Ukrainian landing suggests either that the Russian military command sincerely fears a Ukrainian attack on east bank Kherson Oblast or that it is desperate for an informational victory following the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion or both.
• Russian forces are likely responding to Ukrainian operations around Bakhmut by pulling forces from elsewhere in Ukraine.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the Russians might initiate an intentional radioactive leak at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) as part of a potential Russian strategy to freeze the war.
• Russian propagandists are likely conducting an information campaign to destroy the Wagner Group’s reputation as a uniquely effective fighting force in support of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) effort to dismantle the Wagner Group and integrate former Wagner fighters into MoD structures.
• Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
• Ukrainian forces continued to conduct ground attacks around Bakhmut.
• Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks in and transfer airborne (VDV) elements to the Bakhmut area.
• Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
• Russian forces continued to counterattack recently-liberated Ukrainian positions on the administrative border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Russian security procedures on the Kerch Strait bridge are likely slowing down Russian logistics from Russia to occupied Crimea.
• Iran may be sending materiel and personnel to Russia to help construct a factory in the Republic of Tatarstan that will reportedly make Iranian combat drones.
• Ukrainian and Western sources continue to report on the abductions of Ukrainian children and adults in the occupied territories.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line on July 1. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Novoselivske (16km northwest of Svatove), Nevske (18km northwest of Kreminna), Dibrova (6km southwest of Kreminna), and the Serebryanske forest area (11km south of Kreminna).[36] Geolocated footage published on June 30 shows elements of the Russian 104th Air Assault Regiment (76th Airborne Division) striking Ukrainian positions southeast of Dibrova.[37] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully tried to counterattack near Torske (16km west of Kreminna) on June 30 and that Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) continued assaults in forest areas near Kreminna on July 1.[38]

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

Ukrainian forces continued to conduct ground attacks around Bakhmut on July 1. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian troops advanced from Pryvillia (10km northwest of Bakhmut) along the E40 highway and near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut).[39] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and other Russian sources claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Bakhmut, Vesele (20km northeast of Bakhmut), Zaliznyanske (13km north of Bakhmut), Yahidne (2km north of Bakhmut), and Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut).[40] Russian sources claimed on June 30 that Ukrainian forces attacked near Rozdolivka (19km northeast of Bakhmut), causing Russian forces to retreat about 150 meters, and near Zaitseve (22km south of Bakhmut) and Horlivka (26km south of Bakhmut).[41]

Russian forces continue to conduct limited ground attacks in and transfer airborne (VDV) elements to the Bakhmut area. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Bohdanivka (8km northwest of Bakhmut) and Khromove (immediately west of Bakhmut).[42] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked near Rozdolivka (19km north of Bakhmut).[43] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Russian forces transferred an unspecified VDV regiment from the Lyman direction to areas north of Bakhmut and are concentrating Russia’s best forces in the Bakhmut direction.[44] Geolocated footage published on June 30 shows elements of the 137th Air Assault Regiment of the 106th VDV Division operating south of Rozdolivka.[45] Footage published on June 30 purportedly shows elements of the Russian 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) and the “Alexander Nevsky” volunteer reconnaissance and assault brigade operating near Soledar (12km northeast of Bakhmut).[46]

Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on July 1. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Avdiivka, Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka), and Marinka (immediately southwest of Donetsk City).[47] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully conducted assault operations near Marinka, Pobieda (5km southwest of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka (30km southwest of Donetsk City) and that Ukrainian forces made limited advances in the Pisky direction (9km southwest of Avdiivka).[48] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Lastochkyne (4km northwest of Avdiivka), Vesele (3km northeast of Avdiivka), and Pervomaiske.[49] Geolocated footage published on July 1 shows Ukrainian drones striking Chechen ”Akhmat” forces near Marinka.[50]

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

Russian forces continued to counterattack recently liberated Ukrainian positions on the administrative border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts on July 1. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Rivnopil (11km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[51] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that the Donetsk People‘s Republic’s “Vostok” forces repelled two Ukrainian attacks in the area of Staromayorske (10km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and that Russian forces stopped two Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups in the area of Novodarivka (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[52] Ukrainian Tavriisk Defense Forces Spokesperson Captain Valeriy Shershen stated that Ukrainian forces continue consolidating newly liberated lines and are demining territories in the general Tavriisk (Zaporizhia) direction.[53] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces successfully advanced towards Pryyutne (17km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and in the vicinity of Novodonetske (15km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[54]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on July 1. A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the direction of Robotyne (14km south of Orikhiv) and advanced in an area up to 1.5km deep and 6km wide.[55] Another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces of up to platoon size attacked in the direction of Robotyne and are still at least 1.5km north of Robotyne as of July 1 and that Ukrainian forces periodically engage elements of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet in the area.[56] The 810th Naval Infantry Brigade was notably heavily degraded in failed assaults against Vuhledar in winter-spring 2022-2023.[57] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group near Robotyne.[58] Russian sources claimed that fighting is ongoing north of Robotyne and that  Pyatykhatky (25km southwest of Orikhiv) remains a contested “gray zone.”[59] Russian sources claimed that small Ukrainian assault groups attempted to liberate Pyatykhatky but were unsuccessful due to Russian artillery fire in the area.[60] Russian sources observed that Ukrainian forces are operating in small sabotage and reconnaissance groups and are not using many armored vehicles in western Zaporizhia Oblast.[61]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces launched Storm Shadow missile strikes at Berdyansk on July 1.[62] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces shot down both missiles over Berdyansk.[63] ISW reviewed imagery of the airfield in Berdyansk on July 1 and did not observe any evidence of damage to Russian helicopters on the airfield.

Russian security procedures on the Kerch Strait bridge are likely slowing down Russian logistics from Russia to occupied Crimea. Crimean Occupation Minister of Transport Nikolai Lukashenko claimed on July 1 that a major traffic jam formed at the entrance of the Kerch Strait bridge in Krasnodar Krai and that wait times for security inspections are up to two hours.[64]

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

Iran may be sending materiel and personnel to Russia to help construct a factory in the Republic of Tatarstan to manufacture Iranian combat drones. A Russian milblogger claimed on June 30 that a Pouya airline Il-76TD Iranian cargo plane that normally flies from Iran to Moscow recently flew from Iran to Nizhnekamsk, Republic of Tatarstan.[65] US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby stated on June 9 that Iran is helping Russia build a drone manufacturing factory in Yelabluga (20km from Nizhnekamsk) and that the facility could be operational by early 2024.[66] The Wall Street Journal reported in February 2023 that the facility may be able to produce 6,000 Iranian Shahed drones “in the coming years.”[67]

Regional Russian officials continue to form irregular volunteer battalions to support Russian force generation efforts. Khabarovsk Krai Governor Mikhail Degtyarev reportedly formed two new volunteer battalions on June 26, the “Erofi Khabarov” Battalion and the “Maxim Passard” Battalion.[68] The two new volunteer battalions will reportedly join the Khabarovsk Krai-based “Baron Kofi” Battalion already operating in Ukraine.[69] Recruits will reportedly receive a one-time 300,000-ruble ($3,450) payment when joining these new volunteer formations.[70]

Russian arms manufacturer Lobaev Arms claimed that it has created new hardware that will allow Russian forces in Ukraine to operate commercially available drones under electronic warfare jamming conditions that completely suppress satellite navigation.[71] Lobaev claimed that the hardware will allow Russian forces to use commercially available M2, M2 pro, M2 Air, M3 Classic, M30T, and M300RTK drones when satellite navigation is suppressed and that the company is working on adapting the hardware for other drone types.[72] Lobaev added that Lobaev Arms continues to work alongside the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Russian volunteer groups on sending drone systems to Russian forces in Ukraine.[73]

Ukrainian officials stated that Russian occupation officials are preparing for another mobilization wave in occupied territories. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on July 1 that the Zaporizhia Oblast occupation administration is preparing mobilization processes at 44 military registration centers in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast and that Russian occupation officials plan to add all citizens of conscription age to conscription lists.[74] The Resistance Center reported that Zaporizhia Oblast Occupation Head Yevgeny Balitsky plans to frame the new mobilization wave as a recruitment effort for militias in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[75]

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

Ukrainian and Western sources continue to report on the abductions of Ukrainian children and adults in the occupied territories. NBC News released an investigative report into Russian officials deporting 46 Ukrainian orphans from then-occupied Kherson City to occupied Crimea in late October 2022.[76] NBC News investigated a video posted by United Russia Party Deputy Igor Kastyukevich that showed Russian officials and Ukranian collaborators abducting Ukrainian orphans weeks prior to the Ukrainian liberation of Kherson City in November 2022.[77] NBC News reported that senior Russian officials claimed that the children remain in Crimea, though Ukrainian officials stated they are concerned the children could disappear into Russia before Ukrainian officials can secure the children’s return.[78] Ukrainian outlet Hromadske released its own investigative report into the abductions and reported that the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine filed charges against Igor Kastyukevich, the acting director of the orphanage, and a Kherson Oblast occupation administration official for their involvement in the abductions.[79] The Ukrainian Resistance Center, citing Ukrainian partisans, reported that Russian authorities have detained around 600 people in Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts recently and that their current whereabouts are unknown.[80] The Resistance Center reported that these punitive measures are directed against citizens who openly criticize the Russian occupation.[81]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks).

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private jet reportedly landed in Minsk on July 1. Publicly available flight tracking information indicates that Prigozhin’s plane departed from St. Petersburg and approached Minsk in the early morning of July 1.[82] A Belarusian source reported that Prigozhin’s plane landed in Minsk on July 1.[83] Prigozhin’s plane previously traveled from Rostov to Moscow, and then from Moscow to Minsk on June 27.[84] Prigozhin’s exact whereabouts are unknown as of July 1.

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

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.

2. A world where China is Number One

Excerpts:

Brown hopes that pragmatism will also take hold in the West. He states that, “Whether we embrace or have distaste toward China as it is politically today, we have no choice but to recognize that it is there and that it is as it is. We will not all wake up tomorrow, like protagonists in some fantasy film, and find China is no longer there, or that it has magically transformed to become somewhere we actually like and feel close to. We can console ourselves with the associated thought that exactly the same in reverse applies to China.”

There is a lot more to this book, which is informed by the author’s 30 years’ experience of life in China, where he has worked in education, in business and as a diplomat. He is the author of more than 20 books on China.

A world where China is Number One

Kerry Brown’s new book notes folly of projecting Western values and a Manichean worldview onto China’s very different civilization and tradition

asiatimes.com · by Scott Foster · June 28, 2023

The three key things about China we need to keep in mind are that

• it is strong, not weak;
• it has become a sea power; and
• its values are both different from those of the West and not necessarily what Europe and America think they are.

“When we are discussing anything to do with the People’s Republic of China in the contemporary context, therefore, these three factors are good places to start,” writes Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese Studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London, in the first chapter of his new book, “China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One.”

The title reminds us of Japan Inc, the words used to describe Japan’s combination of industrial policy and mercantilism since the 1980s; and “Japan as Number One: Lessons for America”, the popular book by Ezra Vogel published in 1999. Brown’s book even has a chapter entitled “The Enigma of Chinese Power,” which echoes Karel Van Wolferen’s “The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation,” published in 1990.

But the book does not explain Chinese industrial and trade policies; it does not tell us what the West can learn from China’s rapid modernization; and it is certainly not about what the writer imagines is the hollow political center of a great economic power.

Rather, Brown examines the more important issue of how Western misunderstanding of Chinese thinking about the role of government and international relations has magnified the problem of dealing with a different civilization that has grown big and strong enough to reject our criticism and push back.

The misunderstanding has historical, cultural and political roots but fundamentally it can be attributed to the universalist, Manichean (good vs evil) worldview of what Brown refers to as the Enlightenment West – and the projection of that attitude onto a civilization that doesn’t share the same history.

“The distinctiveness of the intellectual and cultural history of inhabitants of the space now occupied by the People’s Republic of China is undeniable,” Brown writes. “In terms of language, modes of governance, economic behavior, and fundamental view about how the world operates and how society should be shaped, the Chinese tradition is a long, complex and sometimes (but not always) contrasting one to that which has created the Europe and North America of today.”

He continues, “The Western European proclivity has been to maintain the conviction, at least until recent decades, that there is a final, truthful, unifying vision of the world.”

On the other hand,

In the Chinese world where a notion of harmony in the abstract was privileged, the focus was on accepting different kinds of views and convictions for different spaces and occasions….

A syncretic worldview is the result – one that in the twenty-first century continues to puzzle and fascinate because of the ability of modern Chinese to place capitalism next to socialism while seeming under Xi Jinping to be proud of Confucianism as well as having as many as 200 million Buddhists in various sects and about half that number of Christians.

That description runs head on into democratically elected politicians’ abhorrence of one-party dictatorship and American alarm over perceived or potential subversion by Confucius Institutes, Huawei or any other Chinese organization under the sway of the Communist Party.

People stand next to a display commemorating the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai on June 30, 2021. Photo: AFP / Hector Retamal

Brown does not dwell on the nature of the Communist Party, but points out that Confucius Institutes have often been their own worst enemies and that Huawei, due to its leading position in the telecommunications industry and the legal environment in which it operates, will never be free of suspicion.

After all, China’s National Intelligence Law stipulates that “all organizations and citizens shall support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with the law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.”

Combined with the rapid growth of its military power, including the ever-longer reach of its navy, the globe-spanning infrastructure investments of the Belt and Road Initiative, allegations of hacking and the hot-button issues of the South China Sea, Taiwan and Xinjiang, this makes China for “a large number of American and European politicians … not just a problem, but the problem.”

The problem with this problem is its ambiguity. The Chinese military has never used more than a fraction of its power. No clear evidence of surveillance via Chinese telecom equipment has been publicly provided. The motives and capabilities are there, but there is no smoking gun.

As for the Belt and Road, which critics regard as a combination of debt-trap diplomacy and strategic threat, Brown asks, “How much longer do we have to wait till we see Beijing’s hand fully exposed? What if, in the end, it really was all mainly commercial?”

For centuries, the West has been working to remake the world in its own image. Its Enlightenment mind finds it logical to conclude that the Chinese are trying to do the same, regardless of China’s doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other countries (rejected as duplicitous on the one hand and as unprincipled support for dictators on the other) and its cultural exclusiveness.

Western military and national security officials default to the worst-case scenario, while many politicians favor a simple narrative of evil communists oppressing the good Chinese people. But, as Brown writes, “one thing stands out – the complexity of the issues China poses, just being itself, and doing the kinds of things it does as an actor of its size and reach.

“Complexity alone is a vast problem, and one the Enlightenment West in particular, with its love of orderly frameworks and all-embracing tidy theories, clearly abhors. China upsets the epistemology of the West – it violates notions of universalism being universal.”

If economic prosperity either is contingent on the existence of multi-party government and Western style rule of law or inevitably brings these in its wake, this leads to:

• China explanation number one – We are right; China is undertaking a huge con, and
• China explanation number two – China has to democratize.

Otherwise, China will collapse. But it hasn’t collapsed since Gordon Chang’s book “The Coming Collapse of China” was published in 2001 and Brown now doesn’t expect it to collapse anytime soon. Rather, within a decade, “the world’s largest economy could well be an Asian country under a Communist government.”

If and when that happens, the West is likely to be a sore loser, angry and frustrated. In fact, it already is doing everything it can to slow China down and prevent that outcome.

At the same time, China

is certainly more frustrated and irritated than ever before at the outside world. This has reached such a level of intensity that there has been a formal policy response: “Dual Circulation” – a strategy in many Chinese people’s eyes to simply get whingeing, moaning, sore losing Westerners with their toxic social media, their crazy political systems, their moralizing and ignorance and arrogance, off China’s back.

Dual Circulation is an economic policy that puts priority on domestic consumption (internal circulation) while remaining open to foreign trade and investment (external circulation). Dependence on exports is to be reduced while technological independence is achieved through innovation. It is an answer to Western sanctions and protectionism, a sort of reverse decoupling or de-risking that is less ideological and more pragmatic.

Brown hopes that pragmatism will also take hold in the West. He states that, “Whether we embrace or have distaste toward China as it is politically today, we have no choice but to recognize that it is there and that it is as it is. We will not all wake up tomorrow, like protagonists in some fantasy film, and find China is no longer there, or that it has magically transformed to become somewhere we actually like and feel close to. We can console ourselves with the associated thought that exactly the same in reverse applies to China.”

There is a lot more to this book, which is informed by the author’s 30 years’ experience of life in China, where he has worked in education, in business and as a diplomat. He is the author of more than 20 books on China.

“China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One” is scheduled to be published by Bloomsbury on September 7, 2023. It can be pre-ordered here.

Follow this writer on Twitter: @ScottFo83517667

Related

asiatimes.com · by Scott Foster · June 28, 2023

3. With eye on China, Japan to deepen ties with NATO at key leaders' summit

The Asia-Pacific Four. Sounds like a superhero group.

A question: Can Japan adjust politically ito step up and become a partner in the Arsenal of democracy?

Excerpts:

Kishida, who last year became the first Japanese prime minister to attend such a gathering, is set to join the summit on July 11 and 12 with the leaders of South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Informally known as the Asia-Pacific Four, these countries, which have been part of NATO’s “global partners” group since the early 2010s, are also expected to enter deeper partnerships with the trans-Atlantic alliance.

...

Allies will also commit to supporting Ukraine with weapons and military assistance for the longer term as few believe that a Ukrainian offensive, even if successful, will enable the country to liberate all of its occupied territories for the foreseeable future, Shea said.

Besides deepening engagements with the like-minded Asia Pacific nations, other topics on the NATO agenda will be the approval of defense plans for Central and Eastern Europe and enhancing the allies’ resilience against hybrid threats from both Russia and China.

Other key issues will be the position of Turkey and Hungary on Sweden’s NATO membership, and the alliance’s defense spending targets. Member states are looking to agree on 2% gross domestic product as the minimum the allies are expected to devote to defense, re-framing the spending pledge as “a floor, not a ceiling,” according to Black.

Increasing support for Ukraine is also something that is expected to be high on Kishida’s agenda. Japan’s reaction to the Ukraine conflict has not only been swift but also comprehensive, with Tokyo providing Kyiv with a mix of humanitarian, financial and nonlethal military aid in the form of surveillance drones, bulletproof vests, helmets, transport vehicles, tents and medical supplies.

Unlike the United States and many European countries, pacifist Japan has not delivered weapons due to guidelines that effectively ban arms exports. But the winds are shifting in Tokyo, as the ruling coalition looks to reach an agreement on how to modify the guidelines on the export of lethal weapons.

With eye on China, Japan to deepen ties with NATO at key leaders' summit

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/07/02/national/nato-leaders-summit-japan-preview/?utm_source=pianoDNU&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=72&tpcc=dnu&pnespid=qvzIiNFS5vTa_Kmj.UTxsOEJug0doyBrgFUwBxM4tU_VsQMJNQ3Vj5hE9lrueXadePJtJAY

• BY GABRIEL DOMINGUEZ
• STAFF WRITER
• SHARE
• Jul 2, 2023
• 
  

More support for Ukraine, a new NATO office in Tokyo and a new partnership agreement with the world’s most powerful military alliance are set to top Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s agenda when he attends the NATO leaders’ summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next week.

Kishida, who last year became the first Japanese prime minister to attend such a gathering, is set to join the summit on July 11 and 12 with the leaders of South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Informally known as the Asia-Pacific Four, these countries, which have been part of NATO’s “global partners” group since the early 2010s, are also expected to enter deeper partnerships with the trans-Atlantic alliance.

The planned transition to NATO’s new Individually Tailored Partnership Program (ITPP) later this year also appears far more advanced than initially reported, with the Vilnius summit likely to see the new partnerships approved for each of the four countries, Jamie Shea, a former deputy assistant secretary-general for emergency security challenges at NATO, told The Japan Times.

“The ITPPs have been negotiated and approved at the ambassador level,” said Shea, who is now a professor at the University of Exeter in England, adding that the leaders would use the summit to “endorse and highlight them as a mark of progress.”

What exactly the ITPPs will mean for each of the Asia-Pacific countries is not entirely clear, as few details have emerged. In general, however, these engagement frameworks — based on a partner’s individual capacities, needs and interests — provide opportunities to develop interoperability with NATO militaries as well as a platform for engaging and sharing information about a variety of security issues.

"Adopting the ITPPs will surely be an important development, but it is mainly a bureaucratic innovation," said Michito Tsuruoka, an international security expert and associate professor at Keio University, adding that what will matter most is what new kinds of cooperation will become possible under the framework.

Japan sees closer cooperation with NATO as a means of expanding its security engagement with its members. The aim is to strengthen deterrence by forging closer strategic ties and interoperability, while simultaneously building bridges between U.S. alliances in both the trans-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions, said Celine Pajon, a Japan expert at the French Institute of International Relations.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg talks to reporters as he arrives for a European Council Summit, at EU headquarters in Brussels on Thursday. | AFP-JIJI

At the same time, by engaging as many partners as possible, Tokyo aims to avoid being caught in a precarious position between Washington and Beijing, the expert said. Pajon said that Japan’s ITPP will likely aim to facilitate information-sharing, enhance resilience against common threats and address challenges in cyberspace, outer space and maritime domains.

At the summit itself, Kishida is expected to emphasize the importance of Japan-NATO cooperation for securing the Indo-Pacific, and by doing so help to further entrench Tokyo’s own security agenda, said Sebastian Maslow, a Japan security expert and lecturer at Sendai Shirayuri Women's College.

“Similar to Kishida’s initiative at the G7 summit, I would also expect Tokyo to emphasize the specific regional security threats posed, for example by China with regard to maritime security and peace across the Taiwan Strait, or by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs," Maslow said.

Kishida, who will visit the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels after the summit, is also likely to work toward connecting growing security frameworks such as “the Quad” and multilateral groupings with NATO.

“Improving coordination in this way is important to avoid the complex web of overlapping cooperation agreements emerging between different Atlantic and Pacific nations from becoming a burden to navigate,” said James Black, assistant director of defense at Rand Europe, part of the nonprofit Rand Corp. “Otherwise, the risk is that these frameworks become talking shops, rather than the basis for concrete actions.”

Japan, which has already joined NATO for several cyber, air and naval exercises, has also expressed its intention to regularly participate as an observer in the North Atlantic Council — the alliance’s principal political decision-making body — as well as its meetings of defense chiefs.

Meanwhile, Kishida will also want to make the case for setting up a liaison office in Tokyo — which would be the alliance’s first in Asia — sometime next year.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hold a joint media briefing on Jan. 31 in Tokyo. | POOL / VIA REUTERS

Resistance from French President Emmanuel Macron has complicated the move, with Paris saying NATO should remain focused on its own region. To try and persuade France, which could veto the plan, other member states are expected to argue that the office will be critical to implementing Individually Tailored Partnership Programs.

“If the opening of a modest NATO office in Tokyo is directly linked to coordinating the ITPP with local partners, it may be more acceptable to France,” said Pajon.

That said, most discussions at the NATO summit will revolve around the war in Ukraine and how the alliance can increase support for Kyiv. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said last month that Kyiv expects to receive a clear signal and "formula" at the summit for the country to join the alliance.

Experts, however, doubt that NATO will go that far.

“It seems Ukraine will not be offered a clear timeline to membership, but only an enhanced partnership and a clear reiteration of the prospect for its future membership,” said Paal Sigurd Hilde, a NATO expert at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.

Ukraine will not be able to join NATO while the war continues, as under the alliance's Article 5 this would commit the allies to entering the war against Russia.

Currently, the allies are debating a package of measures for Ukraine which, while short of actual membership, will show that the NATO-Ukraine relationship is moving forward, according to Shea.

One initiative under discussion is to upgrade the NATO-Ukraine Commission — a joint consultative mechanism — into a council, while another would be to launch a NATO program and fund to assist the Ukrainian army in becoming fully interoperable with the alliance and adhering to its standards. Such a program would facilitate Ukraine’s integration at a later stage.

A third proposal, coming from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, is not to apply NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Ukraine and say that Kyiv has already met many of the political and military requirements for membership.

“The requirement for a MAP was waived in the case of Finland and Sweden so they could be fast-tracked into the alliance,” Black said. “Some NATO allies are thus asking why Ukraine should have to jump through this hoop, especially when its armed forces have proven their capabilities on the battlefield."

The idea is that once the war is over, a membership decision can be taken fairly quickly.

A Ukrainian serviceman sits on a T-72 tank at a position in the country’s Donetsk region on Sunday. | AFP-JIJI

The allies may also discuss security guarantees for Ukraine short of NATO membership, although Kyiv expects these will be supplied on a bilateral basis by the United States and European countries such as Britain or Poland, rather than the full alliance.

Allies will also commit to supporting Ukraine with weapons and military assistance for the longer term as few believe that a Ukrainian offensive, even if successful, will enable the country to liberate all of its occupied territories for the foreseeable future, Shea said.

Besides deepening engagements with the like-minded Asia Pacific nations, other topics on the NATO agenda will be the approval of defense plans for Central and Eastern Europe and enhancing the allies’ resilience against hybrid threats from both Russia and China.

Other key issues will be the position of Turkey and Hungary on Sweden’s NATO membership, and the alliance’s defense spending targets. Member states are looking to agree on 2% gross domestic product as the minimum the allies are expected to devote to defense, re-framing the spending pledge as “a floor, not a ceiling,” according to Black.

Increasing support for Ukraine is also something that is expected to be high on Kishida’s agenda. Japan’s reaction to the Ukraine conflict has not only been swift but also comprehensive, with Tokyo providing Kyiv with a mix of humanitarian, financial and nonlethal military aid in the form of surveillance drones, bulletproof vests, helmets, transport vehicles, tents and medical supplies.

Unlike the United States and many European countries, pacifist Japan has not delivered weapons due to guidelines that effectively ban arms exports. But the winds are shifting in Tokyo, as the ruling coalition looks to reach an agreement on how to modify the guidelines on the export of lethal weapons.

4. Opinion | A slow Ukrainian counteroffensive can’t prompt a Western retreat

It seems to me many of the military armchair quarterback pundits only learn half of Clausewtiz' famous dictum. " In war everything is simple."

They expect quick results after an announcement of an offensive.

But they fail to read Clausewitz in sufficient depth to learn the second part of the dictum: "But even the simplest thing is hard."

But is strategic patience the right characterization? So much baggage with that phrase. (I do think it is useful but it conjures views of other "conflicts" in a not so positive way - my bias is showing).

Excerpts:

That raises the question of how to define a Ukrainian victory, a point already the subject of intense debate. For Mr. Zelensky, publicly at least, winning means recapturing all Ukrainian territory — including Crimea, which Russia seized illegally in 2014. That would require a major rout of Russian forces, who have built up heavy defenses to protect the peninsula. Some analysts also believe Mr. Putin would regard the loss of Crimea as a red line that could prompt him to use a nuclear weapon.

A more modest version of a Ukrainian victory would be advances that push Russian troops back to the territory they held before the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. That would leave Russia still in control of large swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine, a scenario anathema to Mr. Zelensky. However, it might also give Kyiv an edge in peace negotiations, if either side were willing to engage in them, at some point in the future.

There is ample cause for worry about Ukraine’s prospects — but also for measured optimism. The recent mutiny staged by the Wagner Group private mercenary force seems likely to sideline some or many of those soldiers, who are Moscow’s most battle-hardened and effective shock troops. Even if some of Wagner’s estimated 25,000 soldiers in the Ukraine conflict are incorporated into the Russian army, as Moscow has offered as an option, it is questionable whether a force so distinct, and heretofore independent, would be effectively integrated — or fully trusted by their comrades in arms or superiors.

Wagner troops were largely responsible for Russian gains in Bakhmut; Ukraine’s advances around it have taken place since their departure. Without Wagner on the battlefield, Russia is a diminished force, albeit a still formidable one.

Strategic patience is the wisest course for the Biden administration and its European allies. No matter what the outcome of the next several months’ fighting, their interests lie in continuing to arm, train and help defend Ukraine in the face of an ongoing threat from Russia — and to its aspirations to become a full-fledged Western country.

Opinion | A slow Ukrainian counteroffensive can’t prompt a Western retreat

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · June 30, 2023

If there is any lesson that Russia — and the West — can learn from Vladimir Putin’s ruinous war against his neighbor, it should be not to underestimate Ukraine’s determination, ingenuity and adaptability on the battlefield. That’s a useful reminder almost a month into Kyiv’s long-telegraphed counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces, which, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged, has progressed more slowly than many had hoped.

Nearly 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory remains occupied by Russian troops, who had months to dig multiple tiers of deep trenches and prepare other defensive obstacles along the length of a 600-mile front line. That frontier is now among the world’s most heavily mined strips of land — more than 75,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory has been seeded with explosives, according to Mr. Zelensky — and is also stitched with antitank obstacles, made of reinforced concrete, known as dragon’s teeth.

What’s more, there are thought to be several hundred thousand Russian soldiers in Ukraine, considerably more than Ukraine can muster. Kyiv’s forces lack the 3-to-1 numerical advantage generally thought needed for attacking soldiers to overcome dug-in defenders such as Russia’s.

Yet hand-wringing over Ukraine’s stuttering advance, which began in early June, is premature. It ignores not just the gains that have been made — more than 100 square miles of territory liberated, according to the British Defense Ministry — but also the fact that the real fight has not begun. When it does, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the Financial Times, “everyone will see everything.”

Ukrainian forces, having retreated from the battered city of Bakhmut in May after 10 months of house-to-house fighting, are now advancing in the suburbs, threatening to encircle Russian troops. More broadly, Mr. Reznikov made the point, confirmed by Western officials, that some or most of the Ukrainian brigades trained by U.S. and European allies, and equipped with top-shelf arms and equipment, remain in reserve as other troops probe Russia’s lines to detect weaknesses. When those brigades and others are sent into battle, the combat is likely to intensify. It might then stretch through the summer and into the fall.

At that point, Ukraine and its allies can sensibly reckon with what has and has not been achieved — and what more might be gained with the provision of U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets and other advanced weaponry whose delivery isn’t expected until later this year or next.

Ukrainian officials, pressed by their Western counterparts to show dramatic results, understand the political and military stakes. Mr. Putin’s strategy is not, at this point, to take Kyiv, topple the Zelensky government or erase Ukraine’s national identity — all goals he harbored when he unleashed his troops 16 months ago. Rather, the Russian dictator is thought to be content for now with a frozen conflict, which he hopes will exhaust the West’s patience and political will to keep Ukraine supplied with arms and materiel.

And, of course, Mr. Putin might be betting that the American electorate will break his way in the 2024 elections by restoring Donald Trump to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump has pledged to sever Kyiv’s lifeline from Washington, which so far tops $40 billion in military aid.

So a stalemate in Ukraine, one in which Kyiv’s forces are stymied in their attempt to make major territorial gains, plays into Mr. Putin’s strategy. Hence the mounting pressure on Mr. Zelensky and his generals to achieve a breakthrough that will show the world that Ukraine can “win.”

That raises the question of how to define a Ukrainian victory, a point already the subject of intense debate. For Mr. Zelensky, publicly at least, winning means recapturing all Ukrainian territory — including Crimea, which Russia seized illegally in 2014. That would require a major rout of Russian forces, who have built up heavy defenses to protect the peninsula. Some analysts also believe Mr. Putin would regard the loss of Crimea as a red line that could prompt him to use a nuclear weapon.

A more modest version of a Ukrainian victory would be advances that push Russian troops back to the territory they held before the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. That would leave Russia still in control of large swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine, a scenario anathema to Mr. Zelensky. However, it might also give Kyiv an edge in peace negotiations, if either side were willing to engage in them, at some point in the future.

There is ample cause for worry about Ukraine’s prospects — but also for measured optimism. The recent mutiny staged by the Wagner Group private mercenary force seems likely to sideline some or many of those soldiers, who are Moscow’s most battle-hardened and effective shock troops. Even if some of Wagner’s estimated 25,000 soldiers in the Ukraine conflict are incorporated into the Russian army, as Moscow has offered as an option, it is questionable whether a force so distinct, and heretofore independent, would be effectively integrated — or fully trusted by their comrades in arms or superiors.

Wagner troops were largely responsible for Russian gains in Bakhmut; Ukraine’s advances around it have taken place since their departure. Without Wagner on the battlefield, Russia is a diminished force, albeit a still formidable one.

Strategic patience is the wisest course for the Biden administration and its European allies. No matter what the outcome of the next several months’ fighting, their interests lie in continuing to arm, train and help defend Ukraine in the face of an ongoing threat from Russia — and to its aspirations to become a full-fledged Western country.

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · June 30, 2023

5. Has Laos Ensnared China In A ‘Creditor Trap?’ – Analysis

A complex problem.

Is Bonaparte watching his enemy make a mistake?

Excerpts:

However, that deal also meant that the Lao government was able to palm off to Beijing a state-owned enterprise that was hemorrhaging money. Before the merger, EDL was estimated to have been $8 billion in debt. (Much of Laos’ external debt has been taken on to finance its underperforming state-run firms, while a recent spate of bond issuances has gone to fund state-run banks.) How much of that remains on the Lao state’s books remains unclear but presumably China Southern may have taken on a proportion of that debt. Granted, it also means less revenue for the state but the Lao government now wants domestic taxation on private firms and individuals to be the main bulk of its revenue.

None of this is to say that the Laotian people benefit from the situation. Laos is a one-party, communist state. If it was a democracy, perhaps ordinary folk would rebel over how the current financial burdens will impact their children. National debt, after all, is a tax on the yet unborn generation. No-one benefits from this. Consider the question: Would Beijing prefer Laos to be a debt-ridden economic mess or to be more like Cambodia, another geopolitical partner but one with relatively low debt (less than 40 percent of GDP), good trade with the wealthy West and public finances to invest in its citizens? 

Patron-client relations aren’t one-directional and debt is also trapping China in Laos. Something must give. But it’s in Beijing’s court to decide. If the Belt and Road is China’s weltpolitik, a Laotian default on its debt would arguably be the biggest crisis yet to Beijing’s image as an honest creditor. Debt deferrals are only possible for a few more years. At some point, Beijing will surely have to offer forgiveness. 

Has Laos Ensnared China In A ‘Creditor Trap?’ – Analysis

https://www.eurasiareview.com/02072023-has-laos-ensnared-china-in-a-creditor-trap-analysis?

 July 2, 2023  0 Comments

By RFA

By David Hutt

In the Western vernacular there’s a warning about tails wagging dogs. And the Buddhist adage dictates that when the sage points at the moon, only the fool looks at his finger. The point of both is not to confuse the object for the subject. For years, we’ve been warned that Laos has been ensnared in a Chinese “debt trap.’ What if Laos has equally caught Beijing in a “creditor trap?”

According to the World Bank’s latest estimates, Laos’ national debt has probably surpassed 110 percent of GDP, with more than two-fifths of that owed bilaterally to China. (It accounts for around half of Laos’ external debt.) Others reckon the percentages are actually much higher. And as things stand, Laos’ public debt will remain above the 100-percent-of-GDP mark until 2030, according to a baseline scenario of an IMF report published last month.  

China and Laos rarely make these things public, but the IMF reckons known deferrals of debt servicing to China amounted to $220 million in 2020, $450 million in 2021, and $610 million last year. By one estimate, China’s short-term debt relief in the form of deferrals accounted for nearly 8 percent of Laos’ GDP by the end of 2022. Delaying makes sense. It frees up Vientiane’s finances in the short term. Because most of Laos’ debt is in U.S .dollars and the Lao kip has depreciated so badly since early 2022, payment now would be far more costly to the state than if China was paid back in a few years time (when the kip would have presumably rallied). 

Beijing might remain conservative. “Given the approach China has taken previously, it may offer short term relief, but only that,” Mariza Cooray, of the Lowy Institute’s Indo-Pacific Development Centre, argued last month. Beijing has moved much quicker to defer debt repayments for Laos compared to for the likes of Sri Lanka and Zambia, Cooray noted. But as with Sri Lanka and Zambia, she added, “China has also so far been unwilling to take a haircut on its debt, despite obvious signs that this will ultimately be necessary and to everyone’s benefit.” 

Speaking recently to several economists, however, most were of the opinion that at some point, perhaps in the next year or two, Beijing will have to take a bolder step. That may not be as simple as write-downs or debt forgiveness, although those aren’t beyond doubt. Writing off two or three billion dollars, for instance, would prick China’s overseas credit sheets but it would be a godsend to Laos’ coffers.  

Special case

Other debtor nations might cry foul. But unlike Pakistan, say, Laos has miniscule relations with the West, so slightly freeing Vientiane from this debt burden won’t see it suddenly realign with the United States or Western lenders. A majority of Laos’ debt is owed bilaterally to China, whereas most of Pakistan’s external debt is owed to multilateral institutions. That makes Laos a special case. 

More likely, though, Beijing will want some form of quid-pro-quo: a stake in Laos’ national assets or a geopolitical favor. It’s worth considering that Laos takes on the annually-rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2024, and Beijing may lean on its geopolitical client to represent its interests. Vientiane, which isn’t overly fussed by how others perceive it, could demand something in return.

In any case, that will once again raise the hackles of those who proclaim Laos is ensnared in a Chinese “debt trap”. But Beijing cannot easily walk away from its commitments in Laos, either. Toshiro Nishizawa, who has advised the Lao government in the past, has argued that the scale of Laos’ debt may seem like “a default is inevitable” but “geo-economic factors mean that the concerns about Laos defaulting are unrealistic. China is unwilling to stomach the financial and political ramifications of a potential Laotian default.” 

Laos has also, in a way, trapped China. If Beijing allowed Laos to default, it would send a shock throughout the Global South. Because Beijing cannot afford to let Laos suffer too much, it’s compelled to offer Laos more relief than other lenders might have done. Neither does it want Chinese firms invested in Laos to be burdened by non-performing loans or for the local economy to collapse. 

Chinese gangsters might run mini-fiefdoms in northern Laos but it’s in Beijing’s interest for the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) to maintain tight central power. It certainly wouldn’t help Beijing’s global interests if a political crisis erupts in its southern neighbor over the government’s inability to pay civil servants or fund basic services for the people, now increasingly the trend.   

Debt is trapping China in Laos

In September 2020, Électricité du Laos (EDL), the state-owned energy company that controls the power grid, partnered with China Southern Power Grid Company to create the Électricité du Laos Transmission Company (EDL-T). The firm, of which China Southern has a controlling share (reportedly 90%), will manage Laos’ power grid for the next 25 years, including decisions on buying and selling power locally. 

Anjali Bhatt, writing about this topic in the Diplomat, noted that this “means China Southern will effectively control the electricity imports and exports of Laos – the crux of the whole Southeast Asia battery ambition.” The direct control of critical infrastructure, she added, “gives China leverage. Though unlikely, Beijing could use the threat of interfering with energy exports as a way to influence Lao policy.”

However, that deal also meant that the Lao government was able to palm off to Beijing a state-owned enterprise that was hemorrhaging money. Before the merger, EDL was estimated to have been $8 billion in debt. (Much of Laos’ external debt has been taken on to finance its underperforming state-run firms, while a recent spate of bond issuances has gone to fund state-run banks.) How much of that remains on the Lao state’s books remains unclear but presumably China Southern may have taken on a proportion of that debt. Granted, it also means less revenue for the state but the Lao government now wants domestic taxation on private firms and individuals to be the main bulk of its revenue.

None of this is to say that the Laotian people benefit from the situation. Laos is a one-party, communist state. If it was a democracy, perhaps ordinary folk would rebel over how the current financial burdens will impact their children. National debt, after all, is a tax on the yet unborn generation. No-one benefits from this. Consider the question: Would Beijing prefer Laos to be a debt-ridden economic mess or to be more like Cambodia, another geopolitical partner but one with relatively low debt (less than 40 percent of GDP), good trade with the wealthy West and public finances to invest in its citizens? 

Patron-client relations aren’t one-directional and debt is also trapping China in Laos. Something must give. But it’s in Beijing’s court to decide. If the Belt and Road is China’s weltpolitik, a Laotian default on its debt would arguably be the biggest crisis yet to Beijing’s image as an honest creditor. Debt deferrals are only possible for a few more years. At some point, Beijing will surely have to offer forgiveness. 

David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. As a journalist, he has covered Southeast Asian politics since 2014. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.

RFA

Radio Free Asia’s mission is to provide accurate and timely news and information to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a free press. Content used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.

6. Judge to Decide Whether Taint of C.I.A. Torture Extended to Guantánamo

Judge to Decide Whether Taint of C.I.A. Torture Extended to Guantánamo

The New York Times · by Carol Rosenberg · June 30, 2023

At issue is whether an alleged confession made at the naval base but after years in C.I.A. black sites can be used against a man accused of bombing the U.S.S. Cole.

The suicide bombing of the U.S.S. Cole killed 17 U.S. sailors in October 2000.

Reporting from Guantánamo Bay

June 30, 2023, 7:43 p.m. ET

More than 22 years after Al Qaeda bombed the U.S.S. Cole and nearly 12 years after a prisoner was first charged with plotting the attack, a judge heard final arguments on a fundamental question in the pretrial phase of the case: Can the accused bomber’s confession, after years in C.I.A. custody, be used against him?

The judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., acknowledged that potentially relevant information was still being given to defense lawyers in the case, but he said it was time to resolve a key obstacle in the long wait for the death-penalty trial of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Colonel Acosta will retire from the Army in September and has been determined to wrap up a portion of the pretrial phase focusing on the legacy of C.I.A. torture.

In closing arguments, he confronted several issues straight on, including whether what the C.I.A. did to the defendant — waterboarding him, depriving him of sleep, holding him nude in solitary confinement — constituted torture or cruel and inhuman treatment.

“I do not concede that at this time,” replied Edward R. Ryan, a prosecutor from the Justice Department.

By day’s end, however, Mr. Ryan read from a filing that the Justice Department submitted in Superior Court in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 31, 2022, conceding that, in this case, what Mr. Nashiri said in C.I.A. custody “should be treated as ‘statements obtained by the use of torture or by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.’”

Mr. Ryan devoted much of his argument to reading from a 34-page account of the interrogation by federal agents and intercepted communications from the prisoner in the months after he reached Guantánamo Bay that cast him as a boastful and at times arrogant prisoner who spoke to his interrogators freely.

Mr. Nashiri voluntarily incriminated himself “about his role in the sneak attack bombing of the U.S.S. Cole that resulted in the death of 17 naval service members,” Mr. Ryan said.

Mr. Ryan said that during the three-day interrogation at issue in January and February 2007, government agents told Mr. Nashiri his participation was voluntary.

To illustrate that Mr. Nashiri understood this, Mr. Ryan quoted from intercepted advice Mr. Nashiri gave another prisoner at Guantánamo that “meeting with these people is not mandatory. Deny everything.”

But rather than deny everything, Mr. Ryan said, the defendant admitted to being “Bilal,” a man who rented a house and moved money used in the attack by two suicide bombers on the American destroyer in a harbor in Aden, Yemen, on Oct. 12, 2000.

Annie W. Morgan, a defense lawyer, portrayed the Saudi prisoner as a broken man at the time of his 2007 interrogations. He had already been interrogated 200 times in C.I.A. custody and had no reason to believe that “another American in another polo shirt” coming to question him would not hurt him.

“There is nothing voluntary when you assess the totality of the circumstances,” Ms. Morgan said.

She reminded the judge that Mr. Nashiri’s questioning by different interrogators — so-called clean teams — at Guantánamo in 2007 was held in Camp Echo, the same facility on the U.S. Navy base that had served earlier as a secret C.I.A. prison, a black site.

Mr. Nashiri was held there in 2003 until he “was kicked out of Guantánamo Bay for behavior issues,” she said. He was sent to another C.I.A. black site, this one in Europe, as punishment and “was raped,” she said, referring to the time a C.I.A. employee forced a breathing tube into his rectum in a discredited medical procedure. Four months after his return to Guantánamo in September 2006, the F.B.I. carried out the interrogations in Camp Echo, which had been repurposed for military use.

The judge asked about testimony and records from 2006 and 2007 that portrayed the prisoner at the time as projecting free will, sometimes belligerent, controlling the pace of interrogations and aware of his rights.

Ms. Morgan pointed to the U.S. government’s recent disclosure of a secret cache of videos of Mr. Nashiri being forcibly removed from his cell in 2006 and 2007. “This is someone who has given up,” she said. Some of the videos were screened for the judge on Friday in a classified portion of the closing argument that excluded both the public and the defendant.

She also cited a recently disclosed C.I.A. “exploitation plan” from 2004 that described Mr. Nashiri as not able to engage in conversation, struggling to answer yes or no questions and showing signs of dyslexia.

A crux of the question confronting the judge is the principle of attenuation, how to get an untainted confession after a coerced one. Mr. Ryan said the “clean team interrogations” at Guantánamo in 2007 met the legal standard of a change in time, change in place and change in identity of the questioner.

Judge Acosta sounded skeptical. He said legal precedents were based on episodes that did not compare to what happened to Mr. Nashiri in the black sites. At one point, he ticked off this list of his treatment: “The waterboarding, the box, the walling, the slaps, etc., the way in which he was shackled, solitary confinement, no bedding, concrete floor, stripped, shaved.”

After a pause, he added, “sleep deprivation.”

The judge cited testimony from the psychologists who as C.I.A. contractors waterboarded Mr. Nashiri in Thailand in 2002. They had said their “enhanced interrogation techniques” were intended to create a social contract — as long as the prisoners cooperated, they would not return to “the bad times.”

The judge acknowledged this week that prosecutors were still finding and preparing classified evidence for the case, including more videos from Guantánamo that were being sanitized of certain national security secrets before the judge and defense lawyers could see them.

Colonel Acosta had earlier indicated that the three-week hearing that ended Friday would be his last on the case, and that he would issue rulings on key questions until his retirement.

Carol Rosenberg has been covering the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, including detention operations and military commissions, since the first prisoners were brought there from Afghanistan in January 2002. She worked as a metro, national and foreign correspondent with a focus on coverage of conflict in the Middle East for The Miami Herald from 1990 to 2019.

The New York Times · by Carol Rosenberg · June 30, 2023

7. Brazil Worries It Has Become a Haven for Russian Spies Infiltrating the West

Recognize Russia's strategy, understand it, expose it, and attack it.

Brazil Worries It Has Become a Haven for Russian Spies Infiltrating the West

Alleged agents posing as Brazilians have caught the eye of the U.S. and Norway—and could be candidates in any prisoner exchange

By​ ​Luciana Magalhaes and​ ​Louise Radnofsky

July 2, 2023 12:01 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazil-worries-it-has-become-a-haven-for-russian-spies-infiltrating-the-west-525021ba?mod=hp_lead_pos7

The U.S. seeks to extradite Sergey Cherkasov, pictured in 2012, a suspected Russian spy now imprisoned in Brazil. PHOTO: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

PADRE BERNARDO, Brazil—The double life of a suspected Russian spy arrested in the far north of Norway began more than a decade earlier in this corn-and-soybean producing town a half a world away, Brazilian authorities say.

Norwegian authorities say a university researcher carrying Brazilian documentation is actually a deep-cover agent for Moscow, charging him with espionage. Investigators traced his Brazilian citizenship to a fraudulently obtained birth certificate from Padre Bernardo, in what has become a familiar pattern of identity theft and spycraft originating from this South American country.

Another Russian using a forged Brazilian identity is incarcerated in Brazil and faces spying charges in the U.S. Dutch authorities stopped him last year as he allegedly attempted to infiltrate the International Criminal Court as an intern. A third suspected Russian spy who lived for years under a Brazilian identity in Rio de Janeiro is missing. 

The incidents have sparked an investigation in Brazil into whether Moscow is using the country as an incubator for deep-cover agents seeking to infiltrate the West—and have put Brazil in an uncomfortable international spotlight. Brazilian investigators have offered few public details about their probe, but they believe more covert agents could be lurking undetected within the country or around the world, according to people familiar with the matter.

Federal Police headquarters in Brasília. Brazilian authorities believe more covert agents could be lurking undetected. PHOTO: EVARISTO SA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The Russian Embassy in Brasília didn’t respond to requests for comment on the allegations of spying. Moscow has denied that Russian agents are covertly operating in Brazil, Norway or elsewhere.

For the U.S., the two alleged agents now in custody also present an opportunity for a possible prisoner exchange. U.S. officials have said they are engaging with countries holding Russian citizens and are open to incorporating such prisoners in a deal aimed at freeing Americans held in Russia. That includes Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is being detained on a charge of espionage that he, the Journal and the U.S. government strongly deny. 

In the case of Sergey Cherkasov, who allegedly attempted to infiltrate the International Criminal Court under the Brazilian identity of Victor Muller Ferreira, Brazil is wrestling with competing extradition demands from the U.S. and Russia. Cherkasov is serving a 15-year prison sentence in Brazil for using false documents and is under investigation there for alleged espionage. 

Paulo Ferreira, a lawyer representing Cherkasov, said his client admitted to the use of false documents but denied he is a Russian spy. 

The U.S. indicted Cherkasov in March, charging him with illegally entering the U.S. under his Brazilian alias and acting as a Russian agent while attending a graduate program in Washington, D.C. 

The Russian consulate in São Paulo. Moscow denies that Russian agents are covertly operating in Brazil, Norway or elsewhere. PHOTO: ROBERTO HERRERA/ZUMA PRESS

Russia has also requested his extradition, saying that he is a drug trafficker, an allegation that has drawn skepticism from many U.S. and Brazilian officials but which Cherkasov himself has said to be accurate.

According to the U.S. indictment, Cherkasov fraudulently obtained a Brazilian birth certificate that identified him as Victor Muller Ferreira, born in April 1989, and used that birth certificate to obtain other fraudulent IDs, building up his double life in Brazil over several years.

That alleged strategy underscores security gaps within Brazil’s documentation system that covert spies can exploit: Law-enforcement officials say that with just a birth record in hand, a person can obtain Brazilian identity cards and a passport, as long as those documents haven’t already been obtained under that identity.

When authorities took Cherkasov into custody, they recovered a message from him describing how a source in Brazil had helped him obtain fake documents and could potentially help others do the same, according to the indictment.

“She feels happy when she can help, asking her for help is pretty easy,” Cherkasov wrote in the message, according to the indictment. He wrote that he gave the source a necklace worth $400 in return for her services.

In Norway, authorities arrested a man they say is Mikhail Mikushin in October and charged him with espionage. At the time, he was working as a researcher at the University of Tromsø under the Brazilian identity of José Assis Giammaria and had previously spent years at universities in Canada under that alias.

Investigators traced an alleged Russian spy posing as a Brazilian citizen to a birth certificate issued in the agricultural town of Padre Bernardo. PHOTO: EVARISTO SA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Mikushin’s lawyer in Norway, Marijana Lozic, said she couldn’t comment on the charges against him under section 122 of the Norwegian penal code, which covers “aggravated intelligence-gathering activity targeting state secrets” and carries a prison term of up to 10 years. 

Brazilian authorities tracked Mikushin’s Brazilian documentation to Padre Bernardo, a town of about 30,000 people in the Brazilian state of Goiás. Records at the town’s main public notary office list José Assis Giammaria as a person born in November 1984 to an Italian-born businessman who was a naturalized Brazilian citizen and a woman who was a school employee from Rio de Janeiro. 

Authorities are trying to confirm what happened to the real Giammaria. One official said he believes Giammaria was a real person who is now dead. 

“I was born here, where I have been living for 54 years. I don’t know this person, not by his name, not by his picture,” said Milton Oliveira, who works at the town hall in Padre Bernardo, referring to the picture of Mikushin and the Brazilian birth certificate of Giammaria. Other Padre Bernardo residents, including people who worked in the notaries in the town, also said that they had never heard of him or of his parents.

In another incident from late last year, the owner of a 3-D printing company in Rio de Janeiro named Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich abruptly disappeared while traveling overseas, sparking a social-media campaign from friends for information on his whereabouts.

That campaign ended in March when Greek intelligence officials identified the man as a suspected Russian spy with the last name of Shmyrev. They said he fled back to Russia with a woman they identified as his wife, who was also a spy living under a fake identity in Greece.

Greek officials haven’t provided further details on the case, and Brazilian officials declined to comment.

Write to Luciana Magalhaes at luciana.magalhaes@wsj.com and Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com

8. Uniforms? Check. Motto? Check. Now the Space Force needs an identity.

They already are SF (Space Force).

Uniforms? Check. Motto? Check. Now the Space Force needs an identity.

The Washington Post · by Christian Davenport · July 2, 2023

Space

By

July 2, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The uniforms resemble costumes from the television series “Battlestar Galactica,” and the logo is right out of Star Trek. Even the name given its members, “guardians,” seems born of science fiction. But three years after it was established as the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, the U.S. Space Force is very much a reality.

It has a motto, “Sempra Supra” or “Always Above,” fitting for an agency whose future is outside Earth’s atmosphere. It has an official song, a short, melodic anthem about guardians “boldly reaching into space” that’s not as catchy as “The Army Goes Rolling Along.” It has a budget, ($26 billion last year, similar to that of NASA’s), bases across the country and a mission to transform the military’s relationship to the cosmos at a time when space has moved from being a peaceful commons to a crucial front in military conflict.

“We are very much clearly in the next chapter of the Space Force,” Gen. David Thompson, the vice chief of space operations, said during a recent event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. The mission of the Space Force now is to become an “enterprise that really makes sure that we’re ready to deliver warfighting capabilities.”

But what that means in practice is still unclear to an extent. The Space Force remains one of the least understood arms of the federal government. Its culture and identity are still being molded, as its leaders push to set the department apart from the Air Force, Navy and Army by arguing that as a new, smaller service it is free to do things differently. While the Air Force has more than 300,000 service members, there are only 13,000 guardians.

Internally, Space Force officials are still debating its priorities, analysts say, a tension that gets to the heart of what the Space Force is, or should be. Is it to support warfighters on the ground, or should it focus primarily on protecting assets in space? Or both? And despite all the talk of starting fresh and moving nimbly, the Space Force still exists within the rigid walls of the Pentagon, the world’s largest bureaucracy, which is often faulted for resisting change and defaulting to old ways of doing things.

Even when Space Force Gen. Chance Saltzman, the chief of space operations, introduced the tenets that should guide the force, he labeled them “A theory of success,” rather than a doctrine because he wants it to continue to evolve. “I’m proposing this theory so that people will debate with me,” he said during an event earlier this year at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “So we’ll get better at figuring out what are the nuances that matter, what are the details that we to continue to refine.”

Still, a glimpse of what the Space Force has become, and aspires to, can be seen on the Florida Space Coast, where the Space Age was born in the United States and where a new space era, driven largely by a growth in the private space industry, is taking hold.

Propelled largely by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the number of launches here has not only increased, but the topography of the place has changed, with landing pads for SpaceX’s reusable rockets and historic launch sites, like pad 39A that launch the Apollo astronauts to the moon, in private hands.

New companies, such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, are taking over launchpads that had sat vacant for decades, trying to get their rockets into orbit as well. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Even the official name has changed: It is now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The growth is remarkable. In 2021, 31 rockets blasted off from the facilities run by NASA and the Space Force. Last year, the number jumped to 57, and this year it’s expected to exceed 90.

With some thinking that number will eventually exceed 200, 300 or even more, a top Space Force general decided he needed help managing the traffic. So last spring, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the commander of the 45th Space Wing, which oversees the base, arranged a meeting for a couple dozen of his staff at a place where many loathe to go but that is used to sending large numbers of vehicles into the sky at a regular cadence: Orlando International Airport.

During the visit to the Orlando airport, “our folks got a lot of good ideas,” he said in an interview in his office at Patrick Space Force Base. “Because these are people they don’t normally talk to. So they do things in a different way. They think a different way.”

What Purdy — and the Space Force as a whole — is trying to do is far more than just create airline-like operations. They are focused on redefining how the military uses space, and attempting to transform it into a domain where the U.S. can exert the kind of tactical dominance it now displays on land, air and sea.

That is easier said than done. Much of the military’s infrastructure in space was developed at a time when space was considered a peaceful place. Satellites, for example, were built to be big and robust and last for years, even decades, without interference. But then China and Russia showed such fat targets were sitting ducks. China blasted a dead satellite with a missile strike in 2007, and Russia did it in 2021 — shows of force that shook the U.S. military leadership and polluted Earth orbit with dangerous debris for decades to come.

So the Space Force is pivoting, relying on constellations of small satellites that can be easily replaced and, to an increasing degree, maneuver.

That’s just one example of how the Space Force intends to ensure the U.S. maintains “space superiority,” as its leaders often say, to protect the satellites the Defense Department relies on for warnings of incoming missiles, steering precision-guided munitions and surveilling both friendly and hostile forces. It also could deter conflict in space — why strike a satellite if there are backups that would easily carry on the mission?

In the interview, Purdy gave a tour of some of the roles the Space Force could play, offering a glimpse into its future.

Soldiers and Marines already pre-position supplies and equipment on the ground, he said. Could the Space Force start storing supplies in space and then fly them to hot spots on Earth as well?

“In theory, we could have huge racks of stuff in orbit and then somebody can call those in, saying. ‘I need X, Y, Z delivered to me now on this random island.’ And then, boom, they shoot out and they parachute in and they land with GPS assistance,” he said. “It’s a fascinating thought exercise for emergency response — you know if a type of tidal wave or tsunami comes in and wipes out a whole area.”

The military is also working to harness solar energy in space, and then beam it to ground stations. Could the Space Force use that technology to beam power to remote areas to support soldiers on the ground?

Another idea: If the cadence of launches really does double or triple and the costs continue to come down, could the Space Force start using rockets to deliver cargo across the globe at a moment’s notice?

Soon there could be commercial space stations floating around in orbit. “Can we lease a room?” Purdy said. “Can we lease a module?”

The idea is to use space as if it were any other theater of war, with supply lines, logistical oversight and tactical awareness of what’s happening day in and day out. But all of that is more difficult in a weightless vacuum that extends well beyond the largest oceans.

“In no other military domain would you take a tank, or an aircraft or a jeep or a ship and gas it up and then say … ‘Okay you will never refuel it again,’” Purdy had said earlier this year in an interview with the Aerospace Corporation. The military also has the ability to repair tanks and jets. But the vehicles the Space Force depends on — satellites — are different. Refueling and servicing them are difficult and so every movement has to be considered carefully. “Am I going to need this fuel 10 years from now?” he said in the Aerospace Corporation interview.

Some of these concepts may become real. Some may not. But Purdy at least feels free to pursue new ideas because “we’re not bound by years of tradition within the Space Force or the previous Air Force command,” he said. “It didn’t exist. And so we can define our own concepts of how operations will work.”

Two years ago “we weren’t thinking of any of this stuff, none of it,” he added. “The on-orbit space storage of logistics, we weren’t thinking of six months ago. And so we’ve been able to think rapidly, get with industry and rapidly move the ball forward on all those pieces.”

The fact that the idea of the Space Force is still somewhat in flux is to be expected, said Douglas Loverro, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy.

After it was founded in 1947, “it took the Air Force 25 years to figure out their mission,” he said. “We shouldn’t expect that the Space Force is going to be able to figure it out the day after we stand them up. It’s going to take a little while, and that’s okay.”

When it was established by President Donald Trump at the end of 2019, the Space Force was widely mocked — derided as a political ploy for a politician desperately trying to project strength and the butt of alien jokes for late-night comedians.

But as it has taken form, the culture of the Space Force “is building, and I think that’s good,” retired Air Force general John Hyten, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview. “We just have to change the process along with the culture because you can have a new culture and the old process, and you still run into a brick wall.”

In Congress, Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.) and former congressman Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) advocated for the establishment of a Space Corps as part of the Air Force, the way the Marine Corps exists under the Navy. The effort was driven by a desire to make space a priority for the Pentagon at a time when other nations, particularly China, were catching up.

“We have lost a dramatic lead in space that we should have never let get away from us. So that’s what gave us the sense of urgency to get after this,” Rogers said in 2019.

Since then, the threat has only grown.

In its annual “Space Threat Assessment” report, the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently reported that “China continues to make progress toward its goal of becoming the world leader in space. Over the past year, China has continued to grow its space and counterspace assets, maintaining its status as the second-most-capable space nation after the United States.”

In April, The Post reported that space would likely be a key part of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China would seek to jam communications and intelligence satellites as well as “destroy ballistic missile early warning satellites,” as part of a military strike on Taiwan, according to documents allegedly leaked to a Discord chatroom by Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. China is now able “to hold key U.S. and Allied space assets at risk,” according to the documents, which were obtained by The Post.

In March, Saltzman gave a speech titled “Guardians in the Fight” in which he unveiled a plan he called “competitive endurance” that is designed to compete over the long-term with China and other actors. The goal is initially to deter any conflict from reaching space, but “if necessary to achieve space superiority.”

As part of the plan, the Space Force would work to ensure that the United States avoids “operational surprise,” by keeping track of other countries’ satellites and movements in space while also being able to “identify behaviors that become irresponsible or even hostile.”

But he acknowledged the difficulties of operating in an area hundreds of miles off the surface of the Earth. On the ground, battle lines can be drawn, delineating zones of conflict. “Our domain is a little different,” he said. “In space, you cannot leave the war zone.” There is also no way, he added, “to physically separate civil, commercial, military satellites from one another because the laws that govern orbits are immutable.” And low Earth orbit also is polluted with debris, traveling at 5 miles per second, so fast that even a small piece, a bolt or even a fleck of paint, can cause enormous damage.

While the Navy patrols vast oceans, the Space Force’s “area of responsibility” is “defined as 100 kilometers above sea level extending outward, indefinitely,” Lt. Gen. John Shaw, the deputy commander of the U.S. Space Command, said during a recent talk with the Secure World Foundation. “So, a huge AOR. Do the math.”

Another problem, Hyten said, is that so much of what the Space Force does remains classified. “And because it’s overclassified, it’s very difficult to talk about specifics,” Hyten said. “And when you can’t talk about specifics that makes it one of the most misunderstood elements of our government. … We fundamentally need to normalize the classification, so we can have a conversation with the public, with the American people.”

The Washington Post · by Christian Davenport · July 2, 2023

9. Opinion | Hong Kong’s downfall is a warning to the world

Excerpts:

The most important lesson the world must learn from the tragedy in Hong Kong relates to Taiwan. Hong Kong proves that Beijing’s proposal of “one country, two systems” is a delusion — and that any promises Xi makes regarding Taiwan’s continued autonomy under reunification are worthless.

Xi’s China is a totalitarian regime that seeks nothing less than total control of China and everything it sees as part of China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan. That pattern is undeniable and we ignore it at our own peril.

Opinion | Hong Kong’s downfall is a warning to the world

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · July 1, 2023

The July 1 anniversary of Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China from British rule used to be a day of celebration in the city. Now, it has morphed into a morbid reminder of Hong Kong’s tragic decline under the ever-worsening repression brought on by Beijing.

One might think that Chinese authorities, having quashed the pro-democracy protests that erupted in 2019, would ease up. After all, they’ve shuttered all free media, neutered judicial independence, destroyed civil society and suppressed all political opposition. But since last year, the Chinese government has ramped up its effort to snuff out Hong Kong’s autonomy and Hong Kongers’ rights, even while exporting its authoritarianism around the world.

Many have written off Hong Kong. But paying continued attention is crucial because it tells us something important about the character of Xi Jinping’s government. For the Chinese Communist Party today, too much repression is never enough. China is becoming more emboldened. That spells danger for Taiwan and the rest of the world — unless the lessons of Hong Kong are learned.

“In the early 1990s, the West was swept up in the euphoria of the post-Cold War era. We fundamentally failed to internalize the lessons of the Tiananmen Square massacre and what it told us about the brutality of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Select Committee on the CCP. “We must not repeat that mistake for Hong Kong.”

It’s no coincidence that Hong Kong authorities have gone out of their way to shut down any reference to the 1989 massacre of student protesters in Tiananmen Square. Many Hong Kongers were jailed and charged with “inciting a riot” for simply lighting candles in June 4 vigils commemorating the Tiananmen victims. One of those imprisoned was Jimmy Lai, the former head of the largest independent Hong Kong media outlet, Apple Daily.

Lai, 75 years old, already finished serving 14-months in prison for daring to recognize a moment of history that’s embarrassing for the CCP. He is now serving an additional five years and nine months on trumped-up fraud charges. He could go on trial again as early as this September under Hong Kong’s pernicious “national security law,” which the authorities apply liberally to hand down harsh prison sentences to any opponents of the crackdown.

Lai is one of many journalists charged with crimes such as “sedition” just for telling the truth about what’s going on in Hong Kong — and reporters aren’t the only ones. According to the Hong Kong Democracy Council, the authorities have jailed more than 1,500 political prisoners since 2019, half of whom are under the age of 25.

The CCP’s efforts to shut down any inkling of criticism have reached a high level of paranoia. For example, Hong Kong authorities are shutting down a child’s clothing retailer called Chickeeduck, which they accused of “advocating violence” because the stores displayed pro-democracy artwork and protest messages.

The Chinese government is also going after anyone overseas who dares to criticize its Hong Kong policies. In June, Hong Kong’s former chief executive publicly demanded that the British police “investigate” an event to publicize “Sheep Village,” a collection of children’s books about the democracy movement written by activists. The host, regretfully, canceled the event.

Beijing is also trying to snuff out musical criticism of its Hong Kong policy in Western countries. This past month, Spotify and other streaming services removed the protest song “Glory to Hong Kong” from its libraries worldwide before restoring it after widespread public backlash.

“Hong Kong doesn’t matter just for itself,” Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, told me. “China is really trying to draw red lines and parameters for what we in free societies can do and discuss.”

On Thursday, 31 U.S. senators wrote an open letter pledging that the United States and other countries will “hold the CCP and the Hong Kong government accountable for their destruction of Hong Kong’s freedom, autonomy, and rule of law.” It’s past time for the U.S. government and Congress to back up those words with actions.

Congress should pass legislation to increase visas for Hong Kongers fleeing the crackdown. Congress should also pass pending bipartisan legislation recognizing that Hong Kong’s trade offices in the United States no longer represent a place where U.S. businesses are safe.

The Biden administration should announce that Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee is not invited to the November meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Council in San Francisco, because the United States has sanctioned him for human rights abuses in Hong Kong. The U.S. government also must do more to protect Hong Kongers from the long arm of China’s transnational repression when they are on American soil.

The most important lesson the world must learn from the tragedy in Hong Kong relates to Taiwan. Hong Kong proves that Beijing’s proposal of “one country, two systems” is a delusion — and that any promises Xi makes regarding Taiwan’s continued autonomy under reunification are worthless.

Xi’s China is a totalitarian regime that seeks nothing less than total control of China and everything it sees as part of China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan. That pattern is undeniable and we ignore it at our own peril.

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · July 1, 2023

10. Opinion | Russia’s biggest problem isn’t the war. It’s losing the 21st century.

Excerpts:

For Putin’s regime, the West now represents forces of social, economic and political modernization that could infect Russia. In his speech as he launched the invasion of Ukraine, Putin accused the United States of seeking to destroy Russia’s traditional values and impose new ones on it which directly lead “to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.” For Putin, modernizing Russia would create a more active civil society, greater demands for better health care, more opportunities for ordinary citizens and a less kleptocratic state. And so he advocates a traditional Russia, which celebrates religion, traditional morality, xenophobia and strict gender conformity.

What does this all add up to? I am not sure. But it’s fair to say that Russia’s biggest problem is not that it is losing the Ukraine war but rather that it is losing the 21st century.

Opinion | Russia’s biggest problem isn’t the war. It’s losing the 21st century.

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · June 30, 2023

In his important book “The Third Wave” Samuel Huntington pointed out that division among the ruling elite is a key sign of weakness in authoritarian regimes. When prominent members of the establishment break with the system, it often triggers a larger set of changes. Conversely, when you do not see such defection, it means the autocrat will probably be able to survive. (Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad offers one example of this principle at work.)

How would we apply that to Russia today? Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s failed attack has revealed some dissent within Russia’s ruling elite. But Vladimir Putin was apparently able to snuff it out within a day or two. It appears that Prigozhin got no public support from any key figure in the Kremlin, which could be why he ended his quixotic march on Moscow. Putin has spent much of his tenure crushing dissent from liberals; now he is subduing his challengers from the nationalist side.

Power struggles within the Russian state take place in a black box. As the lines often attributed to Winston Churchill go: “Kremlin political intrigues are comparable to a bulldog fight under a rug. An outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath it is obvious who won.” For now, it is Prigozhin’s bones that we see figuratively — and perhaps soon we shall see them literally.

What is not a matter of speculation is the state of Russian society. I’ve been stunned by one statistic ever since I read it: A 15-year-old Russian boy today has the same life expectancy as a 15-year-old boy in Haiti. Remember, Russia is one of the world’s richest countries in terms of natural resources. And it is an urbanized, industrialized society with levels of education and literacy comparable to, and perhaps even exceeding, other European countries.

This analysis comes from an August 2022 working paper by scholar Nicholas Eberstadt, who has long studied demography. He points out that for three decades now, Russia has been depopulating. With a brief respite from 2013 to 2015, deaths have outpaced births, but he notes that this trend is one that we see in many industrialized countries.

What stands out in Russia is its mortality rate. In 2019 — before covid and the invasion of Ukraine — the World Health Organization estimated a 15-year-old boy in Russia could expect to live another 53.7 years, which was the same as in Haiti and below the life expectancy for boys his age in Yemen, Mali and South Sudan. Swiss boys around the same age could expect to live more than 13 years longer.

Education usually correlates with good health, but not in Russia. Eberstadt points out that shockingly, Russia is a country with “First World” education levels and “Fourth World” mortality rates for its working age population. He then digs deeper into the educational attainments and finds that the mystery deepens. With huge numbers of well-trained people, especially in the sciences, Russia performs miserably in the knowledge economy, much worse than did the Soviet Union. In 2019, Russia ranked behind Austria in international patent applications, despite having 16 times the population. Today, it ranks alongside Alabama in annual U.S. patent awards (the gold standard for companies everywhere), despite having almost 30 times the population. All these numbers will likely get much worse given the hundreds of thousands of (likely well-trained, urban, educated) Russians who fled the country after its aggression against Ukraine.

What explains this stunning mismatch in Russia? A new book by scholar Alexander Etkind, “Russia Against Modernity,” makes the case that Putin has created a parasitic state that gets revenue by extracting natural resources rather than any creative production and that fulfills none of the functions of a modern state in terms of providing welfare for its people. Corruption is intrinsic to this kleptocratic regime, Etkind wrote, noting that post-Soviet Russia has seen the fastest rise in inequality anywhere in the world. After the anti-Putin protests in 2011 and 2012 (which an enraged Putin blamed on then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton), the Russian state became even more anti-modern.

For Putin’s regime, the West now represents forces of social, economic and political modernization that could infect Russia. In his speech as he launched the invasion of Ukraine, Putin accused the United States of seeking to destroy Russia’s traditional values and impose new ones on it which directly lead “to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.” For Putin, modernizing Russia would create a more active civil society, greater demands for better health care, more opportunities for ordinary citizens and a less kleptocratic state. And so he advocates a traditional Russia, which celebrates religion, traditional morality, xenophobia and strict gender conformity.

What does this all add up to? I am not sure. But it’s fair to say that Russia’s biggest problem is not that it is losing the Ukraine war but rather that it is losing the 21st century.

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · June 30, 2023

11. The FBI has formed a national database to track and prevent 'swatting'

The FBI has formed a national database to track and prevent 'swatting'

Advances in technology allow callers to mask their voices, phone numbers or IP addresses (also called “spoofing”) or make their false 911 calls sound more credible.

NBC News · by Jacob Ward and Lora Kolodny, CNBC

Author Patrick Tomlinson and his wife, business owner Niki Robinson, have been "swatted" at their home in Milwaukee more than 40 times, often resulting in police pointing guns at their heads. Their tormentors have also called in false bomb threats to venues using their names in three states. Yet law enforcement hasn’t been able to stop the calls.

The couple’s terror comes as these incidents appear to be on the rise in the U.S., at least on college campuses. In less than a single week in April, universities including Clemson, Florida, Boston, Harvard, Cornell, Pittsburgh, Rutgers and Oklahoma, as well as Middlebury College, were targeted by swatters.

To combat the growing problem, the FBI has begun taking formal measures to get a comprehensive picture of the problem on a national level.

Chief Scott Schubert with the bureau’s Criminal Justice Information Services headquarters in Clarksburg, West Virginia, told NBC News that the agency formed a national online database in May to facilitate information sharing between hundreds of police departments and law enforcement agencies across the country pertaining to swatting incidents.

Police respond at the house of Patrick Tomlinson in Milwaukee. Courtesy Patrick Tomlinson

Schubert said this effort will provide the bureau with “a common operating picture of what’s going on across the country.” He added, “We’re taking every step to monitor this national problem and help however we can.”

What is swatting?

Security expert Lauren R. Shapiro, who is an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said: “Swatting involves people making fraudulent 911 calls reporting serious-level criminal threats or violent situations like bomb threats, hostages, killing, etc. to fool the police into raiding the house or business of somebody who is not actually committing a crime.”

Swatting can have deadly consequences. In 2021, Mark Herring died of a heart attack during a police response to his Tennessee home caused by a fraudulent report of a shooting.

Patrick Tomlinson and his wife, Niki Robinson.NBC News

And in 2017, a Wichita police officer — who didn’t realize a caller had falsely reported a homicide and hostage situation at the home of Andrew Finch — killed Finch, 28.

Such fatalities are incredibly rare, Shapiro noted, to the credit of highly trained SWAT teams responding to false calls.

No central agency has tracked swatting incidents or suspects in the U.S., so official statistics are not available. By 2019, there were an estimated 1,000 swatting incidents domestically each year, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, and each incident is estimated to cost at least $10,000 to affected communities, even before expenditures on follow-up work like investigations, property repairs and counseling.

Swatting is increasingly enabled by technology that can be used to mask a caller’s real voice, their phone number or IP address (also called “spoofing”) or to make their false report sound more credible.

Schubert told NBC News that the FBI’s new centralized database should help the agency “get that common picture of what’s going on across our nation so we can learn from that.”

Tomlinson’s terror

Tomlinson’s troubles began after he posted a casual remark on Twitter in 2018 saying he’d never personally found the comedian Norm Macdonald very funny. As The Daily Beast reported, the tweet caught the attention of online trolls who soon began to harass, stalk, impersonate and defame Tomlinson and his wife, using a website of their own along with social media accounts on Reddit, Twitter and YouTube to target the couple and invite others to pile on.

Their harassers mostly converge on a website that’s cloned elsewhere so participants can migrate rapidly if their forum is ever banned by a service provider.

Since The Daily Beast report, the harassment escalated both online and offline.

The couple was mostly recently swatted at their home on Tuesday, bringing the total of swatting incidents to 43. Tomlinson’s parents, who are senior citizens, also suffered swatting at their home about 2 hours outside of Milwaukee this year.

“It’s taken away our sanctuary,” Tomlinson said of the constant harassment, adding: “We don’t feel safe in our own home. We don’t know when the door’s going to get kicked in.”

Tomlinson described one incident: “I make my way downstairs to find that there are half a dozen police with pistols drawn, shotguns, AR-15s, all pointed and flashlights all pointed at my head. I am pulled out of the house, and then on my own front porch I’m immediately handcuffed.”

Police handcuff Patrick Tomlinson outside his house in Milwaukee. Courtesy Patrick Tomlinson

Besides misusing emergency services, impersonators also fraudulently called the couple’s natural gas provider, We Energies, to have their heat cut off during cold Wisconsin nights on two occasions, most recently in March, according to records shared by the family.

"We woke up with our breath visible indoors. Temperatures were in the 50s in our house,” Tomlinson said, putting the couple and their pets (two cats and a bearded dragon lizard) in danger.

False threats using the couples’ names have also reached a favorite local Irish pub twice this year, causing police to bring bomb sniffing dogs to the bar during a Marquette game on one occasion.

Swatters also called in a false bomb threat to the American Family Field, the baseball stadium where the Milwaukee Brewers play, on a night when Tomlinson had publicly posted that they would be in attendance. And on Dec. 10, 2022, false bomb threats mentioning Tomlinson caused the evacuation of thousands of fans from a Patti Labelle concert at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee.

The couple says they have spent tens of thousands of dollars in the last five years in a bid to protect themselves. Among other items, they said they purchased high-end home security systems, personal defense weapons and more.

Tomlinson and Robinson filed a lawsuit against the owners of an online forum that their stalkers have used to target them. But their case was never heard by the court because they had no names of website owners to sue. They sent a subpoena to obtain those names to a web services provider, Cloudflare, but that was quashed. They were forced to withdraw the suit and now say they owe more than $50,000 in legal fees to the very people attacking them — enough to possibly bankrupt them, the couple said.

Patrick Tomlinson and Niki Robinson have been “swatted” 43 times. Courtesy Patrick Tomlinson

Why no arrests?

While the earliest recorded case of swatting occurred in 2002, to this day, there is no specific law criminalizing swatting in the U.S., says John Jay’s Shapiro.

“Without a statute in place, there’s no designated resources or training for investigating swatting incidents,” she said. “And the 911 dispatchers do not have the resources and training they need to differentiate between actual emergencies and false reports.”

Legally, the False Information and Hoaxes statute, also known as section 1038, is most frequently used to prosecute swatting. Other statutes can sometimes apply — one pertaining to interstate threats involving explosives and another pertaining to interstate communications, which refers to extortion or threats to injure or kidnap somebody.

“Too often, perpetrators are getting a slap on the wrist compared to the consequences suffered by their victims,” Shapiro said.

As far as law enforcement goes, the couple and their predicament is now familiar to the Milwaukee Police Department. During the most recent swatting incident, police went to their home and simply left a calling card but did not wake the couple up, let alone point guns at their faces as in the past.

Robinson is something of an advocate for training police to deal with swatting as a result of her experience.

She said that she had to explain to police what swatting is while they were pointing guns at her at her own front door. “There is no excuse for any police department, any police officer to not know what swatting is, and every department in this country should have policies, procedures and training around it. It has existed for over a decade. People have died from it. It’s insane.”

The Milwaukee Police Department said in a statement: “MPD has a duty to respond to calls for service in order to ensure that no one is in danger and that the necessary precautions are taken into consideration during these incidents.”

At a federal level, Tomlinson filed a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center in November 2020. He never saw a reply to that, so in early May 2022, he went to the Milwaukee branch of the FBI in person to file a new one.

An FBI special agent was assigned to evaluate his case. He says the agency already had a file on Tomlinson because of a false bomb threat that swatters had called into a hotel outside of Detroit in April 2022, a few weeks prior to a presentation he was scheduled to give. The presentation, part of PenguiCon, was titled,”Elon Musk is Full of S---.”

Since then, “There has been nearly zero communication by the FBI,” Tomlinson said.

One agent has requested more evidence from his family by email on rare occasions. But the agency has not brought him or his wife in for an interview, and have not arrested people who the couple identified as participants in their harassment and swatting.

The FBI’s Schubert couldn’t comment on their specific case but recommended, generally, “If you receive a swatting threat or information that an individual is planning to engage in a swatting event, then immediately contact your local law enforcement.”

NBC News · by Jacob Ward and Lora Kolodny, CNBC

12. Cyber Command to expand 'canary in the coal mine' unit working with private sector

​Excerpts:

Seales, who originally began his military career as a helicopter pilot before joining the Army’s then nascent cyber mission in 2011, said those looking to join the crew need to possess two specific attributes: be an analyst who can speak “cyber lingo” as the command ferrets out and hunts down foreign adversaries; and second, “you have to be a good people person.”

“You got to be able to sit down and have a good conversation with a company and a provider and be an outgoing person,” he said, noting civilians can stay on permanently while service members generally cycle out after three years.

“It's very hard to be an introvert and be super successful in [Under Advisement] because your job is to go out there and partner with organizations, talk to strangers to be able to build out or inform a relationship.”

To prepare for the future expanded lineup, Seales and his team have spent the last six months crafting standard operating procedures so that the growth is codified and analysts aren’t sitting around for months during their tour of duty waiting to be trained.

There is one hitch, though: Seales himself won’t be around to see it.

After 26 years in the service, Seales will leave Under Advisement at the end of the calendar year before his official retirement in September 2024.

“That's the nature of the beast of any kind of military organization: you set the conditions for your successor to basically take it to the next level,” he said.

​

Cyber Command to expand 'canary in the coal mine' unit working with private sector

Martin Matishak

June 28th, 2023

therecord.media

U.S. Cyber Command is doubling the size of a little-known program that serves as one of the military's chief links to private industry in order to bolster the country’s defenses against cyberthreats.

The team of tech-savvy military and civilian experts, dubbed “Under Advisement,” will grow from one dozen to two dozen people by this time next year, according to Army Lt. Col. Jason Seales, the command’s chief of private sector partnerships.

Cyber Command and companies use tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams to communicate daily about digital threats. The “results” for both the digital warfighting command and participating private organizations are “clear,” he said during a recent interview at the NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (CCC).

“We need to make sure that we have additional resources and capabilities available … and not put the burden so much on the small handful of folks that we have now — kind of spread that wealth out.”

The effort got its start around the 2020 presidential election, when industry was eager to share indicators of compromise and other potentially malicious cyber activity with the federal government to help defend against foreign interference.

At the time, Cyber Command’s elite Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) was having trouble meeting the enormous demand for information.

“When you look at all the big companies, they get hit by all the same cyber actors as anyone else does,” Seales told Recorded Future News.

“So the thought was, ‘Well, why don't we start partnering with them? Why don't we start sharing some of this information back and forth — obviously at the unclassified level — that they have on malicious cyber actors so the command can then go out into foreign space and go hunt for them?’”

Ultimately, a former Marine Corps major and two others began making the connections with businesses in the hopes of improving defense planning and information sharing between the two sides as an extension of the CNMF.

It’s a collaboration that has been refined through landmark incidents like the Colonial Pipeline ransomware strike and the China-linked Hafnium cyber espionage campaign. The program has now matured to the point where it can keep up with the faster speed of industry and share information that produces operational results for both sectors on a regular basis, according to Seales.

Speaking at HammerCon last month, Cyber Command Executive Director Holly Baroody said that in the past year operators had “collaborated with 22 private sector partners to pass 149 unique indicators of malicious cyber activity.”

Those figures are “steadily growing, daily,” according to Seales, who took over the team in November 2022.

'They’ll come to us’

Commonly, companies come to Under Advisement — located within the collaboration center’s 36,000-square-foot office unclassified space across the highway from Fort Meade in Maryland — with a suspicious IP address or piece of malware.

Once its origins are confirmed to be foreign, the team can then act as a conduit, sharing the data with companies and other federal agencies — especially the CNMF. That force has become pivotal to Cyber Command, particularly through its “hunt forward” missions around the world to see firsthand the digital tactics of foreign adversaries and obtain new malware samples.

For instance, if a deployed military team discovers never-before-seen malicious software, “they'll come to us because we have those connections with the private sector to get this megaphone blasted out to everybody so they can patch their networks long before that malware migrates from Country X,” Seales said.

It is Cyber Command’s authority to “impose costs” on adversaries globally that separates Under Advisement from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s much more high-profile Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC), with its focus on shielding the country’s critical infrastructure and domestic networks from attack.

It also differentiates the team from the work of the Justice Department and the FBI, which aim to prosecute hackers in court, as well as the NSA’s CCC with its cybersecurity missions.

That said, Under Advisement is a JCDC member and can tap that roster of partners — as well as the collaboration center’s list of almost 500 participants from across the defense industrial base and private cybersecurity firms — to alert entities about potential threats.

Seales said it’s “pretty remarkable” to watch data shared with multiple federal agencies and businesses on JCDC channels prompt the various players to “swarm in to try to help,” like with the vulnerabilities in the MOVEit file transfer tool that has impacted both public and private sectors.

“It's pretty awesome to be able to go see that. It's something we haven't had before.”

‘Our canary in the coal mine’

Even before its expansion got underway, Under Advisement had been routinely cited by Cyber Command leaders as a success story.

The team is “our canary in the coal mine,” outgoing Cyber Command and NSA chief Gen. Paul Nakasone said last month during a speech at Vanderbilt University, adding it is “seen as value added to industry partners, given both Under Advisement gives and it gets.”

Maj. Gen. William Hartman speaks at event in 2021. Image: U.S. Cyber Command / Josef Cole

“If it’s late Friday night or Monday night or over a weekend and there’s some vulnerability that’s released out there on the internet, you can bet” the Under Advisement team is working, CNMF chief Maj. Gen. William Hartman said in December during a ceremony when the force was made a permanent subordinate organization of Cyber Command.

Hartman, who has been nominated to be Cyber Command’s next deputy, previously described the team as a “CNMF group of nerds and they wear that label as a badge of honor.”

JD Work, a professor at the National Defense University’s College of Information and Cyberspace, said it “makes sense” for the military to have a “direct level of connectivity” to industry” given the volume of digital threats that exist in foreign cyberspace.

“We are dealing with things that move very quickly in this environment, and where we're dealing with things that properly exist in foreign threat spaces,” according to Work, who contributed analysis and research on information sharing relationships as the CNMF team matured.

He noted that there are private sector representatives who would prefer a “single point of contact, single pane of glass” when working with the government but “there's really a very different focus between the different players and I see this has generally been productive.”

“I am acutely cognizant of the challenges of potential duplication of effort, particularly in a crisis. I'm absolutely certain the team is very well aware of this and their decisions are very measured as a result,” he said. “These are very busy folks. It's not like they are routinely out there just trying to drum up business for their shop.”

Talk is not cheap

Seales, who originally began his military career as a helicopter pilot before joining the Army’s then nascent cyber mission in 2011, said those looking to join the crew need to possess two specific attributes: be an analyst who can speak “cyber lingo” as the command ferrets out and hunts down foreign adversaries; and second, “you have to be a good people person.”

“You got to be able to sit down and have a good conversation with a company and a provider and be an outgoing person,” he said, noting civilians can stay on permanently while service members generally cycle out after three years.

“It's very hard to be an introvert and be super successful in [Under Advisement] because your job is to go out there and partner with organizations, talk to strangers to be able to build out or inform a relationship.”

To prepare for the future expanded lineup, Seales and his team have spent the last six months crafting standard operating procedures so that the growth is codified and analysts aren’t sitting around for months during their tour of duty waiting to be trained.

There is one hitch, though: Seales himself won’t be around to see it.

After 26 years in the service, Seales will leave Under Advisement at the end of the calendar year before his official retirement in September 2024.

“That's the nature of the beast of any kind of military organization: you set the conditions for your successor to basically take it to the next level,” he said.

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Martin Matishak

Martin Matishak is a senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. He spent the last five years at Politico, where he covered Congress, the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community and was a driving force behind the publication's cybersecurity newsletter.

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13. Noes the West should give China

Excerpts:

The West could start by borrowing Beijing’s obsession with numbers as guides for what it deems unacceptable behavior, and issue some of its own: No genocide against the Uighurs; no repression of Tibetans; no suppression of Hong Kong’s promised democratic system; no use of force or coercion against Taiwan; no interference with freedom of navigation in the East and South China seas or the Taiwan Strait; no violation of other countries’ sovereign rights in their waters and airspace for spying, military intimidation or other illegal purposes; no construction of artificial islands in international waters and use thereof for military purposes; no interference with Taiwan’s diplomatic and political relations with other countries; no interference in elections in Taiwan, the US or other democracies; no coercing small, poor countries into debt traps that squander their critical natural resources and strategic infrastructure assets; no violation of international commercial rules; no stealing of other countries’ technology; no proliferation of nuclear and missile technology; no economic, diplomatic or other support to countries and organizations that violate international norms, eg, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

The list could go on.

Sat, Jul 01, 2023 page8

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/07/01/2003802456?utm

Noes the West should give China

• By Joseph Bosco
• 
  
•  
•  
• China has a long tradition of fascination with numbers. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) likes to use numbers and lists to communicate with the West, usually followed by the word “no” or “not.”
• Before Mao Zedong (毛澤東) would agree to meet with then-US president Richard Nixon, Washington had to commit to Beijing’s “three conditions”: terminating diplomatic relations with Taiwan; ending the Mutual Security Treaty; and withdrawing its military from Taiwan.
• In the 1972 Shanghai Communique, China declared its position on Taiwan: “The Chinese Government firmly opposes any activities which aim at the creation of ‘one China, one Taiwan,’ ‘one China, two governments,’ ‘two Chinas,’ and ‘independent Taiwan’ or advocate that ‘the status of Taiwan remains to be determined.’”
• The US merely “acknowledged” China’s position and “did not challenge it,” but neither did it endorse it as Beijing wanted.
• In the 1979 communique establishing diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US, Washington again “acknowledged” China’s position, without agreeing with it, that “Taiwan is part of China.”
• In the third communique in 1982 regarding arms sales to Taiwan, the US stated: “The United States Government attaches great importance to its relations with China, and reiterates that it has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, or interfering in China’s internal affairs, or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan.’”
• However, China was still not satisfied that the US’ commitment to Taiwan had been sufficiently diminished.
• During then-US president Bill Clinton’s 1998 visit to China, it pressured him into explicitly declaring the “three no’s”: “We don’t support independence for Taiwan; or ‘two Chinas,’ or ‘one Taiwan, one China.’ And we don’t believe that Taiwan should be a member in any organization for which statehood is a requirement.”
• The “three noes” increased in November last year, when US President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Bali, Indonesia.
• US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was careful to keep expectations low.
• “I don’t think you should look at this meeting as one in which there’s going to be specific deliverables announced,” Sullivan said ahead of the event.
• However, there were deliverables from the US side, at least enough to give Beijing more talking points in its false narrative that Washington ever concurred with its “one China” principle.
• China’s readout of the meeting increased the numbers ante on prohibitions against conduct Beijing deems unacceptable. The expanded list now included “five noes and four no intentions to”: Respect the PRC system and do not seek to change it; do not seek a “new cold war”; do not seek to oppose China by strengthening alliances; do not support Taiwan independence; and do not advocate “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan.”
• The four “no intentions to” were: No intention for conflict with China; no intention to seek “decoupling” from China; no intention to obstruct China’s economic development; and no intention to contain China.
• When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing this month, it wanted his affirmation of the “consensus framework” — which it said Biden and Xi had agreed to in Bali — recorded in its “notification document” of Blinken’s discussions. Nothing in Blinken’s account of his five-and-a-half-hour meeting and working dinner with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang (秦剛), or his 35 minutes with Xi, contradicted Beijing’s account of what Biden supposedly agreed to in Bali and Blinken supposedly confirmed in Beijing.
• China can be expected to expand its allegations of bad faith and deal breaking by US presidents.
• Biden’s “dictator” remark, accurate though it is, gave Beijing another arrow for its quiver. It can plausibly argue that Biden does not “respect” the PRC’s system and is subversively “seeking to change it.”
• That, of course, ought to be US policy, consistent with Nixon’s warning in his 1967 Foreign Affairs article: “The world cannot be safe until China changes.”
• Such change is implicit in Biden’s recurrent focus on the existential struggle between democracy and authoritarianism.
• The US and the West should stop suggesting that they are indifferent to the nature of Beijing’s communist system and declare it the problem that it is. Rather than the world changing to suit the CCP’s narrow, malign interests, democratic leaders should make a sustained effort to encourage peaceful change in China consistent with the multiple international commitments Beijing has made.
• The West could start by borrowing Beijing’s obsession with numbers as guides for what it deems unacceptable behavior, and issue some of its own: No genocide against the Uighurs; no repression of Tibetans; no suppression of Hong Kong’s promised democratic system; no use of force or coercion against Taiwan; no interference with freedom of navigation in the East and South China seas or the Taiwan Strait; no violation of other countries’ sovereign rights in their waters and airspace for spying, military intimidation or other illegal purposes; no construction of artificial islands in international waters and use thereof for military purposes; no interference with Taiwan’s diplomatic and political relations with other countries; no interference in elections in Taiwan, the US or other democracies; no coercing small, poor countries into debt traps that squander their critical natural resources and strategic infrastructure assets; no violation of international commercial rules; no stealing of other countries’ technology; no proliferation of nuclear and missile technology; no economic, diplomatic or other support to countries and organizations that violate international norms, eg, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
• The list could go on.
• Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the US secretary of defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, and was involved in US Department of Defense discussions about the US’ response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.

14. China Has Begun To Retreat From Southeast Asia

​Conclusion:

​With signs that Europe may already have tipped into recession and with slowing in the American economy, also perhaps on the brink of recession, China’s all-important export sector can hardly be expected to improve any time soon. Indeed, many now expect that amid this global economic slack, China will have a hard time coming up to its already reduced 5 percent real growth target for the year. Facing such economic constraints, it is also unlikely that China will recover its former prominence in Southeast Asia any time soon.

China Has Begun To Retreat From Southeast Asia

Forbes · by Milton Ezrati · June 30, 2023

... [+]Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Beijing has begun to draw down its financial presence in Southeast Asia. Once pre-eminent as a lender and aid-giver in the region, China finds itself today eclipsed by others. As China pulls in its horn in its own backyard, the global dominance of which Xi Jinping and his colleagues in Beijing doubtless still dream must look further away than ever.

Beijing’s official development finance (ODF) to Southeast Asia dropped again in 2021, the most recent year for which data are available. That year it ran close to the equivalent of $3.9 billion, well down from the $7.6 billion registered at the 2015 peak. At barely over half the level of that peak, this latest figure even fell below the $5.53 a year averaged during since 2010.

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Other nations and international bodies have filled the gap left by China’s withdrawal. During this time since 2015, China has fallen from the largest single investor in the region commanding fully 25% of the total to a mere 14%. Indeed, China’s effort has fallen so steeply from its highs that now it has ceded top investment spots to the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. Japan’s continued effort has brought its cumulative total since 2015 almost up to China’s. The Chinese figure for the entire period of record comes to the equivalent of $37.9 billion, mostly earlier in this stretch of time. Japan’s persistence has brought up its cumulative investment total to $28 billion. South Korea is not far behind, with a cumulative investment total of just over $20 billion of the recorded period. Germany, the United States, Australia, and France, in that order take up the bulk of the balance, investing cumulatively between $8.5 billion and $5.4 billion.

Beijing’s dramatic turn cannot reflect a shift in its overseas priorities. Southeast Asia remains critically important to China given its geographic proximity and its importance along trade routes as well as for China’s national defense. Nor is it likely that these nations have turned away from Chinese money wholesale, though some, such as Malaysia, have shown a reluctance to get involved Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative. Rather, China’s pullback testifies in yet another way to the Middle Kingdom’s pressing economic and financial problems, a fact that makes it highly unlikely that more recent data when it becomes available will show a shift back.

Readers in the space should well know the roots of China’s economic and financial troubles. Add to those commentaries a still relevant analysis from Goldman Sachs. It highlights the long shadow cast by the failures in China’s property development sector, most notably of company, Evergrande, and concludes that this sector — once fully 30 percent of China’s economy — will remain depressed for the foreseeable future.

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More recently, it has become apparent that the Chinese economy, after a surprisingly fast start in 2023, has again slowed markedly. In May, the most recent period for which data are available, Chinese exports stood some 7.5 percent below year-ago levels. Imports – a reliable indicator of domestic economic activity — were 4.5 percent below year-ago levels. Imports from South Korea, a close trading partner, were down 20.8 percent during that same time. Imports of semiconductors, a crucial input in much of what China sells domestically and to the rest of the world, were 15.5 percent below year-ago levels. Enlarging on this picture of slack economic activity is the fall in raw material imports. Shipments of coal, still critical to Chinese electricity production, have dropped precipitously from the highs of last March.

With signs that Europe may already have tipped into recession and with slowing in the American economy, also perhaps on the brink of recession, China’s all-important export sector can hardly be expected to improve any time soon. Indeed, many now expect that amid this global economic slack, China will have a hard time coming up to its already reduced 5 percent real growth target for the year. Facing such economic constraints, it is also unlikely that China will recover its former prominence in Southeast Asia any time soon.

Goldman SachsOutlook for China's Property Sector

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Forbes · by Milton Ezrati · June 30, 2023

15. CIA thinks the U.S. should get away from China quick

CIA thinks the U.S. should get away from China quick

Jai Hamid - July 1, 2023

2 mins read

cryptopolitan.com

TL;DR Breakdown

• The CIA Director calls for the United States to reduce dependence on China by diversifying its supply chains, not fully decoupling.
• Near-miss military incidents have escalated tensions between the U.S. and China.
• The U.S. and China's economic rivalry and differing political views intensify conflicts, especially regarding Taiwan's status and South China Sea territories.

The symbiotic relationship between the United States and China has always been a towering edifice of economic interdependence. However, as tremors of discord continue to shake this global monolith, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sounds the alarm. Their message? The U.S. needs to develop an exit strategy— and fast.

A call for supply chain diversification between U.S. and China

While speaking at a lecture in Oxfordshire, England, CIA Director William Burns didn’t mince words about the ramifications of an untempered reliance on China.

He acknowledged China’s rapidly growing influence in shaping the international order, fueled by their burgeoning diplomatic, economic, and technological prowess.

Burns suggests that the U.S. needs to extricate itself from a single-source dependence, particularly on critical minerals and technologies.

But rather than decoupling from China, an act deemed unwise given the country’s economic significance, Burns advocates for a smart approach: de-risking and diversifying to secure resilient supply chains, protect technological superiority, and invest in industrial capacity.

It’s not about severing ties, but about building alternatives and safeguards.

Military dissonance and economic dominance

The tenuous U.S.-China relationship is fraught with more than just economic considerations. An escalating military tension is palpable, emphasized by recent near-miss incidents involving military vessels and aircraft from both nations.

Such developments create an atmosphere of anxiety that intensifies existing jitters.

Furthermore, a seemingly innocuous balloon, supposedly a Chinese spy craft, was shot down by the U.S., stirring up more unrest between the two nations.

As the situation becomes more fraught, it’s clear that these issues are more than passing disputes. They’re harbingers of a potential geopolitical showdown.

The great power rivalry

When it comes to sheer economic size, the U.S. and China are in a league of their own. As the world’s two largest economies, they make up a staggering 44.2% and 34.7% of the world’s nominal GDP and PPP respectively.

Consequently, their competition is fierce, regularly leading to trade disputes and sanctions. Beyond the realm of economics, the power tussle extends to the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

Each nation has its own political, economic, and security interests, which often intersect and clash with the other’s. Major points of contention include differing views on Taiwan’s political status and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict adds an ominous twist to this already complicated narrative. The echoes of the Cold War are growing louder, as alliances shift and longstanding agreements are tested.

China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine, following their own declaration of an alliance “without limits”, has sparked alarm.

Meanwhile, top U.S. politicians, led by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan in what China considers a violation of the One-China policy. This move underscores the country’s intent to safeguard its own interests, even in the face of China’s growing assertiveness.

In this new geopolitical chess game, the stakes are high. The CIA’s call for the United States to swiftly diversify its supply chains and lessen its dependence on China is not just pragmatic—it’s imperative for the nation’s security, economic stability, and global standing.

Disclaimer: The information provided is not trading advice. Cryptopolitan.com holds no liability for any investments made based on the information provided on this page. We strongly recommend independent research and/or consultation with a qualified professional before making any investment decision.

cryptopolitan.com

1​6. Chinese military convoy attacked by rebels in Myanmar, claims junta

An excuse for the Junta military to attack the freedom fighters?

Chinese military convoy attacked by rebels in Myanmar, claims junta

wionews.com

An armed ethnic group has been accused of attacking a vehicle convoy carrying Chinese military personnel, according to the Myanmar junta on Saturday. The Chinese convoy was travelling to a meeting on border security when the alleged attacks took place.

"We can confirm that (Kachin Independence Army) (KIA) members attacked the convoy," junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun was quoted as saying by AFP.

The vehicle carrying Chinese military representatives and Myanmar counterparts was on its way to Myitkyina in northern Kachin state when it came under heavy fire. According to the junta, a vehicle, second in line was shot five times but fortunately, no one was wounded or killed.

The rebels (KIA) have denied the claims. "KIA did not attack any convoy," KIA colonel Naw Bu told AFP.

Also read | Myanmar: At least 26, including six children, killed in fresh fighting between army and resistance fighters

Not the first attack on the Chinese

Notably, this is not the first time that anti-junta rebels have attacked a Chinese convoy or China-funded projects. In May, days after the Chinese foreign minister visited the war-torn country, another resistance group named Natogyi Guerrilla Force (NGF) attacked the China-built oil and gas pipeline in the Mandalay region.

The 973-km pipeline runs from the Rakhine coast to southern China and was constructed in 2011 and began operations in July 2013. It passes through Magwe, Mandalay regions, and Shan state to China's Yunnan province.

Following the Chinese FM visit, anti-Chinese protests were held across Myanmar with some protesters burning the Chinese flag.

Notably, Beijing is one of the most prominent investors in Myanmar, especially in the mines, oil and gas pipelines, and infrastructure projects, which gives it access to the Indian Ocean.

WATCH | Myanmar: Abysmal state of armed conflict, insurgency, chaos & anarchy | Details

×

Myanmar in perennial chaos

Since the military removed Myanmar’s democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) in 2021 and overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi, the top leader has been forced to change her position on non-violence.

The country's parallel National Unity Government (NUG), formed out of the ashes of NLD, has established the People's Defence Force (PDF) which is responsible for training civilians to fight alongside established ethnic armed groups. Armed ethnic minority groups such as the Karenni, the Karen and the Kachin are part of this group.

More than 3,700 people have been killed in the military's crackdown on dissent since the coup, according to a local monitoring group. Meanwhile, more than 23,000 have been arrested during the same period.

(With inputs from agencies)

WATCH WION LIVE HERE:

wionews.com

17. Elon Musk sets new daily Twitter limits for users

It is all about the benjamins. They want us to pay for twitter. But no worries. I cannot read 1000 tweets per day or even 600 unless I am doing nothing else.

Excerpts:

Verified accounts will be limited to reading 10,000 posts per day while unverified accounts will have access to 1,000 per day, Musk tweeted. New unverified users who join the platform after Saturday’s announcement can access only 500 posts per day. The change came after significant backlash to initial tweet limits set by the company Saturday afternoon, allowing 6,000 tweets for verified users, 600 tweets for unverified and 300 for new profiles.

Elon Musk sets new daily Twitter limits for users

By Tamia Fowlkes and Julian Mark

Updated July 1, 2023 at 5:05 p.m. EDT|Published July 1, 2023 at 2:35 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Tamia Fowlkes · July 1, 2023

Elon Musk announced Saturday that Twitter will temporarily limit the number of tweets users can read per day — with separate limits for paid and unpaid users — to combat computer programs that comb through posts to extract useful data from the platform.

It’s unclear how long the limits will last, and what lifting them will depend on. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Verified accounts will be limited to reading 10,000 posts per day while unverified accounts will have access to 1,000 per day, Musk tweeted. New unverified users who join the platform after Saturday’s announcement can access only 500 posts per day. The change came after significant backlash to initial tweet limits set by the company Saturday afternoon, allowing 6,000 tweets for verified users, 600 tweets for unverified and 300 for new profiles.

The news follows the announcement by the Tesla and SpaceX CEO on Friday that tweets could not be viewed without being logged into an account. He described that change as a temporary measure to deter third parties from lifting data off the platform. In a tweet, Musk expressed dismay at what he characterized as “extreme levels of data scaping” by artificial intelligence companies. He again cited data scraping on Saturday as a reason for imposing the limit. Chatbots like ChatGPT rely on troves of data, mostly scraped from the internet.

Musk’s post did not describe how the change will affect Twitter features like the audio conversation platform Spaces. However, following Musk’s post, many users began sharing screenshots of their Twitter homepages with the message “rate limit exceeded,” curbing their ability to view tweet replies or posts on their home feed.

The website Downdetector indicated that user reports of Twitter malfunctions spiked at 8 a.m. Eastern on Saturday and continued throughout the day.

The restrictions represent the latest drastic change by Musk, who headed up the social media company after purchasing it in October for $44 billion. After taking over, Musk restored many banned accounts, including that of former president Donald Trump, and stripped verification marks from public figures and instead offered the blue check marks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month.

Advertisers have fled in droves, raising questions about how the company will make money. Amid what observers have characterized as a chaotic tenure, Musk in May appointed Linda Yaccarino, formerly NBCUniversal’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, as Twitter’s CEO.

Twitter’s changing user experience and frequent glitches have led to some users jumping to similar social media sites such as Mastodon and Bluesky. Meta has also reportedly proposed introducing its own Twitter clone.

Bluesky, a platform backed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, bears a resemblance to Twitter. Bluesky said in a post on the platform Saturday afternoon that it was experiencing record high traffic after Musk’s announcement. The app, described as a decentralized social network, is currently invite-only and paused its sign-ups to respond to the spike in activity Saturday.

The Washington Post · by Tamia Fowlkes · July 1, 2023

18. Probe into ex-US Navy Seal complete, says Selangor's top cop

Malaysia is very strict (except when it comes to VX and north Korea). I seem to recall having our weapons impounded a number of times when our SF teams deployed there to train with the Malaysian military and security forces.

Probe into ex-US Navy Seal complete, says Selangor's top cop

thestar.com.my · July 2, 2023

PETALING JAYA: Investigations into the former Navy SEAL (Sea, Air and Land) who was arrested for carrying unloaded gun magazines in his luggage has been completed.

Selangor police chief Comm Datuk Hussein Omar Khan confirmed the matter when contacted Sunday (July 2).

"It has been completed. Tomorrow, it will be referred to the DPP (Deputy Public Prosecutor) for any charges," he said.

ALSO READ: Ex-Navy Seal free on bail

According to CBS Austin, US citizen and Navy veteran Ryan Bates was detained at a Malaysian airport on Thursday (June 29) while attempting to return to Henderson, Nevada.

Bates' wife Dianna was quoted as saying she had not heard from her husband since he was escorted away at KL International Airport (KLIA) late Thursday (June 29) evening.

It was learnt that Ryan was working with Netflix to film a documentary series entitled "The World's Toughest Forces".

Ryan also posted details of his initial detention in a series of videos on social media.

"I'm being detained because I had military gear coming into this country. They're trying to figure out why I have all of this stuff. It sucks," Bates said on social media while Malaysian officials are seen going through his luggage.

Subscribe now to our Premium Plan for an ad-free and unlimited reading experience!

Tags / Keywords: Police , Probe , Investigations , US Navy , Seal , Ryan Bates , Hussein Omar Khan

​

thestar.com.my · July 2, 2023

19. The Tao of Deception by David Ignatius: Part 2

​Summer reading continued.

Opinion - The Tao of Deception by David Ignatius: Part 2

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius

Post Opinions Presents

Summer Fiction

The

Tao Of

Decep

tion

Part II

A Four-Part Thriller

By David Ignatius

June 29 at 8:30 a.m.

Miss Part I? Read it here.

1

1999, Chengdu

Thomas Crane, the CIA’s base chief in Chengdu, tugged the consul general down the stairs to the consulate basement on Lingshiguan Road. A secretary and a Chinese administrative officer tried to follow, but Crane blocked them and locked the basement door. He paced the length of the big room, peering at the concrete floor and chipping at any irregularities with an ax he had brought from the armory upstairs.

“What the hell are you looking for?” asked the consul general. He was balding, in middle age, wishing he wasn’t stuck in the Chinese provinces.

“A hole in the floor,” answered Tom. “I need a flashlight.” He pointed to a big lamp on the wall. He shined the beam into the corners of the room and behind the filing cabinets and bookshelves that lined the walls.

“How do you know there’s a hole?” demanded the diplomat. His intelligence chief was scaring him.

“I can’t tell you,” Tom answered. The consul general started to protest, but Tom raised the palm of his hand. “Sir, please don’t ask any more questions.”

Press Enter to skip to end of carousel

About ‘The Tao of Deception’

“The Tao of Deception” is a fictional spy thriller by Post columnist David Ignatius inspired by real-life events in CIA history.

Want to receive the next installment by email as soon as it’s live? Sign up to follow David Ignatius.

Have questions about this story or the case that inspired it? Submit them here for David’s reader Q&A at 12 p.m. Eastern on Monday, July 3.

Have feedback on this story or format? Tell us here.

End of carousel

The consul general retreated while Tom continued his investigation. At the rear of the room was a wooden wall that enclosed an empty storeroom. He surveyed the wall, calculating its position. He looked up toward the ceiling and rechecked his measurements. By his reckoning, the boundary wall of the CIA base’s classified workspace was three floors above.

“Ground zero,” said Tom. “Has to be.”

Tom took his ax and swung it hard against the wall, splintering the wood. The consul general shouted for him to stop, but he swung again, harder, and once more, until the frame gave way. Tom shined his flashlight along the floor, and there, in the concrete, was a six-inch hole, with a thick rubber casing sprouting from the opening and rising up through the ceiling to the floor above.

“Those bastards,” muttered Tom. “They’ve run wires upstairs.”

“Oh, Jesus,” said the consul general. He looked dazed. The worst thing that could befall a U.S. diplomatic facility abroad seemed to have happened to his little piece of real estate. “What do I do now?”

“Stay put,” said Tom. “Don’t let anyone come down here.”

Tom raced up two flights of stairs to the CIA base, ax in hand, navigating the maze of doors and locks. To anyone he encountered along the way, he barked, “Can’t talk now.”

Inside the secure area of the base, Tom took his ax to the supporting wall. The inside was lined with a thin strip of metal to prevent intrusion. After four clanging blows, the wall and its lining collapsed. Inside was the top of the same rubber tube Crane had seen in the basement. He peered inside. It appeared to be empty.

“Oh, no, no, no!” Tom muttered, followed by a loud oath. He knew what the empty casing meant. Yu Qiangsheng had told him in one of their endless tradecraft discussions that the Ministry of State Security designed its surveillance systems so that wires could be withdrawn quickly if they were ever discovered.

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Tom ordered a CIA colleague to secure the space and then ran pell-mell back down the stairs to the basement. The befuddled consul general was standing by the splintered wall there. Tom ignored him. He hacked at the rubber tube with his ax until it severed and examined the interior. There were still some wires inside; the Chinese hadn’t been able to pull them all out yet.

The consul general had his arms up, begging for an explanation.

“Not now,” said Tom. He bent the rubber casing to a 90-degree angle and buried the ax halfway in, so that the remaining wires couldn’t be extracted.

“Duct tape,” he shouted, and the consul general fumbled around until he found some in a supply storage cabinet. Tom taped the wires to a nearby support beam, so they couldn’t be retracted more.

The consul general was sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor, his head in his hands. All of this, whatever it was, would be his responsibility.

“What should I tell Washington?” he asked plaintively.

“Leave it to me,” said Tom. “Right now, you need to go upstairs and tell everybody that things are fine. We just had a little electrical problem.”

The base chief took charge, to the consul general’s relief. Tom summoned a CIA Technical Services team overnight from Beijing. The team tapped into the remaining wires, but they had gone dead. In the CIA’s workspace on the second floor, the technicians dismantled the walls to check for cameras or microphones. They found nothing. The Chinese evidently hadn’t been able to fish their wires past the metal lining. And they hadn’t penetrated the Acoustic Conference Room, where the base did its most sensitive work, or the classified computer system.

“Maybe we lucked out,” Tom told his CIA colleagues in the bubble after the frantic search ended. But he was haunted by the possibility that the Chinese had seen or heard something that might prove valuable.

He sent a quick flash cable home on the Restricted Handling channel. He received back an RH cable from Langley commending him for prompt, decisive action. It wasn’t until a day later, when he was alone in his office with his wife, that he let himself breathe.

“That was, uh, unusual,” he said. “Right on the line between near disaster and total disaster.”

“You did good,” she responded. “Iceman.”

The State Department lodged a protest with the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The Chinese government denied responsibility, though it offered no alternative explanation. Had an army of rats with tiny jackhammers burrowed through the concrete foundation of the building? State decided against issuing a public complaint. The Chinese had been caught red-handed; a public shaming would only create more problems.

Tom wanted to take the offensive. The Technical Services team widened the hole in the basement and sent down cameras, hoping to collect more Chinese surveillance gear. But the lines were dead, and any other equipment had been extracted.

Tom then proposed excavating the tunnel and sending a CIA Global Response Staff team down in hot pursuit of the Ministry of State Security. But Hendrick Hoffman, the chief of the East Asia Division, told him that would be a “cowboy move,” risky and insecure. Tongue in cheek, Tom proposed a vivid demonstration of America’s reaction: Widen the hole, enclose it in plastic and use it as a toilet.

Tom and his colleagues concluded that the best response would be to feed concrete through a tube into the small opening, pump it as deep as it would go, and then seal it up tight. The consulate’s maintenance department mixed the concrete in the basement, so the Chinese wouldn’t see, and siphoned it into the hole.

A Ministry of Public Security official appeared at the gate and requested entry for a building inspection, but the consul general reminded him tartly that the compound was sovereign American territory.

Tom and Sonia were the only consulate officers who knew that the breach had been disclosed by a “walk-in” from the MSS.

What to do about Chen, the deputy CG whose treachery had been proffered by the walk-in as a sign of his bona fides? Hoffman, back at Headquarters, wanted to put him under surveillance and wait for his next meeting with his handler. But the State Department nixed that. Too sensitive, too vulnerable, too much of a pain in the butt for an already frazzled consul general. State chose its favorite way of saying no: How would it look when it was published in The Washington Post?

Instead, Chen was quickly summoned to Beijing for a supposed meeting with the ambassador. He was greeted by a joint CIA-FBI team who said they had rock-solid evidence he had been recruited by the MSS. This wasn’t true, but Chen cracked and agreed to spill everything he knew in exchange for a reduced sentence.

The FBI at first wanted to double Chen back against the Chinese, but he was so jittery, the bureau decided he would break under the stress. Chen delivered what his inquisitors demanded: He provided a detailed account of his recruitment during his previous posting in Bangkok, including the honey trap that had snared him and the identity of the MSS case officer who had pitched him.

“All they saw was my Chinese skin,” Chen said during his interrogation in Beijing. “They targeted me because they thought they already owned me as a Chinese man.”

When Tom heard that comment, he remembered what Yu had said about how Chinese people were always Chinese. This racism was an MSS vulnerability, but Tom knew that it afflicted the CIA, too. He watched the way his wife was treated, how some other members of the station would stop talking when she came around. When he asked her about it, she just shrugged. Her parents were U.S. citizens, but one was always “African” and the other was “Chinese.” It couldn’t be fixed.

Chen was sent home on the next plane. He later agreed to a negotiated plea; in exchange for cooperation, he received a suspended jail sentence.

Tom had a team of watchers deployed on the ground and satellite eyes overhead to stake out Chen’s next scheduled meeting with his case officer. But the MSS officer was a no-show. They knew Chen was busted.

Tom Crane had punched his ticket. He had recruited a penetration agent inside his adversary’s spy service. Now he had to communicate with him and keep him alive.

In the paper bag that Tom had given his agent, he provided the simplest and most secure means for communicating: A pad to code and decode messages in an unbreakable cypher, and a secure radio frequency on which to exchange messages with the CIA. But for two months, the man vanished back into the anonymity of Chengdu.

Tom’s colleagues back home predicted that the walk-in would never make contact again. But he thought otherwise. In their momentary interaction, the Chinese spy had a rapturous look on his face, melded with his terror of discovery. He had said in his initial pitch that he needed money to fix a “woman problem,” but Crane guessed that like a gambler, he was aroused by his risk-taking, too. This man liked walking on the edge, and he’d be back for more.

“I love tunnels,” said a genial Hoffman, the East Asia chief, during a secure videoconference chat with Crane after the dust had settled. “They never work.”

And it was true: Tunnels had a poor history in modern espionage. The CIA had dug one to tap a Soviet Army communications line in East Berlin during the 1950s, and the Russians had used it to feed disinformation. The FBI had bored a shaft under the new Soviet Embassy on Mount Alto in Washington during the 1980s, but the plot was discovered before the tunnel was finished. Now, the Chinese tunnel had reached a similar dead end — though, in truth, the CIA was lucky it was tipped off in time.

The tunnel discovery had turned Tom into a star. But it is a universal truth in the spy business, as in most aspects of life, that success breeds envy. Some of his colleagues thought his recruitment of the MSS volunteer who had brush-passed him on Renmin Road had been too easy, too perfect.

Tom dismissed the grumbling. The CIA was like high school, where you were surrounded by jealous kids and bullies. Nice people worked for the Commerce Department or the Bureau of Land Management. Colleagues wondered if he’d been more than lucky in Chengdu. Some even wondered if he had been a witting tool of the MSS.

2

1999, Beijing

The tunnel “mistake,” as MSS officials privately described it, was another blunder for a Chinese intelligence service that seemed in 1999 to be snakebit. The Politburo fired the ministry’s director. The new director, in turn, fired the head of the North America section. The People’s Liberation Army argued that a separate intelligence ministry shouldn’t exist at all, since the PLA’s Third Branch did the truly important work of signals intelligence, including the strange new wizardry known in English as “cyber.”

The only MSS officer who benefited from this latest stumble was Ma Wei, the deputy chief of the North America section, who was still known as “the American girl.” After the firings, she was promoted to chief of the section and immediately began what she called a “restructuring.”

“All our secrets were disclosed a decade ago by Yu Qiangsheng,” she told her colleagues in her maiden speech as chief of the section. The room was silent. “He shamed our service. Now, we need to create a new service untouched by his crimes.”

Ma was haunted by Yu. He had stolen not only the secrets of the MSS but also its soul. Every day he lived in exile in America was a reminder that the new China was unsteady. It was a toy of the West; it could be bought.

When the MSS chief mentioned Yu during a private lunch after Ma’s promotion, he was startled by the vehemence of her response. “I have a fervent desire to put a bullet in his head,” she said.

Ma set about building a new service. She thought the MSS was too timid and lazy. More Americans could be recruited if China acted more boldly. She reorganized her branch to better identify targets: The MSS had made a practice of scooping up vast quantities of defense and economic information and then sifting it for useful nuggets. It was antiquated, like panning for gold. Ma instead imposed what the CIA called “targeting” and “tasking.” She instructed her officers to identify people who had real secrets and pursue them.

The Chinese knew the essence of good tradecraft, but some people had forgotten. Ma reminded her colleagues of Sun Tzu’s advice to know their enemy and know themselves. She dropped 2,500-year-old field notes into her tradecraft lectures. “If the trees move, the enemy is approaching.” “Where birds congregate, the field is empty.” “If the birds take flight, beware of an ambush.” People weren’t always sure what she was talking about, but they liked it.

Ma thought her colleagues were too uptight. She encouraged them to relax. Failure was okay. A perfect score was a sign that you weren’t taking enough risks. She organized cocktail parties and karaoke nights at the ministry social club, and basketball and ping-pong games in the gym. She tried to make the compound at Xiyuan feel more like the college campus she remembered in Madison.

Ma referred to China’s slowly growing roster of American agents as “our dear friends.” Yes, most of the assets were still Chinese American, drawn from the easiest recruiting pool. But there were more needy and greedy Anglos, too. Ma had studied psychology as a graduate student; now she created a psychology unit in the North America section to understand people’s needs and vulnerabilities.

“Americans are born to expect success,” she said at the introductory psychology lecture. “But most Americans these days do not succeed as they hoped. When they reach forty-five years, they take stock: Their marriages are unhappy; their jobs are boring; money is scarce; debts are large; their parents are old and feeble; their children are disobedient. That is our moment, to reach out to our dear friends and find a way to provide what they are missing.”

Ma Wei didn’t tell her colleagues, but her life-cycle approach was classic CIA tradecraft, an espionage version of Gail Sheehy’s “Passages.” To the cadres of the MSS, bound by tradition and cut off from the West, the concepts sounded revolutionary.

Ma introduced another practice that proved devastatingly effective. She insisted that senior staff of the North America section reassess every known case in which the CIA had recruited a Chinese agent. She asked her team to look for patterns. How did the CIA’s recruits communicate with their handlers? How often were they in contact? What common features characterized the people who were recruited? What was the communications protocol? Were there any common internet addresses or radio frequencies?

As soon as the MSS found a pattern that was repeated, she advised, it could begin to crack the code. Her students listened.

3

2000, Chengdu

Tom Crane’s agent in the MSS proved to be a stone-cold professional. Following their initial rendezvous at Xinglong Lake, Tom never had another face-to-face meeting with him. But after two months of silence, the agent sent an encrypted radio message using his one-time pad. He wanted to exchange new secrets for more money. The agency gave him a cryptonym, LCBRINK, and a “201” file, and began reconnoitering dead-drop sites where they could make exchanges.

The Cranes prepared each drop site meticulously. Satellite reconnaissance identified potential locations. Remote, but accessible; situated so that they allowed a few seconds of invisibility from any chance observer. The satellites were distant partners; they could watch the sites before the Cranes dropped a package, and then monitor the pickup. But the human factor was still decisive. Crane aborted one early drop because he felt a shadow of doubt that he was clean, even when technical surveillance gave a green light.

The Cranes were the only people in China who knew the CIA was running an MSS agent in Sichuan. For them, it was the closest thing to having a child. The agent was utterly dependent on them for safety and nurture; one clumsy moment and he would be doomed. It was strange, but what Tom loved about intelligence work was the intimacy of that bond.

“I know him,” Tom told his wife after LCBRINK made the third successful pickup and drop. “I’ve watched him move. I’ve seen his face. I know where he lives. I’ve seen his wife and his mistress. I know where he gambles. I know how crazy and needy he is. I don’t want him to get caught.”

“We’ll keep him dry,” said Sonia.

The Cranes were true partners. Tandem couples sometimes got so stressed they started running covert actions on each other, but the Cranes happily cohabited their secret compartment. Sonia had joined the agency as an analyst because of her fluent Chinese, but after she and Tom married, she received “hostile environment” training at Camp Peary and became a case officer. She was a natural operator, nimbler on the ground than Tom was.

CIA officers always live two lives. Tom had proposed to her in Chinese. She had laughed and answered “yes” in English. Some nights at home she sang to him in Portuguese. When they went to clubs, she could vamp like Lil’ Kim. When Tom asked her once in bed if she was a liar, she answered proudly, “Yes.”

Sonia alternated with her husband in making the drops. She moved effortlessly between disguises, altering her skin tone, clothing and posture so deftly that even her husband might not recognize her. She insisted on handling the most sensitive drop since the first meeting by the lake.

Headquarters had decided that after six months and three successful drops, LCBRINK should be given a direct covert communications device. It was a simple burst transmitter that uploaded the agent’s messages to a satellite and downloaded the agency’s instructions.

The cov-comm device was hidden in an artfully configured stock of pine wood, seemingly fallen from a tree, like those strewn across every park in Chengdu. The wooden fragment was indistinguishable from other sticks and branches on the ground except for a reddish fungus on its underside.

Sonia walked the taut wire of surveillance alone. The drop site was in a thickly forested park north of the Third Ring Road. Sonia circumnavigated the city several times, following the route she and her husband had mapped. She changed vehicles and directions many times, but more important, she changed her appearance, one hour in the guise of an older Chinese woman draped in a gray shawl; next as a younger woman wrapped in a silk headscarf; then as a slender man in a cloth cap and baggy jeans.

In this last disguise, as a youth on a leisurely stroll in the park, she approached the wooded area that was the drop zone. The tree branch with its electronic treasure was stuffed into the bag slung over her shoulder. She was clean. Her run had been perfect. She felt so dry she was fluffy. She walked toward the drop site.

A car was parked in the far distance; a red Honda Accord, with two people in the front seat. It was a new model, one just marketed in China. Ten minutes earlier, she had seen a white Accord, also with two occupants. Coincidence, maybe. Two new cars out driving in a scenic park. She walked toward the glen where she would drop the disguised tree branch. She steadied her gait, loping, boyish. Her heart pounded against the tight binding around her chest.

Sonia reached toward the bag for the covert communications device. As she did so, she took a breath and closed her eyes. Breathe, she told herself. Remember. Yu had told the Cranes that the Chinese lived for American mistakes; their advantage was in their numbers; they were everywhere; coincidence didn’t happen in their world.

In that silent moment, eyes wide shut, Sonia saw in her mind’s eye the image of the man she knew as LCBRINK, cuffed to an iron chair as he was interrogated. And she sensed, instantly, that she was about to deliver a death sentence.

She kept walking, easy steps, past the drop site and toward a clearing beyond, pausing occasionally to look at the trees, until she reached the south gate of the park and caught a bus back toward the city. Overhead reconnaissance photographs later confirmed that the two Hondas were part of the MSS motor pool.

“You saved his life,” Crane told his wife later in the ACR at the consulate, when he debriefed her about the run.

“This time,” she answered. “Next time, it’s your turn.”

Chengdu was a triumph for the Cranes. They asked to extend their tour when it ended after two years, but Headquarters wanted them back home to help Hoffman run the East Asia Division. Before Tom left, he revisited the concrete-filled opening of the Chinese tunnel to say a benediction; he rechecked the communications protocols and drop sites that would be handed off to the next base chief, who would take over his agent inside the MSS.

When the Cranes boarded the plane for the long trip back to Washington, the MSS agent was still operating, invisible and undetected. The ministry knew it had a leak, but it hadn’t yet found the pattern.

4

2006, Beijing

Tom Crane and his wife returned to China six years later. This time, Tom was appointed chief of operations in the Beijing station. The station chief at the time was an analyst rather than an operations officer, so Tom would effectively run clandestine activity in China. He would be a “declared” officer, officially part of the CIA. Sonia would not; that meant she would be taking more risks.

In the intervening years, the Cranes had grown up in the way a lucky couple can in middle age. The first two years back, Tom was a senior deputy in the East Asia Division, planning and running operations against Chinese targets around the world. They had then moved to Tokyo, where Tom, undercover as a U.S. trade official, became a “singleton,” a lone-wolf recruiter who traveled abroad on false passports and in disguise, pitching prospective Chinese-speaking agents.

The Cranes returned to Washington for another two years, as Tom continued the singleton role. He was the closer, the officer the agency sent in to complete big recruitments. He traveled to California to visit Yu, who was fading into a defector’s cantankerous dotage. The man was still an encyclopedia of Chinese tradecraft, but it was dated now, and sometimes he seemed to be repeating the same page.

Sonia had taken most of those six years off to start a family. Since leaving Chengdu, they’d had two daughters, now five and three, both with the easy adaptability of expat kids. Sonia knew she was starting to get restless when she began looking for gigs as a singer with an Afro-Portuguese band in D.C.

Tom went ahead of the family to set up shop in Beijing. He flew into a China that had hurtled forward in the years he had been away. Beijing Capital International Airport was so dense with flights that it had added a second terminal and was about to open a third; China was already planning another, entirely new airport about forty miles south in Daxing.

The country’s growth astonished him; it was something you couldn’t fathom from intelligence reports. Tom did the math: A country growing ten percent a year roughly triples its wealth in a decade. That was what had happened to China. Everything old had become new again.

Like everything else in Beijing, the U.S. Embassy was bursting at the seams; work had started on a fancy new compound northeast of the city center, but it wouldn’t be ready for another few years. The old building was in the Jianguomenwai compound, three miles east of Tiananmen Square; the dowdy building had once been the embassy of Pakistan. The CIA station competed for space with every other American agency and interest group that wanted a piece of the new China.

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The family had been assigned a comfortable, soulless apartment in a compound near the embassy. It was late winter when Tom moved in, and Beijing was dry and bitterly cold. From his window, he could see the leafless trees that lined the diplomatic area, bending against the winds gusting in from the mountains north and west of the city. Cold weather was miserable, but it was good for spies. Watchers hated to stay out on the streets. Disguises were easier in bulky coats and hats. Cold people made mistakes.

“I hate this apartment,” Sonia announced the day after she arrived that spring. She stood at the windows, looking at the dull vista of the diplomatic quarter; it had the charm of a well-tended prison.

“What do you think they’re beaming at us?” she said, rapping at the windowpane. “Lasers or microwaves or both?”

Tom put a finger to his lips and pointed to the ceiling.

“No, I want them to hear,” said Sonia, eyes flashing. “We have two young children. Their health is precious. Five people who served in the U.S. Embassy Beijing since 2000 have been diagnosed with melanomas. Did you know that? We had a briefing at the State Department a week ago. Five people! Everyone should know that.”

Tom nodded his head. Nobody signed up to get cancer.

“You’re right, sweetheart. I hope they’re listening.” He raised his voice. “If anything happens to my wife or children while we’re here, I will hold the government of China legally and morally responsible. Tongshi! Comrades, you don’t want me as an enemy.”

The wild card for Tom wasn’t the Chinese economic landscape. It was counter-terrorism, which had become a near-obsession for the CIA in 2006 and consumed a surprisingly large part of his time as chief of operations. Instead of recruiting and running Chinese spies, he was meeting with them to discuss counter-terrorism cooperation.

The Chinese were beginning a savage repression campaign against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Of course, they claimed that the Uyghur rebels were really an al-Qaeda front. The MSS offered to share intelligence from their penetrations of the groups and asked for reciprocal CIA help. Tom thought it was a poisoned cup, but he drank.

Tom’s chief liaison partner was Ma Wei, now one of the deputy chiefs of the Ministry of State Security. She had been promoted two years earlier from her post as chief of the North America branch. She was still the ministry’s avenging angel. In addition to running aggressive operations against the United States, Ma was said to be cracking down on the corruption that had been endemic in the MSS — and making enemies in the process.

Tom studied Ma Wei’s impressive biography in his briefing book on MSS leadership. “I wonder if she’s recruitable,” he asked himself. That would be his “extra credit” assignment in Beijing, he decided. To draw the very best talent in the MSS into a conversation with the CIA.

Tom met her at a one-day counter-terrorism seminar the MSS was hosting for the visiting CIA director. The participants’ fervid denunciation of Muslim extremism was predictable; Tom approached Ma during a coffee break and began a conversation about the welcome arrival of spring. She chatted back, amiably. She wasn’t pretending to be shy in English anymore. Crane sought her out at the next coffee break and invited her to join him for lunch; to his surprise, she agreed.

Miss Ma proposed that they meet on “neutral” ground, in a private room at the Beijing Hotel on the grand boulevard known as Chang An, next to Tiananmen Square. The hotel was an old Soviet-era monstrosity and every room had been wired for sound for decades, but Tom didn’t object. It was a start. The next time he would choose the lunch spot.

The “American girl” welcomed him. She had dropped her black sneakers and ponytail now that she was a senior cadre. She dressed fashionably in clothes she had bought from Zara, which had just opened a branch in Beijing. Crane planned to do the talking; now that he was a “declared” officer, part of his job was carrying the flag.

But it was Miss Ma who steered the conversation. She asked Crane if he missed Chengdu. His CIA cover there was blown, obviously, now that he was a declared CIA officer in Beijing. She apologized for the “tunnel incident.” It was a mistake, she said; the chief of the MSS office there had been replaced.

“How did you know the hole was there?” she asked sweetly, with what seemed almost a wink. “It was a great secret.”

“Lucky guess,” answered Tom, winking back and then changing the subject. He wondered if she knew anything real; probably she was just probing.

“And your wife. Does she work for the CIA?”

Tom hesitated, only for an instant. “No, thank goodness,” he replied. “She’s a consular officer.”

Tom debated whether he should meet her a second time, and then he made an invitation for another lunch, “early next year.” She accepted.

Why was Crane optimistic that his outreach to Ma Wei was worth the trouble? China watchers back at Langley thought she might be on a collision course with the new minister of public security. He had made his reputation (and fortune) running party operations in regions that had begun to boom in the 1990s and early 2000s, moving from oil-rich Liaoning to Sichuan, which was gushing with money from new start-ups, and finally, back to Beijing to run security.

The security chief was a tough, canny operator. Like everyone in his generation, he had survived the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution. As he rose, he made common cause with the wealthy children of the party elite, doing them favors, helping them launder the profits of China’s roaring boom. He was a very different animal from Ma Wei; where she had made her name through finesse and precision, he understood raw power.

One detail in the security chief’s résumé jumped out at Crane. He was very close to the Communist Party secretary in Shanghai, a former minister of construction who had been appointed to the Politburo in 2002. This man had spent his career rehabilitating his image and ingratiating himself with party cronies who were becoming rich. His family name was Yu; the CIA files said that he was the younger brother of Yu Qiangsheng.

So it was with some curiosity that Tom met Ma for a second lunch in February 2007. He proposed a chic restaurant frequented by art dealers and collectors in a new office tower east of the city center. Crane said his wife helped him pick it out. The place featured spicy dishes from Yunnan province in the far south, near the Laotian border.

Ma startled him with her first question.

“How is Sonia?” she asked pleasantly. “Is she enjoying her consular work?”

“Loves it,” said Tom quickly. “The kids are happy, too. Thanks for asking.”

Ma seemed almost relaxed over lunch. She ordered a mushroom dish that was a house specialty and said she loved it. She admired the art on the walls, especially a retro-Maoist painting that showed workers painted in day-glow yellow and red and the word “art” painted in the corner.

Tom tested the limits. He mentioned a story that had just appeared in the South China Morning Post about new worries in the party about corruption. It had obviously been a leak from party officials. What did she think?

Ma parried that one. “Hard to say. I didn’t see the story.” And to a question about the charismatic new party chief in Chongqing, rumored to be campaigning to become the next general secretary of the party, she demurred, as well. “I cannot say I know this gentleman personally.”

Tom asked her when they finished the meal if she would join him a third time; she answered that she would see if it was “convenient.” He wondered if he would ever hear back.

And why was Ma Wei willing to meet with the CIA officer Thomas Crane? That was a more complicated question.

Ma had taught her generation of MSS officers how to interrogate facts. The ministry was a hoarder: It stored every audio record, every intercepted communication, every case of shadowing known or suspected CIA officers throughout China. Ma was especially curious when MSS operations failed. She wanted to know why.

So, of course, she had wanted to understand the famous “tunnel mistake” in Chengdu. Evidently, there had been a leak, but the ministry had never discovered who it was. So, Ma had decided to interrogate the facts of that case.

The tunnel had been discovered in 1999. The CIA must have learned of it hours before. She instructed her analysts to look for anything unusual that week in the Chengdu office of the ministry: Were there any sudden absences or breaches of duty? Then she asked for the surveillance logs on Thomas Crane, who she now understood must have been base chief. Surveillance teams had followed him all over town but never caught him at a drop or a meeting.

Ma’s research team examined a dozen suspects in the MSS office in Chengdu, tracked their movements and tapped their phones. But they had come up empty-handed there, too. So, eventually, Ma had put the case aside.

Ma’s interest revived after her first lunch with Crane. There was something about his odd, momentary stutter before he insisted that his wife didn’t work for the CIA that turned on a light. Of course: Crane’s wife was a deep-cover officer and part of the team that serviced the MSS agent.

Ma began anew, looking for evidence about Sonia Machel. She had her team search the audio tapes from the aborted penetration of the secure area of the consulate. That operation hadn’t produced much, because the microphones hadn’t reached to where the base’s officers discussed sensitive matters. But Sonia Machel’s voice was distinct among those allowed to enter the base. She was clearly an operations officer, under deep cover.

Ma’s team looked for Sonia by combing through thousands more photos and audio recordings. The search required hundreds of people; it was a marriage of old-school and new. But finally, the facts confessed. There were photos of Sonia taken by officers in two Hondas from the MSS, arriving at a glen in the forest and then leaving. The watchers had checked; she had never made a drop; it was just a walk in the woods.

Ma suspected otherwise. She instructed her army of analysts to scrub every surveillance image from every entrance and exit to the park for the following week, looking for any member of the MSS staff in Chengdu who entered the area where Sonia had been. And soon enough, they found it. The agent had come looking for the drop that Sonia aborted. A long-distance camera captured him searching on the ground for a stick that wasn’t there.

5

2007, Beijing

Tom Crane’s chief worry in the Beijing station was a tall, slender Chinese American officer named Arthur Li. He was a Yale graduate, an agency throwback in that respect. He came to the CIA with his own version of “great expectations.” His father was a prominent MIT-trained chemical engineer; his mother was a concert violinist. Perhaps he suffered from this burdensome background, but Arthur Li proved to be a complainer and an underperformer. He was a “declared” officer, so he didn’t do much spying himself, and he seemed bored by his other duties.

“That kid is trouble,” said Sonia, after he had behaved with a sullen lack of interest at a small dinner the Cranes gave at their apartment. As in most things, she was right.

Tom gave him a negative fitness report in his annual review, and Li complained bitterly to the station chief. He claimed that Crane had a racial bias, stating in a written response: “Mr. Crane doesn’t trust me because I’m Chinese. He won’t give me serious assignments.” The station chief, being a modern bureaucrat, advised Tom that it would be very unfortunate, indeed, if Li filed a discrimination complaint with the inspector general.

So, Tom gave the young officer more responsibility. He wasn’t about to send him out on operations. But he brought him into the station’s inner circle, where he had access to information about the agents the CIA was running in China. The files he saw didn’t have agents’ real names, to be sure, only cryptonyms. But they contained some details about the tradecraft the CIA used to contact each one.

“Thank you for recognizing my abilities,” said Li when Tom offered him this additional responsibility. And he seemed to become more interested in his work. But after six months, he grew listless again and asked for a larger role in reviewing operations. The next major operation was a sensitive drop that involved Sonia. Tom flatly refused Li’s request.

Li’s tour ended a few months later, and he departed Beijing. He had a vituperative exit interview with the station chief, who by this time had concluded that he was a spoiled brat. Li refused to shake Tom’s hand on the way out the door, but his sullen temper did him no good. Hoffman, the East Asia chief, warned him about poor performance when he returned home, and the inspector general’s office, after a brief review, rejected his discrimination claims. A year later, informed that he would not be promoted, he began the long resignation process at the CIA.

On a day in the summer of 2007, near the end of the Cranes’ second year in Beijing, Chengdu suddenly and uncharacteristically turned up in high volume in National Security Agency monitoring of the signals traffic from the MSS headquarters in Beijing.

The Chengdu office then went into lockdown — with no messages going in or out. The CIA base in Chengdu tried to contact its only agent on the books there, LCBRINK, but the cov-comm message went unanswered at first. A day later, a message was sent in plain, unencrypted text. It was zàijiàn, which means goodbye.

The agency queried Taiwanese intelligence, which had good coverage in Sichuan. Were they aware of anything unusual involving the security service in Chengdu? The Taiwanese reported there was a rumor in senior party circles that the MSS office had arrested one of its mid-level officers.

The Cranes spent their last days in the Beijing station with a sense of dread. They had been considering whether to extend their tour for another year and had promised to let headquarters know soon. Finally, a week before their decision was due, the hammer fell.

On a Restricted Handling channel, Tom received a photograph of the courtyard at MSS headquarters at Xiyuan that had been taken by a satellite operated by the National Reconnaissance Office.

It showed a man strapped to a chair in the court of the ministry, naked from the waist up. The exquisite precision of the image showed the prisoner’s face. He had been badly beaten, but Tom could recognize his features. It was the Chinese man who had dropped a note into his pocket eight years before and had spied for the CIA ever since.

The agony showed on the prisoner’s face, and it was felt by Tom and Sonia in their hearts. They ended their tour at the end of the summer and went home. And the bad times were just beginning.

To be continued.

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About this serial

Project management and audience editing by Beatrix Lockwood and Mili Mitra. Social media editing by Edgar Ramirez and Deirdre Byrne. Audio production by Hadley Robinson and Charla Freeland. Illustrations by Anthony Gerace for The Post. Copy editing by Vince Rinehart and Lydia Rebac. Design and development by Post Opinions staff.

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius

20. The Tao of Deception: Part III

Opinion | The Tao of Deception: Part III

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · July 1, 2023

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1

2012, Washington

A bullet through the head, fired at close range in the courtyard of the Ministry of State Security’s headquarters, ended the life of the Chinese agent Thomas Crane had recruited in Chengdu in 1999. The Chinese meant it as a public execution. They knew the Americans would be watching and listening with every device they possessed. The Chinese message to the CIA was: We’re not frightened of you anymore. Now it’s your turn to worry.

When they saw a surveillance photograph of the man’s body, his skull exploded from the force of the bullet, Tom and Sonia Crane made the decision to end their Beijing tour. They had stayed two years in Beijing, a normal assignment. But they were spent. Losing an agent is a bit like losing a child. There’s a sense of failure that accompanies the grief. You don’t know what you did wrong, but the damage is irreparable, and the guilt persists.

When the Cranes returned to Washington, the CIA offered them both good new jobs. But the taste of espionage had soured. They put in their papers for retirement; they had both served twenty years in the clandestine service and were eligible for full pensions. Tom took a job as a China analyst for a big defense contractor; Sonia stayed home with their girls. They bought a house in the suburbs in Great Falls.

About ‘The Tao of Deception’

“The Tao of Deception” is a fictional spy thriller by Post columnist David Ignatius inspired by real-life events in CIA history.

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The CIA was on guard after the execution of its Chengdu agent, but for several years the rest of the agency’s network in China continued to run seemingly unmolested. China, meanwhile, was flexing every muscle. It hosted a dazzling Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and an equally stunning world expo in Shanghai in 2010. It tested an antisatellite weapon and built an aircraft carrier. People began to talk of the inevitability of Chinese economic dominance. The only thing Beijing seemed to lack was spies.

Then, in 2010, something happened. The CIA’s networks in China began to shrivel and die. As with Ernest Hemingway’s famous description of bankruptcy, the agency’s disaster came gradually, then suddenly. At first, the cases seemed isolated: An agent failed to communicate on schedule. Another didn’t collect a drop. A third vanished after a meeting. Then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, went off the radar.

By 2011, the bad news was cascading. The Ministry of State Security was ripping apart, plank by plank, the intelligence structure that the CIA had built over decades. The Chinese didn’t disguise the savagery of their counterespionage campaign: Over the course of two years, nearly 30 CIA sources were killed or imprisoned. The agency tried desperately to exfiltrate the agents who hadn’t yet been rounded up, but in almost every case, it was too late. A generation of American spies was wiped out.

This bludgeoning of the CIA’s China network was one of the agency’s most closely guarded secrets, for a simple but terrifying reason: The only plausible explanation for the loss of so many CIA assets was that the MSS had recruited a mole inside the most senior ranks of the agency’s operations against Beijing. A monster was inside the house.

The CIA director designated a small team from the CIA and the FBI to organize a hunt for the mole. The intelligence agencies were still reeling from two Russian penetration cases a decade earlier, and now this.

The mole hunters operated from what might be described as the back closet of the back room. Their first priority was to make an accurate damage assessment. This lasted many months. It was like collecting bodies from a battlefield. These victims were Chinese who had trusted the CIA to keep them alive, and now they were gone, liquidated one by one.

When the task force had finished the toll of lost agents, it began a meticulous review of each case to look for leaks. Who could have had access to secret recruitments that stretched through the late 1980s into the 1990s and 2000s? No CIA suspect quite fit all the evidence, but the mole hunters assembled a short list consisting of the agency’s most senior China operations officers. This list included many former Beijing station chiefs and their deputies. It seemed impossible, but one of these officers had apparently betrayed the agency and destroyed nearly everything it had built in China. Tom Crane was on the list.

Tom noticed small things at first. Former colleagues stopped returning his phone calls. He wasn’t invited to conferences with other China hands. People begged off lunch dates. He asked Sonia what might be happening, and she was puzzled. But then she called one of her closest friends from the agency, a woman with whom she had carpooled when their children were younger, and the friend begged off. She wouldn’t meet for coffee, and she wouldn’t explain why.

The Cranes had always been a model CIA couple. They had served in denied areas, taking personal physical risks. Both had received medals when they retired. They had been popular with their colleagues. On the surface, they had done everything right.

It didn’t take long to realize that they were under suspicion as Chinese penetration agents. Tom had heard rumors of the lost assets in China; people talked, even when they weren’t supposed to. And he certainly knew that his Chengdu walk-in case had gone bad. He remembered the image of the tormented man’s face. Tom understood with crystal clarity why he was being shunned. He and his wife were suspects.

The Cranes had been home nearly three years when the FBI asked Tom to come to the Washington field office on Fourth Street. Visiting the bureau as a suspect was agony; Tom had worked with the FBI frequently over his two decades at the agency. He had done nothing wrong, in his mind, but he still felt ashamed. He had been “canceled” in the intelligence world.

The FBI office was a few blocks past Chinatown. Tom came an hour early; he walked the streets nervously. He had an instinct as he neared the entrance to run away, but that wasn’t an option.

The special agent in charge told Tom it was an informal interview; he asked if Tom wanted a lawyer present, and Tom said no. The FBI agent smiled and nodded approval, but Tom could see that he was thinking: Now we’ve got him.

“You handled Yu Qiangsheng,” the FBI man began. “That means you probably know more about how Chinese intelligence works than anyone in this country.”

“Maybe,” said Tom. “Is Yu still alive?”

“He died last year. A stroke. He wasn’t taking care of himself. We didn’t publicize it. The Chinese would have claimed they killed him, to scare other defectors. Do you know what he told us before he died? He said that if he were running the MSS, he would try to recruit Tom Crane.”

Tom laughed and shook his head. Yu probably would have said that.

“That’s bullshit,” he responded. “Yu drank too many highballs. His head was messed up.”

The SAC turned the questioning over to two specialists from the China branch of the counterintelligence division. They walked Tom through the details of his career. They had no evidence, no motive, no known intent — no predicate at all, really, except opportunity. Crane knew the cases. He spoke perfect Chinese. And he had the feel of the country on his skin. As Tom had confessed once to his wife, he dreamed in Chinese.

The FBI interrogators picked at every loose thread. Among the lost Chinese agents were two that Crane had pitched successfully early in his career — in Malaysia and then in Cambodia. How had he recruited them so easily? After those postings, why had he applied for base chief in Chengdu? A higher-ranking position as station chief in Hanoi had been available; why hadn’t he chosen that? What contacts did he have with the MSS before the agent code-named LCBRINK bumped him? When others had argued that this Chinese “walk-in” was a provocation, why did Crane meet him anyway? Why did Crane provide this agent with sensitive covert-communications gear after only six months?

Tom’s answers — that he operated on skill, intuition and careful practice, and always with the approval of his superiors — seemed hollow even to him.

Then the FBI team began to rake over Crane’s years in Beijing, especially his close contacts with the deputy chief of the MSS, Ma Wei. Why did he meet her several times? Why didn’t he include more details about her operational activities in his field notes? When she questioned him about his activities in Chengdu, did he reveal, perhaps unwittingly, his MSS agent there? During the time he was chief of operations in Beijing, did he check the communications protocols personally? Why had he reviewed the list of agency assets three times while he was in Beijing? Why did he return home after two years when he could have requested an extension of his tour? Did he think he was to blame for the death of his Chengdu agent, or others?

The questions were meticulous; the investigators had every cable and operational report Tom had ever filed. Inevitably, there were questions he couldn’t answer, and anomalies that he knew would raise questions and suspicions. The simple fact was that he had known the identities of most of the Chinese agents the CIA had recruited over three decades. He was an obvious suspect.

When Tom left the interview, he felt dirty. The FBI’s catalogue of insinuations left him furious at himself. For all his care, he had opened doors to the MSS in Chengdu and Beijing.

But beyond this self-reproach, he felt a rage at Ma Wei, the congenial MSS officer who had teased bits of information from him like a magician picking his pocket. He had been a fool, imagining that he was charming her even as she readied a dagger that would eviscerate the CIA and its Chinese agents.

The FBI’s interrogation of Sonia was, if anything, even worse. They focused on the fact that she was half-Chinese. Did she think Chinese people were discriminated against in America? They gave her a “psychological test” that included photographs of Chinese people in Chinatowns, in opium dens, working as railroad laborers — and asked for her reactions.

“This is racist crap!” Sonia told the FBI agents. They took careful notes about her outburst.

The inquisition continued: They asked Sonia if she sympathized with Chinese people. They asked her why she was teaching her two daughters Chinese. Did she expect to live there again? She had mixed ancestry: Did she think of herself as more African or Chinese? Were Chinese more hostile to Black people than Americans, or less?

Sonia kept it together through the interview. But when she got home to Great Falls, she fell into her husband’s arms and sobbed.

The case lingered, month after month. Tom’s intelligence community contacts had vanished at the start of the investigation, and, without them, he was of little use to the defense contractor who had hired him. He was let go. He put together a small consulting company of his own, which specialized in advising Japanese companies that were active in China and the other Asian countries where he had served.

The Cranes were in limbo, it seemed, until the case was resolved. Tom’s business was struggling, but beyond that, it was a torment to remain under investigation. He wasn’t sleeping well; he was drinking too much. He and Sonia couldn’t talk about the investigation, but they couldn’t avoid it, either.

Finally, it became obvious: The only way to escape suspicion was to help identify the person who had penetrated the agency. It was like the plot of “The Fugitive.” He had to find the MSS version of the “one-armed man.” But to catch a mole, he would first need to build a trap.

2

2012, Beijing

Tom’s years of turmoil in Washington were a time of triumph for Ma Wei at the Ministry of State Security. She had subtly guided the devastating campaign against the CIA, which was celebrated with grisly regularity inside the walls of the MSS compound at Xiyuan. When the Chinese caught more CIA spies within their ranks, they didn’t try to play them back at the enemy or conduct a public trial. They killed them. As a sign to the Americans.

The bodies piled up at Xiyuan. The party’s senior cadres showered praise on Ma Wei for her aggressive methods and meticulous attention to detail. China hadn’t known a great spymaster since the defection of Yu Qiangsheng. Now, the young case officers had a model. She was embarrassed when the ministry circulated a list of the “four goods” in recruiting agents: Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego. They attributed it to the hero-spy Ma Wei, even though it was a rip-off of a shopworn precept of CIA tradecraft. That wasn’t her approach at all, but she kept quiet.

China roared like a lion. New money was spouting everywhere, not just in Beijing and Shanghai but in second-tier cities across the country. Regional banks would lend to anyone for anything, it seemed. Ma went home to visit her parents in the Suzhou district west of Shanghai. Once it had been a welter of alleyways and workers’ flats; now, it was a metropolis dotted with new residential towers and shopping malls.

“We have our China dream,” said her mother contentedly. She had worked in a factory when Ma was a girl; now she played cards with her friends. Her father, a policeman, was driving a big new Japanese car. He hadn’t bought that with his earnings as a cop. People gave them fat red envelopes at Chinese New Year’s, stuffed with yuan.

They wanted to be friends with people whose daughter was so influential.

Ma told her parents to give the money back, but she knew they wouldn’t listen. Nobody did. For a country that had been so poor, money made people dizzy. The new prosperity gladdened Ma, of course. But she worried that it was setting loose forces of disorder that would eventually require more and more control.

Ma did her best to sidestep party feuds, but it was becoming difficult. The “little men,” the consensual Politburo members who allowed everyone to take a dip of the spoils, were being displaced by the “big men,” who wanted it all for themselves. The Communist Party was supposedly in charge, but people gossiped that provincial party leaders in Chongqing and Shanghai and Chengdu were running their own fiefdoms, using state-run banks and local enterprises as personal cash machines.

Intelligence officers like Ma knew they were sitting on a volcano: Top jobs in the army, police and the party itself were up for sale, and as quickly as the bribes were paid to a big man’s relative in Hong Kong, a wire transfer was purchasing real estate in Cannes. Party leaders feted each other at lavish banquets — eight courses, sometimes ten, at the fanciest restaurants in Beijing. They imported the best wines, Bordeaux and Burgundy vintages that even the French couldn’t afford. Every official’s wife had a bag from Louis Vuitton, and his mistress had two.

The big men were battling for power in 2012. Chinese magazines began to print scandal stories as the party titans leaked damaging information about each other. The boss in Chongqing briefly seemed to be dominant, but then he was vaporized — expelled from the party. The same thing happened to the Politburo security chief Ma had disliked.

Ma studied the newspaper photograph of Yu Qiangsheng’s younger brother, now on the Politburo, so sleekly groomed, the indispensable friend of the powerful. To Ma, he and his friends were no different from the defector Yu whom she had despised. She had that same fervent desire to put a bullet through all of their heads.

Rumors circulated at MSS headquarters that Ma Wei would be purged. She had disemboweled the CIA, but she had been outspoken in her criticism of corruption. Ma’s boss, the chief of the MSS, was a weathervane, waiting to see who emerged on top. His sister had just bought a seaside estate in Vancouver.

It was the time of “no one knows.” The rumor mill, which was wrong except when it was right, said the army was supporting a party disciplinarian who had risen in the ranks as a provincial chief in Fujian, Zhejiang and Shanghai. He had a round, sturdy face and an iron will. His nickname was “Big Daddy.” By the end of 2012, he was the only big man left standing.

Sensible people looked for a place to hide at such a moment, but that wasn’t in Ma Wei’s character. She was still the schoolgirl in Suzhou who had defied the bullies. She created a special cell to run counterespionage operations, deep in the Xiyuan compound, where she supervised her assault on the CIA and its “friends” in China. She didn’t touch China’s new wealth, and it didn’t touch her.

3

2014, Washington

Arthur Li, the diffident young officer who had accused Tom Crane of discrimination back in Beijing, was surely on the FBI’s list of suspects. Tom had mentioned him during his interviews. But Li was long gone. He had left the CIA, still protesting about anti-Chinese bias, after he finished his tour in Beijing. He worked overseas now for a Japanese company that did business in China, and he wasn’t volunteering to come home for an FBI interview.

Crane considered the matter: Could someone become so angry about what he viewed as anti-Chinese prejudice that he would betray his country? Tom didn’t know the answer, so he asked Sonia, who was half-Chinese.

“Off-the-wall question,” Tom ventured as they were having an evening cocktail. “You told me the agency sometimes discriminates against Chinese people. So, how bad is it?”

She answered immediately.

“Very bad. Sometimes all they see is skin color. They don’t need to polygraph you. They just assume you could be a double agent before you open your mouth.”

There was an awkward pause. The Cranes had been married for so long they didn’t often talk about race.

“If you thought that the agency was disrespecting you, like, really screwing you, would you work for the other side?”

“Of course not,” she answered. “But some people might.”

Tom had to find a dangle; someone who might lure a Ministry of State Security case officer to make a pitch — and open a door to search for Arthur Li. As in most things, he consulted Sonia. Once again, she focused on “Chinese-ness.” The easiest approach, she said, would be to play on the implicit bias of the MSS, which was that Chinese Americans did in fact have an innate sense of loyalty to their ancestral motherland.

Tom shook his head. How was he going to find someone alluringly Chinese enough that the MSS might bite?

“Try Valerie,” said Sonia. Valerie Wen had joined Tom’s consulting firm six months before. She had been born in Hong Kong and spoke perfect Chinese. And most enticing of all, she had worked for six years as a CIA analyst.

Sonia made the ask, and the logistics proved easy. Valerie had a business trip planned to Southeast Asia. Sonia asked her to add a stop in Kuala Lumpur. There, she should visit a wine bar two blocks from the U.S. Embassy. The Cranes knew from their posting to Malaysia years before that this particular bar was a favorite trolling ground for MSS officers.

Valerie was a short, vivacious Cantonese woman. She was ready for anything, so long as it wouldn’t get her in trouble. “What should I do in KL, exactly?” she asked.

Sonia answered that she should wait in the bar for Chinese guys to chat her up. The ones she wanted to meet would act like they didn’t work for the government, but they would be obvious. Too friendly, too curious.

Valerie should let on that she used to work for you-know-who. Then she should wait for them to make a pitch. Money, consulting, access. Something of value. When they did, she should ask if they knew Arthur Li. She shouldn’t record the conversation, but she should take careful notes immediately after she left them to provide later to the FBI.

And, improbably enough, that’s just how it happened in Kuala Lumpur. The wine bar was on a busy street in the jumble of the embassy district. It was air-conditioned so cold against the sweltering heat that Valerie had to wear a sweater. She sat at the bar for an hour the first night and then left when someone took her for a sex worker. She came back the next night and, bingo, two Chinese men invited her to sit at their table.

They made conversation for a few minutes. The Chinese leaned in close when Valerie said she had worked for the agency. “Maybe you could write some reports for us,” one of them said, in the classic initial come-on in a recruitment.

“I could use the extra money,” said Valerie.

They continued the conversation at another bar, farther from the embassies and quieter. The man making the pitch tried to encourage her by saying that one of Valerie’s former colleagues had agreed to be helpful, too, writing reports and sharing other information.

“Arthur Li?” she asked.

“That’s the guy,” answered the MSS recruiter, in a staggeringly incompetent breach of operational security.

“Did you recruit him?” she asked.

“No,” the MSS man answered. “It was another officer. A woman.”

That’s how it happened. Really. Intelligence operations succeed and fail because of the inescapable fact that humans do stupid things.

Tom had his man. He contacted the FBI.

The FBI had been suspicious of Li from the early days of the mole hunt. In fact, bureau agents had gotten a warrant to search his hotel room many months earlier when he foolishly made a stopover in the U.S. On his laptop was a document that described CIA tradecraft and the precise timing of one covert mission. They found handwritten notes, too, about his work as a case officer. The notes included the names of assets, the locations of operational meetings and details about CIA covert facilities.

The FBI let the fish swim back into the sea; they waited and watched, hoping to catch Li in the act of meeting with the MSS. They were as inept as the Chinese case officer who blurted out the fact that Li had been recruited.

When Tom called the FBI with the new information that Valerie had gathered, agents were wary at first. This seemed like a movie plot. A suspected mole had run a sting to gather information that appeared to incriminate another suspected mole. Maybe there were two Chinese moles. But the agency’s representative on the joint CIA-FBI task force remembered Li as a bad apple.

Bolstered by Crane’s information and their own evidence, the FBI put Arthur Li back under surveillance. They got lucky. Li stupidly booked a layover in the United States again. When he landed, he was arrested and charged. He denied everything at first, even the notes on his own laptop computer. But a few months later, he pleaded guilty to espionage. The next year, he was sentenced to more than a dozen years in prison.

The FBI and the CIA didn’t officially drop their investigation of the Cranes, but they let it wither and die. They believed they had found their mole in the CIA, the highest-ranking Chinese penetration of the agency since Yu Qiangsheng had delivered Larry Wu-Tai Chin in 1985.

Officers from the East Asia Division hosted a party in a private room at a restaurant on Route 123, near CIA headquarters. They invited the Cranes. It was a celebration.

One that was short-lived, though. A few months later, the MSS arrested a new CIA asset inside China, one who had been recruited long after Arthur Li lost access to classified information.

The CIA hadn’t solved the China puzzle after all.

To be continued.

Read Part 4 on July 3. Sign up for David Ignatius’s Follow email alerts to get the links to the next installments as soon as they are published.

About this serial

Project management and audience editing by Beatrix Lockwood and Mili Mitra. Social media editing by Edgar Ramirez and Deirdre Byrne. Audio production by Hadley Robinson and Charla Freeland. Illustrations by Anthony Gerace for The Post. Copy editing by Vince Rinehart and Lydia Rebac. Design and development by Post Opinions staff.

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · July 1, 2023

21. How climate change inflames extremist insurgency in Africa

How climate change inflames extremist insurgency in Africa

The Washington Post · by Rachel Chason · July 1, 2023

Their harvests were growing smaller and smaller. Boko Haram militants promised them a brighter future.

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Photos by Adrienne Surprenant

KOULKIMÉ, Chad — Alhadji Yaro was a teenager when Boko Haram militants stormed onto his island in the vast, blue-green waters of Lake Chad and made villagers an offer at gunpoint.

“‘We will give you good lives,’” he recalled the fighters’ saying as they urged young men to join them. “‘You will have everything.’”

Yaro felt fear mixed with curiosity. He said he had grown up during a time of relative abundance, before changes in the weather started to mean smaller and smaller harvests for his family. Then, a few months before Boko Haram showed up in 2015, a flood destroyed their crops of corn and millet, leaving Yaro’s family with nothing.

Throughout the Sahel, the region that stretches across Africa below the Sahara Desert, climate change is raising temperatures, increasing droughts and making rainfall less predictable, researchers say. These changes, in turn, are helping fuel Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist movement born in the 2000s in northern Nigeria out of political grievances, and stoking its violence, according to interviews with former militants, local leaders, military officials and researchers.

Climate change, they say, is reducing the economic prospects of young men in this part of Africa and making them more susceptible to recruitment by violent extremists. This dynamic reflects a broader finding by the United Nations this year that the opportunity for jobs, rather than religious ideology, is the main reason that people join extremist groups across Africa.

Local residents and researchers say that climate change also fosters conflict in the Lake Chad region, as extreme hunger pushes people to begin fishing and farming in areas controlled by extremists. The Lake Chad area — where the borders of Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger converge — has provided bases for Boko Haram and other militant groups since 2014.

Military officials at the U.S. Africa Command said they view climate change as a “threat exacerbator” in the Lake Chad region and elsewhere. They said they are closely studying the connections between climate and conflict, because Africom’s area of responsibility involves some of the Sahelian countries most vulnerable to climate change, including Mali and Burkina Faso, where Islamist violence is spiraling. An official in the French military, which has one of its largest African bases in Chad, agreed that climate change contributes to the conflict.

Worldwide, more than half of the 20 countries considered most vulnerable to climate change are experiencing armed conflicts, according to a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Chad, a landlocked nation of 17 million, is ranked the third-most vulnerable.

“Climate change didn’t cause this conflict, but it is compounding existing dimensions of the conflict,” said Janani Vivekananda, the head of climate diplomacy and security with Adelphi, a German think tank. “Then the conflict reduces people’s ability to cope with climate change … which then creates new conflict.”

Yaro, who has lived in a dusty displacement camp since surrendering to Chadian soldiers, said the riches that Boko Haram promised never materialized.

“When I got there, all they gave me was a gun,” said Yaro, now 26, his eyes downcast as he remembered details of the years he would rather forget. “They told me that if I wanted to eat, I’d have to go and fight.”

Alhadji Yaro, 26, in the village of Koulkimé on April 1, says he was in an Islamist extremist group but escaped and returned to his previous life at Lake Chad.

About 700 families live in Koulkimé, and local leaders say that some 200 of them include former members of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram.

Irregular and extreme weather is destroying the profitability of traditional fishing and farming at Lake Chad, thus pushing young men to join extremist groups to make a living.

Irregular and extreme weather is destroying the profitability of traditional fishing and farming at Lake Chad, thus pushing young men to join extremist groups to make a living.

Inside the red zone

The lake was quiet on a recent day as two motorized pirogues cut through the gentle waves, blue water stretching toward the horizon.

The islands in this area are included in a red zone; many displaced residents have decided it is too dangerous to return here, and most aid groups, other than the ICRC, have deemed operating here to be too risky. After Boko Haram fighters began their sweep across Lake Chad nearly a decade ago, they killed scores, kidnapping entire villages, pressuring young people to join and burning the homes of those who refused.

On the island of Koulfoua, where children played along the shores and women sold fish, Chief of the Canton Mahamat Ali Kongoi said a near-total lack of economic development has made the area fertile ground for extremist recruitment. Kongoi, the local leader, noted that few here make it past primary school and have no options but farming and fishing.

Most do not know what climate change is, he said, much less what is causing it. But he said they know intimately that the weather is less regular than it was and that because of it they are poorer.

In the past 30 years, the average temperature in Chad has been about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than during the period between 1951 and 1980, according to the World Bank. There has been a threefold increase in the intensity of rainstorms across the Sahel, including in Chad, since 1982, British researchers say, and the pattern of rainfall has become less predictable.

The insurgent groups have taken advantage of these factors, Kongoi said, his voice heavy with resignation. “They have means,” he said, “and they utilize their means to convince people who have nothing.”

The compound of Choukou Kilelom, 40, on Lake Chad’s Nahar island.

On Koulfoua island, Hassan Mbodou, 50, front right, said his brother joined a militant group because of desperation after losing cattle and struggling to catch fish.

Chief of the Canton Mahamat Ali Kongoi, 43, on Koulfoua island, is in charge of a vast sweep of territory on Lake Chad near Nigeria.

A boat leaves Nahar, one of many inhabited islands on Lake Chad where fishing and farming communities have been impoverished by erratic weather and terrorized by armed extremists.

A boat leaves Nahar, one of many inhabited islands on Lake Chad where fishing and farming communities have been impoverished by erratic weather and terrorized by armed extremists.

Choosing insurgency

The makeshift village of Koulkimé emerges from Lake Chad’s sandy shores, a cluster of shelters constructed with nothing more than reeds and blankets. For years, it has housed hundreds of families displaced from the islands by Boko Haram. About 200 men in this part of Koulkimé, local leaders said, were members of Boko Haram or the rival Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) group who have since surrendered.

Yaro, now a father of four, lives in a neatly swept shelter so small that cooking materials have to be stored on top of it. He said that when he was growing up, he lived in a bigger house made of brick on an island near Nigeria. Fish, cows, goats, millet and corn were abundant.

But sometime during his teenage years, Yaro said, he noticed that the seeds they planted no longer yielded as much as before. So he was already struggling to imagine a future before the flood wiped out his crops and Boko Haram arrived.

Stories like Yaro’s are common, according to interviews with six former Boko Haram members in the Lake Chad region. They said that some who joined the group were forced to do so, while others signed up voluntarily, often motivated by a combination of economic problems and frustration with the government.

“They join because of hope and because of revenge [against the government],” said Malimiti Mahamat, 35, a former Boko Haram member. And they join, he said, “because the harvests are small and the water levels are changing.”

Mahamat Abdoulaye, 33, who said he was forced into Boko Haram in 2014 when he was a fisherman, said many in the group were young, desperate for money and saw no other way to get it. Many of those who joined the Islamist extremists for economic reasons were still fighting, he said.

Back on Koulfoua, Hassan Mboduo, 50, said his brother joined the militant ISWAP group in 2019 because fish had become scarce in the lake, a phenomenon that both men blamed on changes in the weather. Mbodou said he begged his brother not to go. But his brother insisted. “‘I have to feed my family,’” Mbodou recalled his brother saying as he left.

After enlisting with Boko Haram, Yaro shifted his allegiance to ISWAP. The group’s leaders instructed members to rob and intimidate villagers to get supplies, he recounted. Yaro said he fired on soldiers across the border in Nigeria but did not know whether he killed anyone. “They said it is about religion, but it is nothing close to religion,” he said.

After a few years, Yaro recalled, he decided to escape from the islands where the extremists were holed up, and he commandeered a pirogue with three friends. They paddled as fast as they could to the shore. Being caught would mean death. He said he still remembers the loud beating of his heart.

Yaro said he was a member of Boko Haram, then moved to the rival Islamic State West Africa Province, a group from which he escaped and returned home.

Rudimentary shelters in Koulkimé next to Lake Chad.

A prayer mat on the sand in Koulkimé.

Koulkimé resident Malimiti Mahamat, 35, said he joined Boko Haram in 2014 out of frustration with the Chadian government but left the group. Although now without money and food, he would not go back because his former colleagues would kill him, he said.

Mahamat displays a card that shows he is no longer a member of Boko Haram.

A scene from daily life at Lake Chad.

A scene from daily life at Lake Chad.

A deadly calculus

Climate change and violent conflict can create a vicious circle, according to Vivekananda and other researchers.

In areas without conflict, people can adapt to changes in the weather by moving, for instance, searching out dry land when there is flooding and more-fertile areas when there is drought. But in areas where violent extremists are active and the military is waging a counterinsurgency, as in the Lake Chad region, people either go hungry or relocate into the sights of the militants.

Ali Abdallah, 40, said he and his brother had long tried to farm the dry land outside the village of Baga Sola. But after years of struggling to feed their families, relying mostly on money from the Irish nonprofit organization Concern Worldwide, the brothers decided in 2020 to start farming on the islands, despite the danger posed there by Boko Haram.

For a couple of years, it went well, Abdallah recounted. He and his brother were able to bring rice and potatoes home to their children. Then, one rainy night a few months ago, Abdallah said, he woke to the sound of gunfire. Insurgents had attacked their camp, fatally shooting his brother. Abdallah fled into the water.

Many who live in the region say family members and friends have faced a similar fate.

Kaka Koura, 40, a mother who lives in a one-room house, had begged her husband not to begin fishing on the lake. But she said so few options for sustenance existed on land that she could not stop him.

She said she learned he had been killed in an ambush after she heard the wailing of other women who’d lost their husbands in the same extremist attack.

Standing near an inlet of Lake Chad in Baga Sola, livestock herders said that in earlier days, even when they had less water, they had peace.

In Kousséri at Lake Chad on March 30, Kaka Koura, 40, said her husband was killed when he took the risk of fishing out on the lake where Boko Haram attacks are frequent. “He was desperate,” she said.

Women sell fish in March in Baga Sola, where Boko Haram carried out an attack in 2015, killing dozens.

People head to a market on the outskirts of Baga Sola on a Saturday in April.

People head to a market on the outskirts of Baga Sola on a Saturday in April.

Fear that conflict is inevitable

Scientists predict that as the world warms, the Sahel will be a hot spot, with temperatures here estimated to rise 1.5 times faster than the global average. It is likely that by the middle of this century, more than 40 days a year will exceed 95 degrees F, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Water shortages will increase and crop productivity will decline, the IPCC found.

Cameroonian Brig. Gen. Assoualai Blama, who helps lead a multinational force combating the insurgency, said the military has been defeating Boko Haram. But when he thinks about the future of the Lake Chad region, he worries, he said. The changing climate means there will be fewer economic resources to split among a growing population. Conflict, he fears, is inevitable.

Already, some former Boko Haram members say they feel trapped. After spending a few months in reentry camps run by the military, the men were released back to their families. But these days, they explained, there are even fewer opportunities than before because of the increasingly erratic weather and the shrinking area that is both arable and safe from extremists.

Ahmat Souleymane, 30, was a fighter with Boko Haram and then ISWAP. In the years since he escaped from them, he said, his wife and child have died of sicknesses that he blames on poor living conditions.

Now, he admits, he’d be ready to return to the militant fold — if only the groups would not kill him as a deserter.

“Dying here is not a solution,” he said.

A general, right rear, who commands an element of the Multinational Joint Task Force, issues orders.

A soldier during a demonstration in April of the amphibious capabilities of the Multinational Joint Task Force.

Ammunition for a boat-mounted machine gun of the anti-terrorism multinational force.

Soldiers of the multinational force relax in an outpost by the lake.

Soldiers of the anti-terrorism multinational force pass some of the long-horned cattle prized by the local herdsmen.

The Washington Post · by Rachel Chason · July 1, 2023

22. Chinese authorities monitor Tibetans to prevent communication with outside world

Chinese authorities monitor Tibetans to prevent communication with outside world​

Anyone who has contacted people abroad is called in for police interrogation.

By Sangyal Kunchok for RFA Tibetan

2023.06.30​

rfa.org

Chinese authorities in Tibet have intensified monitoring of Tibetans, and continue to interrogate them in the regional capital Lhasa to prevent communication with people outside of Tibet, RFA has learned.

The Chinese government has been intensifying its monitoring of Tibetans and maintained their interrogations of Tibetans living in Lhasa to determine if they have contacted people outside Tibet and stepped up surveillance measures to prevent such communication. Now the Chinese authorities are interrogating Tibetans in Lhasa specifically targeting and warning them to stop communication.

In March, two major anniversaries prompted police to step up surveillance. The month marked the 15th anniversary of a 2008 riot, and the 64th anniversary of the 1959 uprising against Chinese troops that had invaded the region a decade earlier.

But the heightened security from March has continued well into June, and police have continued closely monitoring residents in Lhasa and random searches of their cell phone and online communications to discover whether they had communicated abroad.

A police officer searches a Tibetan woman's cell phone on a street in Lhasa, capital of western China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 11, 2023. Chinese authorities in Tibet have intensified monitoring of Tibetans, and continue to interrogate them in the regional capital Lhasa to prevent communication with people outside of Tibet, RFA has learned. Credit: Chinese State Media

The police were particularly concerned that the Lhasa residents might be in contact with journalists or researchers outside of Tibet, a Tibetan resident told RFA’s Tibetan Service.

“Tibetans are warned not to contact people outside and those who have, have been summoned and interrogated,” the source said. “Their cell phones are confiscated and they are under constant scrutiny.”

The source was among those who had contacted people outside of Tibet, and was summoned for interrogation along with some friends.

“They gave us warning to not ever contact people on the outside, especially researchers on Tibet and journalists,” said the source. “I also know that so many other Tibetans who contacted people outside Tibet were interrogated by the Chinese authorities too.”

Another resident said that people could be summoned even for casual conversations with outsiders.

“I was summoned two times already this year for interrogation and one of my friends had to bribe the authorities to release me the second time around,” the second resident said. “My name is now listed amongst those interrogated, therefore I have to get permission from the local police if I need to travel outside Lhasa.”

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Eugene Whong.

rfa.org

​

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com