Quotes of the Day:

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world, the masses had reached a point where they would, at the same time, believe everything, and nothing, think that everything was possible, and that nothing was true. […] under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements, one day, and trust that, if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting, the leaders would lie to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie, and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” 

- Hannah Arendt, The original of Totalitarianism

"The one thing that holders of power fear is that they personally should be held responsible for their own actions.

- Stuart Christie

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil The only crime is pride."

- Sophocles

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 12, 2023

2. A Complicated Legacy: Army Officer Who Exposed Iraq Abuse Was Under FBI Suspicion at the End of His Life

3. Bond vs Iron Man: How Tomorrow's Special Operators Will Use AI To Win the Fight

4. Fort Campbell commander reflects on heritage and service

5. EXCLUSIVE: Michigan community leads fightback against Chinese takeover of US agriculture as Beijing-backed companies now own $2bn of American farmland

6. US and Japan could develop hypersonic missile interceptors together

7. China won’t take the US military’s calls. A top general claims that makes war more likely

8. Where in the world is Wagner warlord Prigozhin? At large and in charge, apparently

9. Taliban’s Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along

10. Violent threats against public officials are rising. Here's why

11. Russian spy agencies targeting Starlink with custom malware, Ukraine warns

12. Exclusive: Russia Has Its Own Resistance

13. Georgetown Still Considering Renaming SFS After the Late Madeleine Albright

14. U.S. Visit by Taiwan Vice President Puts China in a Bind

15. A DuPont China Deal Reveals Cracks in U.S. National-Security Screening

16. See where Sen. Tommy Tuberville is blocking 301 military promotions

17. Defense Budget Déjà Vu: Why Conservatives Should Again Lead to Rein in Defense Costs

18. The End of Progressive Elitism?

19. Blackwater paved the way for Wagner

20.  It’s Not Just US Army Soldiers Going Hungry, Food Insecurity Hitting Other Branches of the Military: Expert

21. ‘Treat it like China’: How U.S. officials stay safe, and have fun, at the world’s biggest hacking conference

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 12, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.iswresearch.org/2023/08/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment_12.html

Key Takeaways:

• Russian milbloggers acknowledged that Ukrainian forces are maintaining a presence on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast in contrast to previous Ukrainian raids, but ISW does not yet assess that these positions constitute a bridgehead.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least two sectors of the front on August 12 and reportedly made tactically significant advances along the administrative border between Zaporizhia and Donetsk oblasts.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly launched two missile strikes targeting the Kerch Strait Bridge and a drone attack targeting occupied Crimea on August 12.
• Russian forces conducted counteroffensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on August 12 and made no confirmed gains.
• The Russian Ministry of Digital Development is preparing an amendment to the law on the conscription age that would increase the military service deferment age for IT specialists from 27 years to 30 years, likely in response to concerns about “brain drain” from Russia.
• Russian authorities are reportedly adjusting propaganda language about the war aimed at Russian schoolchildren in Russia and occupied Ukraine.

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 12, 2023

Nicole Wolkov, Angelica Evans, Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, and Mason Clark

August 12, 2023, 3:45pm ET 

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

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 12:10pm ET on August 12. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the August 13 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian milbloggers acknowledged that Ukrainian forces are maintaining a presence on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast in contrast to previous Ukrainian raids, but ISW does not yet assess that these positions constitute a bridgehead. A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed on the evening of August 11 that Ukrainian forces have established positions west of Kozachi Laheri after several days of limited raids across the Dnipro River.[1] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups continue to operate west of Kozachi Laheri, but that the settlement itself is still under Russian control.[2] The milbloggers also claimed that Ukrainian reconnaissance groups continue to operate near the Antonivsky Bridge and in the Hola Prystan area and conduct raids across the Dnipro River.[3] Continuing Russian claims that Ukrainian forces maintain a presence on the east bank of the Dnipro River suggest that Russian forces are concerned that Ukrainian forces have established semi-lasting positions across the river.[4] Russian sources continue to describe Ukrainian groups operating on the left bank as small in size and fighting to be primarily between light infantry units. No Russian sources have indicated that Ukrainian forces on the left bank have the heavy equipment or vehicles likely required to establish a bridgehead that would be necessary to enable wider offensive operations into left bank Kherson Oblast.[5] An effective Russian mechanized counterattack could threaten this Ukrainian advance position, but it is unclear if Russian forces possess the mechanized reserves necessary to do so. ISW will continue to offer a conservative assessment of the situation on the east bank of Kherson Oblast until or unless ISW observes visual confirmation of an enduring Ukrainian presence on the east bank of Kherson Oblast. ISW has not yet observed visual evidence that Ukrainian forces have established a permanent position or have deployed a substantial number of personnel near Kozachi Laheri.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least two sectors of the front on August 12 and reportedly made tactically significant advances along the administrative border between Zaporizhia and Donetsk oblasts. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) and Berdyansk (Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border area) directions.[6] Geolocated footage published on August 11 indicates that Ukrainian forces made marginal gains near Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) in the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border area.[7] Russian milbloggers claimed late on August 12 that Russian forces abandoned their positions in Urozhaine after days of intense fighting, although ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation of these claims.[8]

The “Vostok” volunteer battalion, which is allegedly defending in the Urozhaine area, had earlier expressed concern that Russian forces would lose Urozhaine if the Russian military does not fix persistent issues with Russian counterbattery capabilities.[9] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are effectively using electronic warfare systems to disrupt Russian communications in western Zaporizhia Oblast and retain large artillery and precision munitions stocks to support interdiction efforts against Russian forces there.[10] The milblogger also claimed that Ukrainian forces have significantly reduced the time between target identification and strikes on Russian targets with HIMARS rockets, warning that Russian forces need to move farther than 10km from the frontline in western Zaporizhia Oblast to be safe from Ukrainian strikes.[11]

Ukrainian forces reportedly launched two missile strikes targeting the Kerch Strait Bridge and a drone attack targeting occupied Crimea on August 12. Russian authorities claimed that Russian air defenses downed up to three Ukrainian ground attack missiles fired from S-200 systems targeting the Kerch Strait Bridge.[12] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) also reported Ukrainian forces targeted occupied Crimea with 20 drones on the night of August 11­–12.[13] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian air defenses shot down 14 Ukrainian drones and downed another 6 drones with electronic warfare (EW) systems.[14] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that Russian air defense units of the 31st Air Defense Division shot down one of the Ukrainian missiles near Kerch in occupied Crimea.[15] Russian sources claimed that Russian authorities stopped traffic on the bridge for several hours following the Ukrainian missile and drone strikes, creating a traffic jam of almost 1,300 cars.[16] Russian sources claimed that Crimean occupation authorities are initiating tougher criminal liability for publishing photos and videos showing locations of military installations such as air defenses, likely in response to a photo posted today showing the location of a Russian air defense system in occupied Crimea.[17] Ukrainian strikes targeting Russian logistics in Crimea are a part of a deliberate interdiction campaign aimed at setting favorable conditions for larger counteroffensive operations. Previous Ukrainian strikes on bridges along Russian ground lines of communications (GLOCs) between occupied Crimea and occupied Kherson Oblast continue to disrupt Russian logistics.[18]

Key Takeaways:

• Russian milbloggers acknowledged that Ukrainian forces are maintaining a presence on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast in contrast to previous Ukrainian raids, but ISW does not yet assess that these positions constitute a bridgehead.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least two sectors of the front on August 12 and reportedly made tactically significant advances along the administrative border between Zaporizhia and Donetsk oblasts.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly launched two missile strikes targeting the Kerch Strait Bridge and a drone attack targeting occupied Crimea on August 12.
• Russian forces conducted counteroffensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on August 12 and made no confirmed gains.
• The Russian Ministry of Digital Development is preparing an amendment to the law on the conscription age that would increase the military service deferment age for IT specialists from 27 years to 30 years, likely in response to concerns about “brain drain” from Russia.
• Russian authorities are reportedly adjusting propaganda language about the war aimed at Russian schoolchildren in Russia and occupied Ukraine.

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 offensive operations in the Kupyansk area but did not make any confirmed gains on August 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations northeast of Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk), north of Kyslivka (22km southwest of Kupyansk), and near Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk).[19] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Russian offensive operations in the Kupyansk direction aim to draw Ukrainian forces from the Bakhmut direction, supporting ISW’s previous assessment that intensified Russian offensive operations in the area hope to draw Ukrainian forces away from more operationally significant areas of the front.[20] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that elements of the Russian Western Grouping of Forces improved their tactical positions in unspecified areas in the Kupyansk direction.[21]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful counterattacks northeast of Kupyansk on August 12. The Russian MoD claimed that elements of the Russian Western Grouping of Forces repelled Ukrainian counterattacks near Pershotravneve (21km east of Kupyansk), Synkivka, and the Mankivka tract (around 15km east of Kupyansk).[22]

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line on August 12 but did not advance. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations southeast of Andriivka (15km west of Svatove).[23] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces seized the initiative near Karmazynivka (13km southwest of Svatove) and conducted assaults near Nadiya (15km west of Svatove).[24] Another milblogger claimed that Russian forces made unspecified advances near Torske (15km west of Kreminna).[25]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line on August 12. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian assaults near Novoselivske (15km north of Svatove), Serhiivka (12km southwest of Svatove), and in the Serebryanske forest area south of Kreminna.[26]

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 reportedly conducted offensive operations around Bakhmut on August 12, but did not make any confirmed or claimed advances. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and other Russian sources claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Yakovlivka (14km northeast of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut), and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[27] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces continue to repel Ukrainian attacks from the heights around Klishchiivka despite Russian forces defending lowland positions in the settlement.[28] Russian sources claimed that the area west of Klishchiivka is contested and that intense fighting is ongoing.[29] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Force Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Ukrainian forces continue to hold the initiative around Bakhmut.[30]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks around Bakhmut but did not make any confirmed advances on August 12. A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Klishchiivka and are gradually advancing.[31] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Bohdanivka (8km northwest of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, and Bila Hora (12km southwest of Bakhmut).[32]

The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on August 12. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Vodyane (7km southwest of Avdiivka), Krasnohorivka (14km southwest of Donetsk City), and Nevelske (13km southwest of Avdiivka).[33]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on August 12, but did not make any confirmed or claimed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Avdiivka and Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City).[34]

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

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on August 12 and reportedly made tactically significant advances. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces abandoned their positions in Urozhaine on August 12 after days of intense fighting and several statements earlier in the day that Russian forces were struggling to hold their positions in the settlement, but ISW cannot independently confirm these reports at this time.[35] Geolocated footage published on August 11 shows that Ukrainian forces made marginal gains near Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[36] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces out of Urozhaine on the night of August 11–12 after Ukrainian forces briefly took control of the northern part of the settlement earlier in the day on August 11.[37] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed early on August 12 that elements of the Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces repelled two Ukrainian attacks near Urozhaine.[38]

Several Russian sources reported Ukrainian advances and difficult fighting in Urozhaine prior to the late-breaking unconfirmed reports of a Russian withdrawal from the settlement. The “Vostok” volunteer battalion, which is allegedly defending in the Urozhaine area, stated early on August 12 that Russian forces were losing their positions in the settlement and that the Russian loss of the entire settlement was likely.[39] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces entered the northern part of Urozhaine earlier on August 12, and that fierce fighting is ongoing in the area.[40] A Russan milblogger claimed that Russian forces were struggling to hold positions in Urozhaine due to Ukrainian fire from three sides.[41] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces repelled a small Ukrainian attack near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and that elements of the 127th Motorized Rifle Division (5th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) destroyed a Ukrainian sabotage group north of Pryyutne (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[42]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances on August 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Urozhaine.[43]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and did not make any confirmed advances on August 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction.[44] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled three Ukrainian attacks near Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv).[45] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian infantry groups attacked Robotyne but did not specify the outcome of those attacks.[46] Another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces achieved partial success near the settlement.[47] Elements of a volunteer battalion from North Ossetia-Alania reportedly defending near Pyatykhatky (25km southwest of Orikhiv) and Zherebyanky (26km southwest of Orikhiv) claimed that there is active fighting in the area.[48] Another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Zherebyanky.[49]

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

The Russian Ministry of Digital Development is preparing an amendment to the law on the conscription age that would increase the military service deferment age for IT specialists from 27 years to 30 years, likely in response to concerns about “brain drain” from Russia.[50] The changes, if approved, are expected to go into effect before the spring 2024 conscription cycle and will correlate with the recent amendments that increased the upper conscription age limit from 27 to 30 starting in January 2024.[51]

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)

Russian authorities are reportedly adjusting propaganda language about the war aimed at Russian schoolchildren in Russia and occupied Ukraine. Russian authorities will reportedly introduce a new history textbook for all 10th and 11th graders in Russia and in occupied territories in Ukraine starting on September 1.[52] Ukrainian sources, including Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko, indicated that Russian authorities are likely increasing their propaganda efforts in schools because television — the channel through which the Kremlin has traditionally spread its propaganda narratives — is less popular among younger Russian generations.[53] Russian Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky allegedly stated that the new textbooks will refer to Ukraine not as a “Nazi state” but as an “ultranationalist state.”[54] This change in rhetoric may indicate that the Kremlin is concerned that using divisive labels such as “Nazi” to educate schoolchildren will make future assimilation of occupied territories difficult.

Russian opposition media outlet Verstka reported on August 11 that the United Russia party’s candidate list for the September 2023 regional elections in occupied territories includes Russian occupation officials and Kremlin officials.[55] Verstka reported that United Russia’s candidate list for elections in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) include DNR head Denis Pushilin and current deputies from the “People’s Council of the DNR.”[56] The list also includes Artyom Perekhrist, who is reportedly the head of a department within the Kremlin’s internal policy administration that monitors the occupied territories in Ukraine and participates in the appointment of high-level occupation officials.[57] Verstka reported that there were only three active Russian servicemen and volunteers on the United Russia candidate list for the DNR, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s promises to nominate “members of the special military operation” to political positions.[58] The absence of United Russia candidates with military experience is likely due to the lack of political experience among candidates with active military experience, as previously reported by ISW, as well as Ukrainian voters’ negative attitudes towards the war, as reported by Verstka in July 2023.[59]

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

Nothing significant to report.

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 Complicated Legacy: Army Officer Who Exposed Iraq Abuse Was Under FBI Suspicion at the End of His Life

What a tragedy on so many levels. There seems to be more to the story that I am not seeing.

A Complicated Legacy: Army Officer Who Exposed Iraq Abuse Was Under FBI Suspicion at the End of His Life

military.com · by Drew F. Lawrence · August 10, 2023

Three volleys of blank shot thundered across Section 71 on Tuesday morning, echoing over white headstones as Army Maj. Ian Fishback was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

Fishback was a Special Forces veteran, whistleblower and philosopher who died nearly two years ago. During his military career, he reported 82nd Airborne Division abuses of prisoners in Iraq, prompting landmark U.S. anti-torture legislation. At the end of his life, Fishback was medicated with antipsychotics, racked by paranoia that he was under surveillance by the government, and virtually immobile in a court-ordered adult foster care home.

The Army officer believed beating and caging Iraqi prisoners was unacceptable, and with the late Sen. John McCain helped enshrine a prohibition into law in 2005. During his later mental health struggles, the government was indeed watching him -- the FBI created a file on Fishback due to its concerns over his behavior, according to exclusive documents obtained by Military.com.

Ripples from the blank shots faded and the sound of cicadas returned to the ears of roughly 60 family members, veterans and well-wishers gathered for Fishback's funeral service. The service was a reminder of his complex legacy and the deeply American tragedy of his 42 years of life, one that tracked with the bitter realities of the Iraq War.

The struggles at the end of his life made Fishback's story all the more complicated.

"Ian fought with honor, integrity and courage for his nation and fellow soldiers," the military chaplain presiding over his interment service said. "And with those same values, he also stood up for those some viewed only as enemies, but knew were people who had the right to just treatment and dignity."

"I have buried many heroes," she said. "But none like Ian Fishback."

Ceremony for Army Maj. Ian Fishback is seen in the background at Arlington National Cemetery. (Staff photo by Drew F. Lawrence)

The Warrior and Whistleblower

Fishback, a West Point graduate, deployed to Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division in 2003. He was 24 years old and about to make one of the biggest decisions of his life.

It was the dawn of the invasion, and Fishback witnessed his unit treating Iraqi prisoners inhumanely, according to The New York Times Magazine, which published an in-depth biography on him six months before his Arlington service.

The treatment included beatings -- at least once with a baseball bat -- sleep deprivation and confinement to makeshift cages where a prisoner had to lie in the fetal position to fit. NPR also reported mistreatment that included breaking prisoners' bones and leaving them nude in the cold.

Fishback, then a captain, raised his concerns about the abuse to his superiors, but they fell on deaf ears.

In 2004, the U.S. was shocked by a separate abuse scandal at the military-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Photos were published by the press showing Iraqi detainees being terrorized by working dogs, others bound and forced into stress positions, and male inmates in simulated sexual positions while U.S. military personnel looked on.

After two years of no traction within his chain of command, Fishback reached out to the non-governmental organization, Human Rights Watch. He also penned a letter to McCain, an Arizona Republican and former prisoner during the Vietnam War.

"Dear Sen. McCain: I am a graduate of West Point currently serving as a captain in the U.S. Army infantry," the letter began, articulating that abuse occurred because of a lack of guidance on prisoner treatment.

"I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment," he wrote.

The letter eventually led to the Detainee Treatment Act, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2005 and prohibits anyone in U.S. custody from cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. It thrust Fishback into the public spotlight, too. The following year, he was named one of Time magazine's most influential people.

His whistleblowing during a period of patriotic fervor and political division over the Iraq War ostracized him from some in the military community, a community he worked so hard to become a part of -- and to hold accountable.

Still, Fishback was entrusted with teaching philosophy at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

It was there that Fishback seemed to settle into a second calling in life as a philosopher and teacher, according to The New York Times. Mental illness, exacerbated by the tumultuous spotlight of whistleblowing, rumbled in his mind, however. He left the Army in 2014, but continued to teach.

The Just War Scholar

Between West Point and the University of Michigan, where he pursued his doctorate, Fishback accrued many admirers and followers who believed his lessons on just war theory, a philosophical argument for ethical warfighting that the Special Forces veteran lived firsthand.

"At one time, he was one of the foremost thinkers in just war theory," a current Army officer who was an on-off mentee of Fishback's for the better part of a decade told Military.com on Wednesday. The officer was granted anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

The officer was introduced to Fishback through a family connection at a time when he was trying to decide whether to join the military.

"He was very candid about the moral dilemmas that he found himself in throughout his service," the officer said. "But the impression I got was that Ian thought the armed services were the tip of the spear, the operational domain for ethics in practice, and so he wanted good people to be in the arena with him.

"I always felt -- in a very friendly way -- that he was sort of vetting me to see if I had that kind of judgment."

The officer wears a black band on his wrist in memory of Fishback. The text reads, "Once an Eagle," an allusion to a 1,300-page book by Anton Myrer about two soldiers -- one who serves with honor, the other who chases self-serving opportunities.

Fishback recommended the book to the officer when he was in high school, about to join the military.

"I wanted to read it and finish it so I could tell Maj. Fishback that I'd read it and discuss it with him," the officer said. "I didn't get the chance to do that."

The Investigation

Fishback's disillusionment, and paranoia, of the government metastasized during his time in academia, even as he racked up acclaim, according to The New York Times.

While he was a graduate student instructor, even Fishback's students began to perceive something amiss, according to the FBI investigation documents obtained by Military.com.

The FBI initiated an assessment in July 2019 with a case name that read "Former U.S. Army Major Claims Abuse by U.S. Government and Threatens Disclosure of Classified Information." The bulk of the investigation contains information from April of that year into early fall. Military.com received the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.

"In end of class evaluations that [redacted] finally reviewed in January 2019, several students reported that, mid-term, something seemed to have changed in Fishback's demeanor that affected his ability to effectively communicate the information on the syllabus," said one document, referencing an interview with a University of Michigan professor.

That April, Fishback allegedly made comments "concerning a possible justification for killing those who may violate a person's rights." The interviewee did not find the comments threatening, however, and when interviewed later by a campus police officer, Fishback denied he said anything about killing.

That same month, Fishback sent an email to other graduate students saying, in part, that they and the department as a whole "lack the intellect and honor of professional scholars," according to an email included in the FBI file.

In July 2019, the messages became more explicit and less tethered to reality. Fishback wrote to his colleagues alleging that he was tortured and raped at the University of Michigan, and that he was retaliated against by "U.S. Special Operations, the NSA, and/or the CIA."

In one email, he denied that he was suffering from mental illness. He also worried he "might be killed."

It was around this time that Fishback traveled to Europe to speak and teach, becoming only intermittently available to authorities who wanted to question him.

That summer, according to the FBI investigation, the U.S. Capitol Police contacted University of Michigan authorities stating that someone named Ian Fishback called then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a "veiled threat."

But it was a Fishback threat to share classified information that seemed to garner the most attention from the FBI. "If the U.S. fails to protect me, I will make every attempt to share high level, sensitive classified information with the governments of European Union member states," he wrote in an email collected in the investigation.

"I feel justified in doing so because the U.S. has tortured me for the better part of my adult life," he added. A report included in the investigation from the University of Michigan police marked Fishback as a "suspect."

Amid its investigation, the FBI decided it should not participate in an interview with Fishback upon his return from Europe, recognizing his "apparent paranoia with respect to the Federal Executive Department," according to investigatory notes.

Despite the concerns, a special agent out of the FBI's Ann Arbor office contacted Fishback under the auspices of helping the Special Forces veteran get the government off his back.

"It is my understanding that you have alleged United States federal government employees have violated your rights, possibly by means of classified technology," the agent wrote. "It is also my understanding that you are seeking legal accountability for the alleged violations of your rights. ... I take these allegations very seriously and would like to speak with you at your earliest convenience."

Fishback said that it "might be useful for us to meet," but said that Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., was assisting him. The investigation does not indicate that the FBI ever interviewed Fishback, and campus police "did not find any additional information that would give cause to believe Fishback is a threat to campus."

The FBI appeared to close the case. In March 2021, however, the agency shared his case with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Eight months after Fishback died in adult foster care, the FBI added a one-page update, seemingly from a tipster. It is redacted.

'It Won't Solve It, But It Will Help'

Fishback died on Nov. 19, 2021. The New York Times reported that he died of "sudden cardiac death in schizophrenia." In the months leading up to his death, Fishback endured a Kafkaesque race for care headed by his family. Despite being awarded his doctorate that year, he slipped quickly and deeply into a mental health collapse.

The Times reported that the year he died, Fishback "took to roaming on foot, wearing a backpack decorated with Disney characters, talking to himself." The Department of Veterans Affairs had essentially denied him care leading up to his death, too, one it vowed to investigate.

Bedridden, unable to move on his own and speaking slowly, the Times said, Fishback died in adult foster care.

But on Tuesday, he received the high honor of being interred at Arlington, a reflection of his life's accomplishments.

"It's been two years from it [his death], for this moment," John Fishback, Ian's father and a Vietnam veteran, told Military.com on Tuesday at his son's service. "It will help. It won't solve it, but it will help."

Of the FBI investigation, John seemed unperturbed and said, "There's a point where you do things that cause them to actually investigate you."

The main problem, he said, was the failure of the mental health system. "A lot of it was a total failure of the mental health system. They dropped it bad."

Closer to his mind -- and the minds of other attendees, some of whom were in uniform or sported 82nd Airborne Division and Ranger tab pins -- was Ian's legacy. Before the ceremony and the cavalcade of cars that quietly rolled down Patton Drive at Arlington Cemetery, mentees, family and friends spoke proudly of that legacy, of how Ian had touched their lives and spurred them to be better people.

Service members and veterans in the crowd told Ian's parents how proud they were to know him and how much his tutelage and friendship meant to them. His father received Ian's flag after the volley echoes faded and the bugler finished Taps.

"He was a peaceful warrior," John Fishback told Military.com. "A very peaceful warrior."

-- Drew F. Lawrence can be reached at drew.lawrence@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @df_lawrence.

military.com · by Drew F. Lawrence · August 10, 2023

3. Bond vs Iron Man: How Tomorrow's Special Operators Will Use AI To Win the Fight

Bond vs Iron Man: How Tomorrow's Special Operators Will Use AI To Win the Fight

sofrep.com · by Guy McCardle · August 11, 2023

2 days ago

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A soldier in an Iron Man suit. Looks a bit warm to me.

Iron Man and Killing Geronimo*

Several years after the highly successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound by DEVGRUs Red Squadron, Admiral William McRaven revealed an ambitious dream for special operations forces (SOF). This vision included troops equipped with exoskeletons reminiscent of Iron Man, able to withstand bullets and swiftly neutralize terrorist threats. Although this idea never materialized, a decade later (yes, believe it or not, it has been that long), U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is exploring new high-tech capabilities, with an emphasis on something akin to complete knowledge rather than physical invulnerability. A marriage of sophisticated technology with supremely capable operators. More Bond than Iron Man.

This change in direction is driven by both practical considerations and an evolution in SOCOM’s mission and role. Developing real-world technology that mimics comic-book feats is fraught with challenges, and SOCOM’s expectations of its operators have transformed over time.

The tux may be a bit much, but what else are you supposed to wear when your armorer turns out to be none other than James Bond’s famed “Q”?

Hyper-Enabled

During Global SOF’s SOF Week conference, Col. Jarret Mathews explained SOCOM’s initiative to develop hyper-enabled operators. He described efforts to adapt to new mission areas such as internal defense, irregular warfare campaigns, and integrating deterrence with allied forces.

In future operations, especially those involving training foreign allies, SOF teams may lack certain tools previously employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as missile-equipped drones. Mathews expressed that SOF teams operating discreetly in various countries don’t have access to these assets but still need to support their partners’ goals.

SOCOM is embracing augmented reality and artificial intelligence to enhance its capabilities. In a demonstration, Mathews showed how an operator using augmented reality glasses could instantly translate written language, gather data on enemy locations, and alter or conceal electronic footprints, likening it to “seeing around corners.”

This technology push includes SOCOM’s “Automate the Analyst” project, aimed at creating a continuous advisory system for the operator. While civilian technology like ChatGPT and other AI models offers similar functionalities, they often rely on public datasets and extensive cloud resources unavailable to SOCOM operators.

This image needs some explanation. I took this photo during the most recent SOF Week. In person, this was equal parts fascinating and unsettling. This half a young woman, a spokesperson for a major corporation, was fully three-dimensional and spouting the company line to passersby. Did I mention she has no lower half? Creepy. You could walk the whole way around her, and it looks just as if she was a real person, but she obviously was not. She was centered within a pyramid of glass, which accomplished the illusion very well. The future is here, people. And this is just the stuff I can talk about. Photo by the author.

SOCOM Partnering With Nvidia

To overcome this limitation, SOCOM is collaborating with companies like Nvidia (that’s right, the graphics card people) to develop an instant translator that functions without internet access, though this remains an ongoing endeavor.

SOCOM acknowledges that it’s lagging behind adversaries like China and Russia in some technological areas. Brian Sisco, who leads SOCOM’s Futures team, established in 2020, stressed that the U.S. has been too focused on counterterrorism and must adapt to challenge high-tech opponents.

Sisco emphasized the need to shift from traditional combat tactics to embracing innovative technologies, comparing the new direction to the gadgets provided to James Bond by “Q.”

Incidentally, in Bond’s world, “Q” is a job title rather than a name. It stands for “Quartermaster.”

He also warned that some enemies are advancing technologically faster than others, and the U.S. must boost its innovation rate. He contrasted the traditional “bad guy” with more technologically sophisticated adversaries, highlighting the importance of government-backed technology development and research programs.

In summary, the U.S. Special Operations Command is steering away from fantastical visions of bulletproof soldiers towards a more practical and sophisticated technological approach. This includes leveraging augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and other innovative solutions to enhance operators’ situational awareness, adaptability, and capability to counter increasingly tech-savvy adversaries.

—

*Geronimo was DEVGRU’s code name for Osama bin Laden during Operation Neptune Spear

4. Fort Campbell commander reflects on heritage and service

Fort Campbell commander reflects on heritage and service

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Photo By Kayla Cosby | Fort Campbell Garrison Commander Col. Andrew Q. Jordan, visits the Fort Campbell...... read more

Photo By Kayla Cosby | Fort Campbell Garrison Commander Col. Andrew Q. Jordan, visits the Fort Campbell German POW Cemetery to pay his respects to the more than 50 partial Native American remains, July 28. The remains were reinterred in the German POW Cemetery July 20, 2021. Jordan, a member of the Cherokee Nation, visited the cemetery as part of his final tour as the garrison commander. (U.S. Army photo by Kayla Cosby) | View Image Page

UNITED STATES

08.11.2023

Story by Kayla Cosby

Fort Campbell Public Affairs Office

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - Native Americans have served in the U.S. military across major conflicts for more than 200 years, often surpassing enlistment rates of other demographics. From the Revolutionary War to present day, American Indians and Alaska Natives have played a vital role in defense and preservation of our nation.

Like Gen. Ely S. Parker, a Seneca Nation member who served as Ulysses S. Grant’s military secretary during the Civil War, many Native Americans have served with high honor and distinction making significant contributions that changed the course of history.

At U.S. Army installation Fort Campbell Kentucky, Garrison Commander Col. Andrew Jordan, a member of the Cherokee Nation, exemplifies commitment and leadership of Native Americans who serve at U.S. military installations throughout the world.

Jordan's journey, similar to that of many Native Americans, reflects a storied tradition of service and sacrifice. He enlisted in 1995, serving in the Oklahoma Army National Guard while pursuing his education at Oklahoma State University. Graduating in 1998 as a Top Ten Graduate, he received a commission in the Infantry as a Distinguished Military Graduate

As a member of the elite Special Forces, a multi-purpose force for high-priority operational targets of strategic importance, Jordan’s assignments include several leadership roles at Special Operations Command Central and Chief of Staff for the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Iraq; deploying to Iraq to establish Special Operations Command’s task force to counter ISIS.

Throughout Jordan’s military career, his Native American roots fueled his drive to succeed as a leader. Within Native American tradition, it is held that good leaders are confident in their indigenous identity and understanding and in following traditional practices to preserve cultural heritage. Jordan explained his own dedication to preserving his heritage as he spoke of attending powwows and other Native American events and exhibits. “Protecting and preserving our Native American heritage and especially supporting our Native American service members and veterans is critical to carrying on the legacy of those that have gone before.”

"My ancestral roots trace back to the Cherokee Nation through my mother's side of the family. Specifically, my maternal grandfather was a member of the tribe through his mother," Jordan explained. "Growing up in Oklahoma, it's quite common for people to have Native American heritage due to the historical settlement of Oklahoma as Indian territory in the 1800s."

Today, Native American men and women continue a legacy of service and sacrifice, enlisting in the U.S. military at a higher rate than any other demographic. They contribute to the strength and diversity of the armed forces, embodying the values that define it.

According to the National Indian Council on Aging (NICOA), during the Vietnam War, of the 42,000 Native American service members who served during the conflict, an astounding 90% were volunteers. From the legendary Navajo Code Talkers, who devised an unbreakable code using their indigenous language during World War II, to the 400 Native Code Talkers who played a critical role in the Pacific theater, Native Americans have displayed ingenuity and resourcefulness with remarkable impact and outcomes.

"Recognizing the legacy of Native American service members highlights their essential role in safeguarding freedom and national security, showcasing the diversity that strengthens our military and society," Jordan said.

"Fort Campbell’s commitment to being good stewards of the land and culture is commendable," he said. "Understanding the history of how this land was provided to the United States government to create Fort Campbell reminds us to appreciate and preserve what we have inherited."

The recent repatriation of Cherokee remains at the Fort Campbell Cemetery exemplifies the enduring legacy of Cherokee military members and their deep connection to the land they defended. The process honors ancestral ties and recognizes the resilience and cultural heritage of Native American service members.

“Through honoring their legacy, we celebrate the vibrant tapestry that defines the U.S. military and reinforces our commitment to a united and diverse nation,” Jordan said. "The respect for veterans and their service within Native American communities is profound. Throughout history, they have exemplified the warrior ethos, playing essential roles in defending the United States in every conflict."

Jordan will relinquish command of Fort Campbell Garrison, August 16, after nearly 26 years of active-duty service.

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5. EXCLUSIVE: Michigan community leads fightback against Chinese takeover of US agriculture as Beijing-backed companies now own $2bn of American farmland

Graphics at the link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12385673/Green-Charter-Township-residents-fight-land-grab-Chinese-firm-Gotion.html

Buried lede: China owns the most land in Texas.

China owns 383,935 acres of US farmland as of December 2021, with almost half of it in Texas

EXCLUSIVE: Michigan community leads fightback against Chinese takeover of US agriculture as Beijing-backed companies now own $2bn of American farmland, with more acreage than Bill Gates

• Residents in Green Charter Township have protested the land grab by Chinese firm Gotion, which has now backed out of buying around 80 acres of farmland
• Chinese-owned companies now own almost 400,000 acres of US agricultural land worth $2bn, up from just $162m a decade ago, DailyMail.com can reveal
• It has sparked a national debate over whether the US should be allowing a hostile state to buy swathes of land critical to the country's food and energy supply

By MILES DILWORTH, SENIOR REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 07:35 EDT, 13 August 2023 | UPDATED: 07:35 EDT, 13 August 2023

Daily Mail · by Miles Dilworth, Senior Reporter For Dailymail.Com · August 13, 2023

A rural community in Michigan has hailed a 'huge victory' after a Chinese-owned industrial firm backed out of buying local farmland.

Residents of the idyllic Green Charter Township, around 50 miles east of Lake Michigan, say they were 'bullied' into accepting the takeover, but refused to do so.

Gotion, a company that 'pledges allegiance' to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), did, however, complete the purchase of 260 acres of derelict industrial land in the township and 10 acres of disused farmland last week.

It comes as data shows Chinese firms now own more than $2billion worth of US farmland, up from just $162million a decade ago, DailyMail.com can reveal.

The CCP has a stake in 383,935 acres of American agricultural land as of December 2021, according to the latest figures released by the US Department of Agriculture.

China owns 383,935 acres of US farmland as of December 2021, with almost half of it in Texas

Residents of the idyllic Green Charter Township in Michigan are leading a fightback against the Chinese land grab, hailing a 'huge victory' after Beijing-backed firm Gotion pulled out of the purchase of farmland in the area. (L-R) Residents Kelly Cushway, Lori Brock, Debbie Diegert and Jeff Thorne protest the deal

By comparison, Bill Gates owns 248,000 acres of US farmland, while Jeff Bezos owns 420,000.

It has sparked a national debate over why the US is allowing a hostile state to buy up vital land across the country amid concerns over espionage and security.

Hundreds of residents in Green Charter Township, Mecosta County, have previously turned out to protest the Gotion deal, in which the firm is to be paid $175million in direct taxpayer funding to help it build the facility.

Questions have also been raised over allowing a CCP-subsidiary to move into a site that is just 100 miles away from a US military camp where the Michigan National Guard has been training troops from Taiwan - a territory neighboring China some security experts, including among the US military, say Beijing is preparing to invade.

In a statement confirming the purchase of 270 acres of land in Green Charter Township last week, Gotion said it had 'listened to concerns of local residents and decided not to purchase two large parcels of land zoned for agriculture use at this time'.

Resident and realtor Lori Brock, 58, who has led the local opposition to the deal, said the concession was a 'huge' victory for the community, but warned the fight was 'far from over'.

'We don't want that factory in our community no matter what,' she told DailyMail.com

'We want an American company. Not one that is backed by the CCP.

'We're almost at war with China right now. Why are we allowing them to buy land here and we can't buy land in China? It doesn't make sense.

'We're fighting [the deal] tooth and nail.'

Brock, 58, a local realtor said residents wanted an American business, not one backed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to invest in the community

A billboard expresses the feelings of many residents of the 3,200-strong township, who oppose the building of a battery factory in the area by CCO-subsidiary Gotion

Protest placards litter the roads entering the town, around 50 miles east of Lake Michigan

Residents gathered to discuss their concerns regarding the Gotion deal when DailyMail.com visited the town last weekend

Camp Grayling (pictured), a Michigan base used by the US military to conduct training exercises, is around 100 miles away from the land bought by Gotion

The Michigan National Guard has been training troops from Taiwan - a territory neighboring China that some security experts say China is preparing to invade

A sign saying 'private property, no trespassing' marks the entrance to 260 acres of disused industrial land bought by Gotion. It sits opposite a small private airport and animal shelter in Green Charter Township

The animal shelter, is allegedly refusing to sell their property, which would allow for a larger entrance way to Gotion factories

Gotion has broken ground on one large portion of land in Green Charter Township, MI

The takeover of US farmland by Chinese companies comes amid wider concerns over CCP infiltration into American society.

DailyMail.com has previously revealed the locations of three Chinese 'community centers' in San Francisco, Nebraska and Houston suspected of secretly working for Beijing.

Meanwhile, a top Republican warned last week that China is 'in our house' following a raid on an illegal Chinese-run virus lab in California.

US farmland owned by China represents only around 1 percent of all foreign-owned land in the country.

But some politicians fear the CCP could use corporations under its control to take over America's food and energy supply, or use these businesses for espionage.

There are also concerns that wealthy foreign owners could price domestic farmers out of the market.

Almost half of all Beijing-owned US farmland is in Texas, with more than 100,000 acres in Val Verde County held by Chinese billionaire and former People's Liberation Army captain Sun Guangxin, through Brazos Highland Properties LP and Harvest Texas LLC.

Critics of the Gotion deal have highlighted a clause in its business filings that states the company 'shall set up a party organization and carry out party activities in accordance with the constitution of the Communist Party of China'.

The company has said it plans to bring four Chinese nationals to help set up the factory in Michigan for a short period of time.

In July, former director of the US National Counterintelligence and Security Center William Evanina told a congressional committee that it was '100 percent' likely that the plant would be used to spy for the CCP.

He stressed that the threat came from the CCP, not the Chinese people.

Chuck Thelen, the company's vice president of North American operations, denied that the CCP had 'penetrated' the company during a virtual town hall earlier this year.

He told the DailyMail.com: ' The continued prejudice-fueled propaganda is insulting, inflammatory and flat-out divisive.'

'Gotion Inc. and the Green Charter Township Board have fulfilled every state and federal check that Mr. Moolenaar has required, and when presented with positive outcomes, that should be celebrated for the region and its citizens, we continue to see political scare tactics from the congressman that are designed to mislead constituents instead of empowering the people that he was elected to represent,' he added.

China now owns more US farmland (383,935 acres) than Bill Gates (248,000), but less than Jeff Bezos (420,000), according to US Department of Agriculture figures

More than 100,000 acres of farmland in Texas is owned by Chinese billionaire Sun Guangxin

Michigan Congressman John Moolenaar (R.) said in a statement: 'Mecosta County residents have overwhelmingly spoken out against this deal while being bullied and kept in the dark by Gotion and local officials who signed non-disclosure agreements that go against the public's right to know.

'The simple facts are that Gotion is a subsidiary of a company that pledges allegiance to the CCP and it should not be receiving taxpayer money to build in Michigan.

'For our state to welcome CCP investment in Michigan 100 miles from the same facility where the Michigan National Guard has worked with military officials from Taiwan is a dangerous double standard that puts national security at risk. This land purchase is the wrong direction for Michigan and our communities.'

The Gotion deal is the latest in a string of Chinese takeovers of US farmland in recent years.

In 2021 alone, five Chinese investors bought 14 parcels of US land covering almost 60,000 acres with a total value of $85million, according to Department of Agriculture data.

But there are signs communities and lawmakers are fighting back.

The mayor of Grand Forks, Minnesota, has said he will stop the US branch of Chinese firm Fufeng Group from building a $700million corn mill on the outskirts of the town after an Air Force official published a letter citing a security risk due to its proximity to an Air Force base.

Sun Guangxin's plans to buy more than 100,000 acres for a wind farm in Texas were blocked by officials.

In Congress, lawmakers have introduced bipartisan bills to block the ability of buyers from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran to purchase US agriculture.

Meanwhile, more than 20 states are considering measures aimed at restricting existing limits around foreign ownership of US farmland, according to the National Agricultural Law Center.

A graphic rendering of the battery plant Gotion seeks to build in Green Charter Township

A fence demarcates some of the disused farmland that Gotion had intitally sought to buy in the township, before they backed down in the face of local opposition

Residents are worried that a large industrial factory will disrupt the serenity of the community

But others have said the threat from Chinese land ownership is exaggerated. The proportion of US land controlled by Beijing doesn't represent a risk to the country's ability to feed itself, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Texas state Rep. Gene We (D.) has said the Chinese community is being scapegoated.

The Chinese Embassy has previously said the US stands to benefit from overseas investments and described talk of land purchases as a means of infiltration as a 'malicious generalization'.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D.) has welcomed Gotion's $2.4billion investment in Green Charter Township, which she said would create 2,350 'good-paying jobs'.

Jim Chapman, supervisor of Green Charter Township, told DailyMail.com that the 'majority' of residents saw the deal as 'an unbelievable economic opportunity' and accused those who opposed it of displaying a 'NIMBY attitude'.

He described Gotion, which was founded in China in 1998 before being incorporated in California in 2014, as 'truly an international company'.

Plans for the factory must now pass an environmental review by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.

Local entrepreneur Jeff Thorne, 64, is worried about the effects of possible chemical pollution from the Gotion plant on the nearby Muskegon River, a major artery for Lake Michigan

Kelly Cushway, 68, who bought his first farm in the township in 1977, says the plant does not belong in the 'quiet and peaceful' community

The Muskegon River runs through Green Charter Township and Big Rapids, MI

Residents have highlighted the potential toxicity of lithium production at the plant as a particular cause for concern.

Entrepreneur Jeffrey Thorne, 64, who has lived in the area for almost 40 years, highlighted the threat of chemical pollution to the Muskegon River, a major artery for Lake Michigan.

'There is a lot that's been said by politicians over the years about protecting our great lakes and yet here they're bringing a very toxic type of chemicals into our area,' he added.

'My daughter and son-in-law farm close to 2,000 acres of crop farming and just got into beef cattle farming so it just doesn't fit into the overall plan of the community we live in.'

Kelly Cushway, 68, who bought his first farm in the township in 1977, echoed his sentiments. 'It's a rural community. It's very quiet and peaceful here…I just can't imagine the town changing.'

Daily Mail · by Miles Dilworth, Senior Reporter For Dailymail.Com · August 13, 2023

6. US and Japan could develop hypersonic missile interceptors together

US and Japan could develop hypersonic missile interceptors together

Joe Biden and Fumio Kishida to meet this week with likelihood of striking deal amid rising threat from China, Russia and North Korea

By

Louise Watt

13 August 2023 • 12:34pm

The Telegraph · by Louise Watt

The United States and Japan are expected to announce an agreement this week to jointly develop missile interceptors capable of shooting down hypersonic weapons from China, Russia and North Korea.

Joe Biden and Fumio Kishida, the Japanese prime minister, will meet in Washington DC on Friday, where a deal is likely to be discussed.

The pair will meet on the sidelines of a trilateral summit with Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s president, at Camp David, according to a Sunday report in Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper.

Washington and Tokyo agreed in January 2022 to work more closely in the research and development of defence technologies, including ways to counter hypersonic missiles.

Hypersonic missiles have the advantages of fast flight – travelling at five times the speed of sound or more. But their key features are their increased manoeuvrability, and their ability to fly at lower altitudes than ballistic missiles, making it difficult to track and counter them. Interceptors would need to fly long distances at high speeds and be able to change direction to respond to changes in a hypersonic weapon’s flight path.

China is thought to be ahead of the US in developing hypersonics, while Russia has also demonstrated its arsenal in Ukraine, striking Kyiv just last week.

Russia has used hypersonic missiles in the war in Ukraine Credit: NATIONAL GUARD OF UKRAINE/REUTERS

The US Defence Intelligence Agency said in March that both China and Russia had conducted numerous successful tests of hypersonic weapons, and that China has the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal. It also said that China may have already fielded a hypersonic weapon capable of hitting US military forces in the western Pacific.

Japan has pledged its biggest military buildup since the Second World War – and plans to develop hypersonic weapons – under a new security strategy issued in December.

Hypersonic missiles have the advantages of fast flight Credit: KCNA/via REUTERS

Both Washington and Tokyo are increasingly worried about a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, which could draw in both nations. In recent years, Beijing has been increasing military pressure on the democratic island, which it claims as part of its territory, and Taipei has strengthened relations with both the US and Japan.

On Sunday, China condemned a stopover by Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s vice president, in New York on his way to attend a presidential inauguration in Paraguay. Beijing sees such stopovers by Taiwanese officials as further US support for Taiwan.

China’s foreign ministry said Mr Lai’s trip “seriously undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”, and vowed unspecified “resolute and forceful measures”. Taiwanese officials expect Chinese military drills around the island in the coming days.

The Telegraph · by Louise Watt

7. China won’t take the US military’s calls. A top general claims that makes war more likely

As I mentioned during my recent trip to korea I met a Chinese PhD student who was attending the same conference and she asked me about strategic competition and how to reduce US-PRC tension. I told her one way is to allow the two militaries to talk and engage. I told her the US military was willing to do so but the PLA refused to. She was shocked and had no idea the PLA was reading to talk or that the US was very much willing to talk.

Anecdotal yes but I think it may illustrate information control in China.

China won’t take the US military’s calls. A top general claims that makes war more likely

Brisbane Times · by Matthew Knott · August 13, 2023

August 13, 2023 — 4.43pm

China’s military is becoming dangerously arrogant and is fuelling the risk of war with the United States by refusing offers to communicate with commanders in the Indo-Pacific, one of America’s most senior military officials has warned.

Lieutenant General Stephen Sklenka, deputy commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said he feared that China would seek to establish a military base in Solomon Islands or another Pacific nation as it sought to dominate the region.

Sklenka added that he saw value in Republican congressman Mike Gallagher’s idea of positioning US hypersonic missiles in Australia and other key locations across the Pacific as a way to deter China from launching an invasion of the self-governing island of Taiwan.

“We do not want this fight to happen, and to do that you need to present a credible, combat-capable force west of the international date line,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Canberra.

“It’s my belief that the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] responds only to strength and that strength needs to be demonstrated persistently.”

Sklenka said trends in the region were “not going the right direction in many ways”, pointing to a rise in “unsafe and unprofessional activities” by the Chinese military.

The Philippines last week accused China’s coast guard of firing a water cannon at its vessels in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, an action it described as illegal and dangerous.

Sklenka said the US military’s top priority was preventing the breakout of a war with China, but this goal was being stymied by the “non-existent” dialogue between Chinese and American military commanders.

He said the lack of engagement at the “war-fighting level” increased the risk that a misunderstanding could morph into conflict.

“Admiral Aquilino [the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command] has had a standing invitation to talk with his eastern theatre and southern theatre counterparts but had received no response,” Sklenka said.

“I got to Indo-Pacific Command over four years ago, I’ve worked for two combatant commanders. Neither one of those gentlemen has ever been able to have a conversation with their counterpart. It’s dangerous.”

The Chinese military’s eastern theatre command covers the East China Sea and Taiwan Strait, while its southern theatre command includes the South China Sea.

Sklenka, who is based in Hawaii, continued: “The problem we’re having is that the Chinese treat communication as a reward for behaviour that suits their interests.

“My response is: that’s not what great powers do. Great powers talk to each other even when they don’t agree. They talk to each other because that’s the only way we’re going to understand each other and reduce the risk of a miscalculation occurring.”

Sklenka said he believed increased training by China’s People’s Liberation Army was breeding a new sense of confidence and assertiveness.

“That increased assertiveness is going to cause, I think, a hubris that turns into arrogance,” he said.

“And when they start getting arrogant that’s going to be a problem because the fact is that we’re all flying and operating high-performance machines.”

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd, now Australia’s ambassador to the US, said last week: “We are in a region where the risk of crisis, conflict and war is real – not a theory, it’s a real threat.”

While there was much focus on the possibility of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Sklenka said there were several possible triggers for a conflict between the US and China including an island grab by Beijing in the South China Sea.

He said he does not take Beijing at its word when it says it does not want to establish a military base in Solomon Islands, a nation with which it has signed far-reaching security and policing agreements.

He noted that Beijing denied having any plans to establish a base in the African nation of Djibouti before doing so in 2017.

“Despite the Chinese saying right now they have no intent to build a military base in Solomon Islands, we have to ask ourselves: do they have the capabilities? I think that they do. And I will be surprised if they don’t if they don’t at least try.”

Matthew Knott is the foreign affairs and national security correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via Twitter or Facebook.

Brisbane Times · by Matthew Knott · August 13, 2023

8. Where in the world is Wagner warlord Prigozhin? At large and in charge, apparently

Where in the world is Wagner warlord Prigozhin? At large and in charge, apparently | CNN

CNN · by Nathan Hodge · August 13, 2023

CNN —

Late last week, imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was handed a harsh judgment: After a court hit him with a new 19-year sentence in a penal colony, he was sent immediately to a punishment cell.

It was a stark contrast to the fate of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Back in June, Prigozhin led the abortive mutiny that presented the biggest challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin in over two decades of rule. While Prigozhin’s troops stopped short of Moscow, a furious Putin said in a televised speech that those on the “path of treason” would face punishment. Almost two months later, in the case of the Wagner chief, this simply hasn’t happened.

Clearly, the price for confronting Putin is not fixed. Perhaps more surprisingly, Prigozhin hasn’t even kept a low profile since the June uprising.

Just weeks after the insurrection, Prigozhin popped up on the sidelines of the recent Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, shaking hands with a dignitary from the Central African Republic (CAR).

To be sure, the mercenary boss was not striking a martial pose: While subscribers to his Telegram channel have become accustomed to seeing him in camouflage and tactical gear, Prigozhin was spotted in a polo shirt and mom jeans, cutting a seemingly more mild-mannered figure than in months past.

Prigozhin was seen in St. Petersburg with a CAR dignitary on the sidelines of the Russia-Africa summit in July.

Orchestra_W/Telegram

But pity the poor Russian diplomat who has to explain why Prigozhin – whose forces shot down Russian military aircraft and killed Russian military servicemembers on their march toward the capital – remains at large.

That’s exactly what happened when CNN’s Christiane Amanpour confronted Andrei Kelin, the Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom, about the bizarre spectacle of Prigozhin’s post-mutiny appearance.

Wagner’s insurrection, Kelin conceded, might constitute a form of “high treason.” But the ambassador went on to explain that Putin has decided to let bygones be bygones.

“The president has qualified it when it has started, then it was all over,” Kelin said. “Now he’s traveling someplace, so we do recognize some hero deeds by Wagner groups,” alluding to Wagner’s apparent battlefield successes around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

Amanpour, however, pressed Kelin further.

“What I would like to understand, why is it that people like (jailed dissident Vladimir) Kara-Murza, the intellectual, others, Navalny are in jail for verbally protesting and disagreeing with the Russian government, but… Prigozhin, who tried to commit a coup against the Kremlin, maybe even against the President himself – an armed coup – is still wandering around free in Russia? He was photographed meeting with African leaders during this week’s summit in St. Petersburg, why is he not in jail for treason?”

Kelin evaded at first, saying he didn’t recall that Russian soldiers died during the Wagner mutiny. Pressed by Amanpour, Kelin conceded that he had no explanation. Longtime observers, too, are searching for explanations about Prigozhin’s future.

Andrei Kelin, Russia's ambassador to the United Kingdom, was interviewed by CNN's Christiane Amanpour on August 4.

Experts believe that the Wagner boss still has value to Putin, even though the stature of both men has diminished.

“Prigozhin’s stock with the Kremlin has clearly taken a hit,” said Candace Rondeaux, director of Future Frontlines, an open source intelligence service at the think tank New America. “But since Putin lost even more stock after the mutiny it seems he believes some utility remains in keeping Prigozhin around.”

Prigozhin’s business acumen – and his skill at concealing commercial gains through an opaque network of front companies and offshore operations – are an asset for Putin’s Russia, which has been hit by sweeping Western economic sanctions, Rondeaux said.

“At this point, Prigozhin’s networks of shell companies are the best insurance Putin has to keep Russia’s war economy,” she said. “But it’s not likely to stay that way forever – eventually something has got to give. And there is a good chance once it does we’ll see more spectacular events closer to the border between Poland and Belarus.”

Rondeaux was referring to the recent relocation of some Wagner fighters to Belarus. The move – apparently part of a deal brokered to end the June mutiny – has already raised alarms in Poland, a NATO member next door to Belarus.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently said that 100 troops from Wagner were moving toward a thin strip of land between Poland and Lithuania, with the possible intent of posing as migrants to cross the border.

It’s unclear exactly how many Wagner troops are in Belarus, and whether or not they have access to heavy weaponry. But Morawiecki seemed to be pointing to one potential scenario for Wagner mischief: Promoting some kind of destabilization along NATO’s eastern frontier.

Wagner’s African footprint

And then there are Prigozhin’s plans for another region: Vulnerable and unstable countries in Africa, where Wagner has already conducted a series of operations.

Speaking after Wagner fighters relocated to Belarus, Prigozhin suggested he remained focused on this core African market.

“To ensure that there are no secrets and behind-the-scenes conversations, I am informing you that the Wagner Group continues its activities in Africa, as well as at the training centers in Belarus,” Prigozhin said in an audio message shared on Telegram accounts associated with the Wagner group.

Prigozhin’s forces are already implicated in activities in Sudan – where Wagner has supplied the militia battling Sudan’s army – and has operated extensively in the CAR and in Libya.

closeup view of il76 at al jufra airbase_16april2023

Maxar Technologies

Exclusive: Evidence emerges of Russia's Wagner arming militia leader battling Sudan's army

He may also sense opportunities in Niger, after a recent military coup threatened to spark a major regional crisis. In a recent Telegram message, Prigozhin hinted that Wagner might be ready to offer its services there.

“What happened in Niger has been brewing for years,” Prigozhin said. “The former colonizers are trying to keep the people of African countries in check. In order to keep them in check, the former colonizers are filling these countries with terrorists and various bandit formations. Thus creating a colossal security crisis.”

Then followed his hard sell. “The population suffers,” he said. “And this is the (the reason for the) love for PMC Wagner, this is the high efficiency of PMC Wagner. Because a thousand soldiers of PMC Wagner are able to establish order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the peaceful population of states.”

That might be dismissed as pure bluster and salesmanship. But it’s worth noting that Prigozhin’s sale pitch was at odds with the view of the Russian Foreign Ministry, which called for the “prompt release” of Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum by the military.

And that’s where things can still get interesting back in Russia. By defying Putin and evading punishment, Prigozhin seems to have built and sustained a competing center of gravity to the Kremlin.

In a recent analysis, Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said Prigozhin had effectively chipped away at the “power vertical” – Putin’s longstanding system of top-down rule.

“Putin’s much-hyped ‘power vertical’ has disappeared,” she wrote. “Instead of a strong hand, there are dozens of mini-Prigozhins, and while they may be more predictable than the Wagner leader, they are no less dangerous. All of them know full well that a post-Putin Russia is already here – even as Putin remains in charge – and that it’s time to take up arms and prepare for a battle for power.”

CNN · by Nathan Hodge · August 13, 2023

9. Taliban’s Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along

I do not know much at all about opium but it would seem to me that as the US drew down in the last years and withdrew in 2021 US and international eradication efforts dropped off. So it would not be too hard for opium growers to restart their opium plantations.

But in reality I think the article is probably correct in that the Taliban could do what the US and the international community could not do because they follow legal norms.. Which is probably one example of the difference between rule OF law versus rule BY law.

Taliban’s Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge

The Taliban government in Afghanistan – the nation that until recently produced 90% of the world’s heroin – has drastically reduced opium cultivation across the country. Western sources estimate an up to 99% reduction in some provinces. This raises serious questions about the seriousness of U.S. drug eradication efforts in the country over the past 20 years. And, as global heroin supplies dry up, experts tell MintPress News that they fear this could spark the growing use of fentanyl – a drug dozens of times stronger than heroin that already kills more than 100,000 Americans yearly.

The Taliban Does What the US Did Not

It has already been called “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history.” Armed with little more than sticks, teams of counter-narcotics brigades travel the country, cutting down Afghanistan’s poppy fields.

In April of last year, the ruling Taliban government announced the prohibition of poppy farming, citing both their strong religious beliefs and the extremely harmful social costs that heroin and other opioids – derived from the sap of the poppy plant – have wrought across Afghanistan.

It has not been all bluster. New research from geospatial data company Alcis suggests that poppy production has already plummeted by around 80% since last year. Indeed, satellite imagery shows that in Helmand Province, the area that produces more than half of the crop, poppy production has dropped by a staggering 99%. Just 12 months ago, poppy fields were dominant. But Alcis estimates that there are now less than 1,000 hectares of poppy growing in Helmand.

Instead, farmers are planting wheat, helping stave off the worst of a famine that U.S. sanctions helped create. Afghanistan is still in a perilous state, however, with the United Nations warning that six million people are close to starvation.

Data from Alcis shows that a majority of Afghan farmers switched from growing poppy to wheat in a single year

The Taliban waited until 2022 to impose the long-awaited ban in order not to interfere with the growing season. Doing so would have provoked unrest among the rural population by eradicating a crop that farmers had spent months growing. Between 2020 and late 2022, the price of opium in local markets rose by as much as 700%. Yet given the Taliban’s insistence – and their efficiency at eradication – few have been tempted to plant poppies.

The poppy ban has been matched by a similar campaign against the methamphetamine industry, with the government targeting the ephedra crop and shutting down ephedrine labs across the country.

A Looming Catastrophe

Afghanistan produces almost 90% of the world’s heroin. Therefore, the eradication of the opium crop will have profound worldwide consequences on drug use. Experts MintPress spoke to warned that a dearth of heroin would likely produce a huge spike in the use of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, a drug the Center for Disease Control estimates is 50 times stronger and is responsible for taking the lives of more than 100,000 Americans each year.

“It is important to consider past periods of heroin shortages and the impact these have had on the European drug market,” the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) told MintPress, adding:

Experience in the E.U. with previous periods of reduced heroin supply suggests that this can lead to changes in patterns of drug supply and use. This can include further an increase in rates of polysubstance use among heroin users. Additional risks to existing users may be posed by the substitution of heroin with more harmful synthetic opioids, including fentanyl and its derivatives and new potent benzimidazole opioids.”

In other words, if heroin is no longer available, users will switch to far deadlier synthetic forms of the drug. A 2022 United Nations report came to a similar conclusion, noting that the crackdown on heroin production could lead to the “replacement of heroin or opium by other substances…such as fentanyl and its analogs.”

“It does have that danger in the macro sense, that if you take all that heroin off the market, people are going to go to other products,” Matthew Hoh told MintPress. Hoh is a former State Department official who resigned from his post in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, in 2009. “But the response should not be reinvade Afghanistan, reoccupy it and put the drug lords back in power, which is basically what people are implying when they bemoan the consequence of the Taliban stopping the drug trade,” Hoh added; “Most of the people who are speaking this way and worrying out loud about it are people who want to find a reason for the U.S. to go and affect regime change in Afghanistan.”

There certainly has been plenty of hand-wringing from American sources. “Foreign Policy,” wrote about “how the Taliban’s ‘war on drugs’ could backfire;” U.S. government-funded “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty” claimed that the Taliban were turning a “blind eye to opium production,” despite the official ban. And the United States Institute of Peace, an institution created by Congress that is “dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible,” stated emphatically that “the Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world”.

This looming catastrophe, however, will not hit immediately. Significant stockpiles of drugs along trafficking routes still exist. As the EMCDDA told MintPress:

It can take over 12 months before the opium harvest appears on the European retail drug market as heroin – and so it is too early to predict, at this stage, the future impact of the cultivation ban on heroin availability in Europe. Nonetheless, if the ban on opium cultivation is enforced and sustained, it could have a significant impact on heroin availability in Europe during 2024 or 2025.”

Yet there is little indication that the Taliban are anything but serious about eradicating the crop, indicating that a heroin crunch is indeed coming.

A similar attempt by the Taliban to eliminate the drug occurred in 2000, the last full year that they were in power. It was extraordinarily successful, with opium reduction dropping from 4,600 tons to just 185 tons. At that time, it took around 18 months for the consequences to be felt in the West. In the United Kingdom, average heroin purity fell from 55% to 34%, while in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, heroin was largely replaced by fentanyl. However, as soon as the United States invaded in 2001, poppy cultivation shot back up to previous levels and the supply chain recommenced.

US Complicity in the Afghan Drug Trade

The Taliban’s successful campaign to eradicate drug production has cast a shadow of doubt over the effectiveness of American-led endeavors to achieve the same outcome. “It prompts the question, ‘What were we actually accomplishing there?!'” remarked Hoh, underscoring:

This undermines one of the fundamental premises behind the wars: the alleged association between the Taliban and the drug trade – a concept of a narco-terror nexus. However, this notion was fallacious. The reality was that Afghanistan was responsible for a staggering 80-90% of the world’s illicit opiate supply. The primary controllers of this trade were the Afghan government and military, entities we upheld in power.”

Hoh clarified that he never personally witnessed or received any reports of direct involvement by U.S. troops or officials in narcotics trafficking. Instead, he contended that there existed a “conscious and deliberate turning away from the unfolding events” during his tenure in Afghanistan.’

Left, a US Marine picks a flower as he guards a poppy field in 2012 in Helmand Provine. Photo | DVIDS. Right, A man breaks poppy stalks as part of a 2023 campaign to target illegal drugs in Afghanistan. Oriane Zerah | AP

Suzanna Reiss, an academic at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the author of “We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of U.S. Empire,” demonstrated an even more cynical perspective on American counter-narcotics endeavors as she conveyed to MintPress:

The U.S. has never really been focused on reducing the drug trade in Afghanistan (or elsewhere for that matter). All the lofty rhetoric aside, the U.S. has been happy to work with drug traffickers if the move would advance certain geopolitical interests (and indeed, did so, or at least turned a knowingly blind eye, when groups like the Northern Alliance relied on drugs to fund their political movement against the regime.).”

Afghanistan’s transformation into a preeminent narco-state owes a significant debt to Washington’s actions. Poppy cultivation in the 1970s was relatively limited. However, the tide changed in 1979 with the inception of Operation Cyclone, a massive infusion of funds to Afghan Mujahideen factions aimed at exhausting the Soviet military and terminating its presence in Afghanistan. The U.S. directed billions toward the insurgents, yet their financial needs persisted. Consequently, the Mujahideen delved into the illicit drug trade. By the culmination of Operation Cyclone, Afghanistan’s opium production had soared twentyfold. Professor Alfred McCoy, acclaimed author of “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,” shared with MintPress that approximately 75% of the planet’s illegal opium output was now sourced from Afghanistan, a substantial portion of the proceeds funneling to U.S.-backed rebel factions.

Unraveling the Opioid Crisis: An Impending Disaster

The opioid crisis is the worst addiction epidemic in U.S. history. Earlier this year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described the American fentanyl problem as “the single greatest challenge we face as a country.” Nearly 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, fentanyl being by far the leading cause. Between 2015 and 2021, the National Institute of Health recorded a nearly 7.5-fold increase in overdose deaths. Medical journal The Lancet predicts that 1.2 million Americans will die from opioid overdoses by 2029.

U.S. officials blame Mexican cartels for smuggling the synthetic painkiller across the southern border and China for producing the chemicals necessary to make the drug.

White Americans are more likely to misuse these types of drugs than other races. Adults aged 35-44 experience the highest rates of deaths, although deaths among younger people are surging. Rural America has been particularly hard hit; a 2017 study by the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau Federation found that 74% of farmers have been directly impacted by the opioid epidemic. West Virginia and Tennessee are the states most badly hit.

For writer Chris Hedges, who hails from rural Maine, the fentanyl crisis is an example of one of the many “diseases of despair” the U.S. is suffering from. It has, according to Hedges, “risen from a decayed world where opportunity, which confers status, self-esteem and dignity, has dried up for most Americans. They are expressions of acute desperation and morbidity.” In essence, when the American dream fizzled out, it was replaced by an American nightmare. That white men are the prime victims of these diseases of despair is an ironic outgrowth of our unfair system. As Hedges explained:

White men, more easily seduced by the myth of the American dream than people of color who understand how the capitalist system is rigged against them, often suffer feelings of failure and betrayal, in many cases when they are in their middle years. They expect, because of notions of white supremacy and capitalist platitudes about hard work leading to advancement, to be ascendant. They believe in success.”

In this sense, it is important to place the opioid addiction crisis in a wider context of American decline, where opportunities for success and happiness are fewer and farther between than ever, rather than attribute it to individuals. As the “Lancet” wrote: “Punitive and stigmatizing approaches must end. Addiction is not a moral failing. It is a medical condition and poses a constant threat to health.”

A “Uniquely American Problem”

Nearly 10 million Americans misuse prescription opioids every year and at a rate far higher than comparable developed countries. Deaths due to opioid overdose in the United States are ten times more common per capita than in Germany and more than 20 times as frequent in Italy, for instance.

Much of this is down to the United States’ for-profit healthcare system. American private insurance companies are far more likely to favor prescribing drugs and pills than more expensive therapies that get to the root cause of the issue driving the addiction in the first place. As such, the opioid crisis is commonly referred to as a “uniquely American problem.”

Part of the reason U.S. doctors are much more prone to doling out exceptionally strong pain medication relief than their European counterparts is that they were subject to a hyper-aggressive marketing campaign from Purdue Pharma, manufacturers of the powerful opioid OxyContin. Purdue launched OxyContin in 1996, and its agents swarmed doctors’ offices to push the new “wonder drug.”

Approximately 1 million fake pills containing fentanyl seized on July 5, 2022, at a home in Inglewood, Calif. Photo | DEA via AP

Yet, in lawsuit after lawsuit, the company has been accused of lying about both the effectiveness and the addictiveness of OxyContin, a drug that has hooked countless Americans onto opioids. And when legal but incredibly addictive prescription opioids dry up, Americans turned to illicit substances like heroin and fentanyl as substitutes.

Purdue Pharma owners, the Sackler family, have regularly been described as the most evil family in America, with many laying the blame for the hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths squarely at their door. In 2019, under the weight of thousands of lawsuits against it, Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy. A year later, it plead guilty to criminal charges over its mismarketing of OxyContin.

Nevertheless, the Sacklers made out like bandits from their actions. Even after being forced last year to pay nearly $6 billion in cash to victims of the opioid crisis, they remain one of the world’s richest families and have refused to apologize for their role in constructing an empire of pain that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Instead, the family has attempted to launder their image through philanthropy, sponsoring many of the most prestigious arts and cultural institutions in the world. These include the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Yale University, and the British Museum and Royal Academy in London.

One group who are disproportionately affected by opioids like OxyContin, heroin and fentanyl are veterans. According to the National Institutes of Health, veterans are twice as likely to die from overdose than the general population. One reason for this is bureaucracy. “The Veterans Administration did a really poor job in the past decades with their pain management, particularly their reliance on opioids,” Hoh, a former marine, told MintPress, noting that the V.A. prescribed dangerous opioids at a higher rate than other healthcare agencies.

Ex-soldiers often have to cope with chronic pain and brain injuries. Hoh noted that around a quarter-million veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq have traumatic brain injuries. But added to that are the deep moral injuries many suffered – injuries that typically cannot be seen. As Hoh noted:

Veterans are turning to [opioids like fentanyl] to deal with the mental, emotional and spiritual consequences of the war, using them to quell the distress, try to find some relief, escape from the depression, and deal with the demons that come home with veterans who took part in those wars.”

Thus, if the Taliban’s opium eradication program continues, it could spark a fentanyl crisis that might kill more Americans than the 20-year occupation ever did.

Broken Society

If diseases of despair are common throughout the United States, they are rampant in Afghanistan itself. A global report released in March revealed that Afghans are by far the most miserable people on Earth. Afghans evaluated their lives at 1.8 out of 10 – dead last and far behind the top of the pile Finland (7.8 out of 10).

Opium addiction in Afghanistan is out of control, with around 9% of the adult population (and a significant number of children) addicted. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of adult drug users jumped from 900,000 to 2.4 million, according to the United Nations, which estimates that almost one in three households is directly affected by addiction. As opium is frequently injected, blood-transmitted conditions like HIV are common as well.

The opioid problem has also spilled into neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. A 2013 United Nations report estimated that almost 2.5 million Pakistanis were abusing opioids, including 11% of people in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Around 700 people die each day from overdoses.

Empire of Drugs

Given their history, It is perhaps understandable that Asian nations have generally taken far more authoritarian measures to counter drug addiction issues. For centuries, using the illegal drug trade to advance imperial objectives has been a common Western tactic. In the 1940s and 1950s, the French utilized opium crops in the “Golden Triangle” region of Southeast Asia in order to counter the growing Vietnamese independence movement.

A century previously, the British used opium to crush and conquer much of China. Britain’s insatiable thirst for Chinese tea was beginning to bankrupt the country, seeing as China would only accept gold or silver in exchange. The British, therefore, used the power of its navy to force China to cede Hong Kong to it. From there, it flooded mainland China with opium grown in South Asia (including Afghanistan).

The effect of the Opium War was astonishing. By 1880, the British were inundating China with more than 6,500 tons of opium per year – the equivalent of many billions of doses. Chinese society crumbled, unable to deal with the empire-wide social and economic dislocation that millions of opium addicts brought. Today, the Chinese continue to refer to the period as the “century of humiliation”.

Meanwhile, in South Asia, the British forced farmers to plant poppy fields instead of edible crops, causing waves of giant famines, the likes of which had never been seen before or since.

And during the 1980s in Central America, the United States sold weapons to Iran in order to fund far-right Contra death squads. The Contras were deeply implicated in the cocaine trade, fuelling their dirty war through crack cocaine sales in the U.S. – a practice that, according to journalist Gary Webb, the Central Intelligence Agency facilitated.

Imperialism and illicit drugs, therefore, commonly go together. However, with the Taliban opium eradication effort in full effect, coupled with the uniquely American phenomenon of opioid addiction, it is possible that the United States will suffer significant blowback in the coming years. The deadly fentanyl epidemic will likely only get worse, needlessly taking hundreds of thousands more American lives. Thus, even as Afghanistan attempts to rid itself of its deadly drug addiction problem, its actions could precipitate an epidemic that promises to kill more Americans than any of Washington’s imperial endeavors to date.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

ZeroHedge

10. Violent threats against public officials are rising. Here's why

Violent threats against public officials are rising. Here's why

NPR · by By · August 12, 2023

FBI agents process the home of Craig Robertson who was shot and killed by the FBI in a raid on his home on August 9, 2023 in Provo, Utah. The FBI was investigating alleged threats by Robertson to President Biden ahead of the president's visit to the state this week. George Frey/Getty Images

For extremism researchers, the shooting death this week of a Utah man who was alleged to have made violent threats against President Joe Biden and other public officials highlights a concerning trend. For years, they have watched a steady escalation in violent political rhetoric that appears to be fueling acts of real-life violence.

On Wednesday, the FBI shot and killed Craig Robertson of Provo, Utah as they attempted to arrest him due to his alleged threats ahead of a visit to Utah by Biden. Federal charges against the 75-year-old laid out a history of violent social media posts, not just about the president, but also a range of Democratic politicians and officials, including New York State Attorney General Letitia James, Vice President Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Robertson has been on the FBI's radar since March, based on a tip from a social media platform, reportedly Truth Social, the company backed by former President Donal Trump. He allegedly posted direct language about his dream to "eradicate" Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, before Bragg's office indicted Trump.

Many of Robertson's alleged posts contained specific locations, graphic descriptions of imagining watching his targets die and photographs of firearms he appeared to have access to. The word 'assasination' [sic] appears repeatedly and the guns are referred to as "Democrat eradication tools."

Those kinds of details hit a trip wire for federal officials, says Seamus Hughes, a senior researcher at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center located at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Hughes has tracked the number of federal arrests over threats to public officials over the last decade. In 2013, there were 38 such arrests — last year, there were 74. The trend began to escalate within the last five years.

Most FBI interventions are 'a diversion program'

"So a lot of the things we saw in there, you know, they're not that unusual, unfortunately," says Hughes, of Robertson's posting history. What is unusual, says Hughes, is for an interaction with the FBI to end in violence.

"You're talking about hundreds of thousands of tips they get about threats. And many times the FBI will knock on the door, say, 'What are you doing online? Knock it off.' It's basically a diversion program. And those individuals will move on with their lives. The smaller subset, you have to bring up federal charges."

According to the charging documents, Robertson allegedly told FBI agents in an initial visit that his flagged post described a dream, rather than serious intent. He reportedly demanded they not return without a warrant and went on to post that the bureau had "no idea how close your agents came to 'violent eradication.'" Hughes says a significant number of individuals approached by the FBI in these cases say they're unaware their threats violate law. "They just thought it was protected by the First Amendment, which on its face, people understand, that's ridiculous," he says.

Hughes says the rising number of arrests is due to factors including the ease of making public threats via social media, an increased focus from law enforcement on domestic extremism and what Hughes calls a cultural "mood music" that normalizes violent rhetoric.

It's not just federal officials. A recent University of San Diego study surveyed local public officials in that city and found 75% reported receiving threats and harassment. Women, it found, are disproportionately impacted.

Violent political rhetoric is seeping into daily life

It is figures on the political right who are primarily fueling this hostile environment, says Katherine Keneally, a senior researcher at the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue, although their vitriol isn't just directed against Democrats and public officials.

"What I think is important to note is that Republicans are also being threatened by members of their own party," she says, often due to perceptions of being insufficiently loyal to conservative principles or figures.

Just last week, ISD tracked threats from pro-Trump voices against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he faced criticism for telling New Hampshire voters he was "going to start slitting throats" of "all these deep state people" if elected president.

While threats may target a bipartisan array of public officials, data from the last decade shows that 96% of murders in the U.S. linked political to extremism are committed by right-wing actors. Recent polling suggests, however, that more than half of 2020 Trump voters surveyed believe the opposite is true.

The Salt Lake Tribune has reported Robertson's neighbors, some who had seen his social media posts, broadly characterized him as a harmless, "cranky old guy," who helped community members out with woodworking projects.

The violent language he used has migrated from the fringes of the internet to become a far more common part of daily life, says Keneally, who lives in Montana. "I can go out my front door or hear a conversation and the things that he was posting online, I can hear at a bar, I can hear in line at my grocery store. It is not very uncommon by any means," she says.

Keneally says she tries to promote "vigilance, not panic" about individuals adopting this kind of speech.

"In many ways they don't just wake up one day and say, 'Yeah, the government is coming for me.' That's not what happens. They have had these narratives pushed to them over and over and over again," says Keneally, by far-right media figures who profit from amplifying emotionally resonant narratives about both real and perceived struggles.

As a researcher, Hughes says he worries less for the president, who receives protection from the Secret Service, than for lower-profile public servants.

"The election official in Georgia or the health official in Wisconsin who does not have this apparatus to lean on if they get threats, does not understand how to protect their personal information online, doesn't really know if they want to get into the arena of public debate on these type of things — that's really where my concern is," Hughes says, who emphasizes that even a rising number of arrests for such threats represent a relatively small number compared to the population.

Violent threats against public officials, he says, tend to spike around moments of crisis or major news events.

"So, you know, if we have another event like a COVID or another event like an election, you know, they'll change the targets. You have a subset of people that are angry, that have been told to be angry, and they're focusing their energy on whatever they need to in terms of to show their anger," Hughes says.

Few details about what led up to the FBI shooting Robertson have so far been released, which Hughes says is already helping drive conspiratorial theories about the deadly encounter, comparing it to past federal law enforcement encounters that have ended in violence.

"They're comparing it to Ruby Ridge. They're comparing it to Waco. And it's likely like what we're seeing is that this is just fueling those same narratives that he was concerned about to begin with," he says.

NPR · by By · August 12, 2023

11. Russian spy agencies targeting Starlink with custom malware, Ukraine warns

Can Elon Musk harden his system to defend against Russian attacks.

Russian spy agencies targeting Starlink with custom malware, Ukraine warns

Ukrainian intelligence report reveals satellite hacking attempts to spy on troop movements

By

Gareth Corfield

12 August 2023 • 6:00pm

The Telegraph · by Gareth Corfield

Hackers from Russia’s intelligence services are deliberately targeting Elon Musk’s Starlink with custom hacking software, Ukraine’s counter-intelligence agency has said.

A report published by Ukraine’s MI5 equivalent, the State Security Service (SBU), detailed how custom malware originating from Russia’s GRU spy agency had been written to try and spy on troop movements via Starlink satellites.

Starlink operates a network of thousands of satellites that beam wireless internet across the world. Ukrainian commanders rely heavily on the infrastructure for communications.

SBU experts discovered malicious software on Ukrainian tablet devices that were captured by the Russians before later being recovered from the battlefield.

One common method of spreading malware is to leave an infected device such as a smartphone, tablet or USB stick lying around in the hope that they are picked up and used.

The malware, one of five different types of information-stealing software found on the tablets, bore the hallmarks of the Sandworm hacker gang, the Ukrainian agency added.

Britain’s GCHQ has previously said Sandworm is Unit 74455 of the GRU, Russia’s main military intelligence division.

The SBU said in a technical report published this week: “The functional purpose is to gather data from the Starlink satellite system.”

Elon Musk has been ambivalent about letting Starlink be used for active military operations Credit: Chesnot/Getty Images

Tony Adams, a researcher with Secureworks’s Counter Threat Unit, said: “The malware suite discovered by Ukraine’s SBU used a compromised device’s Starlink connection to track Ukrainian armed forces.

“If successful, this attack could have yielded extremely useful operational intelligence for Russian battlefield commanders, a goal undoubtedly on the GRU’s punch list.”

The revelation comes amid growing nervousness about Ukraine’s reliance on Mr Musk’s technology.

The billionaire has been ambivalent about letting Starlink be used for active military operations and the New York Times has reported that senior military chiefs in Kyiv have sought assurances from US counterparts as to Mr Musk’s reliability.

The SBU warning comes a month after Ukrainian cyber-security authorities warned that poorly secured Starlink terminals were potentially putting the country’s soldiers at “increased risk”.

Earlier this year another Russian weapon developed specifically to target Starlink, called Tobol, was uncovered after a US airman leaked secret intelligence documents onto online chat service Discord.

Tobol interferes with Starlink satellites’ communications to try and knock them offline, the Washington Post reported in April.

SpaceX, the operator of Starlink, was approached for comment.

The Telegraph · by Gareth Corfield

12. Exclusive: Russia Has Its Own Resistance

Is Gene Sharp taking hold in Russia?

(From Dictatorship to Democracy: https://www.aeinstein.org/s/FDTD-English.pdf)

Exclusive: Russia Has Its Own Resistance

It constitutes the tip of broader, non-violent resistance often ignored by Western press.

nysun.com5 min

August 12, 2023

JAMES BROOKE

Berkshire County, Massachusetts

James Brooke is a Contributor for the Sun.

View Original

In the week after Russia’s parliament voted to raise the military draft age to 30 from 27, Molotov cocktails were thrown at 28 draft boards across Russia. During the five peak years of the Vietnam War, by contrast, Americans attacked 51 draft boards.

In today’s Russia, this anarchic response failed to stop President Putin from signing the bill to raise the draft age. Effective in January, the new age eligibility for men comes after new laws that hike penalties for draft evasion, bar draftees from leaving the country, and institute a system of delivering draft notices by email, instead of by hand.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine stalls, Russia’s defense minister, Sergey Shoigu, has set a goal of expanding Russia’s military by 30 percent to 1.5 million. This would help fill ranks depleted by an estimated one quarter million Russian soldiers killed or wounded in Ukraine over the last 18 months.

Yet the wave of Molotov cocktails may give insight into why Mr. Putin avoids repeating his million-man “national mobilization” of last fall. The Russian Army got its million men. Another million, though, fled Russia for neighboring countries.

The war has been so disruptive to Russia’s population that the workforce shed 1.3 million young workers last year. According to a survey by Russia’s Central Bank, Russia faces its biggest labor shortage in 25 years.

Russian military conscripts in May, 2023. AP/Dmitri Lovetsky

A record 42 percent of Russian industrial companies faced a worker shortage in July, a poll by the Yegor Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy found. Even the nation’s police force shed 5,000 employees over the last month, Russia’s interior minister, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, complained Thursday.

Current Kremlinology focuses on the jockeying of factions and elites in Moscow and inside the Kremlin. The agency of the Russian people barely figures in an essay by a Carnegie fellow, Tatiana Stanovaya, “Putin’s Age of Chaos: The Dangers of Russian Disorder,” in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

Another Carnegie fellow, Andrei Kolesnikov, in his new essay: “Wait and See: How Ordinary Russians Are Adapting to the New Reality,” sets a similar tone. “During the Nazi occupation of Paris, most of the city’s residents neither supported nor opposed the Germans,” Mr. Kolesnikov wrote last week. “They were attentistes: waiting it out.”

Yet, as in wartime France, Russia today has its own resisters. For Russian speakers, alternate news feeds are just a few computer key clicks away. Rospartizan, a Telegram channel with 29,000 followers, chronicles anti-military sabotage across Russia — largely train derailments and fire bombings.

February Morning is a YouTube news channel and talk show that draws thousands of views daily. Both are organized by friends of mine in Kyiv. Rospartizan was founded by the only member of the Russian Duma to vote against Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, Ilya Ponomarev. February Morning is hosted by Peter Zalmayev, a journalist originally from Ukraine’s Donetsk.

In Russia, the attacks are generally ignored by the press and broadcast news, or, if necessary, belittled by authorities. The draft board attacks, compiled by the exiled news site Meduza, were explained as carried out by grandmothers angry over financial schemes.

Rospartizan had a field day with the recent spate of Ukrainian drone attacks in Moscow, bombings that may have benefited from on-the-ground intelligence. After a drone hit a steel and glass high rise on July 31, the government stressed that other drones were shot down.

Rospartizan noted that the drone had flown through a forest of 16 towers to hit a highrise that contains three government ministries. The next day, a second drone hit the same tower.

Rospartizan has posted several seemingly exclusive videos from Wednesday’s massive explosion at the Zagorsk factory at Sergiyev Posad, 45 miles northeast of Moscow. Visible from miles around, this blast killed one worker, wounded 60, and left eight others missing.

The factory initially was identified as producing optical electronics for the military. Rospartizan reported: “The Zagorsk Optical and Mechanical Plant produces a lot of military products, including homing heads and aircraft sights. That is, the equipment that the Putin regime uses to kill civilians.”

Then, authorities said the big blast was due to fireworks stored at the factory complex. Coincidentally, also on Wednesday, Forbes posted an article by David Axe outlining Russia’s problems on producing military optics for its tanks.

Whether providing intelligence for Ukrainian drone attacks or carrying out their own actions, Russia’s violent resisters constitute the tip of broader, non-violent resistance, a movement often ignored by Western press.

Last year, more than 21,000 Russians were penalized for protesting Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to a new report by Amnesty International. Of this group, about 10 percent received prison terms.

“Repression in Russia runs deep where a complex and extensive range of tactics are increasingly being weaponized to silence anti-war dissent,” says Amnesty International’s Russia researcher, Oleg Kozlovsky.

“Peaceful protesters against the war in Ukraine and those who share critical information about the Russian armed forces face severe criminal, administrative and other sanctions,” Mr. Kozlovsky reports. “New, absurd laws that criminalize those who freely express their views have been adopted and immediately put to use.”

This week, Kholod news site concluded a nationwide crime survey with a report headlined “One Traitor a Day.” It said that during the first seven months of this year “more criminal cases of treason will be initiated in Russia than in the previous 20 years.”

In an echo of American attitudes during the Vietnam War, anti-war sentiment in Russia is highest among young people aged 18 to 24, according to a June poll by Russian Field, a nonpartisan Moscow-based research company.

The URA.Ru news site reported last week on an incident near Lake Baikal, where last week a group of youth attacked two veterans, calling them “murderers,” and tearing off their Ukraine campaign ribbons. In another case, a Central Asian migrant worker called a recent veteran an “aggressor,” and shoved him to the ground, killing him.

For most Russian young men who lost their chance to escape the country last year, the solution is not to throw Molotov cocktails, but to lay low.

One Russian software designer in his 30s has retreated to a tent deep in the forest. He works “remotely,” using a solar-powered internet connection tied to a fir tree. Blogging under the pseudonym “Adam Kalinin,” his “Rational Forester” Telegram channel has 14,736 subscribers. Every three weeks, his wife drops off food at a safe location.

Russians have a long tradition of resisting by running. In 1936, a member of the dissenting sect of Russian orthodoxy called Old Believers named Karp Lykov fled with his wife and two children after a Soviet patrol shot and killed his brother. They ended up in a remote forest in Southern Siberia, 160 miles from the nearest human settlement.

The family was only discovered when Soviet geologists flew over the area in a helicopter — in 1978. To this day, the surviving family member, a 79-year-old daughter named Agafia, refuses to move from her wilderness refuge.

13. Georgetown Still Considering Renaming SFS After the Late Madeleine Albright

​This possible name change is generating some controversy. Will it grow beyond Georgetown? I did not know how controversial the late Secretary Albright was. And I thought Gerogetown would be politically well suited to adopt her name but according to this article apparently that is not so.

Georgetown Still Considering Renaming SFS After the Late Madeleine Albright

thehoya.com · by Caroline Rareshide · August 12, 2023

Georgetown University is still considering a proposal to rename the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) after Madeleine Albright, despite public outcry from faculty and students.

The proposed change, which was first announced at a June 7 SFS Faculty Council meeting, would change the name of the SFS to the Madeleine K. Albright School of Foreign Service. The university is not and has never considered swapping out “foreign service” for “global affairs,” despite a public letter created by professors in opposition to a name change claiming so, SFS Dean Joel Hellman told The Hoya.

“The University is considering proposals to honor the path-breaking legacy of Secretary Albright. Among the proposals being discussed is renaming the school to the ‘Madeleine K. Albright School of Foreign Service.’ There is currently no proposal under consideration to change the ‘Foreign Service’ portion of the school’s name,” Hellman wrote to The Hoya.

FILE PHOTO: OLIVIA CHUANG FOR THE HOYA |

One day after the faculty meeting where the name proposal was announced, professors Jeff Anderson, Fida Adely, Kate Chandler, Rochelle Davis, Shareen Joshi, Shiloh Krupar and Marwa Daoudy authored a public letter, which was signed by 1,411 community members before it closed at the end of June.

The letter rejects renaming the school, particularly after Albright, citing Albright’s support of U.S. interventions in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and South Eastern Europe and their resulting impacts on civilian populations.

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“By moving on with this project, the University would honor a name associated with gross human rights violations, however great a teacher and mentor Madeleine Albright was,” Daoudy wrote to The Hoya.

Following the release of the faculty letter, many students joined in their opposition, with many citing Albright’s policies toward Iraq during her time as ambassador to the United Nations and as secretary of state.

Albright once said she believed that the deaths of half a million children in Iraq were “worth it.” Many proponents of keeping Walsh’s name on the school also point to his importance as a Jesuit figure and his efforts to protect Russian Catholics from discrimination in the 1920s.

Albright’s support of sanctions on Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War made the proposed change particularly upsetting to Meriam Ahmad (SFS ’26), who is the child of Iraqi immigrants.

“It seemed like a direct challenge to my place in the school, and I felt unheard, sidelined,” Ahmad told The Hoya.

“I felt, though, the opinions of the students on campus who were directly affected or indirectly affected by Secretary of State Albright’s actions were going unheard,” Ahmad added.

Daoudy said many faculty members were also unaware that a possible name change was taking place.

“I am also deeply concerned by the decision-making process as faculty were informed about the proposal after the school year ended and many colleagues were on summer leave and unable to attend the discussions,” Daoudy added.

Hellman said campus community members have been included in the process of a possible name change.

“The SFS community has been engaged in a community-wide dialogue about how best to honor the extraordinary legacy of Madeleine Albright, who was a vital part of this community for close to 40 years. We want to celebrate her deep commitment and enduring influence on generations of our students,” Hellman told The Hoya.

Cate Howell (SFS ’24, GRD ’25) said she’s indifferent toward the name change but believes Albright’s name has more marketability than Walsh’s.

“I don’t really think most students can name his impact on the world or IR or anything like that. He founded the SFS. But I think, besides that, no one can really name anything he did,” Howell told The Hoya.

Howell said she believes Albright was not the sole decision maker for the State Department’s policies when she was in charge.

“It’s really easy to view the secretary of state as someone who does all this stuff, but really they are just one of a lot of people making these kinds of decisions,” Howell said.

“I think the fact that she recanted a lot of her statements and apologized is really important, which I don’t think a lot of public figures do,” she added.

David Trichler (GRD ’11), a former TA for Albright, sees the renaming as an opportunity to honor Albright’s compassion toward her students and to commemorate a prominent woman in international affairs.

“I think she just remembered where she came from as an immigrant, refugee to the country and started her own career later in life as a working mother. She just really paid attention to what people thought,” Trichler told The Hoya.

Trichler also recalls Albright not being defensive when students questioned her on her policy choices as ambassador to the UN and then secretary of state, especially on her support of sanctions.

“I saw her engage in that dialogue and share her perspective and encourage people to make their own decisions about processes,” Trichler said.

The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) passed June 25 a resolution 20-1 opposing the proposed renaming after Albright. Introduced by Senators John DiPierri (SFS ’25) and Julian Jimenez (CAS ’24), the resolution points to the impact on Iraqi society of Albright’s sanctions during the Gulf War. The resolution also affirmed that Walsh’s name should remain on the school.

“Replacing the name of a person who increased education in Iraq with a person who supported devastating sanctions on Iraq’s population would be an unacceptable irony,” the resolution read.

Ahmad, who is also a GUSA senator, co-sponsored the resolution.

“I thought that it was important that the organization that represents the voice of the student body also make this publicly available and make this resolution our position on the matter,” Ahmad said.

A petition created June 12 by Renato Llontop Calosi (SFS ’24) argues Fr. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., the namesake of the SFS, deserved to keep his name attached to the school that he founded. The petition, which has over 700 signatures, lauded Walsh’s service to the university.

“Removing Father Walsh as the namesake of the SFS school will erase not only his legacy, but the Catholic ethos, which encouraged the school’s founding,” Llontop Calosi said in an interview with The Hoya.

Llontop Calosi said the university should consider naming other parts of the university or places on campus after Albright.

“I think she should have some sort of recognition,” Llontop Calosi said. “But I do not believe that the whole school should be renamed.”

Hellman said in the case of a renaming, Walsh’s role will be respected.

“The proposed renaming is not motivated by a desire to remove Father Walsh’s name from the school, but to acknowledge Secretary Albright’s legacy and shape the direction of the school for the next century,” Hellman wrote.

“We are continuing to hold discussions about the most appropriate way to do so that recognizes her enduring impact on our school and in the world,” Hellman said.

thehoya.com · by Caroline Rareshide · August 12, 2023

​14. U.S. Visit by Taiwan Vice President Puts China in a Bind

U.S. Visit by Taiwan Vice President Puts China in a Bind

An aggressive response by Beijing could reignite tensions with Washington and backfire in Taiwan presidential election

By Chun Han Wong

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Joyu Wang

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 and Charles Hutzler

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Updated Aug. 12, 2023 10:18 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-visit-by-taiwan-vice-president-puts-china-in-a-bind-a275b893

Taiwan Vice President Lai Ching-te is the current front-runner in the island’s presidential race. PHOTO: RITCHIE B. TONGO/ZUMA PRESS

After Taiwan’s president traveled through the U.S. this spring, China responded with three days of live-fire military drills and a barrage of condemnations asserting its claims to the self-governing island.

Now, with Taiwan’s vice president, Lai Ching-te, touching down in New York on Saturday night, China’s leaders have more to think about as they weigh a response.

Beijing repeatedly warned the U.S. against allowing Lai to stop in the U.S. on his way to and from Paraguay, denouncing the route as provocative. China’s military stepped up sorties into the airspace and waters near Taiwan in the days leading up to Lai’s trip, and its state broadcaster released a documentary that featured soldiers expressing a willingness to die in an attack on the island.

Yet Beijing could limit its response for a range of reasons, according to Taiwanese officials and political analysts.

One is fear of upsetting a delicate effort to ease tensions with Washington. Another is the potential effect on Taiwan’s presidential election in January. Lai is the current front-runner in the race and a provocative action could boost his popularity among Taiwanese voters who increasingly resent perceived bullying by mainland China.

“Any maneuvering by Beijing, based on past experiences in the last few years, may just help Lai to score points,” said a senior Taiwanese official, referring to past elections in which aggressive Chinese action boosted the ruling party’s candidate. “This holds no benefits for Beijing.”

Lai’s transit comes as Washington and Beijing try to ease tension with tentative efforts to manage friction over Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, espionage and technology controls. For Beijing, easing tensions with Washington would help reduce external pressures weighing on China’s sluggish economy, though Chinese officials have also stressed to American counterparts that they won’t compromise on their core interests—including the goal of unifying Taiwan with the mainland.

Lai is scheduled to depart for Paraguay on Sunday evening as part of a seven-day trip to attend the inauguration of Paraguay’s incoming president. In keeping with past precedent for such trips, Lai won’t go to Washington but is due to stop by San Francisco on his way back to Taiwan.

The passage of Taiwanese officials through the U.S., officially referred to as transits, are part of deliberated arrangements made between Washington and Taipei to allow its leaders to engage with the other side on American soil after the two governments cut formal diplomatic ties in 1979. 

The arrangements around Lai’s transit don’t differ from previous practices and shouldn’t be used as a pretext by China to engage in provocations, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said last month.

Recent opinion polls suggest that Lai, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, is leading the race to succeed President Tsai Ing-wen next year, though observers say the three-way contest is too volatile to pick a favorite, with months to go before the election in January.

Ahead of Lai’s trip, Chinese state media blasted Lai as a separatist bent on stoking tensions. Beijing considers him a more fervent advocate of Taiwan independence than Tsai. That is partly because of previous remarks he has made, including in 2017 when he described himself as a “pragmatic” worker for Taiwan independence.

Lai has said, if elected, he wouldn’t seek to change the status quo between Taiwan and the mainland. Discussing his 2017 remarks in a television interview aired Monday, Lai said he was referring to how he would work to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty. “The fact is Taiwan is not part of the People’s Republic of China,” he said.

American and Taiwanese officials plan to keep Lai under wraps during his U.S. transit. He is expected to meet with members of the Taiwanese community in New York and San Francisco. Unlike Tsai’s stops in late March and early April, Lai won’t give public remarks, won’t meet with U.S. think-tank scholars and is unlikely to see administration officials other than ones who handle Taiwan policy, though members of Congress are likely to turn up.

Representatives of Lai and his party traveled to Washington last month in part to prepare for the trip. A message the U.S. officials conveyed, according to a person familiar with the talks: The U.S. is listening to Lai’s every word.

One reason for the Biden administration’s concern was a recent comment Lai made while campaigning, saying that he looked forward to the day when “the president of Taiwan can walk into the White House.” The remark raised eyebrows because it suggested Lai could be seeking full diplomatic recognition for Taiwan, a red line for Beijing. 

The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, has intensified its almost-daily incursions into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zones, sending two dozen jet fighters, bombers and other aircraft on sorties near the island on Sunday, and another 33 on Thursday.

The Chinese state broadcaster this week also began airing “Chasing Dreams,” an eight-part documentary series to mark the 96th anniversary of the PLA’s founding that features footage of military drills around Taiwan. It includes an interview with a Chinese jet pilot saying, “My fighter would be my last missile” if actual battle were to break out.

On Friday, the day before Lai departed for the U.S., Chinese maritime authorities announced a three-day military drill off the coast of Zhejiang province, roughly 300 miles northeast of Taiwan. Taipei’s Ministry of National Defense said the island’s military would closely monitor the exercise.

“One Chinese tactic used in cognitive warfare is to amplify routine drills by disseminating information in an exaggerated manner,” Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang, the spokesman for Taiwan’s military, said in an interview Saturday before Lai departed for New York. “This is an attempt to magnify the perceived threat of a routine drill to Taiwan,” he said, referring to the exercise and any possible Chinese reactions.

Some political analysts expect China to further step up military activities near Taiwan in response to Lai’s trip, perhaps even repeating the April live-fire exercises.

Beijing “will not overreact, but react they certainly will,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University who studies China’s foreign policy. “While it serves Beijing’s interests to have better relations with Washington at this moment,” that doesn’t mean the Chinese leadership would shy from taking strong action on Taiwan, if they deem it necessary, he said.

Nonetheless, the analysts say, Beijing will have to consider how displays of military power have fueled Taiwanese resentment in the past. After China ran combat drills and fired missiles near Taiwan ahead of the island’s 1996 presidential election, the incumbent president, Lee Teng-hui, who had helped steer the island toward democracy and was seen as supportive of Taiwanese nationhood, won with 54% of the vote.

If China reacts strongly to Lai’s transit, “it’s going to backfire actually for Beijing,” said Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist who teaches Taiwan studies at Australian National University.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com, Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com and Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com

15. A DuPont China Deal Reveals Cracks in U.S. National-Security Screening

A DuPont China Deal Reveals Cracks in U.S. National-Security Screening

U.S. officials crafted a compromise to address worries about China’s military. It didn’t go as planned.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-dupont-china-deal-reveals-cracks-in-u-s-national-security-screening-665cb50c?mod=hp_lead_pos5

By Kate O’KeeffeFollow

 and Aruna ViswanathaFollow

Aug. 12, 2023 9:00 pm ET

WASHINGTON—U.S. officials forged an uneasy compromise to let DuPont sell its sustainable-materials business last year to a Chinese company while ensuring the technology behind it never left the U.S.

The arrangement hasn’t worked as planned, according to people familiar with the matter, exposing flaws in a national-security review process on the front lines of a battle over technology between the U.S. and China—and ultimately prompting an investigation by the FBI.

Divisions on the cabinet-level committee that screens sensitive deals involving foreign buyers were so deep that the government review took more than a year, including an unsuccessful appeal for President Biden to intervene. And the solution members ultimately settled on was undermined in just a few weeks.

At issue was a DuPont technology used to make a key component of a more sustainable version of nylon. After initially describing the invention as revolutionary, DuPont decided a few years ago to sell the business. It found a willing buyer in China, prompting DuPont to apply for permission to proceed from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius. The panel, led by the Treasury Department, includes representatives of the departments of Defense, Justice, Energy and Commerce and other agencies. 

The Biden administration early on identified Cfius, whose job is to ensure that such deals don’t end up putting sensitive U.S. technology, data or real estate in hostile hands, as a linchpin in plans to square off with the world’s second-largest economy and reorient the U.S. economy away from China. In another prong of those efforts, the administration on Wednesday banned U.S. investments in some Chinese semiconductor and quantum-computing companies starting next year.

On DuPont, members of Cfius were split on how to proceed. The reason: a U.S. intelligence assessment that byproducts from one of DuPont’s manufacturing processes could theoretically serve as a high-quality base for fuel used in cutting-edge weapons. That had the potential to aid China when Washington is deeply concerned over Beijing’s military expansionism. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin disagreed about whether to block the DuPont deal. PHOTO: TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL/ZUMA PRESS

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin argued in a tense video call with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others that the deal should be blocked. Treasury didn’t agree. The agency found those concerns too abstract, and believed that scuttling a transaction on such grounds would amount to improper market interference.

Officials on the Cfius panel reached a complicated compromise to approve the sale, which closed in May 2022. But no sooner had it been signed than Cfius was told its effort to protect the industrial secret involved hadn’t worked. The process of figuring out what went awry is still under way. 

Cfius deliberations are confidential. This article is based on interviews with people familiar with the discussions of the companies and government agencies involved in the transaction and its aftermath.

‘Sustainable Nylon’ Is Born

DuPont got its start selling gunpowder to the likes of Thomas Jefferson, and grew into a titan of U.S. industry in the 20th century with inventions such as nylon by scientist Wallace Carothers and Kevlar by Stephanie Kwolek.

The company also became the largest employer and philanthropist in Delaware, developing a decadeslong relationship with Joe Biden and shaping his views on the American economy before he became president. 

DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers’s research in high polymers in 1928 led to the development of nylon. PHOTO: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

In 2007, with a British partner, DuPont opened a $100 million factory in Tennessee to use corn to produce an ingredient called BioPDO to make everything from makeup to a replacement for petroleum-based nylon.

The U.S. energy secretary, at the launch, said the facility would build on U.S. efforts to reduce its reliance on imported oil and fight climate change.

DuPont’s innovation involved taking bulk corn grown in the Midwest, crushing it, mixing it with enzymes and creating a sugar. That sugar could be fed into a fermentation tank with bacteria bioengineered to produce the unique liquid known as BioPDO. The substance could then be used to make products such as cosmetics and detergents, and to produce pellets that could be spun into fibers.

One of the resulting products was marketed as “Sorona” and used in clothing and carpeting. While polyester is stiff and cheap and nylon is resilient but expensive, Sorona appeared to have the best of both, including just the right amount of stretch. “We talked about it as the ‘billion-dollar kink,’ ” said Ray Miller, who led the development of the product and retired from DuPont in 2011.

In 2017, under pressure from activist shareholders, DuPont merged with Dow Chemical, and then the combined company split into three. The biomaterials business didn’t fit into the new structure, and DuPont sought buyers. It settled on the Huafon Group of China, a private industrial concern that is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of polyurethane materials.

DuPont announced the deal without disclosing the buyer in the fall of 2020 and sought the blessing of Cfius. 

A model shows off her nylon stockings in 1955, and another model, in 2019, wears a faux fur coat made with Sorona fibers.

MONDADORI PORTFOLIO/ZUMA PRESS; ICONIC/GC IMAGES

Internal Divisions Dog Cfius

Established in 1975, Cfius began scrutinizing Chinese deals more aggressively during the Obama administration. That focus sharpened during the Trump administration after Congress in 2018 expanded the panel’s powers. But the committee still struggles to be effective at times. It is at the center of a messy, yearslong review of the popular Chinese-owned social-media app TikTok.

In cases when Cfius approves a deal with conditions, compliance largely depends on the companies themselves. When parties violate a Cfius agreement, they are rarely punished: The panel has announced only two fines for noncompliance.

Deep internal divisions among its members are a challenge. The Pentagon and other departments that focus on security issues often push for a broader interpretation of foreign threats. The Treasury and Commerce Departments, tasked primarily with championing U.S. industry and economic interests, tend to take a narrower view.

Pentagon officials wanted Cfius to push DuPont to sell the business to an American buyer. Given the intelligence assessment, they worried about the possible military implications of the biomaterials technology moving to China, where laws mandate that private companies comply with Chinese Communist Party demands. 

The officials also wanted to know why DuPont would agree to a deal with Huafon despite earlier misadventures with Chinese partners, including intellectual-property disputes involving Sorona that prompted Chinese authorities in 2017 to raid DuPont’s Shanghai offices and demand passwords to its research network.

Huafon’s chairman has described the deal as part of the company’s strategic efforts to strengthen its supply chain in biomaterials.

DuPont’s corporate headquarters in Wilmington, Del., in 2015. PHOTO: MARK MAKELA/GETTY IMAGES

Some U.S. officials suspected that DuPont selected Huafon to curry favor with Beijing as DuPont sought greater access to China’s booming electric-vehicles market. The U.S. officials considered any such arrangement an unsavory quid pro quo. 

A DuPont spokesman said the Huafon deal wasn’t part of any attempt by the company to gain greater market access in China, adding that by the end of the sales process there were no U.S. bidders interested in the purchase. 

Treasury and Commerce officials found their counterparts’ concerns around the intelligence assessment overblown, and they deemed considerations such as DuPont’s possible motive for the sale irrelevant. They also thought the idea of trying to engineer a sale to a U.S. buyer was inappropriate.

The disagreements, often tense, dragged on for months.

Cfius officials pushing to block the deal asked to meet with Biden to break the stalemate. The White House declined, instead offering a meeting with Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. Sullivan said he agreed the deal presented substantial risks but directed the departments to work it out among themselves. 

A Complicated Compromise

The compromise Cfius settled on was to allow the purchase to go ahead with a major condition: Huafon wasn’t to gain access to the proprietary fermentation process DuPont used to make the corn-derived product, BioPDO, at its Tennessee plant.

To meet the condition, Huafon created a new U.S. holding company called Covation Inc. Under that umbrella, two more entities were formed: Covation Biomaterials, which holds the majority of the assets from DuPont’s biomaterials business; and CovaPDO, a small carve-out that Huafon wasn’t permitted to access because it holds the secrets of the BioPDO production process. 

Huafon and the three Covation companies signed what is known as a national-security agreement with Cfius pledging to honor those terms. With Cfius’s blessing, DuPont and Huafon then closed the $240 million deal in May 2022.

A month later, as Defense Department officials were planning a trip to China to ensure that the key technology hadn’t made its way to Huafon, they got some very unwelcome news: CovationBio employees found information on their servers that should have stayed within CovaPDO, meaning the Cfius effort to ringfence the sensitive technology had been undermined.

FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. PHOTO: TING SHEN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Some “slippage,” as it is known among specialists who work on company integrations, isn’t uncommon. But Pentagon officials were furious and suspected the potential breach of the Cfius agreement was deliberate, following a preliminary investigation into the matter. They, with the support of their Energy Department counterparts, called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which launched a criminal probe, the status of which couldn’t be determined. The FBI declined to comment. 

In the aftermath, DuPont and Covation, in statements to the Journal, traded blame on who was responsible. Covation said DuPont transferred the information to the wrong corporate entity; DuPont said it acted at Covation’s direction. 

Covation said that after its employees noticed the problem, it locked down the relevant information and hired an auditor who reports to Cfius to investigate. It added that the investigation hadn’t found evidence that the information was accessed by anyone outside Covation or the U.S., and said Huafon hadn’t sought or received access to the technology at issue. 

In September, in a move prompted in part by difficulties in handling the DuPont deal, Biden issued an executive order heightening scrutiny of deals that may give China and other adversaries access to critical technologies. 

The order, the White House said at the time, was meant “to ensure that Cfius remains an effective tool to combat these threats now and in the future.” 

Clarence Leong contributed to this article.

Write to Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com and Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com

16. See where Sen. Tommy Tuberville is blocking 301 military promotions

Graphics at the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/12/military-promotions-blocked-tuberville/?utm

See where Sen. Tommy Tuberville is blocking 301 military promotions

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · August 12, 2023

Military

By

and

Hannah Dormido

August 12, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

From Alabama to Asia, the scope of senior military officers frozen in place by a dispute between Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is vast, including not only the incoming leaders of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but generals and admirals focused on China policy, arming Ukraine, and modernizing U.S. combat forces after 20 years of war.

Data obtained and verified by The Washington Post reveals that, as of Aug. 12, 301 high-level positions were ensnared in Tuberville’s hold. That number is expected to more than double by the end of the year, officials say, unless the impasse, which stems from the Pentagon’s abortion policy, is resolved. By year’s end, The Pentagon estimates that about three-quarters of the generals and admirals in the Defense Department — 650 of 852 — will be affected by Tuberville’s hold.

Note: Air Force and Army data includes active duty, National Guard and reserve positions. Navy data includes active duty and reserve jobs.

Each of the Defense Department’s five branches of service is affected, as is President Biden’s nominee to assume the military’s top role, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. The prospective heads of the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps are all in limbo, too, along with each service’s No. 2 position. Yet those roles, all based in Washington, represent only a sliver of controversy’s global reach.

Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, implemented the hold in February to protest Austin’s response to last year’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that for nearly 50 years guaranteed a fundamental right to abortion. The policy provides paid leave and reimburses travel expenses incurred by military personnel who must leave the state where they are assigned because the procedure was banned or otherwise restricted there after the high court ended federal protections.

Those in the military, Austin has argued, do not get to choose where they serve and deserve access to reproductive care. Tuberville’s view is that federal money should not be used to cover abortion and anything connected to it.

His hold is not absolute, but it gums up the usual process in which well-qualified, noncontroversial nominees are approved by the Senate in batches. It’s possible to vote on them individually, but doing so would take months, Democrats say.

A spokesman for Tuberville, Steven Stafford, said that Republicans and Democrats alike have used holds on both civilian officials and military officers in the past.

“The Senate has a right and duty to advise and consent to the President’s nominations and to conduct oversight over the Pentagon,” Stafford said in an email. For not bringing individual names to the Senate floor for a vote, he said, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is to blame.

Previous holds have been resolved relatively quickly, however, making this case uniquely troubling and destructive over time, said Peter Feaver, a professor who studies civil-military relations at Duke University. Feaver, a national security official during the presidential administration of George W. Bush, said the nation is now in “rare and uncharted territory” given the sweep and significance of the roles affected.

What the data show:

Air Force: 98 on hold

Air Force generals affected by the hold begin at the very top, where Brown is expected to be elevated this fall to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. David Allvin has been nominated to replace Brown at the top of the Air Force.

Other frozen nominees include Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider, who is expected to be promoted to four-star general and become the next commander of Pacific Air Forces, a post central to U.S. policy toward China and North Korea; Lt. Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, slated to be the next four-star general overseeing U.S. Northern Command, central to homeland defense; and Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, a four-star general expected to take over at Air Combat Command, which directs the service’s fleet of fighter aircraft.

Army: 91 on hold

Among the Army officers affected are Biden’s nominees for the service’s top two jobs: Gen. Randy George and Gen. James Mingus. Others include Maj. Gen. John W. Brennan Jr., who is expected to be promoted and become the next deputy commander at U.S. Africa Command as it prosecutes an expansive counterterrorism mission on the continent; and Lt. Gen. Laura Potter, who is slated to take over as the director of Army Staff, coordinating work between the service and Austin’s office.

Marine Corps: 18 on hold

Gen. Eric M. Smith, the Marines’ assistant commandant, has served as the service’s acting chief since early July. It’s the first time since 1910 that there has been no Senate-confirmed commandant. Smith’s would-be successor, Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney also is on hold. So is the presumed next commanding general of Marine forces in Japan, Maj. Gen. Roger Turner, another job vital to the Pentagon’s China and North Korea strategies, and the next deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations, Lt. Gen. James “Chip” Bierman.

Navy: 86 on hold

The Navy’s frozen nominees include Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who will make history as the first woman on the Joint Chiefs if confirmed as chief of naval operations. Others on hold include Vice Adm. James Kilby, who is expected to be promoted and replace Franchetti as vice chief of naval operations; Adm. Samuel Paparo, who is slated to become the next commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, a core joint assignment responding directly to the Chinese military; and Vice Adm. Stephen T. Koehler, tapped for promotion and to become the next four-star commander at U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Space Force: 8 on hold

The Pentagon’s smallest and youngest service has fewer nominees caught in the hold, but there are still several significant jobs involved. They include Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, nominated to become the next four-star commander of U.S. Space Command, and Lt. Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, tapped to be the next four-star vice chief of space operations.

Feaver, the Duke professor, said he was struck by the number of “warfighting” positions affected, notably in the Pacific. Leaving jobs like the chief of Indo-Pacific Command without a confirmed successor, he said, undermines U.S. messaging that it considers Beijing its chief competitor.

“This is a gift to China, and it’s a gift that keeps giving day in and day out,” Feaver said.

Feaver said the situation also leaves the United States on less steady footing with allies and partners. Numerous nominees are expected to cultivate strong relationships overseas. Of note: Brig. Gen. Charles D. Bolton, an Air Force officer nominated to become deputy commanding general of Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, an organization established last year in Wiesbaden, Germany, to oversee the flow of weapons to the government in Kyiv as it fights off a Russian invasion. More than a dozen other affected jobs are spread across Europe, the data shows.

Katherine L. Kuzminski, a senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security, noted that nearly two dozen affected nominees would have oversight of U.S. military operations in the Pacific, including posts in Hawaii, South Korea and Japan.

While the military is struggling through a major recruiting crisis, Navy nominees who would have direct oversight of accessions are directly affected, Kuzminski noted. They include Rear. Adm. Jeffrey J. Czerewko, nominated to be the commander of Naval Education and Training Command, and Navy Capt. Craig T. Mattingly, up for promotion and selected to run Naval Service Training Command.

Kevin Uhrmacher contributed to this report.

correction

Defense Department data informing this report misidentified the locations of four positions affected by Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s promotions hold. The head of U.S. Northern Command is based in Colorado; the Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements is based in Washington, D.C.; the deputy commander of Pacific Air Forces is based in Hawaii; and the deputy commander of the Army’s Combined Arms Center is based in Kansas. The article has been updated.

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · August 12, 2023

17. Defense Budget Déjà Vu: Why Conservatives Should Again Lead to Rein in Defense Costs

Defense Budget Déjà Vu: Why Conservatives Should Again Lead to Rein in Defense Costs

Published 08/12/23 08:30 AM ET

Kris Kolesnik

themessenger.com · August 12, 2023

America’s attention has been tsunamied by media coverage of Donald Trump’s legal troubles. As the former president’s supporters in Congress jockey with Democrats to score points and turn the narrative, much of the people’s important business is being neglected.

As if to slap Washington back to reality, Fitch Ratings downgraded the U.S. credit rating a critical notch, citing “a high and growing general government debt burden,” as if to scream, “Hey, America! While your government is fiddling, your future is burning!”

Indeed, the nation’s public debt is rapidly nearing a staggering $33 trillion. Interest payments on the debt are a whopping $475 billion last year, an increase of 35% over the previous year. Next year will add another 35%! Interest payments are quickly crowding out other spending priorities.

The last time I can remember such a fiscal crisis was in the early years of the Reagan administration, when a recession created a string of future deficits — an at-the-time unheard-of $200 billion a year or more — for as far as the eye could see. In his election, President Reagan was given a mandate to raise defense spending.

He was also given one to balance the budget. Nonetheless, Reagan pushed for an unprecedented peacetime defense budget build-up. That scenario compelled Congress to put all federal spending under a microscope, including defense.

Until that time, the debate against larger defense budgets was dominated by the liberal nuclear freeze movement, which argued for strategic arms control — or they used a guns vs. butter argument to avoid cuts in social programs. Those liberal arguments didn’t cut it against Reagan’s “Peace Through Strength” slogan.

Enter a new coalition that rejected those arguments in favor of conservative effectiveness and efficiency arguments driven by the Pentagon’s own data. That coalition was led by Republicans — dubbed “The Great Plains Rebels” — plus a few moderate Democrats, with the help of Defense Department insiders and whistleblowers.

We rose to the challenge then. It needs to be done again, now.

To simplify: the excessive Reagan budget increases were creating higher weapons costs and overhead rather than more defense capability. The force structure was shrinking as was readiness, and too often weapons didn’t work as planned. That’s because the defense industry/Pentagon complex couldn’t effectively manage such huge increases. The defense budget was a fiscal and defense capability nightmare. The bureaucracy hid these failures from Congress and the public.

A then-little-known non-profit called The Project on Military Procurement (PMP) began to collect information from Pentagon insiders and whistleblowers that exposed all aspects of the budget mess. Members of Congress also developed confidential Pentagon sources. We learned that the vaunted five-year defense plan (FYDP) was only loosely wired to a military strategy; rather, it reflected chaotic planning, cost overruns, and politically engineered weapons purchases doled out to “strategic” congressional districts.

Using an old farm term, we called the defense budget a “blivet” — 10 pounds of manure in a five-pound sack, full of overpriced, underfunded, and outdated-before-completed weapons.

We learned about decades-old bureaucratic schemes at DOD that brought this all about. Live-fire weapons tests were falsified to avoid production stoppages. Contractors conspired with defense insiders to detect budget amounts before negotiating contracts; with that knowledge, they could absorb it all with contract change orders to add new bells and whistles to weapons. Only 6% of total defense dollars were let competitively. Contractors had the taxpayers over a barrel, often with help from department and congressional officials who needed jobs after retirement. DOD had turned the defense budget into an entitlement program.

We passed laws to stop them.

In 1985 we froze the defense budget after just two years of publicly airing these flaws. The public grew outraged over exorbitant spare parts prices, like a $640 toilet seat, a $435 hammer and the like. That was in the middle of the Cold War. The defense budget mandate was squandered. But the department was more transparent and had more oversight checks built in.

Fast-forward to this spring — 30 years removed from that defense debate — and I was shocked to learn, while watching CBS’s 60 Minutes, that some of those pathologies have resurfaced.

Contractors are denying DOD access to cost and design data that we pay for. Exorbitant price-gouging, a problem we thought we addressed by mandating more competition and better access to cost-and-pricing data, has returned.

More than 50% of the $800 billion-plus defense budget goes to contractors, so competition is crucial for a robust defense industry and for taxpayers.

Doing online research to get caught up — and re-connecting with the non-profit PMP, now called Project on Government Oversight (POGO) — I learned that consolidation within the defense industrial base since the mid-1990s has caused the number of competing companies to shrink considerably. The number of prime contractors went from 51 to just five, a 90% drop. Without the ability to foster competition, contractors once again have taxpayers over a barrel — only worse now.

That shouldn’t happen in a monopsony, in which a single buyer has leverage to control suppliers’ costs. Not so with a shrinking defense industrial base. I can’t imagine what present-day spare parts cost under a monopoly supplier.

It's safe to say that Washington failed to learn from the 1980s.

All over again, DOD is trying to hide the FYDP from Congress; the blivet is back; they’re once again stuffing that same 5-pound sack, with unprioritized programs having questionable links to the threat strategy; price-gouging has returned triumphantly; cost-and-pricing and tech-and-design data is being withheld.

In a haunting déjà vu, the defense budget is back to the same old mess.

Given the Fitch wake-up call, our weapons supply build-up for Ukraine, China’s rising threat in the Taiwan strait, and our shrinking industrial base, the U.S. is playing ball with its hands tied, fiscally and militarily. It’ll take an all-of-government effort with the same kind of conservative approach we used in the Reagan years to fix the problem — and with similar energy and passion currently being channeled into the polarizing distractions of today.

Kris Kolesnik is an expert on federal government oversight. He spent nearly 20 years as senior counselor and director of investigations for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). He then served as executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, after which, he spent 10 years working with the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General as the associate inspector general for external affairs.

themessenger.com · August 12, 2023

18. The End of Progressive Elitism?

Conclusion:

No one expects these fledgling efforts to dislodge the Ivy League and its peers from their place at the top of America’s higher-education status hierarchy, at least not yet. What we can say is that many young Americans and their families are looking for alternatives to elite education as we’ve come to know it, and a growing number of civic entrepreneurs are hoping to revive something like the still-resonant meritocratic ideal.

The End of Progressive Elitism?

The Ivy League’s theory of legitimacy is under attack from two directions.

By Reihan Salam

The Atlantic · by Reihan Salam · August 12, 2023

A renowned political philosopher, Amy Gutmann was in some ways an inspired choice to serve as President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Germany. Over the course of a long and fruitful academic career, she has made enormous contributions to the theory of deliberative democracy, identity politics, and the role of educational institutions in a pluralistic society, lines of inquiry that are as urgent as ever on both sides of the Atlantic. And in the thick of Russia’s war in Ukraine, there is an undeniable resonance to having the daughter of a German Jewish refugee represent U.S. interests in Berlin.

But I suspect it was not Gutmann’s considerable achievements as a public intellectual or her ancestral ties that won her one of the nation’s most prestigious ambassadorial appointments. A more likely explanation is that the president felt he owed her a debt of gratitude, as she gave him something more precious than even the most eye-wateringly large Super PAC contribution.

Prior to taking on her new role, Gutmann served as president of the University of Pennsylvania for 18 years, where she was celebrated, and well compensated, for her prodigious fundraising and strategic acumen. Notably, she presided over the establishment of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in February 2017, which was initially led by Joe Biden, who at the same time was named the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Having a former vice president on your faculty is no small thing, and Gutmann and Biden appear to have developed a strong rapport. And when Biden’s granddaughter Maisy Biden applied for admission to Penn in 2018, he intervened personally to press her case to Gutmann, who seems to have given the former vice president valuable advice about improving her chances. Despite an imperfect academic record, the younger Biden matriculated at Penn in the fall of 2019 and graduated this past spring. By then, Gutmann was comfortably ensconced in Berlin.

Annie Lowrey: Why you have to care about these 12 colleges

I don’t begrudge Biden for doing whatever he could to secure his granddaughter’s admission to a prestigious university, an admirable act of grandfatherly devotion, or Gutmann for having been receptive to his entreaties, as her job was in no small part to add luster to the University of Pennsylvania. The relationship between them is striking nevertheless. One would normally expect a university president to be solicitous toward a former vice president of the United States, not the other way around.

But Gutmann wasn’t the president of just any university. She was the president of an Ivy League university, and that made all the difference. Her relationship with the Biden family is a perfect distillation of the immense influence of the Ivy League and its peer institutions—and it points to how that influence might come undone.

Armed with billion-dollar endowments, America’s most selective universities have in recent decades transformed themselves into “the makers of manners” for the nation’s mass affluent population. By mixing the children of the rich and powerful with the children of designated disadvantaged groups, they’ve given rise to a new progressive elite that holds enormous sway over the nation’s cultural and political life. Now, as Ivy-plus admissions practices come under intense scrutiny from left and right, this potent alchemy is at risk, opening the door for a new set of elite-making institutions.

One of Gutmann’s distinguished predecessors as U.S. ambassador to Germany is James Bryant Conant, who served as the U.S. high commissioner for Germany and then as the first U.S. ambassador to the Federal Republic at the dawn of the Cold War. In a neat parallel, Conant took on the role after a highly consequential 20-year tenure as president of Harvard University.

Between Conant’s era and Gutmann’s, elite higher education in America reached the zenith of its power. But Conant’s vision for Harvard and Gutmann’s vision for Penn were strikingly different.

The product of a working-class childhood in Boston, Conant famously sought to transform Harvard from a finishing school for the WASP elite into a more meritocratic institution, tasking administrators at the university with finding an aptitude test that would select for the nation’s brightest, most capable young people, which later formed the basis of the SAT. He believed that Harvard could help realize “Jefferson’s ideal,” a nation led by a public-spirited intellectual elite, chosen through a rigorous, evidence-based process. To many Americans, some version of Conant’s thesis is the most compelling justification for the elevated status of Harvard and institutions like it, which is why departures from the meritocratic ideal tend to undermine the legitimacy of Ivy League eliteness.

This brand of meritocratic elitism has never been fully realized in practice, certainly not in the Ivy League. For one, Conant himself presided over Jewish quotas, and he’s been accused of indifference—at a minimum—to the scourge of antisemitism. A long line of university administrators in the decades since have abandoned meritocratic elitism, converging on a different and arguably more robust foundation for eliteness. In lieu of a single-minded focus on academic excellence, elite higher education has taken a more pluralistic approach, one that blends students selected solely on the basis of academic credentials with others whose presence is meant to enrich university life, figuratively and literally. For much of this period, these departures from a meritocratic paradigm were seen as concessions to the imperative of fundraising and other prosaic institutional objectives. In more recent years, however, this brand of admissions pluralism has been given a moral makeover. Call it progressive elitism.

In May 1995, Gutmann, then the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and dean of the faculty at Princeton, delivered the esteemed Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford. Her remarks were focused on racial injustice, which she referred to as “the most morally and intellectually vexing problem in the public life of this country.”

One of Gutmann’s central arguments is that because “public policies and individual practices that would effectively address racial injustice are collective goods,” it is fair and reasonable “for blacks to criticize other blacks who benefit from their efforts to combat racial injustice but who do nothing to aid this cause or an equally urgent one.” That is, Black Americans “need to unite in order to combat racial injustice” by, for example, supporting affirmative-action policies.

And according to Gutmann, it is not just Black Americans who have a special obligation in this domain. “The fewer burdens of race we have to bear,” she argues, “the greater our obligations are to overcome racial injustice.” Americans who are not Black “have a special obligation to fight racial injustice so as to decrease the likelihood that they will be the beneficiaries of unfair advantages that stem from the racial stereotyping of social offices and other forms of institutionalized injustices that unfairly disadvantage blacks.”

If Gutmann is right that advantaged individuals and groups have a special obligation to eschew unfair advantages that reinforce racial inequality, how should one understand the concerted effort of President Biden to secure his granddaughter’s admission to the University of Pennsylvania—or rather, how should we expect the political philosopher Amy Gutmann to understand it?

One potential resolution is that the end justifies the means. That is, it is reasonable and appropriate for privileged people to leverage their status, relationships, and wealth to secure high-status educational opportunities if doing so serves the larger cause of racial and social justice.

Someone in Gutmann’s position could maintain that because the institution she controls is aligned with causes she and her peers deem worthy, admitting students who can enhance its centrality and prestige is in itself a noble pursuit. A commitment to egalitarianism gives Penn and universities like it not just moral license but moral imperative to fortify their student bodies with the children and grandchildren of the nation’s most privileged families. Doing so gives progressive university presidents like Gutmann a powerful tool to shape the rising generation of the American elite.

Crucially, this project of elite-making needs a more broadly acceptable theory of legitimacy. If meritocratic elitism is justified by the need to inculcate a sense of patriotism and civic duty in the best and brightest, progressive elitism is justified by the need to diversify the American elite. That means increasing the representation of Black Americans and other historically disadvantaged groups in prominent roles in American public life—but it also means protecting and strengthening the role of the Ivy League as an opportunity choke point. Under progressive elitism, the Ivy League isn’t just where dynastic wealth meets the dynamism of first-generation strivers. It is where America’s elite gains its moral imprimatur.

The Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case shed light on how this approach to elite-making has worked in practice. Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit legal advocacy group opposed to racial preferences, retained the Duke University labor economist Peter Arcidiacono to analyze who was admitted to Harvard and who was not, drawing on years of closely guarded data that the university was obliged to share with the plaintiffs. His expert testimony revealed the extent to which the university’s admissions practices disadvantaged Asian American applicants, which helped galvanize conservative critics of race-conscious admissions. Arcidiacono and his co-authors also drew attention to Harvard’s preferences for recruited athletes, legacies, prospective students on the dean’s interest list, and children of faculty and staff (ALDCs), which were in some cases strikingly large.

Alarmed by Arcidiacono’s findings, critics and champions of race-conscious admissions united in denouncing preferences for ALDCs, a rare instance of cross-ideological agreement. But racial preferences and preferences for ALDCs are fundamentally complementary, and it is this complementarity that serves as the cornerstone of progressive elitism.

Consider the mounting evidence that the chief advantage of an elite education is not the quality of instruction but rather the access it gives to relationships with powerful people. In a recent New York Times op-ed, the Princeton sociologist Shamus Khan described how the social binding together of students from privileged and less privileged backgrounds can redound to the benefit of the latter.

“Graduating from an elite school,” writes Khan, “affiliates you with an illustrious organization, offers you connections to people with friends in high places and acculturates you in the conventions and etiquette of high-status settings.” But while students from privileged backgrounds have access to networks of affluent, educated, professionally accomplished adults even before attending institutions such as Harvard or Penn, less privileged students do not. When these students are brought together, the privileged students gain a sense of validation—of their intellect, accomplishments, and character—and the less privileged gain social and cultural capital that can hasten their post-college professional ascent.

Though Khan is no defender of legacy preferences, he observes that “legacy students, with their deep social and cultural connections, are part of the reason less advantaged students get so much out of elite schools.” This logic applies not just to legacy students but to other privileged students as well, including the children and grandchildren of prominent elected officials, major philanthropists, academic and cultural luminaries, and perhaps even accomplished equestrians and squash players.

And progressive elitism is doing much more than just shaping the manners, mores, and life trajectories of students attending elite universities. It allows admissions officers to engage in soulcraft on a much grander scale.

In 2010, the economists Valerie and Garey Ramey found that intensified competition for prestigious college slots from the mid-1990s on led to a dramatic increase in the time and resources college-educated U.S. parents devoted to their children’s development. In contrast, there was no comparable increase in rivalry among parents in Canada, where the prestige hierarchy in higher education is not nearly as steep. The Rameys conclude that the net result of this intensified competition has been a wasteful, zero-sum “rug rat race.”

Building on this empirical foundation, the essayist Matt Feeney goes further still. In his 2021 book, Little Platoons, he denounces the hubris of selective college admissions, accusing admissions officers of arrogating to themselves extraordinary power over the inner lives of aspirational parents and their children.

Faced with a surge of applications as Millennials came of age, Feeney posits, “admissions people came to grasp that the selection power this competition had given them was also a deep and subtle sort of moral power … They could now tell their applicants which extracurriculars were better, and which sort of personal confessions were more pleasing in admissions essays, which sorts of person, as manifest in these essays and extracurriculars, they liked more.” By signaling these behavioral preferences to parents, teachers, counselors, and anxious young strivers highly susceptible to small gradations of status, admissions officers found that “they could now induce their applicants to become such people.”

A number of scholars and practitioners have called for using selective college admissions to “nudge” parents and students in several ways. In 2017, for example, Thomas Scott-Railton published a provocative article in the Yale Law & Policy Review urging elite colleges to give a substantial admissions bonus to applicants who had attended high-poverty K–12 schools even if they were not from low-income households themselves. “By rewarding applicants for attending socioeconomically integrated schools,” he argued, “colleges would mobilize the resources of private actors across the country towards integration.”

Leaving aside the merits of this particular proposal, it speaks to the extraordinary power that elite higher education has over the nation’s middle-class-and-up families. Scott-Railton’s proposal could be seen as an exercise in having Ivy League institutions advance a policy objective that Congress would likely reject. Striking legislative bargains in a culturally plural society is hard. Winning over the admissions office is a significantly lighter lift.

This disciplinary power has an ideological character, and it’s not always subtle. In 2018, an admissions officer at Yale University published a note reassuring prospective applicants and admitted students that they wouldn’t be penalized for suspensions or other disciplinary action imposed by their high schools for taking part in gun-control activism. “For those students who come to Yale,” she wrote, “we expect them to be versed in issues of social justice.” Imagine a similar note cheering on prospective applicants to Yale for taking part in the March for Life—and then imagine the opprobrium that would follow for the admissions officer who published it.

The result is that the opportunity choke point of elite college admissions has become, in the hands of progressive administrators and admissions officers, a tool for transforming progressive pieties into elite social norms.

And that leads us to why Ivy League eliteness may have peaked.

If progressive elitism has allowed selective universities to reconcile moralistic progressivism with the elitism that is the source of their desirability, what happens when Ivy League admissions officers’ power to reshape social norms is no longer undergirded by an appeal to racial justice? Since the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision curtailed racial preferences, legacy preferences have come under vigorous attack, not least from the Biden administration, which has launched a civil-rights investigation into Harvard’s use of the practice. Amherst College abandoned legacy admissions in October 2021, and Wesleyan University announced this July that it would follow suit. If Shamus Khan is right, although the symbolic value of an elite education for less advantaged students might persist beyond the end of legacy admissions, its value as a source of social and cultural capital will be greatly diminished.

Richard V. Reeves: The shame deficit

This in turn could create an opening for a different set of higher-education institutions committed to a different set of values—perhaps even a revival of the midcentury vision of elite institutions that would promote social mobility while instilling patriotism and a sense of civic obligation.

That, at least, seems to be the impetus behind a slew of new higher-education initiatives in red and purple states, where many voters, policy makers, and philanthropists are wary of Ivy League progressivism. The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, a public research university that has seen surging enrollment in recent years, is pioneering an approach to civics that welcomes debate and encourages a deep understanding of the nation’s founding principles. In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee is creating a similar institute, which aims to inculcate an “informed patriotism,” through the state university system.

And then there is the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, a new initiative that is being led by Will Inboden, a distinguished scholar of international relations who most recently taught at the University of Texas at Austin. With more than 60,000 students at its Gainesville campus, UF is already one of the nation’s most respected public universities and, in light of the Sunshine State’s rapid economic and demographic expansion, it is well positioned for further growth. The Hamilton Center, aimed at fostering diversity of thought and improving the quality of civic education on campus and throughout the state, represents a bet on UF’s enormous potential. One possibility is that it will serve as the seedbed of a new liberal-arts college that would compete with the likes of Penn and Harvard, attracting bright and capable students from a wide range of social and ethnic backgrounds. To date, UF hasn’t distinguished itself as a beacon of social mobility. But that could soon change.

No one expects these fledgling efforts to dislodge the Ivy League and its peers from their place at the top of America’s higher-education status hierarchy, at least not yet. What we can say is that many young Americans and their families are looking for alternatives to elite education as we’ve come to know it, and a growing number of civic entrepreneurs are hoping to revive something like the still-resonant meritocratic ideal.

The Atlantic · by Reihan Salam · August 12, 2023

19. Blackwater paved the way for Wagner

Blackwater paved the way for Wagner

The use of contractors in the US ‘war on terror’ inspired Russia and other powers to outsource war.

• 
  
• Ibrahim Al-Marashi
• Ibrahim al-Marashi is an associate professor at the Department of History, California State University, San Marcos.

Al Jazeera English · by Ibrahim Al-Marashi

In the aftermath of the mutiny by the Wagner private military company (PMC) in Russia, many observers expected that its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin would pay dearly for his actions, perhaps with his life. Instead, the mercenary commander was sent into “exile” in neighbouring Belarus and his fighters continued operations outside Russia and Ukraine. Prigozhin eventually met with Russian President Vladimir Putin personally and then announced that his PMC would focus on its work in Africa.

It is hardly surprising that Putin has decided to preserve a mercenary force that has proven quite effective in pushing forward his foreign policy adventures in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has likely learned a lesson or two from another great power – the United States – whose heavy reliance on PMCs paved the way for the growing privatisation and outsourcing of war across the globe.

For the US, Russia, and other powers, military contractors are serving as convenient means for proxy warfare which offer plausible deniability and mitigate potential domestic tensions over foreign wars.

Outsourcing war

The employment of contractors by the US government is not a recent phenomenon, but over the past two decades it has greatly expanded. While in World War II, 10 percent of American armed forces were privately contracted, during the “war on terror”, launched in 2001, they reached some 50 percent, sometimes more.

Needing hundreds of thousands of personnel to carry out military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, but fearing domestic backlash, the US government had to turn to PMCs.

Since the start of the “war on terror”, the Pentagon has spent $14 trillion, with one-third to one-half of it going to military contractors in combat zones. A lot of this money has gone to contracts related to logistics, construction and weapons supplies, but a sizable chunk has also paid for “hired guns”.

During the height of the 2008 counterinsurgency effort in Iraq, the number of contractors reached 163,400 (including people in non-combat roles) compared to 146,800 US troops. In 2010, amid the “surge” in Afghanistan, when additional troops were deployed for a renewed offensive against the Taliban, there were 112,100 contractors (including people in non-combat roles) compared to 79,100 troops.

The pouring of trillions of dollars into PMCs has helped create a vast and powerful military contractor industry which has gone global and transformed how great and smaller powers engage in warfare and other violent foreign policy undertakings.

The use of contractors conveniently offers plausible deniability and can help governments pacify electorates reluctant to send national troops on risk foreign missions. They also help dodge responsibility for war crimes.

For example, in 2007, Blackwater killed 14 Iraqi civilians in a melee in Nisour Square in Baghdad. They were not under the US military chain of command, as they had been privately contracted by the US Department of State to guard their staff.

When the Iraqi government decided to revoke Blackwater’s licence with the government, it found that the company never had one in the first place. Furthermore, the perpetrators of the massacre were not subject to Iraqi law, so they could not be tried on Iraqi soil.

In 2015, a US court sentenced three former Blackwater employees to 30 years and one to life in prison for the massacre, but just five years later, President Donald Trump pardoned them before he left office.

The Nisour Square massacre was by far not the only atrocity American mercenaries committed. Ultimately, the violence PMCs were involved in contributed to wide-spread anti-American sentiments in Iraq which undermined US-led counterinsurgency efforts – a major factor that later enabled the rise of ISIL (ISIS).

Despite these troubles, the US did not do away with PMCs and has continued to rely on them, even after it withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq. The flourishing PMC industry today which enables the outsourcing of war and violence across the globe is one of the morbid legacies of the US “war on terror”.

Plausible deniability

The Kremlin likely watched closely the US government’s use of contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq and understood their utility. According to some observers, Putin likely wanted a Russian version of Blackwater to use in his foreign policy adventures. In following his patron’s orders to create a mercenary group, Prigozhin went as far as emulating the American PMC’s aesthetics. “Wagner mercenaries in Syria and Africa played the part, wearing baseball caps and wraparound sunglasses while toting serious guns,” wrote Lucian Kim, NPR’s former Moscow bureau chief, in Foreign Policy.

Prigozhin’s contractors was first used in 2014 to support Russian aggression in Eastern Ukraine. They were then deployed in Syria to bolster the regime of President Bashar al-Asad, and to Libya, to fight for renegade general Khalifa Haftar. Throughout these conflicts, the Kremlin kept denying the involvement in and existence of Wagner, as PMCs were illegal according to Russian law.

The effectiveness of the Russian mercenaries encouraged political and military leaders from across Africa to resort to their services, which strengthened Moscow’s international standing and foreign policy reach.

When in February 2022, Putin decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he also needed a large number of troops, which the Russian army did not have. Wagner was tasked specifically with providing fighters to throw into the bloodiest battles as cannon fodder. Quickly running out of volunteers, Prigozhin went as far as recruiting convicts, who were offered amnesty in return for military service.

Thus, Wagner helped the Kremlin minimise the perceived cost of war for the Russian public which was rather uncomfortable with the full-scale invasion. But its forces were not under the direct command of the Russian army, which also turned into a major problem for the Kremlin.

The mutiny was perhaps an unexpected development for Putin, and it made him look weak, not only to the international community, but also to regime insiders. The fallout of Prigozhin’s rebellion will likely continue to play out in the coming months.

The Kremlin has removed Wagner’s forces from Russian territory and the battlefield in Ukraine, but it is clearly not ready to do away with its foreign operations. They are way too lucrative economically and useful politically. In exchange for its military services, Wagner and its front companies abroad are involved in oil and gas extraction and gold and diamonds mining, which ensure considerable financial flows to Moscow. This is a role that the traditional Russian military cannot replicate.

By relying on mercenaries, the US, Russia and other powers have weakened internationally accepted rules of engagement and undermined the international legal regime that seeks to protect civilians in times of war. This has allowed them to get away with violence and atrocities even more easily and misrepresent the true cost of war. Blackwater, Wagner et al ultimately are making the world a that much more dangerous place.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Al Jazeera English · by Ibrahim Al-Marashi

20. It’s Not Just US Army Soldiers Going Hungry, Food Insecurity Hitting Other Branches of the Military: Expert

25%? How can we let that happen?

It’s Not Just US Army Soldiers Going Hungry, Food Insecurity Hitting Other Branches of the Military: Expert

Over 25% of US military personnel were food insecure in 2018, according to a research report

Published 08/12/23 03:41 PM ET|Updated 5 hr ago

Aaron Feis

themessenger.com · August 12, 2023

If an army marches on its stomach, many within the U.S. military face a grueling trudge, as inadequate food access is a widespread and “somewhat persistent” problem hardly limited to the issues exposed earlier this week at Texas’ Fort Cavazos, an expert told The Messenger.

Over 25% of personnel across all branches of the military were food insecure in 2018, with some service members struggling to stay within their monthly budgets or finding themselves captive to their schedules, according to a report released earlier this year by the RAND Corporation think tank.

“[W]e actually looked at some of the predictors of food insecurity among service members and, actually, service members who live on-post are more likely to experience problems accessing food, more food insecurity,” said Dr. Thomas Trail, a behavioral scientist who co-authored the report.

“Which makes the situation at Fort Cavazos kind of concerning, because you think, ‘Well, you know, they have dining facilities there, they get a meal card, they should be able to eat.’”

Soldiers at the sprawling, 214,968-acre U.S. Army base, which sits about 70 miles north of Austin, have battled insufficient food access for much of the summer, Military.com reported earlier this week.

Just two of the base’s 10 major dining stations have been open every day this summer, with another three open only during limited hours, according to the report. Confusing or conflicting information on hours of operation has compounded the problem.

While some soldiers can head off-post to grab grub, not all have vehicles. And those who do face a lengthy drive — up to an hour round trip — plus the prospect of paying for food out of pocket, rather than with military-issued meal cards usable on-post. Without factoring in bonuses and allowances, annual base pay for active duty soldiers starts at just over $23,000.

After the Tuesday publication of the Military.com report, the Army said in a news release that two other on-post restaurants had reopened on Monday.

The reported root of the problem at Fort Cavazos is a lack of staffing for the on-post facilities, with a majority of cooks either deployed or undergoing training elsewhere.

Trail called the Fort Cavazos situation “really perplexing” and said that research for the report he co-authored did not find a similar case of kitchen understaffing elsewhere.

But while the cause seems unique, the effect is not, Trail said.

What's the larger context for the Fort Cavazos food shortage?

“What we’ve found and what the [Department of Defense’s] own surveys have found is that the rate of food insecurity is high among service members and their families, higher than it is among equivalent civilians even,” Trail told The Messenger. “It’s a fairly large and somewhat persistent issue.”

The research report, which was sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, did find some trends. Two-thirds of those service members found to be food insecure were “in the early to middle stages of their career,” according to the report. They were also more likely to be of racial or ethnic minorities, and disproportionately in the Army rather than other branches.

Food served at Fort CavazosU.S. Army

Do we know why so many service members are food insecure?

“It’s really tricky,” said Trail. “Because there’s a lot of associations, but it’s really hard to tell what is driving this problem.”

Data-based research is continuing into possible root causes, but some people interviewed for the report cited a housing allowance for soldiers who live off-post that may be lagging behind costs of living, as well as the overall pay rate.

“[I]t’s not just pay that is driving this effect, we don’t think,” said Trail. “But it’s got to be part of it.”

How can service members get a food allowance and still go hungry living on a military base?

While soldiers who live off-post receive an extra allowance in their paychecks meant to buy food, single enlisted members who live on-post get meal cards to use at on-post food facilities.

“[I]f you’re living on-post, [and] you have a meal card, but you can’t use that meal card to purchase food because the dining facilities aren’t open or they’re not easily accessible, then you’re essentially not getting the pay you’re owed to pay for your food,” said Trail.

This issue comes up even on bases with ample kitchen staffing, with some soldiers’ work schedules incompatible with the hours of operation for on-post dining options.

“Some people are on shift work and they need to eat when the dining facilities aren’t open, so they’re spending money on food [off-post] that technically they’re not being reimbursed for from the military,” said Trail.

One person interviewed for the research report relayed that exact concern.

“We do a lot of shift work, which means that you won’t be eating in the [dining facility],” that interviewee said. “You get your BAS [Basic Allowance for Subsistence], and if you’re buying microwave dinners or eating takeout all the time, it adds up quick.”

What's the military doing to solve this problem?

New York’s Fort Drum is currently running a pilot program allowing soldiers to use their meal cards at non-military eateries, like Panera and Qdoba, according to Military.com.

The idea has “potential,” Trail said, while noting that it would require meal allowances to be in line with the prices of eating at non-military options, to ensure that hungry soldiers get the same bang for their buck.

“[I]s it going to be enough to provide you with the equivalent amount of food if you were using it on-post?” he asked.

themessenger.com · August 12, 2023

21. ‘Treat it like China’: How U.S. officials stay safe, and have fun, at the world’s biggest hacking conference

‘Treat it like China’: How U.S. officials stay safe, and have fun, at the world’s biggest hacking conference

By JOHN SAKELLARIADIS and JOSEPH GEDEON

08/12/2023 07:00 AM EDT

Politico

The DEF CON hacking conference presents some very real risks — and plenty of fun, say current and former U.S. cybersecurity officials and conference regulars.

Since the first-ever convention in 1993, DEF CON has brought some of the world’s most talented computer security wizards into the Las Vegas desert. | Isaac Brekken/AP Photo

08/12/2023 07:00 AM EDT

LAS VEGAS — The easiest way to embarrass yourself at DEF CON, the annual Las Vegas confab of the world’s largest collection of hackers: ending up on the Wall of Sheep.

The live, interactive display board lists the username and password of every attendee who’s just committed the worst sin imaginable at a hacking conference — getting hacked.

Silly as the Wall of Sheep may sound, keeping your phone, tablet or laptop secure at DEF CON is no laughing matter. And that’s especially true for the growing group of U.S. officials who travel West each August for the conference, named after the alert status the U.S. military uses to classify the threat of nuclear war.

When you spend three days with 30,000 people who love cracking code, you’re always just one errant click away from sheep-dom. In fact, fending off the maze of Wi-Fi sniffers, hardware hackers and social engineers at DEF CON is a little like going toe-to-toe with elite, state-backed cyber spies, according to one senior State Department official.

“Almost treat it like going to China,” said the official, granted anonymity to offer frank and colorful advice to a DEF CON first-timer. “Really treat it like going to a technologically sophisticated peer competitor.”

At this year’s conference, which wraps up Sunday, the Wall of Sheep was located in a dimly lit auditorium off the main conference floor. It included, for the first time ever, a live feed with the location of individuals who were leaking data. As of Friday afternoon, there were at least 2,000 sheep at DEF CON, per the floor-to-ceiling projection. Their personal information was, mercifully, partly blacked out for privacy reasons.

Since the first-ever convention in 1993, DEF CON has brought some of the world’s most talented computer security wizards into the Las Vegas desert to scour software, hardware and networking equipment in search of vulnerabilities.

Operating under the principle that the best way to secure computer code is to expose it, attendees have demonstrated some truly jaw-dropping research over the last three decades. They’ve taken over the controls of cars, tricked ATMs to spew out cash and sent insulin pumps into overdrive, to name a few memorable hacks.

Feats like that have turned the convention into an increasingly common pit stop for top U.S. government officials, dozens of whom are in attendance this year. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, CISA Director Jen Easterly and Acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden are all in Las Vegas for DEF CON and Black Hat, its more corporate-friendly counterpart.

But the convention didn’t earn its reputation as “the world’s most hostile network” just because of what happens on the main stage.

“There is a criminal ecosystem out there,” said Marc Rogers, the conference’s head of security. “You probably don’t want to access your corporate email over the DEF CON Wi-Fi.”

One White House staffer who works on cyber issues said he received a security briefing before making the trek down to Vegas. The staffer, granted anonymity to speak openly about the briefing, said he was advised to turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, to avoid bringing unnecessary devices, and, when possible, to use a Faraday bag — a pouch made of conductive metal that can block wireless signals from hitting your phone.

Rogers also recommends bringing cash to the event. In part, that’s because attendees in past years have snuck fake ATMs into DEF CON. It’s also because on-site vendors refuse to use point-of-sale devices — which let consumers tap or insert a credit card, for example — for a simple reason: they don’t trust them.

“PoS doesn’t stand for Piece of Shit, … but it probably should,” said Monika Hathaway, the DEF CON staffer to whom a POLITICO reporter recently handed $440 in cold hard cash, the price of admission into the conference.

The several hundred red-shirted security staff like Hathaway who patrol the 550,000 square feet of Caesar’s Forum are all volunteers — a sign of how many people find the event irresistible, despite the security risks. They even get their own official moniker: “goons.”

In addition to its own vocabulary, DEF CON has given birth to its own games (“Spot the Fed”), its own swag (nothing here is as valuable as those $440 badges) and its own fashion style, the type that encourages the non-Irish to wear kilts and at least one attendee to strap a Nintendo 64, TV and four controllers onto his back.

“DEF CON is as much about security as Comic-Con is about comic books,” said Mick Baccio, the former chief information security officer for Democrat Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and, more recently, a goon.

A host of non-cybersecurity events have sprung up at DEF CON. There is the tin foil hat contest, a martial arts competition and countless puzzles and trivia contests.

On paper, the government brass that appear at DEF CON are there to recruit new talent or forge ties to the hacker community. But if you pry, it’s clear that showing up to a place like this also is a welcome break from buttoned-up Washington.

“Most NSA folks would be more comfortable in a room full of DEF CON attendees than they would be at a traditional government event,” said Rob Joyce, the director of the NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate.

Joyce, who has attended multiple DEF CONs, said that the technical nature of the conferences meshes well with the work of the National Security Agency. And judging by six bullet points and several hundred words that Joyce — one of the country’s most important cyber officials — emailed POLITICO, it’s clear he means it.

DEF CON is “the happiest place in the world,” added Chris Inglis, the nation’s first national cyber director, who stepped down in February.

For some, the security risks facing U.S. officials aren’t even all their cracked up to be.

“They’ll tell you to turn off your phone, but I don’t really think that’s an issue,” said Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Basic measures, like turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, can significantly reduce the risk of getting hacked, while many modern mobile applications now come with stronger built-in security than they once did. Moreover, with so many U.S. government officials now in regular attendance, it’s not uncommon to hear that the conference has lost some of its original edge.

Perhaps. But that doesn’t seem to have dampened the mood for many of this year’s attendees.

“The event is much more content-focused and much less party focused” than it once was, said Rogers, the DEF CON security lead. “But the parties are still pretty epic.”

POLITICO

Politico

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