Quotes of the Day:

“I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.”

- Yohji Yamamoto

"There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met."

- William Butler Yeats

“Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.”

- Ray Bradbury

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 31 (Putin's War)

2. CDS Daily brief (31.10.22) CDS comments on key events

3. Special Operations News Update - October 31, 2022 | SOF News

4. China's Global Security Initiative: Xi's wedge in the U.S.-led order

5. IntelBrief: Iran’s Repression and Alignment with Russia Carry Costs

6. Maximum Support for the Iranian People: A New Strategy

7. Ukrainians grapple with power outages as winter approaches

8. Russian Army's Quiet Fatal Flaw: No Sergeants

9. US military now doing onsite weapons inspections in Ukraine

10. The High Cost of Low American Military Spending

11. New Army social media policy pushes stricter rules

12. New Pentagon National Defense Strategy Will be 'Well Received' by U.S. Allies in Pacific, Says Expert

13. Senate Democrat wants national security investigation of Saudi Arabia's role in Elon Musk-Twitter deal

14. Russia announces wider evacuation of occupied southern Ukraine

15.  Russia’s Vast Cyber Web Enables Deniability and Obscurity—But Not Without Risks

16. COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab

17. Why The Naivete In Misreading Xi’s Furtherance of One-Man Rule and State-Domination Of The Economy?

18. The nuclear threats that hang over the world

19. CTG #24 A Return to the SOF Truths

20. Biden must act on Iran’s drone and missile transfers

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 31 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-31

Key Takeaways

• Russian forces launched another massive wave of strikes against critical Ukrainian infrastructure, further damaging the power grid and leaving much of Kyiv without water.
• Russian officials again changed their minds about the risk of Ukrainian forces destroying the Kakhovka dam, ordering evacuations of areas that could be flooded. There is no scenario in which Ukraine would benefit from destroying the dam, and this rhetoric is likely meant to speed evacuations and provide informational cover for Russian withdrawals from the west bank.
• Russian forces are continuing to withdraw from the west bank of the Dnipro River even as they set conditions to fight for positions around Kherson City.
• Wagner Private Military Company financier Evgeniy Prigozhin sought to bring charges against the St. Petersburg mayor for corruption and announced the imminent opening of the PMC Wagner Center in St. Petersburg. Prigozhin also attacked “oligarchs” and “elites” for living in comfort and preventing the full mobilization of Russia.
• Russian sources continued to claim that Ukrainian troops conducted counter-offensive operations in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast and along the Svatove-Kreminna line on October 30 and 31.
• Russian forces continued defensive operations and Russian sources reported that Ukrainian forces continued counter-offensive operations in Kherson Oblast on October 30 and 31.
• The Ukrainian interdiction campaign is reportedly damaging Russian forces exfiltrating across the Dnipro River.
• Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut on October 30 and 31.
• Russian sources claimed that Russian troops made incremental gains in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area on October 30 and 31, but ISW cannot verify these claims.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) is likely attempting to prevent draft dodging by trying to deceive the Russian population into believing that autumn conscripts will not be sent to fight in Ukraine.
• The MoD also announced the end of partial mobilization on October 31, executing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to end mobilization by the end of October
• Local Russian governments remain responsible for even basic provisions to mobilized personnel, demonstrating the inefficiency of crowdfunding efforts and uncoordinated supply lines to support a modern military.
• Russian occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast announced that they would allow the use of Ukrainian hryvnias alongside Russian rubles, demonstrating the failure of their monthslong rubleization efforts in Kherson.
• Russian officials continue to create poor conditions in occupied parts of Kherson Oblast, likely to drive local inhabitants to evacuate.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 31

Oct 31, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 31

Karolina Hird, Katherine Lawlor, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

October 31, 9:00 pm ET

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

Russian forces conducted another massive wave of missiles strikes targeting critical Ukrainian infrastructure across the country on October 31, likely in an attempt to degrade Ukraine’s will to fight as temperatures drop. Russian forces fired over 50 Kh-101 and Kh-555 missiles from the northern Caspian Sea and the Volgodonsk region of Rostov Oblast, targeting critical Ukrainian energy infrastructure.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian air defenses shot down 44 out of over 50 Russian missiles.[2] Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal reported that the strikes damaged 18 mostly energy-related targets across 10 Ukrainian regions.[3] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian strikes cut off water to 80% of Kyiv residents on October 31 and left hundreds of thousands without power.[4]

Russian occupation officials once again shifted their rhetoric regarding the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) and are likely setting information conditions to continue to drive evacuations from the west bank of the Dnipro River and provide rhetorical cover for a Russian withdrawal from the area. Kherson Occupation Head Vladimir Saldo announced on October 31 that his administration is expanding the evacuation zone by 15km from the Dnipro River and cited information that Ukraine is preparing for a “massive missile attack” of the Kakhovka HPP dam, which Saldo alleged will cause massive flooding and destruction of civilian infrastructure.[5] Saldo previously claimed on October 26 that it would be “practically impossible” to destroy the dam and that even in case of a breach, the water level of the Dnipro River would only rise 2 meters.[6]

The apparent oscillation in Saldo’s position on the Kakhovka HPP indicates that his administration is likely using threats of breach and flooding to perpetuate an information operation with a two-fold purpose: to drive evacuations from the west bank and to explain away a future Russian withdrawal from the west bank. These is no scenario in which it would be advantageous for Ukraine to blow the dam. The ramifications that such an action would have on the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which relies on the water in the Kakhovka reservoir for coolant, and the economic and social implications of flooding over 80 settlements and destroying civilian homes and viable land, entirely preclude the possibility that this is a contingency Ukraine may pursue. Blowing the dam would also make it much harder for Ukrainian forces to achieve their stated aims of liberating the remainder of Kherson Oblast and other territories east of the river. Saldo’s statements are likely therefore meant to encourage residents of the west bank to promptly evacuate and may also establish informational cover for a Russian withdrawal from the west bank. Saldo could be framing the dam explosion as an inevitable and insurmountable obstacle that Russian forces could only avoid by abandoning the west bank and retreating further into Kherson Oblast. Russia’s ability or willingness to physically damage the dam is relatively immaterial—the informational effects of accusing Ukraine of preparing to blow the dam could be sufficient to create rhetorical cover to explain away any future Russian withdrawals.

Russian forces are likely continuing to move troops and military assets across the Dnipro River in anticipation of Ukrainian advances towards Kherson City. Ukrainian military sources reported on October 30 that Russian forces are preparing to move artillery units and weapons from the west bank of the Dnipro River for possible redeployment in other directions.[7] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command additionally noted on October 31 that Russian forces are preparing to evacuate individual units and military equipment from the west bank and have collected watercraft to facilitate the evacuation.[8] Russian-backed Kherson occupation deputy Kirill Stremousov stated that on October 30 Russian forces also began engineering positions in Bilozerka (6km due west of Kherson City) and Chornobaivka (1km north of Kherson City), which is corroborated by imagery posted by reported Russian collaborators of barbed wire defenses in these areas.[9] The fact that Russian collaborators are preparing to defend Chornobaivka is particularly noteworthy, as Chornobaivka is the last settlement along the M14 north of Kherson City. The current frontline lies less than 20km northwest of Chornobaivka, and active efforts to bolster defense here indicate concern for an imminent Ukrainian advance. The simultaneous evacuation of military assets from the west bank and preparations for the defense of critical areas around Kherson City indicate serious anxiety over Russian control of the west bank.

Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin continued his efforts to increase his status among Russian elites and his presence in St. Petersburg by attacking local officials and announcing the creation of a PMC Wagner Center in St. Petersburg on October 31. Prigozhin reportedly requested on October 31 that the Russian Prosecutor General’s office open a criminal investigation into the “fact” that St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov organized a “criminal community” in St. Petersburg.[10] Prigozhin alleged that Beglov’s criminal network intends to plunder the state budget and enrich corrupt officials. Prigozhin is likely using his criticism of Beglov and other St. Petersburg politicians to enhance his own reputation—and his campaign may be working. The publication Petersburg Vestnik characterized Prigozhin’s popularity as “skyrocketing” on October 31 and asked if he had any plans to form a party or go into politics, to which Prigozhin replied “I do not strive for popularity. My task is to fulfill my duty to the Motherland, and today I do not plan to create any parties, let alone go into politics.”[11]

Prigozhin may or may not create his own political party, but he is establishing himself as a political force, using his popular status and his affiliation with Wagner to critique his opponents within elite circles and to institutionalize his own authority. Prigozhin criticized Russian “oligarchs” and “elites” on October 31 for living in a “state of comfort” and preventing the full mobilization of Russian society: “until [elites’] children go to war, the full mobilization of the country will not happen.”[12] Prigozhin also announced the creation of a “PMC Wagner Center” in St. Petersburg on October 31, which he said is scheduled to open on November 4.[13] Prigozhin described the center as “a complex of buildings in which there are places for free accommodation of inventors, designers, IT specialists, experimental production, and start-up spaces” with the intention of creating a “comfortable environment for generating new ideas in order to increase the defense capability of Russia, including information.” Prigozhin noted that he did not inform the local St. Petersburg administration of the center’s creation because the local government is not a “sufficiently representative structure to interfere with the work of the PMC Wagner Center.” Prigozhin challenged local government officials who have problems with his center to take them up in court and suggested that he will establish new branches if the St. Petersburg branch is successful. Private military companies like Wagner are illegal per the Russian constitution.[14]

Key Takeaways

• Russian forces launched another massive wave of strikes against critical Ukrainian infrastructure, further damaging the power grid and leaving much of Kyiv without water.
• Russian officials again changed their minds about the risk of Ukrainian forces destroying the Kakhovka dam, ordering evacuations of areas that could be flooded. There is no scenario in which Ukraine would benefit from destroying the dam, and this rhetoric is likely meant to speed evacuations and provide informational cover for Russian withdrawals from the west bank.
• Russian forces are continuing to withdraw from the west bank of the Dnipro River even as they set conditions to fight for positions around Kherson City.
• Wagner Private Military Company financier Evgeniy Prigozhin sought to bring charges against the St. Petersburg mayor for corruption and announced the imminent opening of the PMC Wagner Center in St. Petersburg. Prigozhin also attacked “oligarchs” and “elites” for living in comfort and preventing the full mobilization of Russia.
• Russian sources continued to claim that Ukrainian troops conducted counter-offensive operations in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast and along the Svatove-Kreminna line on October 30 and 31.
• Russian forces continued defensive operations and Russian sources reported that Ukrainian forces continued counter-offensive operations in Kherson Oblast on October 30 and 31.
• The Ukrainian interdiction campaign is reportedly damaging Russian forces exfiltrating across the Dnipro River.
• Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut on October 30 and 31.
• Russian sources claimed that Russian troops made incremental gains in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area on October 30 and 31, but ISW cannot verify these claims.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) is likely attempting to prevent draft dodging by trying to deceive the Russian population into believing that autumn conscripts will not be sent to fight in Ukraine.
• The MoD also announced the end of partial mobilization on October 31, executing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to end mobilization by the end of October
• Local Russian governments remain responsible for even basic provisions to mobilized personnel, demonstrating the inefficiency of crowdfunding efforts and uncoordinated supply lines to support a modern military.
• Russian occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast announced that they would allow the use of Ukrainian hryvnias alongside Russian rubles, demonstrating the failure of their monthslong rubleization efforts in Kherson.
• Russian officials continue to create poor conditions in occupied parts of Kherson Oblast, likely to drive local inhabitants to evacuate.

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

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

Ukrainian Counter-offensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)

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

Russian sources continued to claim that Ukrainian troops conducted counter-offensive operations in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast on October 30 and 31. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Russian milbloggers claimed on October 30 that Ukrainian forces conducted a series of unsuccessful assaults around Orlianka, Tabaivka, and Berestove, all within 30km northwest of Svatove.[15] The Russian MoD also claimed that Russian troops repelled Ukrainian attacks northwest of Svatove in the Kupyansk area on October 31.[16] A Russian milblogger reported that Ukrainian troops are preparing for another offensive in that direction on the Orlianka-Pershotravneve line.[17] The Ukrainian General Staff notably stated that Russian troops attacked Mykolaivka and Novoselivske, both about 30km northwest of Svatove, indicating that Ukrainian troops have advanced east of the Kupyansk area.[18]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops continued counter-offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line on October 30 and 31. The Russian MoD and Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian troops repelled Ukrainian attacks on Stelmakhivka (15km northwest of Svatove) and Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna) on October 30.[19] Geolocated footage posted on October 30 showed the aftermath of an explosion of a bridge across the Krasne River in Krasnorichenske, 15km north of Kreminna, suggesting that Russian forces may be conducting a deliberate withdrawal from settlements north of Kreminna in anticipation of Ukrainian advances.[20] Russian milbloggers additionally claimed that Ukrainian troops attacked Chervonopopivka (5km northwest of Kreminna) on October 30 and 31.[21] The Ukrainian General Staff noted on October 31 that Russian troops shelled Ploshchanka (15km northwest of Kreminna), indicating that Ukrainian troops are continuing to advance towards the R66 Svatove-Kreminna highway north of Kreminna.[22] Russian milbloggers continued to claim that Russian troops, including elements of the BARS-13 Combat Reserve are holding the defense of Kreminna and pushing Ukrainian troops away from the frontline.[23]

Ukrainian and Russian sources discussed offensive operations south of Kreminna around Lysychansk on October 30 and 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian attack on Bilohorivka, 10km south of Kreminna.[24] A Russian milblogger claimed on October 31 that Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups are probing Russian defenses near Bilohorivka.[25]

Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Russian forces continued defensive operations in Kherson Oblast on October 30 and 31. Ukrainian military sources reported that Russian troops are conducting remote mining of areas near the Kherson Oblast frontline, evacuating military assets to the east bank of the Dnipro River, and reforming units (likely adding newly mobilized reservists to reconstitute shell units).[26] Russian sources additionally claimed on October 31 that Russian troops are engineering positions northwest of Kherson City and preparing for defensive operations there. Social media imagery shows reported Russian collaborators installing barbed wire to strengthen defensive positions north of Kherson City in Chornobaivka and west of Kherson City in Bilozerka.[27]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops continued counter-offensive operations in Kherson Oblast on October 30 and 31. Russian sources reported that Ukrainian forces attempted to break through Russian lines in the Beryslav Raion — the area where Russian lines are currently stretched the furthest — on October 31.[28] Russian sources reported that elements of the Russian Eastern Military District, special forces, and airborne forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Davydiv Brid on October 30.[29] The Russian MoD claimed on October 31 that Ukrainian troops attacked Russian troops along the current frontline northwest of Beryslav.[30] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 31 that Russian forces shelled near previously Russian-claimed Ternovi Pody, Mykolaiv Oblast, (20km northwest of Chornobaivka) on October 31, indicating a possible Ukrainian advance.[31] Video posted on October 30 reportedly shows Ukrainian forces clearing Russian mines in an unspecified area of Kherson Oblast, indicating ongoing Ukrainian efforts to advance into Russian-held territory.[32]

The Ukrainian interdiction campaign is reportedly damaging Russian forces exfiltrating across the Dnipro River. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported on October 31 that Ukrainian fires destroyed two barges that Russian forces used to transport Russian forces from the west (right) bank to the east (left) bank near the Antonivsky Bridge at an unspecified time last week.[33] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command additionally reported that Ukrainian forces conducted 156 fire missions on October 30 and struck two Russian ammunition warehouses in Beryslav and Bashtanka raions.[34] The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Russian forces intercepted six Ukrainian AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missiles near Antonivka on October 30.[35]

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut on October 30 and 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on Bakhmut itself, Yakovlivka (16km northeast of Bakhmut), Bakhmutske (10km northeast of Soledar), and Mayorsk (20km south of Bakhmut) between October 30 and 31.[36] Russian Wagner Group–affiliated media outlet RIAFAN posted a report from the Bakhmut area on October 30 and claimed that intense fighting is ongoing south of Bakhmut and that Wagner Group forces sometimes only advance 500 meters a day.[37] As ISW reported on October 28, Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prighozin previously stated that Wagner forces are only advancing 100–200 meters per day.[38] Both estimates exaggerate the negligible rate of advance that Russian troops have made south of Bakhmut over the last weeks. Russian milbloggers also claimed on October 31 that Wagner troops are engaged in fierce fighting northeast of Bakhmut around Yakovlivka and on Bakhmut’s northeastern outskirts.[39]

Russian sources claimed that Russian troops made incremental gains in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area on October 30 and 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops conducted a series of unsuccessful ground attacks on the northern, northwestern, and southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City on both October 30 and 31.[40] Russian sources claimed that Russian troops captured the eastern part of Vodiane (8km southwest of Avdiivka), broke Ukrainian defensive lines in Opytne (5km southwest of Avdiivka), and fought for control of Pervomaiske (12km southwest of Avdiivka) on October 30.[41] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian troops completed the capture of Vodiane on October 31 and noted that this claimed advance will allow Russian forces to push northeast on Avdiivka.[42] Russian sources additionally claimed that Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) units and elements of the 150th Motorized Rifle Division of the 8th Combined Arms Army launched an offensive on Marinka (on the southwestern outskirt of Donetsk City) and made marginal advances within Marinka on October 31.[43] ISW has not yet observed independent confirmation of these Russian claims.

Russian sources claimed that Russian troops launched an offensive southwest of Donetsk City on October 30 and made marginal gains in this area on October 30 and 31. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces reached the southern outskirts of Pavlivka (about 50km southwest of Donetsk City) on October 30.[44] Various Russian sources amplified the MoD claim and added that DNR forces took control of most of Pavlivka, with one Russian milblogger claiming that DNR troops had cleared 60 percent of the settlement by October 31.[45] A Russian milblogger reported that elements of the Russian Pacific Fleet entrenched themselves south of Novomykhailivka (25km northeast of Pavlivka) and that elements of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 39th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 68th Army Corps, and DNR are continuing offensive operations towards Vuhledar.[46] ISW has not observed independent confirmation of these Russian claims. Russian sources also noted that as of October 31, Russian forces have not pushed Ukrainian troops across the Kashlyhach River near Vuhledar.[47] The commander of the DNR ”Vostok” Battalion, Alexander Khodakovsky, noted on October 31 that the Russian offensive in this area is premature and that the Pavlivka-Vuhledar area will be difficult to hold.[48] Russian forces likely initiated this counter-offensive in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces near the 2014 frontline in the Vuhledar area, but this offensive endeavor is unlikely to aid Russian troops in taking significant ground beyond the lines that have existed for the last eight years.

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

Russian forces continued routine air, missile, and artillery strikes west of Hulyaipole and in Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts on October 30 and 31.[49] Russian forces launched Kh-95 cruise missiles at Ochakiv on October 30 and hit areas in Bereznehuvate with S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems on October 31.[50] Russian forces additionally shelled Marhanets in the Nikopol Raion of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with MLRS and tube artillery on October 30 and 31 and damaged critical infrastructure in Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia City during a series of large-scale missile strikes across Ukraine on October 31.[51] Various sources reported that a Russian rocket landed in Naslavcea, Moldova, after Ukrainian forces shot it down.[52] A Russian milblogger also notably interviewed a group of Cossacks of the Don Brigade operating on the Kinburn Spit on October 31, suggesting that Russian forces still maintain a presence on this narrow strip of land, likely to protect against Ukrainian amphibious landings.[53] It is not clear what the Don Cossacks might be protecting on the Kinburn Spit, however. Multiple Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group that attempted to conduct a water landing across the Kakhovka reservoir in Enerhodar on October 30.[54] Russian sources made similar claims around September 1.[55] ISW is unable to verify either claim.

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

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) is attempting to deceive the Russian population into believing that autumn conscripts will not be sent to fight in Ukraine, likely to prevent draft dodging. The MoD amplified a briefing by the head of the 4th Department of Main Organizational and Mobilization of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, Rear Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyansky, in which Tsimlyansky claimed that the regular autumn conscription campaign, which will begin on November 1, has “nothing to do with the conduct of the special military operation in Ukraine.” Tsimlyansky reassured recruits that uniforms, equipment, and food have already been provided at training grounds and that conscripts will receive five months of training and then will receive positions appropriate to their education and skill. That reassurance is an implicit admission of the Russian state’s failures to properly equip, house, or even feed mobilized personnel in recent months. Tsimlyansky also claimed repeatedly that conscripts will not be deployed to Ukraine. However, Russia’s illegal and unrecognized September annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory means that all of the fighting is taking place in areas that the Kremlin claims as Russian territory. Conscripts will almost certainly be deployed to Ukraine after their training is complete around March or April 2023, and could be deployed sooner in response to changes on the battlefield.

The MoD also announced the end of partial mobilization on October 31, executing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to end mobilization by the end of October.[56] The MoD will likely continue to order surreptitious mobilization under the guise of “volunteer battalions” where it thinks it can get away with it but needed to end the partial mobilization process to free up space and trainers for the new November 1 conscription class. The MoD announcement oddly ordered all Russian military districts to immediately return their facilities to their pre-partial mobilization functions — an odd order because many mobilized personnel should not yet be in Ukraine according to announced Russian training plans for them and should still require training facilities. The rest of the mobilized Russian servicemembers will likely arrive in Ukraine in the coming weeks, however, and it could take that long for conscripted personnel to be selected and sent to their training grounds.

Local Russian governments remain responsible for even basic provisions to mobilized personnel, demonstrating the inefficiency of crowdfunding efforts and uncoordinated supply lines to support a modern military. A local Republic of Tatarstan media outlet reported on October 30 that residents of Naberezhnye Chelny sent 6 trucks containing 100 tons of “humanitarian aid” including food, equipment, and “essential items” to mobilized personnel from Tatarstan serving in the Northern Military District.[57] Framing basic troop provisions crowdsourced from local governments and residents as “humanitarian aid” belies the shockingly poor conditions in which forcibly mobilized personnel are serving. The head of the Russian Crimean Occupation Administration, Sergey Aksyonov, claimed on October 31 that his government was continuing to purchase basic winter gear, including thermal underwear, sleeping bags, and protective helmets for mobilized Crimean personnel through “extrabudgetary sources.”[58] And anti-mobilization channels reported on October 30 that state officials in Khabarovsk Krai ordered public employees to “donate” one day’s worth of their salary to support mobilized personnel from the territory.[59]

Some Russian citizens continue to resist the Kremlin’s mobilization practices. Russian forces detained a 19-year-old resident of Almetievsk, Republic of Tatarstan on October 29 on terrorism charges after he tried to set fire to a military registration and enlistment office, reportedly to protest partial mobilization.[60] An unidentified person threw a Molotov cocktail into a military registration and enlistment office in the village of Ust-Kan in the Altai Republic on October 30.[61]

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

Russian occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast announced that they would allow the use of Ukrainian hryvnias alongside Russian rubles, demonstrating the failure of their monthslong rubleization efforts in Kherson. The Russian deputy head of the Kherson Occupation Administration, Kirill Stremousov, announced on October 30 that the “dual currency system has returned to Kherson markets” and that vendors must accept rubles, but can use rubles and hryvnias.[62] Occupation officials mandated an exchange rate of 1.25 rubles to one hryvnia, a rate that heavily favors those who hold rubles. The actual global exchange rate at time of publication is about 1.68 rubles per hryvnia. Occupation officials had previously spoken of a “single economic complex” between Russia and occupied Ukrainian territories as early as April 6.[63] The Kherson Occupation Administration had announced on May 1 that Kherson Oblast would transition entirely to a ruble economy by September 1.[64] Poor economic conditions and a thriving hryvnia black market likely led occupation authorities to allow the use of the hryvnia, possibly to capture additional revenues from those transactions.

The failure of Russian occupation administrators to impose the ruble demonstrates that their efforts to degrade Ukrainian governance capabilities and Ukrainian identity in occupied areas are likely floundering. Ukrainian national identity and patriotism in Russian-occupied areas has remained, although Ukraine will face difficulties in rebuilding the institutions (and local economies) that Russian occupiers have destroyed as Ukrainian forces liberate additional territory.

Russian officials continue to create poor conditions in occupied parts of Kherson Oblast, likely to drive local inhabitants to evacuate. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported on October 30 that Russian occupation authorities are creating “unlivable” conditions in Kherson Oblast by shutting off water, electricity, and internet access.[65] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 30 that occupation authorities in Nova Kakhovka shut down the internet and broadcast orders via loudspeaker calling on civilians to evacuate within 48 hours of October 29.[66] Nova Kakhovka occupation authorities also reportedly ordered businessowners to sell all food and other perishables and close their businesses by November 1.[67]

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.

[37] https://riafan dot ru/23724497-_mi_nastupaem_boets_chvk_vagner_o_napryazhennoi_situatsii_pod_bahmutom

[60] https://m.business-gazeta dot ru/news/569514

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (31.10.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (31.10.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

Air raid sirens sounded throughout Ukraine this morning. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, starting at 07:00, the Russian military launched several waves of missile attacks on critical infrastructure objects throughout Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Defense shot down 44 out of 55 cruise missiles. Critical infrastructure objects were hit in Kharkiv, Cherkasy Oblast, Zaporizhzhya, Kyiv, etc. Parts of the Ukrainian railroad infrastructure were also cut off from electricity.

Missiles and drones launched by the Russians on the territory of Ukraine on Monday attacked 10 regions and damaged 18 facilities, most of which are energy facilities, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.

Hits on critical infrastructure in Kyiv oblast resulted in a blackout in Kyiv and a part of Kyiv Oblast. Oleksiy Kuleba, head of Kyiv Oblast Military Administration, urged Kyiv Oblast residents to prepare for a long absence of electricity and save energy. Two people were injured during the strikes, and one of them was hospitalized in a severe condition.

Part of Kyiv was left without electricity, and about 80% of consumers had no water supplies, the city mayor Vitaliy Klychko said. The infrastructure object damaged in Kyiv Oblast supplies about 350 thousand apartments in Kyiv. Kyiv itself was not hit by missiles. As of 18:00, 270 thousand apartments in Kyiv still had no electricity and about 40% of its residents did not have running water.

In Cherkasy Oblast, the Russian missiles hit a critical infrastructure object, cutting off electricity in part of the region, Ihor Taburets, Head of Cherkasy Military Administration(OMA), said.

As a result of the morning missile attacks, the energy infrastructure facilities were hit in Dnipro and Pavlohrad in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Head of Dnipropetrovsk OMA Valentin Reznichenko reported serious destruction.

Kharkiv was hit with S-300 missiles from the Russian city of Belgorod at around 8 a.m. A critical infrastructure object was hit, cutting the electricity supply to subway and ground electric transportation. The water supply was also interrupted.

Russian missiles hit one of the energy facilities in Svitlovodsk, Kirovohrad Oblast, Andriy Rajkovich, head of Kirovohrad OMA said. There were no casualties. A fire broke out.

A critical infrastructure object was also hit in Chernivtsi Oblast. Until this time, it was the only Ukrainian Oblast that had not come under Russian fire. Head of Chernivtsi State Administration Ruslan Zaparniuk said the damage was significant and maybe even critical, and the entire Ukrainian energy system will feel its consequences.

The local law enforcement reported that one missile shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses fell in the village of Naslavcha, Moldova. The missile was targeting the Dnister hydropower plant located near the border, the Ukrainian authorities said.

At night the Russian forces fired MLRS and launched UAVs at Nikopol District of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Marhanets community was affected the most with 40 shells hitting its residential and administrative buildings. A 31-year-old woman died. Another woman is injured. She is in the hospital, Head of Dnipropetrovsk OMA Valentyn Reznichenko said. In the Kamianka district, the enemy hit an energy infrastructure object with kamikaze drones, seriously damaging it.

Znob-Novgorod community of Shostka district, Sumy Oblast, was shelled from the Russian territory at night. No victims are reported.

The Russian forces fired MLRS at Kutsurubska community in Mykolayiv Oblast this morning. A village in the Shyrokinska community was hit by the Russian fire and a residential building was damaged.

Evacuation of people from the recently liberated parts of Kherson Oblast continues, assisted by the Kryvyi Rih Military Administration, its head Oleksandr Vilkul said. The Russian forces continuously shell the areas. Vilkul reported that on October 30, 33 people, including 2 babies, were evacuated from one of the front-line villages.

25 villages of Kharkiv Oblast are still under occupation, Kharkiv OMA recorded.

Occupied territories:

Russia-installed occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast continue their disinformation campaign. The de-facto Kherson administrator Volodymyr Saldo said that in connection with a possible strike by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, the evacuation zone is expanding by 15 km from the Dnipro and will affect the inhabitants of the left bank.

The Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation launched a criminal initiation into a possible "treason" against the so-called head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the so-called DPR Alexei Dikiy, and six more members of the operational-combat tactical formation "Cascade". They face imprisonment for up to life.

The Russia-installed head of the occupied Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, said that he had instructed to transfer the property of some organizations and individuals "connected with the Kyiv regime" to the property of the region, including Rusline Ltd., the Bakhchisarai plant "Stroyindustriya" and the shipbuilding plant "Zaliv".

Operational situation

(please note that this part of the report is mainly on the previous day's (October 30) developments)

It is the 250th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). The enemy tries to maintain control over the temporarily captured territories, concentrates its efforts on disrupting the counteroffensive actions of the Ukrainian troops, and does not give up attempts to conduct the offensive in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions.

Over the past day, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled Russian attacks in the areas around Zelene of Kharkiv Oblast; Bilohorivka, Mykolaivka and Novoselivske in Luhansk Oblast; Avdiivka, Bakhmutske, Vesele, Vodyane, Mayorsk, Maryinka and Novobakhmutivka of Donetsk Oblast.

The Russian military continues to shell the Ukrainian troops along the contact line, fortify frontiers in certain directions, and conduct aerial reconnaissance. In violation of the norms of international humanitarian law, the laws and customs of war, it continues to strike critical infrastructure. Over the past day, the Russian forces have launched 4 missile strikes and 5 air strikes and fired over 90 MLRS rounds. More than 20 towns and villages were hit by the Russian fire, particularly Kupyansk in Kharkiv Oblast, Siversk in Donetsk Oblast, Nova Kamianka in Kherson Oblast, and Berezneguvate and Ochakiv in Mykolaiv Oblast. Near the state border, Halahanivka of Chernihiv Oblast, Pokrovka of Sumy Oblast, Hatyshche, Kamianka, Krasne, Ohirtseve, and Starytsya region of Kharkiv Oblast were shelled. Russian troops launched Kh-59 cruise missiles at Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast, and hit military infrastructure.

The Republic of Belarus continues to support the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The Russian Federation continues transferring individual units to the territory of this country. The threat of missile strikes and the use of attack UAVs from the territory of the Republic of Belarus persists.

Over the past day, the aviation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces made 21 strikes against the enemy, including 15 on areas of enemy weapons and military equipment concentration, 2 on platoon strongholds, and 4 on anti-aircraft missile systems positions. Ukrainian air defense units shot down one Russian helicopter and one Su-25 assault aircraft.

Ukraine's missile and artillery forces hit a command post and an anti-aircraft missile system.

According to unconfirmed Russian reports, Lieutenant General Andriy Mordvichev (commander of the 8th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District) replaced Colonel General Oleksandr Lapin as commander of the Central Military District as of October 30.

The morale and psychological state of the personnel of the invasion forces remain low. Kharkiv direction

• Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;

• Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments, 245th motorized rifle regiment of the 47th tank division, 6th and 239th tank regiments, 228th motorized rifle regiment of the 90th tank division, 1st motorized rifle regiment, 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 6th Combined Arms Army, 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Tank Army, 275th and 280th motorized rifle regiments, 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11 Army Corps, 7th motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs.

The Russian military fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas of Tabaivka and Terny.

Russian troops repelled Ukrainian attacks on Pershotravneve, Tabaivka, and Berestove.

Kramatorsk direction

● Balakleya - Siversk section: approximate length of the combat line - 184 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17-20, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;

● 252nd and 752nd motorized rifle regiments of the 3rd motorized rifle division, 1st, 13th, and 12th tank regiments, 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 4th tank division, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Combined Arms Army, 35th, 55th and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, 2nd and 4th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Army Corps, 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, PMCs.

The Russian military fired tanks, mortars, barrel and rocket artillery at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas of Hrekivka, Kovalivka, Karmazynivka, Makiivka, Novoehorivka, Nevske, Ploshanka and Chervonpopivka in Luhansk Oblast and Zarichne and Yampolivka in Donetsk Oblast. Russian troops destroyed the bridge over the Krasna River in Krasnorichenske, Luhansk Oblast.

Donetsk direction

● Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 235 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 17 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 68th and 163rd tank regiments, 102nd and 103rd motorized rifle regiments of the 150 motorized rifle division, 80th tank regiment of the 90th tank division, 35th, 55th, and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 31st separate airborne assault brigade, 61st separate marines brigade of the Joint Strategic Command "Northern Fleet," 336th separate marines brigade, 24th separate SOF brigade, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 100th separate motorized rifle brigades, 9th and 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

The Russian military shelled the areas around Andriivka, Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Bilohorivka, Verkhnokamianske, Mayorsk, Opytne, Siversk, Soledar, Spirne, Yakovlivka, Avdiivka, Vodyane, Krasnohorivka, Maryinka, Novomykhailivka and Pervomaiske with tanks and artillery.

Russian forces captured Vodiane and Pavlivka.

Zaporizhzhia direction

● Maryinka – Vasylivka section: approximate length of the line of combat - 200 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 11.7 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

The Russian military shelled positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas of Vremivka, Vuhledar, Mykilske, Pavlivka, Paraskoviivka and Prechystivka of Donetsk Oblast and Dorozhnyanka, Malynivka, Novodanilivka, Olhivske and Pavlivka of Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

The Ukrainian Defense Forces destroyed an enemy ammunition depot, 5 pieces of weapons and military equipment of various types, and injured up to 120 servicemen.

Tavriysk direction

-   Vasylivka – Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line – 296 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 39, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 7,5 km;

-  Deployed BTGs of: the 8th and 49th Combined Arms Armies; 11th, 103rd, 109th, and 127th rifle regiments of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps of the Southern Military District; 35th and 36th Combined Arms Armies of the Eastern Military District; 3rd Army Corps of the Western Military District; 90th tank division of the Central Military District; the 22nd Army Corps of the Coastal Forces; the 810th separate marines brigade of the Black Sea Fleet; the 7th and 76th Air assault divisions, the 98th airborne division, and the 11th separate airborne assault brigade of the Airborne Forces.

Areas of more than 20 towns and villages along the contact line were hit by fire, including Bilohirka, Davydiv Brid, Myrne, Nova Kamianka, Pravdyne and Chervone in Kherson Oblast and Kiselyvka and Ternovi Pody in Mykolaiv Oblast.

The enemy is building up the engineering fortification of defensive positions in Bilozerka and Chornobayivka.

In the temporarily occupied territory of Kherson Oblast, the Russian occupation forces continued to dismantle and remove the equipment of cellular communication towers to Donetsk Oblast to establish and expand the coverage of the so-called national communication operators.

Preparations for evacuating individual Russian units and military equipment from the right-bank part of Kherson Oblast are ongoing. For this purpose, the presence of watercraft in the river fleet is verified, pontoon crossings are built, and the serviceability and readiness of barges are periodically checked. Two of them were recently destroyed by the Ukrainian Defence Forces units in the Antonivsky Bridge.

Defense forces destroyed a convoy of enemy military equipment.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the Black Sea and to maintain control over the captured territories.

The Russian fleet has eight ships and boats at sea. They are located along the southwestern coast of Crimea. Among them are 2 Kalibr cruise missile carriers: two Project 21631 small missile ships carrying a total of 16 missiles.

In the Sea of Azov waters, 6 patrol ships and boats are located on the approaches to the Mariupol and Berdyansk seaports to block the Azov coast.

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 14 combat aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

Railway freight trains arrive in Kherson Oblast from Crimea, unloading military equipment and ammunition at the "Kalanchak", "Brylivka", and "Novooleksiiivka" stations.

The internal political situation in Crimea has changed towards more brutal police and counter- intelligence regimes due to the strikes on the Russian Black Sea Fleet ships in Sevastopol by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The Russian side made ridiculous accusations that the drone strike on the ships of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol was allegedly made from civilian ships carrying grain.

There are huge queues at the Kerch Strait crossing, and up to 2,000 vehicles are standing in line on the side of the Krasnodar Krai.

The occupation authorities plan to complete the repair of the road from Crimea to Melitopol by the end of the year. Trains to Crimea run as a part of the so-called "Crimean Voyage" tour have been canceled for the next 3 dates.

"The Grain Initiative":12 vessels left the ports of Greater Odesa on October 31, despite the Russian Federation's statement that it was suspending participation in the grain agreement. As reported by the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine, there are 354.5 thousand tons of agricultural products on board the ships, which are headed for the countries of Africa, Asia and Europe.

Now a caravan is forming 15 km from the Odesa coast, heading to Romania. "Among them is the bulk carrier IKARIA ANGEL with Ukrainian wheat for Ethiopia, which is on the verge of starvation. This is the seventh vessel chartered as part of the World Food Program under the auspices of the United Nations," the Ministry said. At the same time, passage to Ukrainian ports for loading is allowed for four vessels that passed the JCC inspection the day before, which involved all parties, including representatives of the Russian Federation. The Russian delegation was informed that the grain initiative would continue without the Russian Federation. The Joint Coordination Council reported this on October 30 after a meeting in Istanbul. Also, yesterday afternoon, a meeting of the Secretariat of the United Nations took place, which gathered all delegations for a plenary session. "The delegations of Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations have agreed on the plan for the movement of vessels for October 31.

The UN delegation informed the delegation of the Russian Federation on behalf of the Secretariat of the JCC about the transfer per the procedures established by the Joint Coordination Council. According to the procedures, all participants coordinate their actions with their military and other relevant authorities to ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels within the framework of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the Joint Coordination Center said in a statement. The total tonnage of food exported from Odesa ports is approaching ten million tons.

The spokesman of the UN Secretary-General, Stéphane Dujarric, said that the grain agreement signed in Istanbul has indirectly helped to lift about 100 million people from extreme poverty.

On October 29, the Russian Federation announced it was ready to completely replace Ukrainian grain on the world market.

In a separate incident, Russian forces fired at civilian tugboats transporting a barge with grain near Ochakiv, Mykolayiv Oblast, the Operational Command "South" reported. Two crew members were killed, and one was injured but rescued. One crew member is missing.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 31.10

Personnel - almost 71,820 people (+620);

Tanks - 2,686 (+14)

Armored combat vehicles – 5,485 (+32);

Artillery systems – 1,728 (+4);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 383 (0); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 197 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 4,128 (+8); Aircraft - 275 (+1);

Helicopters – 253 (+1);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,413 (+1); Intercepted cruise missiles - 352 (0);

Boats / ships - 16 (0).

Ukraine, general news

Commenting on the morning missile strikes, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said, "Don't justify these attacks by calling them a "response". Russia is doing this because it still has missiles and a desire to kill Ukrainians."

Ukraine signed the agreement on grain export with Turkey and the UN and continues to fulfill its obligations under this document, President Zelensky stressed.

Due to large-scale air alerts during working hours, Ukraine loses UAH 7.5 billion ($203 million) daily, head of the Verkhovna Rada Tax committee Daniil Hetmantsev said.

Russia, relevant news

Although it was announced that the partial mobilization in Russia is already completed, a presidential decree to this effect has yet to be published. When asked about the decree, President Putin's spokesman Dmitriy Peskov dodged the question, saying that he would provide the information later, Ukrainian media reported with reference to the Russian RIA Novosti. Later in the day, Putin said he would consult with lawyers about whether such a decree is necessary. He repeated that the mobilization was completed. In the Russian legalistic system, however, the practice is for every decision to be formalized; therefore, such behavior creates uncertainty.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Moldova declared an employee of the Russian embassy persona non grata. The Ministry said that the Russian attacks on Ukrainian critical infrastructure created increased risks and threats in the region and began to threaten Moldova. As a result, the employee of the Russian Embassy in Chisinau will have to leave the territory of Moldova. However, it is not specified who exactly will have to leave.

International company 3M Co. decided to completely withdraw its business from Russia and Belarus and is considering the possibility of selling its Alabuga SEZ and Volokolamsk production facilities – the Russian Interfax news agency reported, citing the company.

About 70,000 Russian citizens have opened bank accounts in Uzbekistan since the beginning of this year, and almost half of them permanently work and stay in the republic, the Central Bank of Uzbekistan said.

The Estonian authorities will expand the protected zone on the border with Russia from 10 to 300 meters to build additional border infrastructure facilities there, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic said.

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3. Special Operations News Update - October 31, 2022 | SOF News

Special Operations News Update - October 31, 2022 | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · October 31, 2022

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo: Sailors operating a diver propulsion device during high-altitude dive training in California, Sept. 5, 2022. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Alex Per.

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it five (almost) days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

RUT in U.S. Cities. U.S. special operations unit need training time in an urban environment so that they can execute highly specialized missions in cities around the world. These ‘realistic urban training’ events do generate a certain level of excitement among citizens not expecting helicopters dropping out of the sky in the middle of the night and landing in downtown sections of large cities. Read more in “When ‘The Boys’ are Back in Town: A Special Ops Vet Explains Why Elite Units Train in US Cities”, Coffee or Die Magazine, October 22, 2022.

10th SFG(A) Train Up SFAB. The 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) provided some training in advisory tasks to members of the 4th Security Force Assistance Brigade. SFABs are specialized units with the core mission to conduct training, advising, assisting, enabling, and accompanying allied and partner nations. “10th Group Enhance SFAB’s Advisory Roles”, DVIDS, October 14, 2022.

Jetpacks and SOF. The use of one-man flying machines or jetpacks continue to be in the development phase with very little actual use (at least that is publicly known) in special operations missions. But there could be some ‘sightings’ in the future. “Startup Finding Special Ops Customers for Jetpack”, National Defense, October 21, 2022.

Electric Bikes and SOF. Light electric motorbikes could very well be produced and fielded to special operations forces in the future. The quiet bikes have limited range thus far but are useful for getting quickly into an area to conduct operations without making a lot of noise. Ukrainian snipers have been using the electric motorbikes to quietly get into firing position and then quickly depart the area. “US Special Operations tests American-made electric motorbikes for military use”, Electrek, October 27, 2022.

SOF, ALTESS, and Acquisition Process. An application developed by PEO EIS ALTESS is assisting USSOCOM’s Program Manager Special Programs solve information-sharing problems. PEO SOF Warrior program offices have become more efficient and effective at executing their daily workload. “ALTESS-developed application helps Special Ops view entire acquisition process”, DVIDS, October 26, 2022.

Defense Strategies Institute presents SOF & Worldwide Operations, December 7-8, 2022, Tampa, Florida. The 11th Annual SOF & Worldwide Symposium will convene senior level leaders and decision makers from across the Special Operations Community, regional combatant commands, Department of State, intelligence community, academia, and industry.

AFSOC, MQ-9, and Emerald Flag. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) used the Emerald Flag exercise held on Eglin Air Force Base to practice employment of the MQ-9 Reaper drone. The exercise provided AFSOC’s remotely piloted aircraft in a forward deployed mode. “MQ-9s demonstrate new capabilities in Emerald Flag”, Air Force, October 26, 2022.

193rd SOW Has New Cdr. The 193rd Special Operations Wing has a new commander and new command chief. Col. Edward Fink, Jr takes command and Chief Master Sgt. Robert Smith assumed responsibilities as 193rd SOW command chief. “193rd Special Operations Wing welcomes new commander, command chief”, DVIDS, October 28, 2022.

SOF’s Mk 18 Carbine. The short-barreled variant of the M4 carbine, the Mk 18 is a favorite weapon of special operations forces for close quarters combat. Learn about the history of the Mk 18, why it is used by SOF, and which SOF units have used the weapon. “What is the Mk 18? Special Operations Forces Carbine Explained”, Grey Dynamics, October 29, 2022.

USSOCOM Seeks Mobile Workstations. The U.S. Special Operations Command is interested in working with vendors to design, build, and test mobile workstations for the transportation of military personnel and equipment to mission areas. “USSOCOM Seeks Mobile Workstation Concepts”, ExecutiveGov, October 28, 2022.

International SOF

Afghan SOF in Ukraine. About 5,000 former Afghan special operations forces fled to Iran last year to avoid reprisals by the Taliban after they took over Afghanistan in August 2021. Some of the Afghan SOF soldiers have been recruited by Russia to fight in Ukraine. These are well-trained fighters who benefited from training provided by U.S. SOF. The former Afghan SOF have some skills that are marketable – and are knowledgeable of western TTPs. There are reports that some are already in Ukraine on the front lines. Apparently they are recruited by the Wagner Group through the Russian embassy in Iran. The danger of Afghan SOF using their skills on behalf of the adversaries to the United States were thoroughly detailed in the House Republican Interim Report of August 2022 on Afghanistan (PDF, 115 pages). “Ex-Afghan Commandos Fighting for Russia in Ukraine”, by Howard Altman, The WarZone, October 26, 2022.

Women to be Drafted into IDF’s Unit 669. For the first time, women will be drafted into the elite Unit 669 of the Israel Air Force. The brigade conducts search and rescue operations and is considered to be one of the four special forces units of the Israel Defense Force. Cadets who enter the training for Unit 669 will undergo an intense 18-20 months of training in air, land, and sea operations. The entrance requirements for women are stringent. For instance, women candidates for Unit 669 must weigh at least 172 pounds and be at least 5’5″ tall. Some elite IDF units remain closed to women; including the Sayerat Matkal, Shayetet 13, IAF’s Shaldag Special Forces unit, IDF’s commando brigade, and the Navy’s Submarine unit. “IDF begins drafting women to elite combat units in historic first”, The Jerusalem Post, October 30, 2022.

‘Rogue Heroes’ of SAS. Author Gavin Mortimer provides a detailed history of Britain’s daring commandos and their role in taking down Hitler’s empire during the Second World War. “The real ‘Rogue Heroes’ of the early SAS”, History Extra, October 26, 2022.

An Interesting Rescue Mission by NZ SOF. In 1997 a small element of New Zealand special operations personnel assisted in the rescue of five prisoners of war and helped defuse volatile situation. “Spears, machetes and guns in daring POW rescue”, Stuff.co.nz, October 30, 2022.

SOF History

2nd Ranger Infantry Company in Korean War. The only all-Black special operations combat unit in U.S. Army history served with distinction in the early 1950s in Korea. In the early days of the Korean War (1950) Ranger companies were formed up to conduct attacks deep behind enemy lines. Many of the members of this company were veterans of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion – the first black paratrooper unit. “The only all-Black special operations Army unit kicked serious butt in Korea”, We Are the Mighty, October 24, 2022.

Intelligence Support Activity (ISA). Samuel Longstreth offers a comprehensive look (perhaps too much?) of the “The Activity” – a component of the U.S. Army that acts as a dedicated intelligence organization for United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM. “The Activity” has had many names over the years to include Gray Fox, Army of Northern Virginia, Office of Military Support, and others. Read about it in “ISA: Soldier Spies of the Intelligence Support Activity”, Grey Dynamics, October 30, 2022.

MOAB Supporting SF in Afghanistan (2017). A GBU-43/B MOAB was used in April 2017 in Afghanistan to support a Special Forces team engaged in combat. An Air Force Special Operations Command MC-130 dropped it out of the rear of its aircraft and it floated down to the target are suspended from a parachute. Weighing over 22 thousand pounds, it has a blast radius of one mile. The SF team was confronted with an ISIS bunker and cave complex in the Achin district of Nangarhar province and needed some help in neutralizing the ISIS fighters thought to number over 100. Read more in “MOAB: What is the Mother of All Bomb?”, by Brent Eastwood, 1945, October 27, 2022.

Commentary

SOF, Ethics, and Professionalization. C. Anthony Pfaff addresses the perceived ethical crisis of special operations forces, stating that professionalization as an institution is needed. Past assessments of ethical issues have been attributed to SOF’s focus on mission accomplishment and a high operations tempo. However, Pfaff says there is a more comprehensive solution. “Professionalizing Special Operations Forces”, Parameters, US Army War College, Autumn 2022.

SOF and Integrated Defense. Scott Harr, an Army Special Forces officer, provides his perspective on special operations forces role in an integrated defense as described in the DoD’s National Defense Strategy. He cites the move from concentrating on the global war on terrorism to the focus on great power competition as the need to utilize ‘density’ not ‘dispersion’ in the deployment and employment of special operations forces. “Density Not Dispersion: Evolving SOF for Integrated Defense”, War Room, U.S. Army War College, October 27, 2022.

PSYOP and Propaganda Ethics. Dr. Emma L. Briant, a political communication scholar who researches contemporary propaganda and information warfare, says it’s time for a public debate about clandestine PSYOP. “Pentagon PSYOP Scandal Demands an Urgent Debate on Propaganda Ethics”, Tech Policy Press, October 27, 2022.

National Security

Former SECDEF Ash Carter Dies. A past Secretary of Defense who opened up combat roles for women and advanced the cause of transgenders has passed away. Ash Carter suffered a heart attack according to a statement from his family. He spent years with the Defense Department as well as serving in the academic world as well. “Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter Dies at 68”, DOD News, October 25, 2022.

CRS Fact Sheet on Military Readiness. The Congressional Research Service has provided Congress with a two-page fact sheet the lays out the definition of ‘military readiness’ and the role of the SECDEF, CJCS, and defense establishment in reporting on military readiness to Congress. It also provides a chart on the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS) ratings and definitions (C-1 through C-5, etc.). Military Readiness: DOD Assessment and Reporting Requirements, CRS, October 26, 2022, PDF, 2 pages.

Russians and the Arctic. John Grady, a reporter on national defense and national security, examines how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has affected the Arctic region. “Russian Aggression in Ukraine Boosts Arctic Security Concerns”, USNI News, October 26, 2022.

Arctic Security and the Polar Fleet. Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss) serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee and has provided an Op-Ed that warns us of repeated tests of American resolve by the Russians and Chinese in the Arctic region. The two nations are cooperating on the high seas to challenge the U.S. presence in the region. “To deter Arctic aggression, build the polar fleet we need”, Defense News, October 26, 2022.

Learn More about Russia. CNA’s Russia Studies Program provides critical analyses to the national security establishment and government agencies on the Russian way of war and its military capabilities. The program supports U.S. leaders with studies, conferences, panel discussions, and more. Read more about the Russia Studies Program.

Africa

Nick Turse on USAFRICOM (and SOF). A journalist who never misses an opportunity to put the U.S. military in a bad light is once again providing us some interesting details of U.S. operations on the continent of Africa. “What’s the US military doing in Africa?: What the U.S. Africa Command doesn’t want you to know”, Salon.com, October 25, 2022.

DoS Statement on ISIS in Africa. The Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Africa Focus Group held a meeting on October 26, 2022 in Niamey, Niger to discuss efforts to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria movements in Africa. The group shared assessments on the ISIS threat and ways to coordinate and collaborate on effective methods to combat violent extremism. Read “Joint Statement of the Co-Chairs of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Africa Focus Group”, U.S. Department of State, October 27, 2022.

Russian Flags Waving Across Africa. Russian propaganda has a wide reach. However, there is more to the story of what is boosting pro-Russian sentiment. Across West Africa, in countries like Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali, Africans are displaying Russian flags. Many observers of this pro-Russian sentiment laid the source at the Russian use of social media but much of it is based on direct experiences with Western nations. “Why are people in West Africa waving Russian flags?”, The Washington Post, October 28, 2022.

Mali and a Little Russian Influence. The long-running Islamist insurgency in Mali is still going strong. The crisis has not improved even with the partnering of Mali’s regime with the Russian Wagner Group. Mali has experienced two military coups since 2020. France has withdrawn its forces; having deployed up to 5,000 at a time and leading the European special operations Task Force Takuba. In addition, the activities of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and the G5 Sahel have been curtailed. Russia is quickly filling the void. “Mali’s Deepening Extremist Crisis: Stability in the Sahel Falters as Russian Influence Increases”, Counter Extremism Project, October 26, 2022.

Upcoming Events

Webinar – By, With and Through Partner Special Forces in the Middle East. The Middle East Institute will host a panel discussion about how U.S. Special Forces, working along side partner special operations forces, was able to destroy the caliphate and severely degrade the capabilities of ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. The speakers on the panel are Katie Crombe, Michael K. Nagata, and Joseph Votel. The event takes place on Tuesday, November 8, 2022.

https://www.mei.edu/events/and-through-partner-special-forces-middle-east

November 8-9, 2022. Fort Bragg, NC

Modern Warfare Week

Global SOF Foundation

November 17, 2022

JSOU Webinar – Degrade and Destroy (War against ISIS)

Joint Special Operations University

November 17-18, 2022

33rd Annual NDIA SO/LIC Symposium

NDIA

December 7-8, 2022

SOF & Worldwide Operations

Defense Strategies Institute (DSI)

SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, or defense then we are interested.

Books, Pubs, and Reports

Book – SOG -A Photo History of the Secret Wars, by John L. Plaster, Casemate Publishers, May 2022. Plaster served with MACV-SOG in Vietnam. This latest edition contains over 700 photos of the secret operations behind enemy lines in Cambodia and Laos. The separate sections of the book are entitled “The Secret War Begins”, “The Ho Chi Minh Trail”, “SOG’s Air Arm”, “Recon Weapons, Missions, and Tactics”, “Recon Operations”, “SOG’s Hatchet Forces”, “Other Fronts in the Secret Wars”, and “Glossary”. Available on Amazon.com.

Podcasts, Videos, and Movies

Jack Ryan – Season 3. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan returns for a third season on Amazon Prime Video. Season three has our hero going rogue in an attempt to stop a group of Russians from using a nuclear warhead to start World War 3 and restore Russia to the days of the USSR. (Editor’s note: I watched the first two seasons. As someone with 40 years in SF and several years contracting it is easy to pick apart the details . . . as in . . . “That would never happen”, etc. Sometimes you have to suspend reality and push the “I believe button”. I did find the first two seasons very entertaining). Watch the trailer on YouTube, October 27, 2022, 3 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3lQ53e2j6Q

Podcast – Special Forces History with Mitch Utterback. Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Mitch Utterback provides a history of the 10th Special Forces Group, “The Originals”. The Pinelander podcast presented by Blacksmith Publishing, October 28, 2022, one hour.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5gGLROwfZgDponAR7d11cJ

sof.news · by SOF News · October 31, 2022

4. China's Global Security Initiative: Xi's wedge in the U.S.-led order

How could anyone argue with the "Six Commitments" with the Global Security Initiative? 

Excerpts:

As with China's other lofty global programs -- the Belt and Road Initiative for building infrastructure and the Global Development Initiative for helping emerging nations confront poverty and other challenges -- the nascent GSI is heavy on verbiage and light on concrete details. When he announced it at the Boao Forum for Asia in April, Xi said the GSI would provide a framework of principles for global affairs and diplomacy that could make the world a safer place.

In Chinese state media, the GSI is described as "another global public good offered by China" that will contribute "Chinese solutions and wisdom for solving security challenges facing humanity." In the context of the GSI, Chinese leaders and diplomats speak of security issues in the broadest sense -- not just defense but also food, climate, supply chains, the internet, trade and energy.

Experts say that while the new initiative is vague, it is not inconsequential.

For Asia, "it's really about trying to propose an alternative regional security architecture," said Jacob Stokes, senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank, "one that moves away from the historical system, or the postwar system of U.S. alliances and partnerships."

China's Global Security Initiative: Xi's wedge in the U.S.-led order

Beijing's next big program ups pressure to take sides, rationalizes Ukraine war

PAK YIU, Nikkei staff writer

NOVEMBER 1, 2022 06:00 JST

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/China-s-Global-Security-Initiative-Xi-s-wedge-in-the-U.S.-led-order?utm

HONG KONG -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's nearly two-hour speech to more than 2,000 delegates at this year's Communist Party congress was filled with familiar refrains. Written into his work report for the first time, however, was the Global Security Initiative (GSI), signaling an important theme in his precedent-breaking third term.

"An ancient Chinese philosopher observed that 'all living things may grow side by side without harming one another, and different roads may run in parallel without interfering with one another,'" Xi said in his work report. "Only when all countries pursue the cause of common good, live in harmony and engage in cooperation for mutual benefit will there be sustained prosperity and guaranteed security."

It is "in this spirit," according to Xi, that China has launched the GSI.

But what is it?

As with China's other lofty global programs -- the Belt and Road Initiative for building infrastructure and the Global Development Initiative for helping emerging nations confront poverty and other challenges -- the nascent GSI is heavy on verbiage and light on concrete details. When he announced it at the Boao Forum for Asia in April, Xi said the GSI would provide a framework of principles for global affairs and diplomacy that could make the world a safer place.

In Chinese state media, the GSI is described as "another global public good offered by China" that will contribute "Chinese solutions and wisdom for solving security challenges facing humanity." In the context of the GSI, Chinese leaders and diplomats speak of security issues in the broadest sense -- not just defense but also food, climate, supply chains, the internet, trade and energy.

Experts say that while the new initiative is vague, it is not inconsequential.

For Asia, "it's really about trying to propose an alternative regional security architecture," said Jacob Stokes, senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank, "one that moves away from the historical system, or the postwar system of U.S. alliances and partnerships."

Experts say Beijing aims to formalize many of the security-related endeavors and relationships it has been pursuing for years under one umbrella. Not only that, but scholars see the GSI as a reflection of how Xi and company view the world.

From China's perspective, "there's a huge concern that the world is not secure," said Henry Wang, president of the Beijing think tank Center for China and Globalization.

Many, including the U.S., would surely agree. The difference lies in who is responsible for that insecurity and what to do about it.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called China "the most serious long-term challenge to the international order." China, in turn, argues that it is the U.S. and its allies that are the "destabilizing" force. And it looks intent on using the GSI to push this narrative across the Asia-Pacific region and as far away as Africa and South America.

A paramilitary policeman stands outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing before the Communist Party's congress on Oct. 16. From Central Asia to the Solomon Islands, China is offering to train law enforcement personnel. © Reuters

While novel in name, the stage was set years ago when Beijing sought to create a "community of common destiny," first mentioned during then-President Hu Jintao's report to the party congress in 2012.

"They've been very carefully constructing this new basically Asian and then global order. Right from that time, they sort of laid down the fundamental principles, and they're filling in the details as they go along," said David Arase, resident professor of international politics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, part of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Now Beijing has settled on "six commitments," as Foreign Minister Wang Yi explained in April. They include: staying committed to comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security; respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries; abiding by the principles of the United Nations Charter; taking seriously the legitimate security concerns of all countries; peacefully resolving disputes through dialogue; and maintaining security in both traditional and nontraditional domains.

All this, Wang said, "improves and goes beyond the Western theory of geopolitical security."

Beijing's support for Russia and its refusal to condemn the invasion of Ukraine would seem to contradict some of these tenets. But within the framework of the six commitments, China also pushes the notion of "indivisible security."

"Security of one country should not come at the expense of that of others, and security of a region cannot be ensured by strengthening or even expanding military blocs," Wang said.

This jibes with Russia's justification for the war. Indeed, President Vladimir Putin himself used the term "indivisible security" in his speech announcing the invasion in February. The GSI, foreign diplomacy experts say, helps China legitimize the argument that it was the U.S. and NATO that provoked the war in Ukraine.

The GSI "improves and goes beyond the Western theory of geopolitical security"

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi

Beijing is looking far and wide for endorsements, tapping into simmering discontent with the global governance system. At the BRICS summit in June, Xi urged his Brazilian, Russian, Indian and South African counterparts to work with China "to operationalize the GSI and bring more stability and positive energy to the world."

The previous month, Wang found receptive responses from Uruguay's foreign minister, who said the GSI is "highly consistent" with the country's foreign policy philosophy, and Nicaragua's, who said his nation wanted to join, according to Chinese readouts.

China's envoys have also taken to the pages of local newspapers to champion the initiative, from Kenya's Sunday Nation to the Solomon Islands' Solomon Star, describing the GSI in terms such as "a new concept of security that can replace confrontation and zero-sum mentality with dialogue, partnership and win-win results."

One trend that China watchers see as coming under the GSI is the spread of Chinese-style law enforcement and security practices.

Surveillance cameras in Hong Kong. China is exporting the equipment it uses to monitor its own population. © Reuters

In October, a group of 32 police officers from the Solomon Islands flew to China to study policing techniques. China also said it would build a law enforcement training complex in Tajikistan, after Xi offered to train thousands of officers and establish an anti-terrorism instruction facility for member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

China is exporting equipment it uses to monitor and control its own population as well, raising concerns that other governments could replicate the kind of repression and surveillance seen in places like Xinjiang and increasingly Hong Kong.

More than 3 million closed-circuit TV cameras supplied by China's Hikvision are connected to the internet 24 hours a day in 33,000 cities around the world. Chinese companies such as Huawei have supplied over 160 "smart city" packages in more than 100 countries and regions.

"That's really about using those tools and the security apparatus of the state for, you know, regimes' security and stability in the country," said Stokes at CNAS.

Another objective of the GSI, he added, is to create a shield against sanctions. China vehemently opposes Western countries' use of such penalties, and after the invasion of Ukraine triggered a slew of sanctions against Russia, Beijing has taken note and wants to make its economy more resilient.

While the GSI is still in its infancy, Manoj Kewalramani, who runs the Indo-Pacific Research Program at the Takshashila Institution in India, anticipates China finding ways to bolster financial security. At the same time, he sees a number of other fields relevant to the GSI. "Anything with regard to food security, what sort of arrangements can [China] arrive at, whether it is land, or seeds -- any of those cooperative arrangements," he suggested. "Energy, that's another area."

China includes all manner of things under its "comprehensive national security" concept -- including the economy, culture, society, science and technology, cybersecurity, the environment, resources, nuclear technology and overseas interests. "You're exporting that vision, that everything has to be looked at [through] a securitized lens," Kewalramani said.

For example, China "is not looking at cyberspace governance from the perspective of individual rights, privacy, data sharing, corporate rights," he said. "They're fundamentally saying this is a matter of sovereignty."

It is through such reasoning and rhetorical exercises that Beijing seeks to establish new norms and apply its domestic national security apparatus to foreign policy, Kewalramani said.

U.S. and Japanese aircraft conduct an exercise. "It's pretty clear that the region trusts the U.S. strategically or securitywise more than they do with China," an expert said. © Reuters

China's complex diplomatic relationships, especially in its own neighborhood, could make the GSI a tough sell. Beijing is locked in territorial disputes with several Southeast Asian countries in the South China Sea. America has an expansive network of military ties that will not be easy to unravel. Many in the region may have looked askance at China's aggressive reaction to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August, which Beijing answered with unprecedented military exercises. And then there is India.

"India is something that Beijing sees as a threat -- not a threat in terms of 'existential,' but as a threat in terms of a potential spoiler in the region that can enable its containment," Kewalramani said.

Nevertheless, an increasingly self-confident China looks set to push its alternate narrative. Political analysts say China's words and demonization of the U.S. should not be dismissed as empty slogans.

"If you look at the kind of relationships the U.S. has in defense and security partnerships, cooperation in the [Asian] region, it's very comprehensive," said the Hopkins-Nanjing Center's Arase. "It's pretty clear that the region trusts the U.S. strategically or securitywise more than they do with China. But you wouldn't know that just listening to China's rhetoric on GSI."

The danger, he said, is when that rhetoric goes unanswered. Much of the world is aware that China's assertive rise is underway, but "there's a real vacuum or lack of critical discourse, in part because nobody wants to question China's narrative," Arase said.

As the U.S.-China gulf widens, many countries already feel compelled to take sides. The GSI could add to that pressure as Beijing asks others to subscribe to its worldview.

"Over the next two, three, four years, you're likely to see the choices of countries in the region be far more constrained," said Kewalramani. "I think it's useful for them to have these discussions domestically and among themselves about what these things are going to mean for our choices in the future."

5. IntelBrief: Iran’s Repression and Alignment with Russia Carry Costs

IntelBrief: Iran’s Repression and Alignment with Russia Carry Costs - The Soufan Center

thesoufancenter.org · by Mohamed · November 1, 2022

November 1, 2022

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Iranian Presidency Office via AP

Bottom Line up Front

• The U.S., U.K., and Europe have hardened lines against Iran following draconian repression of domestic protests and Tehran’s military support for Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
• Western support for any further concessions to salvage the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear agreement – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – has largely evaporated.
• There is growing support for additional U.S. and European sanctions on Iran, potentially including a UN sanctions “snap-back” that would reinstate sanctions enacted by the Security Council.
• Despite concerted global efforts, sanctions have not, to date, brought about significant changes in Tehran’s behavior.

Since early 2021, the United States, the United Kingdom, and European partners have negotiated with Iran to restore full compliance with the terms of the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear agreement, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the pact in 2018, reimposing all U.S. secondary sanctions which had been lifted under the agreement. Tehran, predictably, responded to the U.S. pullout by violating the deal’s restrictions on its nuclear program. Assessments indicate that Iran is now within weeks of acquiring sufficient fissile material to successfully produce one nuclear weapon should Tehran choose to do so. Talks between Iran and the six major powers that are parties to the JCPOA nearly reached an agreement at several points during 2022, only to stall as Iranian leaders brought forward additional demands.

As of late October, the prospects for the nuclear talks appear to have evaporated due to Iranian behavior separate and distinct from its nuclear activities. Although the JCPOA focuses only on limiting Iran’s nuclear program, the talks have always been vulnerable to a collapse in the wake of shifting public opinion against Tehran. Support for a revived nuclear deal with Iran has eroded significantly as a result of Iran’s draconian suppression of a women-led uprising that began in mid-September. Iran has deployed units of its multiple and overlapping security forces, in many cases using live ammunition, to try to end nationwide protests that were triggered by the death of a young woman of Kurdish origin, Mahsa Amini, while in custody; she had been detained for allegedly violating the mandate that women’s hair be fully covered in public. Human rights groups report that at least 250 protesters have been killed, including 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, and thousands arrested across the country since the uprising began. Concurrent with the protests, Iranian leaders have been actively supporting Russia’s war effort in Ukraine by delivering to Russia hundreds of sophisticated Iranian-made armed drones and short-range ballistic missiles used by Moscow to target civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. A contingent of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) drone operators reportedly have also deployed to Russian-occupied Crimea to help train Russian forces on the Iranian systems.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and European governments have reacted to Iran’s actions by shifting to a decidedly harder line toward the Islamic Republic, derailing any prospects of finalizing a revised Iran nuclear agreement in the near future. The policy shift is driven by demonstrations against Iranian repression taking place in Western capitals, as well as the revulsion by elites and political leaders in Western legislatures to Iran’s brutal repression and expanding alignment with Moscow. Acknowledging that Iran’s actions have complicated any U.S. efforts to complete the nuclear agreement with Iran, on October 12, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that the Iran nuclear deal is “not our focus right now.” “[Instead,] our focus right now is on shining a spotlight on what [the protesters are] doing and supporting them in the ways we can,” Price added. Yet, senior Western officials have stopped short of suggesting that reviving the 2015 nuclear deal is no longer in their national interest, or that the nuclear negotiations have officially ended.

Beyond downshifting the nuclear negotiations, several states have sought to impose tangible consequences on Tehran. U.S officials hope that the European shift against Tehran will help change Tehran’s policies by convincing Iranian leaders that they risk isolating the country from the entire West. In the past, European leaders have often hesitated to pressure Iran through economic sanctions and have consistently engaged with Iranian leaders even at times of high tensions between Washington and Tehran. In October, the United States imposed additional sanctions on Iranian entities and persons responsible for the crackdown against protesters, and for producing and shipping armed drones to Russia. U.S., U.K., and European Union (EU) officials also have agreed that Iran’s drone sales to Moscow constitute a violation of a UN ban on the transfer to or from Iran of missile-related and drone technology. That ban, provided in Annex B of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which enshrined the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement in international law, remains in force until October 2023. A ban on conventional arms transfers to or from Iran, provided for by that same Annex, expired in October 2020.

Violations of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015) give EU officials justification to impose additional sanctions on Tehran and thereby align their sanctions more closely with those of Washington. The U.S. and Albania have called for an informal meeting of the UN Security Council on November 2 to direct international focus on the protests in Iran and push for credible, independent investigations into Iranian human rights abuses. Although support from either Russia or China, two of the Permanent Five (P5) members of the Council, remains unlikely, such meetings serve the purpose of highlighting key international developments and the various positions of its fifteen members.

There is reportedly support among some U.S. and EU officials to trigger a total “snap-back” (re-imposition) of all UN sanctions on Iran – a mechanism provided for in the 2015 JCPOA if any party to the agreement asserts that another party has materially breached the accord. Yet, a “snap-back” would essentially end the nuclear deal entirely, which led EU countries and other Security Council members to derail a 2020 “snap-back” effort by the Trump administration. Currently, the needed threshold level of support for such a move does not yet exist in Washington, let alone in London or EU capitals. At the same time, most experts assess that comprehensive U.S. sanctions have had little effect, if any, on Iranian support for regional armed factions, its human rights practices, its arms and technology development, or its efforts to expand its nuclear program. It is likely that the added Western pressure might not, in the end, bring about the Iranian policy changes that the United States and its partners seek – particularly when veto-wielding Council member Russia stands to materially benefit from Tehran’s continued resistance to Western pressure.

thesoufancenter.org · by Mohamed · November 1, 2022

6. Maximum Support for the Iranian People: A New Strategy

Conclusion:

With anti-regime protests across Iran moving past the 40th day point, Washington desperately needs a strategy to better stand with the Iranian people who continue demonstrating, as well as to bring coherence toward its overall Iran policy. The above vectors of support to the people and punitive measures against the regime can begin to do precisely that.

October 30, 2022 | Memo

Maximum Support for the Iranian People: A New Strategy

Saeed Ghasseminejad

Senior Iran and Financial Economics Advisor

Richard Goldberg

Senior Advisor

Tzvi Kahn

Research Fellow and Senior Editor

Behnam Ben Taleblu

Senior Fellow

fdd.org · by Saeed Ghasseminejad Senior Iran and Financial Economics Advisor · October 30, 2022

Introduction

U.S. policy since the 2009 election-related uprising in Iran has gradually incorporated a variety of human rights related sanctions and designations to name, shame, penalize, and deter Iranian officials and institutions that commit human rights abuses.* Yet U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran has prioritized Tehran’s nuclear program and, to a considerably lesser extent, its ballistic missile program and material support for international terrorism, but not human rights. The ongoing street protests in Iran, as well as the evolving pattern of anti-regime protests in Iran since 2017, illustrate the need for developing — in addition to a “maximum pressure” strategy on the regime that incorporates all tools of American power — a transnational strategy of “maximum support” for the Iranian people. This memorandum provides recommendations for implementing such a strategy, which should be a centerpiece of U.S. policy.

Any such policy shift must take a critical fact into account: Any further negotiations over the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), would likely have a detrimental effect on any U.S. and allied efforts to support anti-regime protestors. Tehran would assess that international pressure, however robust amid demonstrations, would ultimately fade. A financial windfall of an estimated $1 trillion by 2030 under a renewed agreement would enable the regime to withstand both internal and external pressure. To fully support the protest movement, the White House should make clear that all offers of sanctions relief for the regime are off the table. Keeping the door open to a nuclear deal undermines the protesters and strengthens the regime.

U.S. bilateral and multilateral policies underpinning a “maximum support” strategy to Iranian protestors should include communications support and political and financial backing while also increased sanctioning of regime officials and working towards their political isolation in international organizations. This memorandum examines these categories while acknowledging that the president may consider additional active measures.

Communications Support

The United States has long worked to combat censorship in Iran. In September, the Biden administration issued General License (GL) D-2, which authorized “technology companies to offer the Iranian people more options of secure, outside platforms and services,” as the Treasury Department put it in a press release. The administration should take the following additional actions to utilize information as an effective instrument against Tehran:

Provide Information to Protestors on Movement of Iranian Security Services. The Biden administration likely possesses intelligence through signals and imagery that it should share with Iranian protestors to warn them about the movement of all security services involved in repression and to inform them about Tehran’s weaknesses and strengths. The administration should also borrow from its Russia playbook with respect to the rapid declassification and dissemination of information on regime plans, potential false flag operations, disinformation operations, and other activities that put Tehran in the position of reacting to U.S. information dissemination efforts rather than driving the narrative.

Use Cyber Capabilities in Support of Protestors. The U.S. and many of its international partners have significant cyber capabilities that they should use to help protesters. Targets should include Tehran’s command and control systems, its security forces, or its massive bureaucracy, whose information and communications are likely stored in and move through clouds and internet and intranet networks. From abroad, the administration should help protestors in efforts to move from street-power to strike-power by using its cyber capacity to disrupt the normal operation of key industries. Disruption in key industries such as oil, gas, petrochemical, and financial sectors can facilitate a general labor strike across the country.

Support Labor Strikes. Labor strikes are currently ongoing in various sectors of Iran’s economy, from educational institutions to strategic sectors, such as oil and gas. Disrupting the operation of strategic sectors could give a much-needed boost to laborers to begin or continue striking and put time on the side of strikers. Oil strikes (coupled with market supply and domestic production issues) multiplied street power in the 1978-1979 protests that took down the Pahlavi monarchy in Iran. Washington should support labor strikes by using its cyber capacities to disrupt the normal operation of these strategic sectors.

Publicly Support the Iranian People. President Biden and other high-ranking officials should vigorously embrace traditional and social media to amplify and sustain their support for the Iranian people and remind demonstrators that the administration stands with them. The more U.S. officials mention the names of the victims of the regime’s repression, the more the Iranian people will know that America has not forgotten their plight.

Enable Censorship Circumvention. The administration should support efforts to provide the Iranian people access to uncensored internet via satellite, consistent with Treasury’s efforts to broaden the application of general licenses for such purposes. As Iranians increasingly rely on the internet, social media applications, and mobile communications to organize as well as share information about the regime’s atrocities with the outside world, Tehran has improved its domestic cyber capabilities to censor websites and applications and to throttle or black out the internet. With a reported 80 percent of Iranians already using virtual-private networks (VPNs) and anti-filtering technologies prior to the start of these protests, measures to ensure connectivity are now critical.

Reports that a limited number of Starlink terminals are already in Iran and operational are welcome news. The capacity for satellite internet to help Iranians regain internet access as the regime tightens its repression in cyberspace and doubles down on a national intranet. To ramp up the production of Starlink terminals, Washington should establish an Iran Free Internet Fund (or a similarly named entity) under public-private auspices to offer Starlink financial support for an Iran-specific acquisition program. Such an operation would be a game-changer in ending the regime’s monopoly over the internet in Iran. The United States should link this project to a maximum pressure strategy in which Washington enforces its sanctions, especially oil sanctions, confiscates shipment of illicit materials, sells them in the market, and uses the revenue to fund the Iran Free Internet Fund.

Streamline an Interagency Process. The administration should create an interagency team to ensure that Iranians get access to the necessary hardware, be it through smuggling or other means, so that technologies like Starlink can become operational. In the meantime, the team should help identify and contest the regime’s disinformation and hacking efforts that aim to mislead Iranians about the current operational status of Starlink and comparable efforts.

Sanctions and Economic Measures

The United States has imposed sanctions on Iran for human rights violations since the passage of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010. The administration should utilize sanctions and other economic measures bilaterally and in cooperation with U.S. allies and partners as effective instruments to pressure Tehran.

Sanction Members of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and Those Who Provide It Material Support. The United States designated the IRIB as a human rights abuser in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2013, which required the president to impose sanctions on the IRIB and include it in the Treasury Department’s list of specially designated nationals and blocked persons. “The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting has contributed to the infringement of individuals’ human rights by broadcasting forced televised confession and show trials,” Section 1248 of the law states. President Barack Obama sanctioned the IRIB pursuant to Executive Order 13628 in February 2013 for restricting or denying the free flow of information to or from the Iranian people.

The United States should now designate the current IRIB director general, Peyman Jebelli, and every current IRIB official, producer, news director, and anchor. Treasury should also review whether banks and corporate entities are providing the IRIB with material support and designate them accordingly. In 2018, the Treasury Department established a precedent when it sanctioned Ayandeh Bank under Executive Order 13846 for its role in “having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, IRIB.”

Expand human rights sanctions. The Biden administration should significantly expand the use of human rights sanctions against the regime in Iran. The administration should initiate a designations campaign that follows its recent designation of Iran’s morality police and select military commanders who have presided over the Islamic Republic’s latest crackdown. Aimed at naming, shaming, and penalizing the Iranian people’s oppressors, these sanctions should target the Law Enforcement Force (LEF), the Basij paramilitary, and IRGC commanders at regional and local levels. Designations should also explore the applicability of sanctions against governors, governors-general, and a host of political and judicial officials supportive of the crackdown at the regional and national levels. Policymakers can determine this culpability through open sources.

Sanction Senior Iranian Leadership. Washington should strengthen sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Ebrahim Raisi, both of whom are currently on the Treasury Department’s blacklist but not for human-rights related offenses. For example, the administration should amend Executive Order 13876 — which currently targets those in the supreme leader’s office or those appointed by the supreme leader to a political position in Iran — to integrate human rights sanctions into the order’s sanctions regime. It should also broaden the applicability of human rights sanctions and apply sectoral sanctions to defense and intelligence sectors of the Iranian economy based on Iran’s record of human rights abuse. Washington should extend these sanctions to other pillars of the regime where there may be a financial or institutional nexus of support for Iran’s apparatus of repression.

Deny Visas for Regime-Connected Individuals in the United States. The Biden administration should use existing State Department authorities under a 2019 appropriations act to prevent the entry into the United States of Iranian gross human rights violators and their families. Washington should first apply this penalty to individuals on the Treasury Department’s blacklist in cases where an evidentiary basis for human rights penalties may exist. It should then be broadened against new targets. After that, the administration commence a dialogue with international partners to persuade them to consider a visa ban against the same persons and their families. The net result would be a widening web or “no-go zone” for Iranian human rights violators and their families.

Expand Multilateral Efforts. The administration should share targeting information about human rights abusers with its international partners that possess or are developing autonomous sanctions authorities. The designation and accountability campaign should then be “multilateralized” against the IRGC, the LEF, regime officials, sanctions busters, censors, and others aiding the Islamic Republic’s repression machine. Canada’s recent sanctions against Iran’s morality police, as well as those by the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom, are good examples of this, but the use of sanctions must expand to include all American partners with human rights sanctions regimes and autonomous sanctions capabilities.

Conversely, where there are instances of entities subject to EU penalties that are yet to be targeted using State Department and Treasury Department authorities, the administration should rapidly move to bridge the transatlantic gap. The administration should also share information with foreign law enforcement agencies and investigative judges that may be pursuing charges against Iranian officials for human rights abuses.

Establish a Support Fund. The administration should create a fund to support the Iranian protest movement using penalties and past asset forfeiture actions related to Iran, akin to what was done for Poland’s Solidary Movement during the Cold War. This fund should support the efforts of Iranian laborers to engage in strikes to break the regime’s will. It should also provide financial support to families of political prisoners and those who have lost breadwinners in current or past protests.

International Organizations

Finally, the administration should move to isolate the Islamic Republic politically by pushing for its removal from, or censure in, international organizations, while also pressuring allies to sever or downgrade their bilateral diplomatic relations.

Pressure Iran Diplomatically. European nations have recalled their ambassadors from Tehran a handful of times over the past four decades. The recent string of demarches and statements by American allies against the Islamic Republic is therefore welcome, but more can be done, such as the recent statement of joint condemnation featuring female foreign ministers from 12 states. The Biden administration should further instruct all U.S. delegations to walk out of any international meeting where an Iranian representative is speaking. In light of the brutal killing of Mahsa Amini, as well as many other brave young female protestors, such as the 23-year-old social media influencer Hadis Najafi and the 16-year-old Nika Shahkarami, the United States should pressure relevant countries to remove Iran from the 45-member Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations while at the same time consider bringing rights violations resolutions to the attention of other UN bodies such as the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly.

Condemn Iran within International Organizations. The United States should pressure the International Telecommunications Union to issue condemnations of Iran for its violations of international telecommunications laws. America should encourage European broadcasting authorities — such as the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel in France and the Swedish Press and Broadcasting Authority — to direct audiovisual regulators to revoke the IRIB’s licenses to operate. OfCom, the United Kingdom’s audiovisual regulator, revoked Press TV’s license in 2012 for its broadcasts of forced confessions.

Snap Back Sanctions at the UN. At any time, any original participant in the JCPOA can send a letter to the UN Security Council alleging that Iran is in significant non-performance of its commitment under the deal, triggering a 30-day clock until all prior UN Security Council resolutions return to force. The United Kingdom, France, and Germany began this course of action in January 2020, but never completed the process for snapping back sanctions at the UN Security Council. The Trump administration attempted a unilateral snapback at the UN Security Council in August 2020, citing U.S. rights under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, but other members of the Council opposed the move. The Biden administration withdrew the U.S. snapback notification in early 2021. Washington should now restore it.

Conclusion

With anti-regime protests across Iran moving past the 40th day point, Washington desperately needs a strategy to better stand with the Iranian people who continue demonstrating, as well as to bring coherence toward its overall Iran policy. The above vectors of support to the people and punitive measures against the regime can begin to do precisely that.

*This memorandum builds on and borrows from a recent FDD op-ed: Behnam Ben Taleblu and Saeed Ghasseminejad, “How Biden Can Stand With the Iranian People,” The National Interest, October 5, 2022. (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/how-biden-can-stand-iranian-people-205189)

fdd.org · by Saeed Ghasseminejad Senior Iran and Financial Economics Advisor · October 30, 2022

7. Ukrainians grapple with power outages as winter approaches

It is going to be a tough winter for the people of Ukraine. How can Europe help?

Excerpts:

The unpredictable rolling blackouts are increasing as the government scrambles to stabilize the energy grid and repair the system ahead of winter. The cuts add another layer of angst and uncertainty to a population already struggling with the stress of nearly nine months of war.

To try to ease people’s burdens, energy companies are publishing daily schedules of when neighborhoods won’t have power. But it’s not consistent, especially as strikes intensify. Last week a power station in the central region was damaged, causing an emergency shutdown and prompting the government to warn citizens of tougher and longer outages.

“Unfortunately, the destruction and damage are serious,” Kyiv region Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said in a Telegram post. “It is necessary to prepare for emergency power outages for an indefinite period,” he said.

​

Ukrainians grapple with power outages as winter approaches

AP · by SAM MEDNICK · November 1, 2022

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The decorative candles Yaroslav Vedmid bought more than a year ago were never meant to be lit, but the dried wax that now clings to them attests to how they’ve been used almost nightly — a consequence of power cuts across Ukraine.

Seated at the dinner table with his wife in a village on the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, the two can’t count the number of times they’ve eaten in the dark since Russian attacks triggered the blackouts beginning in early October. Moscow has openly declared its intention to target the country’s energy infrastructure and drive the nation into the cold.

“When you’re relying on electricity, the worst thing is that you can’t plan … Psychologically it’s very uncomfortable,” said Vedmid, a 44-year-old business owner in Bilohorodka. The cuts are getting longer — nearly 12 hours of outages a day, he said.

So far, Russia has destroyed about 40% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, affecting 16 regions, according to the Ukrainian government.

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The latest assault came Monday, when a massive barrage of Russian cruise missile and drone strikes hit Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities, knocking out water and power supplies in apparent retaliation for what Moscow alleged was a Ukrainian attack on its Black Sea fleet.

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In Kyiv, some 80% of consumers in the city of 3 million were left without water because of damage to a power facility Monday. By Tuesday, water was fully restored as well as some power. Kyiv region governor, Oleksiy Kuleba said that 20,000 apartments in the region remained without power.

The unpredictable rolling blackouts are increasing as the government scrambles to stabilize the energy grid and repair the system ahead of winter. The cuts add another layer of angst and uncertainty to a population already struggling with the stress of nearly nine months of war.

To try to ease people’s burdens, energy companies are publishing daily schedules of when neighborhoods won’t have power. But it’s not consistent, especially as strikes intensify. Last week a power station in the central region was damaged, causing an emergency shutdown and prompting the government to warn citizens of tougher and longer outages.

“Unfortunately, the destruction and damage are serious,” Kyiv region Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said in a Telegram post. “It is necessary to prepare for emergency power outages for an indefinite period,” he said.

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Across the capital, residents are stocking up on heaters, blankets, warm clothing and power banks to charge electronics. While most say they’re willing to bear the brunt of the blackouts for the sake of the war, the frequency and fluidity of the outages are taxing.

Starting Tuesday, the government plans to change the schedule of the Kyiv subway to include longer wait times to save energy.

On the day that The Associated Press visited Vedmid’s house in October, there was an unscheduled five-hour power outage and then a scheduled one during dinner.

Every time the power shuts off, the family loses internet service. Because the village also has a weak phone network, the household is often unable to communicate with others.

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Staring at his mobile phone, Vedmid shrugs. Google Maps isn’t working, and he doesn’t know how long it will take to reach the train station for a planned trip with his wife to the country.

But what concerns him most are the months ahead when temperatures could drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit). “My major fears are for (the) cold part of season, for winter, because right now it influences our comfort but doesn’t threaten our lives,” he said.

The family has ordered a generator, which should be installed by December, but demand has spiked and not everyone can afford to buy one or the fuel to run it. Diesel has doubled in price since the start of the war, local residents said.

Still, some have found a silver lining to the shutdowns. Vedmid’s wife, Olena, said she reads more books rather than constantly refreshing the internet to see the latest war developments. It helps her feel less anxious.

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If not for Russia’s incessant shelling and the lack of repair equipment, much of which must be imported, the damage could be restored within weeks, energy experts said.

“The main danger is repeated missile attacks,” said professor Gennadii Riabtsev, chief researcher on energy security at the National Institute for Strategic Studies. Residents of cities near the front lines, such as Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv, will suffer the most from the outages, he said.

DTEK, Ukraine’s main energy company, said it has run out of equipment for repairs. The cost of the equipment runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Russia is likely to continue the war into the winter, hoping to weaken Western support for Ukraine and “freeze Europe into surrender,” according to a report issued this week by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

Residents near the front lines say they are bracing for conditions to get worse.

Mariia Chupinina was dealing with blackouts in Kharkiv even before the rolling outages began in the region this week. The woman who fosters orphaned children lives on the fifth floor of an apartment building and takes care of four babies who are less than 12 months old. When there’s no electricity, it’s impossible to heat the apartment, and every time they leave, they have to walk down five flights of stairs in the dark, she told the AP by phone.

If Chupinina forgets to plan ahead, the babies won’t have anything to eat. “If you have not prepared, you don’t have time to fill the Thermos, and there’s no warm water or formula,” she said.

AP · by SAM MEDNICK · November 1, 2022

8. Russian Army's Quiet Fatal Flaw: No Sergeants

E​xcertps:

Maybe it's a peculiarly American trait, but our NCOs are taught to innovate when the battle plan inevitably goes awry. Baked into Russian military practice is the opposite: to wait for orders from above, often, as it turned out in Ukraine, from officers far from the scene. That accounts to Russian units paralyzed by partisan attacks on tank columns en route to Kyiv.

It's hard to imagine how a unit could operate without NCOs, much less win, on the battlefield. And yet the Russian army, for lots of reasons peculiar to its history and culture, has them in name only. 

Only retired Army Gen. Mark Hertling seems to have raised the dearth of sergeants as one of the major reasons for the Russian army's poor performance in Ukraine.​

Russian Army's Quiet Fatal Flaw: No Sergeants

military.com · by 28 Oct 2022 SpyTalk | By Jeff Stein · October 30, 2022

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

Of all the post-invasion excuses given for the Russian army's failures in Ukraine -- corruption, bad logistics, poor execution of a bad idea -- the most obvious one, to me, has gotten short shrift: The Russian army has virtually no sergeants -- or as retired Army Gen. Mark Hertling put it to me recently, "no functioning NCO corps."

U.S. veterans have to be gobsmacked as I was hearing this for the first time. From the moment screaming drill instructors "welcomed" us to basic training, the sergeants owned us. From making tight beds to marching in order to firing and cleaning weapons, they told us how to do it. We all lived in fear of being singled out for punishment on the order of Full Metal Jacket.

But as most of us eventually learned, the sergeants were really trying to teach us how to stay alive. In combat units especially, it's the guys with the stripes who make sure the troops stick together, change their socks, watch the other guy's six and do things right. Same in the Marines and Navy. Gunneys and petty officers make sure their people eat right, get sleep, write home, ace the drills and -- the big one -- don't freeze or run away when the shit hits the fan.

Maybe it's a peculiarly American trait, but our NCOs are taught to innovate when the battle plan inevitably goes awry. Baked into Russian military practice is the opposite: to wait for orders from above, often, as it turned out in Ukraine, from officers far from the scene. That accounts to Russian units paralyzed by partisan attacks on tank columns en route to Kyiv.

It's hard to imagine how a unit could operate without NCOs, much less win, on the battlefield. And yet the Russian army, for lots of reasons peculiar to its history and culture, has them in name only.

Only retired Army Gen. Mark Hertling seems to have raised the dearth of sergeants as one of the major reasons for the Russian army's poor performance in Ukraine.

"I've spoken about a 1000 times on [the] lack of NCO leadership in RU army," Hertling, commander of U.S. Army Europe from 2011-2012,texted me in response to my recent query. "It's been a leadership (which is part of the corruption) issue for the last twenty years. I saw it at every level. But there is no functioning NCO corps."

Hertling knows this first hand. He got his initial, up close and personal looks at Russian combat units and training methods in the 1990s, during the post-Soviet, U.S.-Russia thaw. During an exchange visit to Moscow he was invited to visit Russian units and sit in on classes for Russia's officer corps. He was taken aback at the treatment of the troops.

"The Russian barracks were spartan, with twenty beds lined up in a large room similar to what the U.S. Army had during World War II. The food in their mess halls was terrible," he recalled in a piece for The Bulwark conservative news site. What drill sergeants they had were "horrible," he said. Hazing was rampant.

Russian officer training was as bad. "The Russian ‘training and exercises' we observed were not opportunities to improve capabilities or skills, but rote demonstrations, with little opportunity for maneuver or imagination," he went on. "The military college classroom where a group of middle- and senior-ranking officers conducted a regimental map exercise was rudimentary, with young soldiers manning radio-telephones relaying orders to imaginary units in some imaginary field location. On the motor pool visit, I was able to crawl into a T-80 tank -- it was cramped, dirty, and in poor repair -- and even fire a few rounds in a very primitive simulator ...."

The scales fell from his eyes. Hertling said he "came away from my first formal exchange with the Russian Army doubtful they were the ten-foot-tall behemoth we thought them to be." The revelation was affirmed by a second exchange visit.

Hertling's visits mirrored much of what the British journalist Andrew Cockburn had concluded from interviewing Soviet émigrés and U.S. defense analysts more than a decade earlier. In a PBS documentary, a book and several magazine articles, Cockburn argued that U.S. weapons makers inflated the power and efficiency of the USSR's military forces to win bigger Pentagon contracts. A reviewer for Foreign Policy magazine called Cockburn's book, The Threat – Inside the Soviet Military Machine, "a welcome addition to a debate in which most of the literature is on the hawkish side of the scale."

Over the following decades, Hertling's disdain for Moscow's military product only deepened. "My subsequent visits to the schools and units…reinforced these conclusions. The classroom discussions were sophomoric, and the units in training were going through the motions of their scripts with no true training value or combined arms interaction -- infantry, armor, artillery, air, and resupply all trained separately. It appeared that [Aleksandr] Streitsov [commander of the Russian Ground Forces] had not attempted to change the culture of the Russian Army or had failed."

Still, nuclear-armed Russia represented a threat, especially after Putin's 2008 invasion of Georgia and, six years later, Crimea. Putin was increasingly unleashing "hybrid war," an ugly mix of threats, political subversion, cyber attacks and coup plots, against former Warsaw Pact states.. Hertling grasped that the U.S. had to help Ukraine and the other former Soviet satraps, many now NATO members, sharpen their knives for the Russian threat. And that would require breaking the bad military habits of a generation. He persuaded the Obama Pentagon and NATO members to open a European training center for Ukrainian and other Eastern European troops.

Last February, it paid dividends. With Russian troops, tanks, artillery and aircraft poised to cross into Ukraine, U.S. intelligence and virtually every cable news "national security consultant" was predicting Putin's invasion would be a cake walk. But not Hertling. On CNN, he predicted the Ukrainians would eventually hold and prevail. It was not a popular position.

"I got some huge blowback on it from many in CNN," he told me. "And some retired guys -- Spider Marks, who's never served in Europe, told me I was crazy -- [and] some in different government agencies [critisized me]. But none had the experiences I had."

As Russian tanks rumbled down the highway toward Kyiv, U.S. intelligence, with its $50 billion annual budget spread across 17 agencies, somehow overlooked the Russian army's fatal flaws. It predicted the Russian army, with nary a sergeant helping its troops, tanks and artillery adjust on the fly against Ukrainian guerrilla attacks, would roll into Kyiv in a matter of days, a week or two at the most. When U.S. intelligence officials offered their mea culpas weeks later, they said they underestimated the Ukrainians' willingness to fight -- inexplicable after U.S. forces had been training their army for the past eight years.

According to another report, U.S. intelligence analysts, "did not recognize the significance of rampant corruption and incompetence in the Putin regime, particularly in both the Russian army and Moscow's defense industries." Current and former intelligence officials told The Intercept's James Rosen and Ken Klippsenstein that "U.S. intelligence missed the impact of corrupt insider dealing and deceit among Putin loyalists in Moscow's defense establishment, which has left the Russian army a brittle and hollow shell."

But Hertling had seen it all.

On Feb. 24, he tweeted, "Ukraine had a tough first day. Tomorrow will be tougher. Combined RU conventional, unconventional, cyber, air, arty & special ops tools will be tough to address. But Russia is still on the *offensive* so they have to act, and must continue to "move." They will wear down." He was right.

Thanks largely to the American trainers Hertling argued for decades ago, Ukrainian guerrillas and infantry units have continued to take the battle to the inferior Russian troops, watered down even further since last winter with barely trained, poorly equipped and fed conscripts. They're panicking. Never more has an army needed sergeants than the Russians do now. It's too late.

A couple weeks ago I lobbed a final, joshing question to the retired general. I asked him, "How did you get so smart?" He didn't dodge my cheeky question. He declined to go into details about his upbringing, inspirational figures or particular mentors, but in a back-channel Twitter exchange, he let his silver hair down a little.

"I'm a poor kid from Missouri who was given a chance to see the world and do some neat things," he said. "My career was a bit strange, not by design but by opportunities. I like people and learning about cultures, and I was both blessed and lucky."

"Oh," he added, "and I have a great wife and family who put up with my faults, and some friends and mentors that helped me learn and grow. That's really it in a nutshell."

And that was it. I'd overstayed my welcome so I bid him goodbye with thanks for his generous time.

Blessed and lucky indeed. The Ukrainians should erect a statue to Hertling when this thing is over. And maybe so should we.

This article by Jeff Stein

military.com · by 28 Oct 2022 SpyTalk | By Jeff Stein · October 30, 2022

9. US military now doing onsite weapons inspections in Ukraine

If we can put "inspectors" on the ground why not include advisors?

US military now doing onsite weapons inspections in Ukraine

AP · by LOLITA C. BALDOR · October 31, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — A small number of U.S. military forces inside Ukraine have recently begun doing onsite inspections to ensure that Ukrainian troops are properly accounting for the Western-provided weapons they receive, a senior U.S. defense official told Pentagon reporters Monday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide a military update, would not say where the inspections are taking place or how close to the battlefronts the U.S. troops are getting. The official said U.S. personnel can’t do inspections “close to the front lines,” but said they are going where security conditions allow.

The official said there have been several inspections, and they are being done by the U.S. Defense attache and the U.S. Office of Defense Cooperation team that is in Kyiv. So far, the official said, Ukrainian officials have been transparent about the weapons’ distribution and are supporting the inspections.

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The effort is part of a broader U.S. campaign, announced last week by the State Department, meant to make sure that weapons provided to Ukraine don’t end up in the hands of Russian troops, their proxies or other extremist groups.

Earlier this year, the U.S. said a small number of U.S. military troops had returned to the embassy in Kyiv to do security and other tasks. U.S. President Joe Biden has ruled out any combat role for U.S. forces inside Ukraine.

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U.S. officials have faced persistent questions from some members of Congress over how the administration is accounting for the billions of dollars in arms that have been sent to Ukraine over the past year. But the administration had been reluctant to detail its work on that front due to concerns about the state of the conflict and fears it might tip off would-be smugglers to potential evasion techniques.

The State Department plan includes short-, medium- and longer-term initiatives to bolster U.S. and Ukrainian oversight of transferred weapons, particularly more advanced missile systems and anti-aircraft devices, as well as to improve Ukraine’s aviation and border security to combat the misuse of weapons and prevent possible arms trafficking.

The State Department said that so far Ukraine’s intense demand for weapons on the battlefield appears to be impeding black-market proliferation of small arms, portable air defense systems and anti-tank weapons such as Javelins. It said the main problem has been the seizure of weapons by Russian forces as they take ground, and warned that Moscow can use them to develop countermeasures or conduct false-flag operations.

AP · by LOLITA C. BALDOR · October 31, 2022

10. The High Cost of Low American Military Spending

Excerpts:

Deterring great-power adversaries isn’t something you do with the back of your hand. Deterring the Soviet Union was a whole-of-government effort, and there were times when American presidents and Congresses had to limit domestic spending to meet the demands of the Cold War. America rose to the challenge in part because so many people still remembered the horrors of World War II and understood in their guts that even the most expensive deterrence policies are safer and cheaper than a great-power war.

When major powers fight, even conventional wars are unacceptably costly, disruptive and brutal. Their economic and political consequences are unpredictable. And as the Russian president reminds us every time he rattles his nuclear saber, there are no guarantees a conventional war won’t escalate into something more serious.

When it comes to war, an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. But as an old Roman writer put it 1,600 years ago: If you want peace, you must prepare for war. At the moment, America’s preparations fall woefully short.

The High Cost of Low American Military Spending

Ukraine’s lesson: Deterrence isn’t about preventing only nuclear war.

By Walter Russell MeadFollow

Oct. 31, 2022 6:28 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-spending-ukraine-defense-budget-putin-deterrent-taiwan-china-north-korea-entente-supply-chain-11667242695?mod=flipboard

Vladimir Putin has reminded us of a forgotten lesson of the Cold War: Deterrence isn’t merely about preventing nuclear war.

The U.S. and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization failed to deter Mr. Putin from launching a conventional war in February, and the costs of that failure—in blood and tears, in the military and economic support needed to keep Ukraine in the fight, in the economic shocks reverberating across Europe, in the food and fuel inflation threatening to destabilize governments across the Global South—continue to mount.

If conventional deterrence also fails against China, and Beijing attacks Taiwan, the costs will be even higher. Ukrainians at least were able to flee from the war zone. Trapped on their island, the people of Taiwan would have no place to go as war engulfed their homes. The shock to the world economy would be almost immeasurably greater. The importance of the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea to world commerce eclipses that of the Black Sea. It isn’t only computer chips whose global supply chain would be crippled by war over Taiwan. Everything made in China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan would become scarce. Global financial markets would tank. Japan and Korea would face critical shortages of fuel and food. Africa and Latin America would face massive economic damage.

Meanwhile, the failure to deter Russia is leading to increased American spending in Europe. We have sent around $20 billion to Ukraine since the invasion began and have dispatched an additional 20,000 troops to Eastern Europe. All this makes sense, but the contrast with our Asian commitments is sobering. Senators are currently working to send Taiwan $10 billion in U.S. aid over the next 10 years, half of what Ukraine has received in eight months of war. The U.S. announced plans to send six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Australia Monday morning, but the impact was offset by news that up to half the American combat aircraft stationed in Japan will be withdrawn, with no agreed Pentagon plan for permanent replacements.

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The threats in Asia are growing quickly. As China proceeds with an aggressive and ambitious military buildup, as North Korea’s nuclear arsenal relentlessly grows and as the Sino-Russian entente deepens, the U.S. can’t afford to treat East Asia as a secondary theater. Political, diplomatic and economic stability in East Asia can come only after a return to something like the military predominance that 15 years of ineffectual American policy has frittered away.

The U.S. can’t bear the entire cost of deterring the revisionist powers from conventional as well as nuclear war, and our allies will have to increase their efforts in the common cause. But even with such countries as Japan and Germany implementing robust increases in defense spending, America’s own spending must rise.

This isn’t what Team Biden wants. Current plans call for significant reductions in inflation-adjusted defense spending over the next decade.

The fiscal squeeze is real. A decade of ultralow interest rates led many politicians to think fiscal discipline was no longer an issue. That was a serious mistake. According to the Congressional Budget Office, annual interest payments on federal debt, currently at the eye-popping level of $399 billion, are expected to reach $1.2 trillion (3% of gross domestic product) by 2032. Meanwhile, entitlement costs will continue to rise, and domestic interest groups aren’t going to stop developing clever new ways for Uncle Sam to spend more money on the home front.

None of this is a secret. The Chinese can see the numbers as clearly as we can. However tough we talk, if we and our allies fail to provide an adequate military defense of our core interests in the Indo-Pacific, sooner or later deterrence will fail.

Deterring great-power adversaries isn’t something you do with the back of your hand. Deterring the Soviet Union was a whole-of-government effort, and there were times when American presidents and Congresses had to limit domestic spending to meet the demands of the Cold War. America rose to the challenge in part because so many people still remembered the horrors of World War II and understood in their guts that even the most expensive deterrence policies are safer and cheaper than a great-power war.

When major powers fight, even conventional wars are unacceptably costly, disruptive and brutal. Their economic and political consequences are unpredictable. And as the Russian president reminds us every time he rattles his nuclear saber, there are no guarantees a conventional war won’t escalate into something more serious.

When it comes to war, an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. But as an old Roman writer put it 1,600 years ago: If you want peace, you must prepare for war. At the moment, America’s preparations fall woefully short.

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WSJ Opinion: The U.S. Military’s Growing Weakness

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WSJ Opinion: The U.S. Military’s Growing Weakness

Play video: WSJ Opinion: The U.S. Military’s Growing Weakness

Review and Outlook: The Heritage Foundation's latest 'Index of U.S. Military Strength' warns of declining power in the U.S. Navy and Air Force. Images: Department of Defence/Heritage Foundation Composite: Mark Kelly

Appeared in the November 1, 2022, print edition as 'The High Cost of Low Military Spending'.

11. New Army social media policy pushes stricter rules

Seems like common sense.

But given the threat from China I do not think we should see any official accounts on TikTok.

Excerpts:

Despite ongoing debate about what role the services should play in managing their troops’ social media accounts, not everyone seems to be opposed to the update.

Carrie Lee, an associate professor at the Army War College, shared on social media that the revised policy could help improve civil-military relations and preserve the Pentagon’s nonpartisan status.

“DoD personnel may not use their official position or public office for private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise, or the private gain of friends, relatives, or other acquaintances,” the Army policy says, echoing similar language to the August DoD report.

“This includes the use of any reference to one’s status, name, image, or likeness as a DoD employee or member of the uniformed services,” it continues.

Although it may be a while before you see any official service account on the popular TikTok or BeReal platforms, the Army still considers social media to be a valuable tool.

New Army social media policy pushes stricter rules

armytimes.com · by Jonathan Lehrfeld · October 31, 2022

The Army is taking a tougher stance on social media use, according to a new service-wide policy announced last week.

The new guidance released Thursday governs what information troops can share on their personal accounts and from which accounts Army officials can post. The guidance also calls for more training for key personnel, transparency when posts are removed, and restrictions on using new, untested social media platforms before they’re officially vetted.

The move builds off the Defense Department’s release of its first social media guidance in August, where it called for stricter regulation of official accounts.

Bryce Dubee, a Army spokesperson, said in a statement to Army Times that the DoD policy, “became a catalyst for significant change in the Army’s social media landscape.”

One of the main outcomes from the new policy is that Army leaders may no longer use personal social media accounts to release official DoD information.

In addition to providing more training to social media managers, the policy will also require greater transparency when content is removed, with a public acknowledgement as to why a post was taken down.

Army public affairs teams will also not be allowed to use new platforms before they are reviewed and approved through official channels.

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The Army is struggling to stay out of the culture war

“We get criticized sometimes for being ‘woke.’ I’m not sure what ‘woke’ means,” the Army secretary said.

Despite ongoing debate about what role the services should play in managing their troops’ social media accounts, not everyone seems to be opposed to the update.

Carrie Lee, an associate professor at the Army War College, shared on social media that the revised policy could help improve civil-military relations and preserve the Pentagon’s nonpartisan status.

“DoD personnel may not use their official position or public office for private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise, or the private gain of friends, relatives, or other acquaintances,” the Army policy says, echoing similar language to the August DoD report.

“This includes the use of any reference to one’s status, name, image, or likeness as a DoD employee or member of the uniformed services,” it continues.

Although it may be a while before you see any official service account on the popular TikTok or BeReal platforms, the Army still considers social media to be a valuable tool.

Its social media handbook outlines a variety of resources for troops and their families to safely and appropriately use online sites, including how to report misconduct and how to best express thoughts on political discourse.

Dubee, the Army spokesperson, said the service “is developing further social media guidance that will be published to the Army Public Affairs website.”

About Jonathan Lehrfeld

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

12. New Pentagon National Defense Strategy Will be 'Well Received' by U.S. Allies in Pacific, Says Expert

Excerpts:

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] is the only competitor out there with both the intent to shape the international order and increasingly, the power to do so,” Austin said at his press conference.

The strategies recognize the threat from Russia as “acute,” as well as those already posed by North Korea and by Iran when it is not bound by any agreement on its weapons programs and terrorists.

Shaping the international order in the future also means Beijing is investing heavily in overcoming the United States’ advantages in advanced technologies, Kari Bingen, director of the aerospace security project at CSIS, said.

China is “going after 10 mega projects,” each the equivalent of the Manhattan Project, which led to the United States development of the atomic bomb in World War II. Among the projects, she cited were artificial, intelligence, space and quantum computing.

“They clearly want to have the technological advantage” that the United States has on the battlefield, she said.

But there are areas that the defense strategy does not address, such as “how do we compete in areas that we can’t deter,” like China’s offer of development aid to build ports, airports and highways or its Huawei telecommunications giant offering 5-G networks to poorer nations, she said.

“You need to put some meat on the bones” in the National Defense Strategy through the Fiscal Year 2024 budget requests and beyond to answer that question, Bingen added.

New Pentagon National Defense Strategy Will be 'Well Received' by U.S. Allies in Pacific, Says Expert - USNI News

news.usni.org · by John Grady · October 31, 2022

People’s Liberation Army Navy aircraft carrier Shandong berths at a naval port in Sanya, China. PLAN Photo

The National Defense Strategy clearly points at China as the United States’ pacing threat in both the Indo-Pacific and globally with its territorial ambitions and expanding nuclear arsenal, four regional security experts said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies discussion Thursday.

Christopher Johnstone, Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Relations, said he expects the strategy to be “well-received” across the Indo-Pacific. He added the strategy also now includes “a new constellation” of allies in the region that now includes the United Kingdom through the Australia-United Kingdom-United States [AUKUS] nuclear submarine and technology agreement and the Quad, the informal security and economic arrangement with Australia, Japan and India.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted several times the value of “working even more closely with our unparalleled network of allies and partners” to counter an aggressive China at a Pentagon briefing on the strategy and the accompanying nuclear posture and missile defense reviews earlier Thursday.

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] is the only competitor out there with both the intent to shape the international order and increasingly, the power to do so,” Austin said at his press conference.

The strategies recognize the threat from Russia as “acute,” as well as those already posed by North Korea and by Iran when it is not bound by any agreement on its weapons programs and terrorists.

Shaping the international order in the future also means Beijing is investing heavily in overcoming the United States’ advantages in advanced technologies, Kari Bingen, director of the aerospace security project at CSIS, said.

China is “going after 10 mega projects,” each the equivalent of the Manhattan Project, which led to the United States development of the atomic bomb in World War II. Among the projects, she cited were artificial, intelligence, space and quantum computing.

“They clearly want to have the technological advantage” that the United States has on the battlefield, she said.

But there are areas that the defense strategy does not address, such as “how do we compete in areas that we can’t deter,” like China’s offer of development aid to build ports, airports and highways or its Huawei telecommunications giant offering 5-G networks to poorer nations, she said.

“You need to put some meat on the bones” in the National Defense Strategy through the Fiscal Year 2024 budget requests and beyond to answer that question, Bingen added.

A screenshot of DF-26 launching in China.

On the direct military threat China poses, Johnstone said Beijing has made clear its intentions to take over self-governing Taiwan and also in disputes with Japan over nearby islands, South Korea and the Philippines. It is also rapidly expanding its triad nuclear arsenal.

China also “has not been shy about undermining” democratic institutions in countries across the region and using economic coercion to influence behavior, he said.

Beijing is using a “three warfares” strategy to advance its aims, not necessarily resorting quickly to armed conflict, he said. They are strict psychological warfare, public opinion and media, and legal warfare, and the goal is to “win without fighting.”

Victor Cha, CSIS’ senior vice president for Asia, said, “many of our allies and partners can learn from the Australian example” in surviving Chinese embargoes of many of its products and exports after Canberra questioned Beijing’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.

Along with the economic impact, China stepped up its efforts to interfere in Australia’s political process through bribes and a continuing disinformation campaign, he said.

Johnstone added that Beijing remains “principally interested” in the Pacific nearest the mainland, but is looking for a variety of opportunities to expand its influence economically through its Belt and Road infrastructure initiatives across the Indo-Pacific, in Africa where it also has a military presence in Djibouti, and into the western hemisphere.

On the Indo-Pacific’s response to Chinese moves militarily, Austin said at the Pentagon, “you see the power of partnership with a historic AUKUS agreement, with our trilateral cooperation with Japan and Korea, and with our many multinational exercises.”

Bingen said allies in Europe also recognize the threat that China poses to them as well. The EU is working with like-minded nations in the Indo-Pacific on building up domain awareness and with close allies like the United States on long-range strike and cyber.

She added NATO and EU members see that cooperation in these areas “will be just as relevant in Europe,” to deal with the Russian threat.

As encouraging as these signs of increased cooperation in the Indo-Pacific are, Johnstone noted the efforts remain “piecemeal” because there is no single alliance, like NATO, which brought a unified response to the Kremlin’s unprovoked attack on Kyiv.

On Pyongang’s threat to use weapons of mass destruction in a conflict on the peninsula, the region or against the American homeland, the Nuclear Posture Review states their use would result in “the end of that regime,” so the message is clear.

But deterrence does not work all the time, Cha said. All also cited Russia’s threat to use tactical nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

By identifying North Korea as presenting a “persistent threat,” Cha said the National Defense Strategy recognizes that it one that is growing “by leaps and bounds.” He said the keystone of deterrence on the peninsula remains the presence of more than 27,000 soldiers and airmen showing Kim Jong-un “the United States will always be there.” Johnstone offered a new way to extend deterrence in North East Asia would be to “establish nuclear planning groups” with Seoul and Tokyo.

Kim Jong Un in front of a the North Korea intercontinental ballistic missile. KCNA Photo

The panelists said that in looking ahead Washington and its allies should take away a number of important lessons from Ukraine especially about their defense industrial bases that apply in the Indo-Pacific as well as Europe.

“We run out of munitions pretty quickly,” Bingen said when transportation and logistics have to operate in a contested environment. The value of space rises and “we know the Chinese are targeting that.”

Seth Jones, who moderated the session, said, “we have a potential timeline issue” in producing and delivering everything from munitions to replacements for long-range strike in a war with a power like China that did not impact military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Reflecting on recent state-on-state war games, Cha said, “It’s not a pretty picture [when] we run out of things pretty quickly.”

Related

news.usni.org · by John Grady · October 31, 2022

13. Senate Democrat wants national security investigation of Saudi Arabia's role in Elon Musk-Twitter deal

Senate Democrat wants national security investigation of Saudi Arabia's role in Elon Musk-Twitter deal | CNN Business

CNN · by Matt Egan · October 31, 2022

New York CNN Business —

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy is calling on the federal government to investigate national security concerns raised by Saudi Arabia’s role in Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.

Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal helped Musk finance the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter (TWTR) by rolling over his existing $1.9 billion stake in the social media company. The move makes Saudi entities the second-largest shareholder in Twitter – behind only Musk himself.

“We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in repressing political speech and impacting US politics, are now the second-largest owner of a major social media platform,” Murphy said in a tweet on Monday.

The Connecticut Democrat urged the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, to conduct an investigation into the “national security implications” of the Saudi involvement. CIFUS, an interagency committee chaired by the US Treasury Department, reviews takeovers of US businesses by foreign buyers and has the ability to block transactions that raise concerns.

Even though Musk already closed his takeover of Twitter late last week, it may still be subject to national security review.

According to the 2021 annual CFIUS report to Congress, the panel has the authority to “review pending or completed transactions” if a member of the committee believes there are national security concerns.

“There is a clear national security issue at stake and CFIUS should do a review,” Murphy said, noting that another major social media platform, TikTok, is owned by a Chinese company. “This is a dangerous trend, and we don’t have to accept it.”

Both the White House and the Treasury Department declined to comment in response to the call from Murphy.

Earlier this month, Twitter shares dropped after Bloomberg News reported Biden officials are in early discussions about possibly subjecting some of Musk’s ventures to national security reviews, including the Twitter deal.

However, US officials pushed back on that report. “We do now know of any such conversations,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement on October 21.

CNN · by Matt Egan · October 31, 2022

14. Russia announces wider evacuation of occupied southern Ukraine

Russia announces wider evacuation of occupied southern Ukraine

Reuters · by Pavel Polityuk

• Summary
• Kyiv, other cities suffer power, water outages
• Putin says missile strikes 'not all we could have done'

KYIV/MYKOLAIV, Ukraine, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Russia ordered civilians to leave a sliver of Ukraine along the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, a major extension of an evacuation order that Kyiv says amounts to the forced depopulation of occupied territory.

Russia had previously ordered civilians out of a pocket it controls on the west bank of the river, where Ukrainian forces have been advancing to capture the city of Kherson. Russian-installed officials said on Tuesday they were now extending that order to a 15-km (9-mile) buffer zone along the east bank as well.

Ukraine says the evacuations include forced deportations from occupied territory, a war crime. Russia, which claims to have annexed the area, says it is taking civilians to safety because of a threat Ukraine might use unconventional weapons.

"Due to the possibility of the use of prohibited methods of war by the Ukrainian regime, as well as information that Kyiv is preparing a massive missile strike on the Kakhovka hydroelectric station, there is an immediate danger of the Kherson region being flooded," Vladimir Saldo, Russian-installed head of occupied Kherson province, said in a video message.

"Given the situation, I have decided to expand the evacuation zone by 15 km from the Dnipro," he said. "The decision will make it possible to create a layered defence in order to repel Ukrainian attacks and protect civilians."

Moscow has accused Kyiv of planning to use a so-called "dirty bomb" to spread radiation, or to blow up a dam to flood towns and villages in Kherson province. Kyiv says accusations it would use such tactics on its own territory are absurd, but that Russia might be planning such actions itself to blame Ukraine.

The mouth of the wide Dnipro River has become one of the most consequential frontlines in the war in recent weeks, with Ukrainian forces advancing to expel Russian troops from their only pocket on the west bank. Russia has thousands of troops there and has been trying to reinforce the area. Ukraine's advance has slowed in recent days, with commanders citing weather and tougher terrain.

Saldo, the Russian-imposed occupation leader for the province, identified seven towns on the east bank that would now be evacuated, comprising the main populated settlements along that stretch of the river.

The European Union accused Moscow on Tuesday of launching a new programme to illegally conscript men in Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014, to fight in its forces. The EU statement said Moscow was disproportionately conscripting members of Crimea's indigenous Tatar minority to fight in its war.

Russia, which launched its "special military operation" in Ukraine in February, has announced it has completed a mobilisation drive ordered in September by President Vladimir Putin, saying it had called up 300,000 reservists and more were not needed.

But Putin has not issued a decree ending the mobilisation, raising concern he could restart it without notice. A senior Russian ruling party senator said on Tuesday a decree formally ending the mobilisation was not needed.

[1/17] People walk to board a ferry during the evacuation of Kherson residents in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, in the city of Kherson, Russian-controlled Ukraine October 31, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

Thousands of Russian men have fled abroad to escape conscription to a conflict which has killed thousands, displaced millions, shaken the global economy and reopened Cold War-era divisions.

'BARBARIAN HORDE'

Just north of Kherson, Russia fired four missiles into the Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv overnight, demolishing half an apartment building. Reuters saw rescue workers recover the body of an elderly woman from the rubble.

As rush hour was under way, passersby walked past a two-storey school, the front of which had been torn off by the force of the blast that left a massive crater.

"This is what the barbarian horde does," said Irena Siden, 48, the school’s deputy director, standing in front of the gutted building as workers began sweeping up the rubble.

"They (the Russians) are the descendants of the barbarian horde. They stole our history and how they are trying to steal our culture."

Russia fired a huge volley of missiles at Ukrainian cities on Monday in what Putin called retaliation for an attack on Russia's Black Sea Fleet at the weekend. Ukraine said it shot most of those missiles down, but some had hit power stations, knocking out electricity and water supplies.

"That's not all we could have done," Putin said at a televised news conference.

Putin has also suspended cooperation with a U.N.-backed programme to escort cargo ships carrying grain out of the war zone. The three-month-old programme had lifted a de facto Russian blockade of Ukraine, one of the world's biggest grain producers, and averted a global food crisis.

Russia's suspension of cooperation had raised international fears that a food crisis could return, but so far Moscow has not restored its blockade, with 12 ships able to depart Ukraine on Monday carrying grain, and three more sailing on Tuesday.

Whether those shipments can continue may depend on whether insurers are still willing to underwrite them.

Reporting by Reuters bureaux Writing by Peter Graff Editing by Nick Macfie

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Pavel Polityuk

15. Russia’s Vast Cyber Web Enables Deniability and Obscurity—But Not Without Risks

Excerpts:

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, Russia’s internal security agency with some foreign purview, recruits cybercriminals to carry out operations on its behalf. The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) sets up front organizations to conduct cyber and information operations against foreign targets. The Kremlin permits private military companies to operate around the world and to sell their military and protective services to foreign governments; at least one such company has developed a cyber unit.

All of this fits within a years-long Russian government emphasis on political warfare. The Soviet Union conducted political warfare–style operations under an umbrella of “active measures” against foreign and domestic targets. Akin to contemporary political warfare (a growing point of emphasis in Russian thinking), these active measures ranged from assassinating émigré leaders who participated in anti-Soviet activities to manufacturing and spreading the lie that the Pentagon started the AIDS epidemic. The parallels are not perfect, and the information environment today is very different than it was decades ago; the scale and speed of internet-enabled microtargeting alone, for example, is unprecedented. Regardless, the Russian security apparatus continues to emphasize many of the same Soviet-era ideas, such as deniability, covertness, and the use of proxies, which carry over to cyber operations.

While Putin inherited an ecosystem of both legitimate technology companies and technically talented individuals engaged in cybercrime, the regime has purposefully shaped this resource pool of Russian cyber actors to its own benefit, though not without accompanying risks.

...

Dueling political and criminal dynamics can also generate internal fractions within hacker groups, which affects their ability to operate for the state. Leaked documents from the Russian hacker group Conti, for instance, highlighted divisions over the group’s official position on the war in Ukraine. The government itself might not coordinate operations very well either. Analysts already debate whether the GRU and the FSB coordinated the hack on the Democratic National Committee in 2016, and the Russian security services, in general, have a long history of turf wars and infighting. It is possible that multiple Russian security organizations—or even multiple units within a single Russian security organization—recruit hackers for overlapping purposes, such as developing information interception capabilities or launching destructive cyber operations that generate additional complexities.

There is also the risk of actors becoming so closely associated with the government that they create problems when they act in line with their own preferences—an actor or group may no longer be working with the Russian government, but others might assume otherwise. Individual Russian officers could face this problem internally when working with a cybercriminal outfit; the Russian government could also face this risk if a previously state-recruited hacker does something independently that generates international blowback.

Painting all cyber and information operations coming from within Russia as “Russian”—and treating the Russian cyber ecosystem as a monolith—glosses over the complexity of the web and the nuanced opportunities for the United States to understand and disrupt the incentive structures at play. It also erases the fact that the Kremlin receives both benefits and risks from using cyber power in this way. If the United States is to respond effectively to Russian cyber operations, it should begin by gaining a better understanding of this network.

Russia’s Vast Cyber Web Enables Deniability and Obscurity—But Not Without Risks - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Justin Sherman · November 1, 2022

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The Russian government’s war on Ukraine has sparked renewed interest in Russian cyber proxies. Before the war began, headlines described “Russian-backed” hackers defacing Ukrainian websites; since then, analysts have continuously debated how much Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime might turn to cybercriminals and other actors to help it attack Ukraine in cyberspace.

Describing every cyber operation coming from within Russia as a “Russian cyberattack” obscures the large, complex, and often opaque web of different cyber actors in Russia—each with varied relationships with the state. As I describe in a new Atlantic Council report, there are cybercriminals operating at the state’s direction, cybercriminals operating with state protection, patriotic hackers encouraged by propagandistic statements on television, front companies set up by the security services, and everything in between. Untangling this web shows many perceived and actual benefits for the Kremlin, such as deniability and obscurity—but it also underscores the risks Putin is running by leaning too heavily on this diverse cyber ecosystem.

The Roots of Russia’s Vast Cyber Ecosystem

Putin inherited a convoluted web of cyber actors—born from the chaos of post-Soviet collapse, the 1990s criminal (and cybercriminal) explosion, and an oversupply of technically talented individuals with few legitimate job prospects—and now actively cultivates it. Rather than cracking down, Putin allows cybercriminals and patriotic hackers to operate freely within Russia, so long as they follow a social contract of sorts: focus on foreign targets, do not undermine the Kremlin’s objectives, and answer to the state when asked.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, Russia’s internal security agency with some foreign purview, recruits cybercriminals to carry out operations on its behalf. The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) sets up front organizations to conduct cyber and information operations against foreign targets. The Kremlin permits private military companies to operate around the world and to sell their military and protective services to foreign governments; at least one such company has developed a cyber unit.

All of this fits within a years-long Russian government emphasis on political warfare. The Soviet Union conducted political warfare–style operations under an umbrella of “active measures” against foreign and domestic targets. Akin to contemporary political warfare (a growing point of emphasis in Russian thinking), these active measures ranged from assassinating émigré leaders who participated in anti-Soviet activities to manufacturing and spreading the lie that the Pentagon started the AIDS epidemic. The parallels are not perfect, and the information environment today is very different than it was decades ago; the scale and speed of internet-enabled microtargeting alone, for example, is unprecedented. Regardless, the Russian security apparatus continues to emphasize many of the same Soviet-era ideas, such as deniability, covertness, and the use of proxies, which carry over to cyber operations.

While Putin inherited an ecosystem of both legitimate technology companies and technically talented individuals engaged in cybercrime, the regime has purposefully shaped this resource pool of Russian cyber actors to its own benefit, though not without accompanying risks.

The Spectrum of Russian Government Involvement

Putin does not control every single cyber operation that occurs within or comes out of Russia. As Candace Rondeaux writes, “The narrative of a grand chess master, whether Putin, a Kremlin insider, or [a] mercenary group, singlehandedly orchestrating Russia’s proxy warfare strategy is a useful fiction for the Kremlin.” Simply put, “Vladimir Putin is not omnipotent,” as journalist Julia Ioffe remarked in 2013. In reality, there are degrees of government involvement with most Russian cyber actors, whether through active financing, tacit approval, or another kind of engagement entirely. Some activity may be entrepreneurial by design, with nonstate hackers and developers auditioning their capabilities to capture the attention of the state. Not all is top-down, either, especially so in an “adhocracy” in which Putin is not a micromanager and instead encourages people to seize the initiative.

The FSB, SVR, and GRU (Russia’s military intelligence service) all have internal cyber units. Unlike the United States, Russia does not have a centralized cyber command. Oftentimes, these security agencies’ cyber teams launch operations from within Russia. At other times, state hackers have gone abroad to hack targets, such as when GRU Unit 26165 hackers traveled to The Hague in 2018, trying to hack into and disrupt the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ investigation into the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

Moscow finances and directs operations through front organizations and websites used by the GRU, the SVR, and the FSB to spread disinformation. The Russian government also uses companies like Neobit and AST to technically support cyber and information operations, with some companies acting like contractors but in a covert capacity. In 2019, a Czech magazine reported that the Czech Security Information Service had shut down two private IT companies in early 2018 that were fronts for Russian government hackers, reportedly part of a broader international network.

The FSB and other agencies also recruit cybercriminal hackers to run operations, sometimes developing cooperative relationships while on other occasions literally hiring criminals to break into systems and steal information on the FSB’s behalf. The US Treasury Department stated in April 2021 that the FSB cultivated and coopted the ransomware group Evil Corp. Authorities allow the Russian cybercriminal apparatus to thrive for a variety of reasons, including the fact that cybercrime brings money into Russia (and lines the pockets of corrupt officials), while the talent base it cultivates gives the Kremlin proxies to tap as needed—as it has time and time again.

Other relationships abound. Positive Technologies, a Russian IT firm sanctioned by the US government, hosts conventions that the FSB and the GRU use as recruiting events. The government encourages patriotic hackers to go after foreign targets by merely going on TV or issuing a propagandistic statement. It taps law-abiding programmers working at legitimate tech companies on the shoulder to help develop capabilities. Mafia-style familial entanglements with the security services, like when a criminal hacker marries the daughter of a former FSB officer, even support the ecosystem.

Experts have published excellent research on cyber proxies, yet, in Russia’s case, questions remain about the exact nature of those relationships, as they sometimes defy the frequent assumption that proxy activity refers to a top-down hierarchical relationship, with the state as the primary actor. Considerable portions of Russia’s cybercriminal ecosystem operate with a sort of Darwinian entrepreneurialism, akin to the approach of Russian criminal enterprises and protective services in the 1990s. Criminals often have substantial agency to drive this activity. And when there are quasi-symbiotic relationships at play with the state—a local FSB official, for instance, taking money on the side to provide a “roof” (krysha) of protection for hackers—these relationships do not entirely follow top-down or state-dominated definitions.

A Web of Benefits—and Risks

From the Kremlin’s perspective, the web of Russian cyber actors offers real benefits. For starters, it enables deniability. Even if cyber operations are ultimately attributed to Moscow, the Kremlin has periods when it can deny knowledge of, association with, or responsibility for cyber and information activities. While the ongoing war in Ukraine is an example of (Western) government intelligence exposing Russian plans and activities in near real time, there are many prior instances when the state had plenty of time to deny cyber operations emanating from Russia before evidence emerged. Ambiguity about the relationship between the Russian government and various cyber actors—whether a GRU front company or a ransomware group working with an FSB officer—gives the Kremlin space, however small, to claim no involvement. Moscow can engage with other governments knowing that sometimes, its denials of involvement are true and in cases when they are not (such as when the government is, at a minimum, complicit in choosing not to investigate certain cyber operations), officials can lean into the ambiguity that surrounds its control over the Russian cyber web. Leveraging this extensive and opaque web of cyber actors also enables the Kremlin to make absurd demands of the United States, such as in June 2021, when Putin said that Russia would allow the extradition of cybercriminals to the United States, if the US government would agree to do the same for Russia.

Tapping into the cyber web also empowers Moscow to wage political warfare in what the West would call the “gray zone,” below the threshold of armed conflict. The Russian state has a history of operating in the sphere of political warfare, and recent Russian military thinking has carried this mindset into the modern age. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and first deputy defense minister, wrote an article in 2013 arguing that “the role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.” While often wrongly cited as the “Gerasimov doctrine,” when it is neither a doctrine nor binding, and often used to incorrectly argue that hybrid warfare is a new kind of Russian thinking, the article nonetheless recognized the importance of nonmilitary tactics in modern conflict. As Eugene Rumer explains, Russia’s foreign and military policy over the last two decades clearly emphasizes that “military power is the necessary enabler” of what many refer to as hybrid warfare, where “hybrid tools can be an instrument of risk management when hard power is too risky, costly, or impractical, but military power is always in the background.” Encouraging patriotic hackers to go after Ukrainian targets, creating great uncertainty in the Obama administration about how to respond to 2016 election interference, and similar actions are part and parcel of this approach.

Finally, the ability to tap into a nebulous web of cyber actors also means that the Kremlin can leverage capabilities without the need to constantly supervise everything, and may even boost Russia’s bottom line; while exact figures are hard to come by, cybercriminals are clearly bringing money into Russia, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in ransomware revenue in 2021 alone. The front companies that run FSB, SVR, and GRU cyber and information operations ostensibly pay for many of those activities themselves. The Internet Research Agency and state-supporting companies like Neobit operate in an undefined zone, where Putin cronies spend state-granted wealth and the Russian government contracts nonstate support and capabilities. Then there are the many cybercriminals, patriotic hackers, legitimate Russian IT company employees, and others who may operate independently, but do so with the state’s permission, and may receive requests to redirect resources to government activities. The publicly available evidence is anecdotal, but these efforts sometimes cost the government next to nothing. In a 2017 case, the FSB paid a criminal about $100 “for each successful hack,” wired through PayPal, WebMoney, and other non-Russian online payment systems.

But there are also risks to Russia’s approach. While leveraging nonstate actors in the Russian cyber web saves the Kremlin resources in some cases, the government may have to deal with competence and discipline issues; cybercriminals might not operate with the same diligence as state hackers. Individual programmers recruited to develop capabilities for the state are likely untrained in Russian government methods of secrecy protection. Patriotic hackers might not use very sophisticated tools and instead rely on off-the-shelf capabilities posted on web forums (even if these hacks may be cover for state operations launched in tandem).

Dueling political and criminal dynamics can also generate internal fractions within hacker groups, which affects their ability to operate for the state. Leaked documents from the Russian hacker group Conti, for instance, highlighted divisions over the group’s official position on the war in Ukraine. The government itself might not coordinate operations very well either. Analysts already debate whether the GRU and the FSB coordinated the hack on the Democratic National Committee in 2016, and the Russian security services, in general, have a long history of turf wars and infighting. It is possible that multiple Russian security organizations—or even multiple units within a single Russian security organization—recruit hackers for overlapping purposes, such as developing information interception capabilities or launching destructive cyber operations that generate additional complexities.

There is also the risk of actors becoming so closely associated with the government that they create problems when they act in line with their own preferences—an actor or group may no longer be working with the Russian government, but others might assume otherwise. Individual Russian officers could face this problem internally when working with a cybercriminal outfit; the Russian government could also face this risk if a previously state-recruited hacker does something independently that generates international blowback.

Painting all cyber and information operations coming from within Russia as “Russian”—and treating the Russian cyber ecosystem as a monolith—glosses over the complexity of the web and the nuanced opportunities for the United States to understand and disrupt the incentive structures at play. It also erases the fact that the Kremlin receives both benefits and risks from using cyber power in this way. If the United States is to respond effectively to Russian cyber operations, it should begin by gaining a better understanding of this network.

Justin Sherman (@jshermcyber) is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative and the author of the recent report, “Untangling the Russian Web: Spies, Proxies, and Spectrums of Russian Cyber Behavior.”

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

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mwi.usma.edu · by Justin Sherman · November 1, 2022

16. COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab

I remember receiving a briefing from a Taiwanese rsk assessment manager in Janaury 2020 just as COVID was coming into the public eye. He said there was eviednce of an outbreak from the lab going back to at least the previous October and maybe August that had been covered up.

Some fascinating insights about "party speak."

Excertps:

Toy Reid, who is now in Jakarta resuming his work for the State Department, says that WIV scientists are not “free agents” who can candidly share what occurred in their laboratories. “The WIV is under the thumb of the party state,” he says. “Just because you can’t see the political pressures they’re under doesn’t mean they’re not under them. American scientists have been slow to realize that.”

Without the cooperation of China’s government, we can’t know exactly what did or didn’t happen at the WIV, or what precise set of circumstances unleashed SARS-CoV-2. But the dispatches that Reid unearthed, when overlaid with additional evidence the Senate team compiled, point to a catastrophe in the making: political pressure to excel, inadequate resources to safeguard risky work, and an effort to skirt blame once a crisis hit.

As Reid sees it, the international community must continue to demand answers.“If you just throw your hands in the air and say, ‘We’ll never know because it’s China,’ and just move on—if you take that defeatist approach to things—you can’t prepare yourself to prevent something like this from happening in the future.”

COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge biotech facility at the center of swirling suspicions about the pandemic’s onset, was far more troubled than previously known, explosive documents unearthed by a Senate research team reveal. Following the trail of evidence, Vanity Fair and ProPublica provide the clearest picture yet of a laboratory institute in crisis.

BY KATHERINE EBAN AND JEFF KAO

OCTOBER 28, 2022

Vanity Fair · by Condé Nast · October 28, 2022

“A Secret Language of Chinese Officialdom”

Toy Reid has always had a gift for languages—one that would carry him far from what he calls his “very blue-collar” roots in Greenville, South Carolina. In high school, Spanish came easily. At nearby Furman University, where he became the first person in his family to attend college, he studied Japanese. Then, “clueless but curious,” as he puts it, he channeled his fascination with the Dalai Lama into a master’s degree in East Asian philosophy and religion at Harvard. Along the way, he picked up Khmer, the national language of Cambodia, and achieved fluency in Chinese.

But it was his career as a China specialist for the Rand Corporation and as a political officer in East Asia for the US State Department that taught him how to interpret a notoriously opaque language: the “party speak” practiced by Chinese Communist officials.

Party speak is “its own lexicon,” explains Reid, now 44 years old. Even a native Mandarin speaker “can’t really follow it,” he says. “It’s not meant to be easily understood. It’s almost like a secret language of Chinese officialdom. When they’re talking about anything potentially embarrassing, they speak of it in innuendo and hushed tones, and there’s a certain acceptable way to allude to something.”

For 15 months, Reid loaned this unusual skill to a nine-person team dedicated to investigating the mystery of COVID-19’s origins. Commissioned by Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the team examined voluminous evidence, most of it open source but some classified, and weighed the major credible theories for how the novel coronavirus first made the leap to humans. An interim report, released on Thursday by the minority oversight staff of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP), concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.”

As part of his investigation, Reid took an approach that was artful in its simplicity. Working out of the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, and a family home in Florida, he used a virtual private network, or VPN, to access dispatches archived on the website of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). These dispatches remain on the internet, but their meaning can’t be unlocked by just anyone. Using his hard-earned expertise, Reid believes he unearthed secrets that were hiding in plain sight.

On November 12, 2019, a dispatch by party branch members at the BSL-4 laboratory appeared to reference a biosecurity breach: “These viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace.”

Ever since the Chinese city of Wuhan was identified as ground zero for the COVID-19 pandemic, a contingent of scientists have suspected that the virus could have leaked from one of the WIV’s complex of laboratories. The WIV is, after all, the venue for some of China’s riskiest coronavirus research. Scientists there have mixed components of different coronaviruses and created new strains, in an effort to predict the risks of human infection and to develop vaccines and treatments. Critics argue that creating viruses that don’t exist in nature runs the risk of unleashing them.

The WIV has two campuses and performed coronavirus research on both. Its older Xiaohongshan campus is just eight miles from the crowded seafood market where COVID-19 first burst into public view. Its newer Zhengdian campus, about 18 miles to the south, is home to the institute’s most prestigious laboratory, a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) facility, designed to enable safe research on the world’s most lethal pathogens. The WIV triumphantly announced its completion in February 2015, and it was cleared to begin full research by early 2018.

Like many scientific institutes in China, the WIV is state-run and funded. The research carried out there must advance the goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As one way to ensure compliance, the CCP operates 16 party branches inside of the WIV, where members including scientists meet regularly and demonstrate their loyalty.

Week after week, scientists from those branches chronicled their party-building exploits in reports uploaded to the WIV’s website. These dispatches, intended for watchful higher-ups, generally consist of upbeat recitations of recruitment efforts and meeting summaries that emphasize the fulfillment of Beijing’s political goals. “The headlines and initial paragraphs seem completely innocuous,” Reid says. “If you didn’t take a close look, you’d probably think there’s nothing in here.”

But much like imperfect propaganda, the dispatches hold glimmers of real life: tension among colleagues, abuse from bosses, reprimands from party superiors. The grievances are often couched in a narrative of heroism—a focus on problems overcome and challenges met, against daunting odds.

As Reid burrowed into the party branch dispatches, he became riveted by the unfolding picture. They described intense pressure to produce scientific breakthroughs that would elevate China’s standing on the world stage, despite a dire lack of essential resources. Even at the BSL-4 lab, they repeatedly lamented the problem of “the three ‘nos’: no equipment and technology standards, no design and construction teams, and no experience operating or maintaining [a lab of this caliber].”

And then, in the fall of 2019, the dispatches took a darker turn. They referenced inhumane working conditions and “hidden safety dangers.” On November 12 of that year, a dispatch by party branch members at the BSL-4 laboratory appeared to reference a biosecurity breach.

once you have opened the stored test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box. These viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace. Although [we have] various preventive and protective measures, it is nevertheless necessary for lab personnel to operate very cautiously to avoid operational errors that give rise to dangers. Every time this has happened, the members of the Zhengdian Lab [BSL4] Party Branch have always run to the frontline, and they have taken real action to mobilize and motivate other research personnel.

Reid studied the words intently. Was this a reference to past accidents? An admission of an ongoing crisis? A general recognition of hazardous practices? Or all of the above? Reading between the lines, Reid concluded, “They are almost saying they know Beijing is about to come down and scream at them.”

And that, in fact, is exactly what happened next, according to a meeting summary uploaded nine days later.

The dozens of pages of WIV dispatches that Reid unearthed, particularly those from November 2019, helped shape the conclusion of the interim report. Working out of a small, windowless room in the Hart building that they nicknamed “the Bat Cave,” the researchers cross-referenced Reid’s analysis with myriad clues, from procurement notices and patent filings to records of ongoing scientific experiments at the WIV. As their investigation grew, so did a timeline that unfolded across the walls like a giant checkerboard.

A sign on the door of the Senate team’s office, nicknamed “the Bat Cave.”Photograph by Mark Peterson/Redux.

Given advance access to hundreds of pages of the Senate researchers’ findings and analysis, Vanity Fair, in partnership with ProPublica, spent five months investigating their underlying evidence. We analyzed WIV documents, consulted with experts in CCP communications, asked biocontainment experts to help analyze documents, and reviewed with independent scientists the possible evidence that certain vaccine research may have begun far earlier than acknowledged.

We also traced the hazards that arose as the WIV built a lab to research the world’s most dangerous pathogens. Taken together, our reporting provides critical context that is not included in the pared-down 35-page interim report. It offers the most detailed picture to date of the months leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, including new details on the intense pressure the lab faced to produce breakthrough research, its struggles to grapple with mounting safety issues, and a previously unreported series of references to a mysterious incident shortly before the virus began infecting its first victims.

The Senate HELP minority committee did not release a detailed 236-page analysis that Reid drafted as a companion report. Nor did the interim report provide context for the documents he unearthed. These omissions came as hundreds of pages were whittled down to 35 in the days before the report was released. Though some members of the Senate team reviewed a small number of classified documents, the interim report relied only on publicly available material. A spokesperson for the Senate HELP minority committee told Vanity Fair and ProPublica: “What has been included in the interim report are the facts the Committee has determined are ready for, and worthy of, publication at this time. The Committee’s bipartisan oversight investigation is still ongoing, and what is worthy of inclusion will find its way into the final report.”

Vanity Fair and ProPublica downloaded more than 500 documents from the WIV website, including party branch dispatches from 2017 to the present. To assess Reid’s interpretation, we sent key documents to experts on CCP communications. They told us that the WIV dispatches did indeed signal that the institute faced an acute safety emergency in November 2019; that officials at the highest levels of the Chinese government weighed in; and that urgent action was taken in an effort to address ongoing safety issues. The documents do not make clear who was responsible for the crisis, which laboratory it affected specifically, or what the exact nature of the biosafety emergency was.

The interim report also raises questions about how quickly vaccines were developed in China by some teams, including one led by a military virologist named Zhou Yusen. The report called it “unusual” that two military COVID-19 vaccine development teams were able to reach early milestones even faster than the major drug companies who were part of the US government’s Operation Warp Speed program.

Vanity Fair and ProPublica spoke to experts who said that the timeline of Zhou’s vaccine development seemed unrealistic, if not impossible. Two of the three experts said it strongly suggested that his team must have had access to the genomic sequence of the virus no later than in November 2019, weeks before China’s official recognition that the virus was circulating.

The authors of the interim report do not claim to have definitively solved the mystery of COVID-19’s origin. “The lack of transparency from government and public health officials in the [People’s Republic of China] with respect to the origins of SARS-CoV-2 prevents reaching a more definitive conclusion,” the report says, adding that its conclusion could change if more independently verifiable information becomes available.

Hidden Agendas, Toxic Politics, and the COVID Lab-Leak Theory

Throughout the pandemic, the WIV has largely remained a black box, owing to the Chinese government’s refusal to cooperate with international probes. By mining the WIV’s own records, Toy Reid and Senate researchers unearthed new clues that support the interim report’s assessment that a lab accident was “most likely” responsible for the pandemic.

In response to detailed questions, a Chinese Embassy spokesperson, Liu Pengyu, dismissed allegations of a lab leak and said that an international team convened by the World Health Organization concluded that “the allegation of lab leaking is extremely unlikely. The conclusion should be respected…. From the very beginning, China has taken a scientific, professional, serious and responsible attitude in origins tracing.” Some American politicians and journalists “distort facts and truth,” he said, adding that the US should “stop using the epidemic for political manipulation and blame games.”

“Open the Aperture of Your Mind”

More than two years after the COVID-19 pandemic’s onset, the question of its origin has remained a scientific whodunit for the ages. Did the virus come from a caged infected animal, languishing in the warren of stalls at a Wuhan wholesale market? Or did it come from the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology, where China’s top coronavirus researchers, some partly funded by the US government, were splicing together coronavirus strains to gauge how they might become most infectious to humans?

A bitter battle has ensued between a group of virologists who assert their research points to a market origin and an alternate group of academics and online sleuths who argue there’s been an attempted cover-up of a more likely lab origin. Four months ago, the World Health Organization’s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens revised an earlier conclusion and said that both scenarios remain on the table, due to insufficient evidence, and require further investigation.

In June 2021, with efforts to learn the truth at a virtual standstill, Burr drafted Dr. Robert Kadlec, the former Health and Human Services assistant secretary for preparedness and response under President Donald Trump, to assemble a team to examine the leading hypotheses. Burr, the ranking member of the Senate HELP committee, is retiring at year’s end. A spokesperson for Burr declined to make him available for an interview.

In the foreword of the interim report, Burr wrote, “My ultimate goal with this report is to provide a clearer picture of what we know, so far, about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 so that we can continue to work together to be better prepared to respond to future public health threats.”

Burr has served in the US Congress for 28 years, first as a congressman and then, since 2005, as a senator. By today’s standards, he is a moderate Republican, having voted to convict Trump in the January 6 impeachment. Long known for his work on biodefense issues, he helped lead passage of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act in 2006 and also worked to speed up the FDA’s approval of drugs for rare diseases.

The pandemic also immersed him in scandal, as ProPublica has previously reported. In February 2020, after receiving Senate intelligence committee briefings on the health threat of COVID-19, he sold up to $1.7 million in stock holdings before the market tanked, sparking a Justice Department investigation into insider trading. Burr said he relied on public news reports to guide his decision to sell stocks. He stepped aside as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee after the FBI seized his cell phone. In January 2021, the DOJ closed its investigation without charging him.

Dr. Robert Kadlec examines evidence assembled by the Senate researchers.Photograph by Mark Peterson/Redux.

The Senate HELP committee paid the salaries of seven researchers, but little more, so Kadlec cobbled together the best team he could. From the State Department, he borrowed a veterinary epidemiologist as well as Reid, whom he’d met just weeks earlier through a mutual friend who was a Dalai Lama aficionado. At the time, Reid was detailed to the office of Senator Marco Rubio to work on China policy issues. Kadlec also leaned on scientific advisers with expertise in virology, epidemiology, and biodefense.

Kadlec, a former Air Force officer who worked with Burr years earlier on bioterrorism issues, has served under both Republican and Democratic presidents. In 2003, he deployed to Iraq for the Department of Defense and played a critical role in debunking the false claims that trailers there doubled as mobile bioweapons labs. That experience, he says, equipped him to navigate the murky world of “dual-use research,” where civilian scientific work sometimes has a clandestine military purpose.

In February 2020, in his role at HHS, Kadlec allowed sick Americans on a cruise ship to return to the US. Angry that the move added to the domestic COVID-19 case count, Trump threatened to fire him. And when Rick Bright, a senior HHS official turned whistleblower, accused the Trump administration of politicizing the pandemic response, he also alleged that Kadlec demoted him in retaliation and used federal funds to bestow contracts on favored drugmakers. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis investigated. While it did not issue formal findings against Kadlec, it noted in a press release that an HHS division under Kadlec’s control awarded a lucrative contract to a drugmaker, despite regulators’ warnings about its troubled manufacturing plants. Calling the experience “very hurtful,” Kadlec says, “I got slimed in the press.” He adds, “I still carry that with me today.”

Kadlec says the investigation of the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster, in which seven astronauts died, inspired his approach to the inquiry. It showed that “in complex disasters and events, there is always a political side, an engineering side, a human error side,” he says. “These things happen for a variety of reasons, so you have to open the aperture of your mind.”

In recruiting Reid, Kadlec found an analyst who would look for clues in places a typical scientist wouldn’t. “The things that I’ve been researching and translating are not really science,” Reid says. “It’s the party speaking to the world of science and trying to manage it.”

“Complex and Grave Situation”

Even the authors of the relentlessly cheerful party branch dispatches and meeting summaries in the WIV archive found it hard to sugarcoat the events of November 19, 2019, Toy Reid discovered as he delved into the WIV’s archives.

Seven days after the Zhengdian party branch members wrote their memo about rushing to the front line to defend against viral dangers, fallout arrived in the form of an official visitor from Beijing. That visitor, Dr. Ji Changzheng, is the technology safety and security director for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the sprawling state agency that oversees more than 100 research institutions in China, including the WIV. His visit was billed as a senior safety-training seminar for a small high-level audience, including the WIV’s research department heads and top biosafety officials.

But the meeting, chronicled in a one and a half page summary uploaded to the WIV website on November 21, was no pro forma seminar. According to Reid, it appears to have been “out of the ordinary and event driven,” and distinct from the annual safety training, which had been held in April.

For Reid, the import of Ji’s opening remarks practically leapt off the page. Ji told the assembled group that he had come bearing “important oral remarks and written instructions” from General Secretary Xi Jinping and China’s premier, Li Keqiang, to address a “complex and grave situation.”

Though the summary’s language is characteristically vague, Ji described:

many large-scale cases of domestic and foreign safety incidents in recent years, and from the perspective of shouldering responsibility, standardizing operations, emergency planning, and inspecting hidden dangers one-by-one, [he] laid out a deep analysis, with many layers and taken from many angles, which vividly revealed the complex and grave situation currently facing [bio]security work.

The WIV’s deputy director of safety and security spoke next, summarizing “several general problems that were found over the course of the last year during safety and security investigations, and [he] pointed to the severe consequences that could result from hidden safety dangers.”

But what drew Reid’s full attention was the word Ji used to describe the important “written instructions” he was relaying from Beijing: “pishi.” When China’s senior leaders receive written reports on a worrying or important issue, they will write instructions in the margins, known as pishi, to be carried out swiftly by lower-level officials. As Reid interpreted it, the pishi that Ji arrived with that day appeared to have come directly from Xi, arguably China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. To Reid, it suggested that Xi himself had been briefed on an ongoing crisis at the WIV.

Is it possible that Ji meant to invoke the authority of China’s supreme leader in a general way? As Reid acknowledges, “When Chinese officials want to be taken seriously by whoever their audience is, they invoke more senior officials.” To assess whether Ji had simply been dropping Xi’s name, as a way to underscore the importance of his message, Reid researched nine of Ji’s visits to different facilities prior to the pandemic. All were characterized as annual or routine. None mentioned a pishi. “There wasn’t this bandying about of Xi,” Reid says.

Further, when Chinese officials are invoking a higher authority in general terms, they will typically cite an important speech, says Reid. For example, Ji could have referenced the one Xi gave at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ plenary session in May 2018. As Reid puts it, “If he just wanted to invoke the authority of Xi, the natural way to do that is to say, ‘Remember when he came to speak to all of us?’” Invoking the pishi, Reid believes, was “taking it to another level.”

China “didn’t have the background of how to run [advanced laboratories] safely,” says James LeDuc. “They were trying to do their best.”

Ji did not respond to questions and a request for comment sent to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The director general at the WIV and the head of the WIV party committee did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Vanity Fair and ProPublica examined research from Chinese academics on pishi and separately got three experts on CCP communications to review the WIV meeting summary. All agreed that it appeared to be urgent, nonroutine, and related to some sort of biosafety emergency. Two also agreed that it appeared Xi himself had issued a pishi.

A former senior US intelligence official said that, while the pishi in the dispatch is not necessarily a smoking gun, he reads it as saying that “there is some issue related to lab security, which doesn’t come up very often, that needed to be seen by Xi Jinping.” He added, “Something signed off on by the General Secretary (Xi) and Premier (Li) is high priority.”

Another longtime CCP analyst said it was not possible to conclude from the document that Xi and Li had actually issued a pishi related to a specific incident, or even that they had been informed of one. Ji, in her view, might well have been invoking their names without their knowledge to underscore the importance of his message. However, she said that, given the party’s preference for positive communications, the acknowledgment of a “‘complex and grave situation’ means ‘We are facing something really bad.’” She also said that the language of the summary implied that the situation in question was happening at that time.

Reading between the lines is essential to understanding what the WIV dispatches really mean. As Geremie Barmé, an emeritus professor of Chinese history at the Australian National University, who analyzed key documents at our request, said of CCP communications, “The style of self-protection, of rounding things out, of avoiding the truth, is a highly developed, bureaucratic art form.”

Without more evidence, it is impossible to know the details of what the assembled group knew and discussed that day. But at least one news report supports the notion that the virus may have been circulating at that time. In March 2020, a veteran journalist with the South China Morning Post reported that she reviewed internal Chinese government data on early cases of COVID-19 that included a 55-year-old in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, who contracted COVID-19 on November 17, 2019.

That was just two days before Ji arrived at the WIV, bearing urgent instructions from the highest levels of China’s government.

“Black Swans and Gray Rhinos”

A virologist and former Army officer, James LeDuc spent half a century studying how infectious diseases impact public health and national security. Over the course of his career, he witnessed China’s rise from a “not well-developed country” to a biotechnology superpower, he told Vanity Fair and ProPublica.

In December 1985, LeDuc, then a supervisor at the US Army medical research center, Fort Detrick, arrived at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help work on a trial of drug efficacy for the hantavirus, a life-threatening disease transmitted by rodents. “China was emerging from the Cultural Revolution. Everyone was on bicycles,” he recalls. “I can remember giving a talk—the screen was a sheet one of us had to hold. The windows were broken out.”

Two and a half decades later, with help from French scientists and engineers, the WIV laid the cornerstone for China’s first BSL-4 laboratory. That facility, the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, would become synonymous with the country’s lofty biotech ambitions. “China has said repeatedly and forcefully—and they’re backing up their words with actions—that they intend to own the bio-revolution,” the biodefense expert Dr. Tara J. O’Toole testified in November 2019 before a US Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. O’Toole served as one of Kadlec’s scientific advisers for the report.

Today, China operates three BSL-4 laboratories and plans to build at least five more. (Biolabs are rated 1–4, from least to most secure, according to standards set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and international public health agencies.)

China’s progress has been fast—arguably too fast for its infrastructure to keep pace. It remains dependent on other countries for critical technology and supplies, leading to chronic procurement hurdles that party branch members refer to as the “stranglehold problem.” It has a thin bench of experts to run the most advanced laboratories. China “didn’t have the background of how to run [advanced laboratories] safely,” says LeDuc. “They were trying to do their best.”

From 2010 until his retirement in 2021, LeDuc served as director of the Galveston National Laboratory, one of eight BSL-4 facilities in the US. During that time, he went out of his way to help improve standards at the WIV. He brought several of the WIV’s scientists to Galveston for training and invited its officials to attend an international conference he hosted.

In 2016, LeDuc returned to the WIV for a scientific meeting in which he shared a new set of recommendations. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity had urged the US government to more intensively screen proposals for what it called “gain-of-function research of concern” in which scientists manipulate dangerous pathogens to gauge their likelihood of sparking a pandemic.

LeDuc says his presentation was “not necessarily well received. Most of the folks were scientists and could care less about policy.” But he felt he had a responsibility to warn them all the same. “It’s enlightened self-interest that we are doing everything to ensure [China’s] success,” he says. “We want to make sure they have the best practices. If someone screws up, we all suffer.”

Poring through publicly available documents, Kadlec’s researchers saw that China’s top scientists had been sounding the alarm too. “The biosafety laboratory is a double-edged sword; it can be used for the benefit of humanity but can also lead to a ‘disaster,’” warned a March 2019 article cowritten by Yuan Zhiming, director of the WIV’s BSL-4 laboratory. “With increasing numbers of high-level biosafety laboratories constructed in China, it is urgent to establish and implement standardized management measures.”

That same month, the director of China’s CDC cautioned that bioengineering technologies would “also be available to the ambitious, careless, inept and outright malcontents, who may misuse them in ways that endanger our safety.” Writing in the journal Biosafety and Health, the director at the time, George Fu Gao, also urged that “modifying the genomes of animals (including humans), plants, and microbes (including pathogens) must be highly regulated.”

Meanwhile, reports of sloppy practices, hazardous conditions, and inadequate oversight reverberated across China’s laboratories, according to documents unearthed by Reid and reviewed by Vanity Fair and ProPublica. A 2018 study by a municipal agency in Zhangjiajie, which canvassed 37 laboratories in the area, came to a scorching conclusion. “Our findings allow for no optimism about biosafety conditions,” the study said. “There are many hidden safety dangers, including occupational exposure, hospital acquired infections, environmental hazard, lack of training, those without credentials taking posts, management systems that do not operate effectively, leadership that does not place enough importance [on lab safety], deficient supervision and management by relevant health departments, etc.”

On November 7, 2018, an official with the Municipal Health Inspection Bureau of Guangzhou, China’s largest manufacturing hub, identified a litany of hazards found during laboratory biosafety inspections: improper use of disinfectants, substandard management of samples, personnel with inadequate training and protective gear, and laboratory wastewater released directly into sewage systems.

The WIV was by no means exempt from such problems, according to reports in its own archives. In 2011 and 2018, inspections of WIV laboratories turned up lapses including improper storage of viral samples and management failings.

Then, on December 24, 2018, an incident that was impossible to conceal helped catapult lab safety to the top of China’s policy agenda. Three students at Beijing Jiaotong University burned to death after improperly stored chemicals exploded inside the school’s laboratory.

On January 21, 2019, Xi Jinping gave a speech to the CCP’s Central Party School, where budding young cadres receive their higher education. Conveying a sense of “anxious urgency,” according to The New York Times, he stressed the need to prepare for two kinds of risks: “black swans and gray rhinos.” He was referring to two concepts popularized in best-selling books: A black swan is a rare and unpredictable event, while a gray rhino is an obvious risk that is ignored until it poses an immediate threat. Xi proceeded to describe potential security problems in China’s state laboratories, leaving no doubt that he was concerned about the issue.

“My gut feeling is that the WIV was not ready to go hot when they turned everything on [at the BSL-4] and started doing experiments in early 2018,” says Larry Kerr.

With Xi himself calling for action, a biosecurity bill that had been on the back burner became a top priority and later passed. In October 2019, Gao Hucheng, chairman of a National People’s Congress committee responsible for environmental protection, argued for its importance before the Congress’s standing committee.

In the fall of that year, according to declassified intelligence in a US State Department fact sheet, several researchers inside the WIV became sick “with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.” The fact sheet did not say who the researchers were or how the US government learned of their illnesses.

As the Chinese government raced to overhaul biosafety regulations, scientists at the WIV faced a conflicting imperative: Beijing’s demand for scientific breakthroughs, which created pressure to perform cutting-edge experiments that could be published in prestigious journals. A party branch dispatch noted that Tong Xiao, a member of the WIV’s CCP committee, often told scientists there: “Don’t look at your work duties as pressure. Every task is an opportunity and a ladder for continuous self-improvement. Our team’s belief is that suffering losses is good fortune.”

“They’ve got this really aggressive regime breathing down their neck,” says Reid. “These guys are in a political pressure cooker.”

“A Doom Loop of Pressure”

In 2002, an outbreak of the SARS coronavirus that originated in China spread around the world, killing 774 people and infecting more than 8,000. At first, China tried to conceal the problem. When that became impossible, it played down the severity, falsely claiming the epidemic was under control. Meanwhile, in two separate incidents in 2004, SARS accidentally leaked from a top laboratory in Beijing and led to mini outbreaks.

In the wake of the debacle, China committed to a long-term project to not only repair its public-health reputation but also achieve the cutting-edge scientific prowess worthy of a true global superpower.

In 2004, French president Jacques Chirac flew to Beijing to sign a scientific cooperation agreement that would help catapult China into the big leagues. Welcomed with lavish ceremony, amid Champagne and strutting soldiers, Chirac pledged that France would sell China four mobile BSL-3 laboratories, help build a world-class BSL-4 lab, and partner on essential research.

Eleven years and $44 million later, construction of the BSL-4 lab was complete. Set high above a flood plain, the four-story concrete laboratory was designed to withstand a magnitude 7 earthquake. By early 2018, it had been accredited to research the world’s most dangerous pathogens, including Ebola, Marburg, and Nipah viruses. Xi Jinping himself hailed it as “of vital importance to Chinese public health.”

From the outside, the WIV appeared to be a transparent hub for top-caliber international collaborations. That ethos was best embodied by a fearless scientist named Shi Zhengli. She had risen through the ranks at the WIV to become director of its Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and deputy director of its BSL-4 lab. Fluent in French, she had trained at the BSL-4 Jean Mérieux-Inserm Laboratory in Lyon and was well known in China as “bat woman” for her intrepid exploration of their caves to collect samples. “Shi Zhengli was totally aware of how to handle viruses,” Gabriel Gras, a French biosafety and biocontainment technology expert who helped train the WIV’s BSL-4 staff, told Vanity Fair and ProPublica. “She has handled these all her life.”

As the BSL-4 lab there became one of the nation’s most exalted scientific showpieces, Shi’s research grew in importance and scope. In a 2015 research paper, Shi and a University of North Carolina virologist named Ralph Baric proved that the spike protein of a novel coronavirus could be used to infect human cells. Using mice as subjects, they spliced the spike of a novel SARS-like virus from a bat into a version of the 2003 SARS virus, creating a new infectious pathogen. The virus manipulation was completed at Baric’s BSL-3 lab in North Carolina. This gain-of-function experiment was so fraught that the authors essentially put a warning label on it, writing, “scientific review panels may deem similar studies…too risky to pursue.”

In March 2018, Shi partnered with Baric and a longtime collaborator, Peter Daszak, on a $14 million grant proposal to genetically manipulate bat coronaviruses to see how they might cause pandemics. The proposal called for possibly enhancing the viruses with something called a furin cleavage site to boost their entry into human cells. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) rejected the grant proposal for not adequately assessing the risks posed by a supercharged virus.

It is not clear whether WIV scientists continued the research on their own. Shi and Baric did not offer comment. In his response to our request for comment, Daszak did not address the DARPA grant. He said that he had not reviewed the Senate report and instead pointed to another report, which he recently coauthored in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that “strongly indicates” a natural origin for SARS-CoV-2.

Though Shi was most often pictured in the Chinese press in her white, pressurized oxygen suit, required for BSL-4 research, published papers show that she and the researchers she supervised did much of their work in BSL-3 and even BSL-2 facilities, which the WIV allowed prior to the pandemic. The interim report enumerates several types of risky research conducted at the WIV at BSL-3 and BSL-2 levels. Animal experiments to test the efficacy of vaccines generated highly infectious aerosols that are “difficult to detect,” the interim report says, adding that “there were concerns about conducting this type of research in a BSL2 laboratory.”

In early 2017, the collaboration with the French fizzled and Gras, the last French expert there, departed. The French had served as designers and contractors but never became partners. “I think the French did not really have a strong interest in working with Wuhan,” in part due to diverging research interests, Gras said. He added that Yuan Zhiming, the BSL-4 director, “was not an easy person. He can put pressure on people.” Yuan did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Long before the lab began its riskiest work, there were alarming signs of trouble ahead. In 2016, during severe flooding, the waters rose so high that nearby streets were impassable, and researchers had to hike through a forested area to reach the laboratory and ensure its safety, Zhengdian lab party branch members recounted in a WIV dispatch that Toy Reid unearthed.

The decision to build the walls out of stainless steel caused a considerable challenge. Stainless steel is “very vulnerable to corrosion” from disinfectants, Bob Hawley, the former chief of safety and radiation protection at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease, told Vanity Fair and ProPublica. Hawley is an expert adviser to the interim report.

Even in 2016, Chinese technicians were already struggling with how to properly disinfect laboratory surfaces and other items, according to emails obtained in a FOIA lawsuit. That July, Yuan emailed an NIH staffer he’d met the previous year under the subject line “ask for help.” He wrote that he was seeking “some suggestion for the choice of disinfectants” used in the BSL-4 laboratory. “I am sorry to disturb you and I really hope you could give us some suggestion,” he wrote.

As LeDuc observed, “They were looking for expertise wherever they could find it.”

Yuan himself identified the shortage of expertise as one of many problems that imperiled safe operations in China’s laboratories. In the September 2019 issue of the Journal of Biosafety and Security, he described a threadbare system where maintenance costs were “generally neglected” and “several high-level BSLs have insufficient operational funds for routine yet vital processes. Due to the limited resources, some BSL-3 laboratories run on extremely minimal operational costs or in some cases none at all.”

Gerald Parker, associate dean for Global One Health at Texas A&M University’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and an expert adviser to the interim report, told Vanity Fair and ProPublica that he found Yuan’s revelations “jaw-dropping.” The combination of biosafety problems and limited maintenance funds is “a recipe for disaster,” he said. “You further couple that with an authoritarian regime where you could be penalized for reporting safety issues. You are in a doom loop of pressure to produce, and if something goes wrong you may not be incentivized to report.”

As the Zhengdian lab party branch members noted in their dispatch of November 12, 2019, which the interim report includes: “In the laboratory, they often need to work for four consecutive hours, even extending to six hours. During this time, they cannot eat, drink or relieve themselves. This is an extreme test of a person’s will and physical endurance.”

A four- to six-hour shift in a positive pressure suit would be “unusually lengthy,” said Hawley, given the stress of dehydration, lack of mobility, and noise from oxygen that is so loud it requires hearing protection. “Usually, it’s only a couple of hours at the maximum.”

Larry Kerr, a virologist who recently retired as HHS’s director of the Office of Pandemics and Emerging Threats and served as an expert adviser to the Senate report, told Vanity Fair and ProPublica, “My gut feeling is that the WIV was not ready to go hot when they turned everything on [at the BSL-4] and started doing experiments in early 2018.” He added: “Even the WIV’s people are saying, ‘We don’t have the resources and capabilities to keep this up and running.’ It’s like, holy crap, if you are working in a lab like that, I don’t understand why people don’t shut it down.”

But the showpiece laboratory remained as busy as ever. As Reid said of the WIV dispatches he analyzed, “The feel you get from all these documents is: It’s just produce, produce, produce, like an actor preparing to take the stage before they’re ready.”

Newspaper clippings on a cork board in the Bat Cave.Photograph by Mark Peterson/Redux.

“The CCP’s Version of ‘Cover Your Ass’”

By the fall of 2019, trouble was brewing at the WIV, according to documents turned up by Toy Reid.

On September 11, 2019, the CCP’s No. 15 Inspection Patrol Group arrived at the Beijing headquarters of the WIV’s parent organization, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), to conduct a two-month political inspection. The inspection was part of a larger routine sweep of 37 state organizations. According to the inspection team’s leader, its purpose was to sniff out any “violations of political discipline, party organizational discipline, [financial] ethics discipline, discipline with regard to the masses, work discipline, and discipline in one’s personal life.” They were also on the lookout for instances of insufficient loyalty to the CCP’s mission.

The Beijing inspectors identified more than a dozen “principal problems” at CAS, among them a “‘persistent gap’ between Xi Jinping’s important instructions on pursuing ‘leap frog development in science and technology’ and CAS’s implementation of Xi’s instructions.” In short: not enough progress, despite all the pressure.

A week earlier, on September 3, more than 50 managers and staffers at the WIV had met to discuss a looming internal audit that would evaluate political discipline, according to a party branch dispatch. The scientists and their overseers were facing scrutiny at every level.

A trail of evidence from that fall appears to show the WIV trying to address a crisis. “That’s when you start to see emergency response activity,” says Larry Kerr, the former director of the HHS pandemic office.

It began within 24 hours of the start of the CAS inspection. On September 12 between 2 and 3 a.m., the interim report says, the WIV took down its Wildlife-Borne Viral Pathogen Database, which contained more than 15,000 samples from bats. The database had been a resource for researchers globally. A password-protected section only accessible to WIV personnel contained unpublished sequences of bat beta-coronaviruses—the family of coronaviruses to which SARS-CoV-2 belongs. Public access to the database has not yet been restored.

The Senate researchers analyzed a trail of procurements and patent applications, which, the interim report notes, suggest that “the WIV struggled to maintain key biosafety capabilities at its high-containment BSL3 and BSL4 laboratories.” On December 11, a team of WIV researchers submitted a patent application in China for a device to filter and contain hazardous gases inside a biological chamber, like the ones it used to transport infected animals. The application, which Vanity Fair and ProPublica reviewed, noted that defective air hoses on animal carriers can lead to “multi-stage” risks when airborne pathogens are involved, and warned that a “stable high-efficiency filtering device” and corrosion-resistant frame were “urgently needed.” The following year, in November 2020, the WIV applied for a patent for a new disinfectant compound that it argued would reduce “the corrosion effect to metal, especially stainless steel material,” the interim report says.

The patent application, which listed seven inventors, including Yuan Zhiming, vividly describes concerns related to its prior disinfectant:

Long-term use will lead to corrosion of metal components such as stainless steel, thereby reducing the protection of…facilities and equipment. It can not only shorten its service life and cause economic losses, but also lead to the escape of highly pathogenic microorganisms into the external environment of the laboratory, resulting in loss of life and property and serious social problems.

In the words of one China analyst who serves as an adviser to Western companies, when Chinese officials “describe the solution to a problem, that’s how you find out what went wrong.”

Vanity Fair and ProPublica analyzed the WIV website and found that there may have been an after-the-fact attempt to reframe the events of November 2019. On November 11, the WIV appeared to republish the entire section of its website containing institutional and party branch news. Every dispatch from prior dates, even those from several years earlier, contains underlying data that indicates that it was changed on that day.

While this could have resulted from routine site maintenance, it raises another possibility: that WIV officials removed or revised documents in an effort to insulate themselves from blame ahead of the November 19 visit from Ji Changzheng, the CAS biosecurity official.

On December 11, a team of WIV researchers submitted a patent application for a device to filter and contain hazardous gases inside a biological chamber, like the ones it used to transport infected animals.

The first dispatch to be posted after November 11 was the one from the Zhengdian lab party branch enumerating how its members had rushed to the front lines every time there had been a biocontainment lapse. The dispatch was dated November 12, but the underlying data suggested the file was actually uploaded on November 19, the day of Ji’s urgent visit.

Matthew Pottinger, who researches China-related issues at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and was President Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, told Vanity Fair and ProPublica, “This is the CCP’s version of ‘cover your ass.’”

“Scientifically, Technically Not Possible”

As Senate researchers explored the question of when the outbreak began, they and their scientific advisers examined the surprisingly fast vaccine development by several Chinese research teams.

The work of one military vaccinologist caught their attention: Zhou Yusen, director of the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, in Beijing. Zhou had spent years working to develop vaccines for pathogens including SARS and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a novel coronavirus first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012. A 2016 report by the WIV featured Zhou as a key partner on its MERS vaccine research. And in November 2019, he collaborated on a paper with a team of WIV scientists that included Shi Zhengli.

On February 24, 2020, Zhou became the first researcher in the world to apply for a patent for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. His proposed vaccine worked by reproducing a part of the virus’s spike protein known as the receptor binding domain. In order to start vaccine development, researchers would have needed the entire SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence, the interim report says.

Shi Zhengli has said that her lab was the first to sequence the virus and completed that work on the morning of January 2, 2020. That sequence is the one Zhou said he worked with in his Chinese patent application, which Vanity Fair and ProPublica reviewed.

According to the interim report, there are limits to how fast a vaccine can be developed. In particular, it said that “animal studies are designed to last a specific length of time and cannot be curtailed without compromising the resulting data.”

In his patent application and in subsequently published papers, Zhou documented a robust research and development process that included both adapting the virus to wild-type mice and infecting genetically modified ones with humanized lungs.

Vanity Fair and ProPublica consulted two independent experts and one expert adviser to the interim report to get their assessment of when Zhou’s research was likely to have begun. Two of the three said that he had to have started no later than November 2019, in order to complete the mouse research spelled out in his patent and subsequent papers.

Larry Kerr, who advised on the interim report, called the timeline laid out in Zhou’s patent and research papers “scientifically, technically not possible.” He added, “I don’t think any molecular biology lab in the world, no matter how sophisticated, could pull that off.”

Rick Bright, the former HHS official who helped oversee vaccine development for the US government, told Vanity Fair and ProPublica that even a four-month timetable would be “aggressive,” especially when the virus in question is new. “Things aren’t usually that perfect,” he said.

Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told us the timetable was very fast but “feasible for a group with substantial existing expertise and ongoing work” on developing similar SARS-related coronavirus vaccines, but only if “everything went right.”

Zhou and his colleagues described their COVID-19 vaccine research in a preprint posted on May 2, 2020. When it was published in a peer-reviewed journal three months later, Reid found, Zhou was listed as “deceased.” The circumstances of his death have not been disclosed.

A chart tabulating early cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan.Photograph by Mark Peterson/Redux.

Battle Lines

In the early hours of January 1, 2020, Wuhan officials closed the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market after identifying it as the site of the world’s first cluster of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Animals for sale were carted away, stalls were sanitized, and an epidemiology team spent days collecting environmental samples.

How did the virus arrive in Wuhan, a metropolis of 11 million people hundreds of miles north of China’s teeming bat caves? It was such an unlikely place for a coronavirus outbreak that WIV scientists had in the past used Wuhan residents as a control group when screening people in the countryside of Yunnan Province for exposure to bat-borne viruses. The assumption was that urbanites in Wuhan would have little contact with bats.

To many scientists, the answer was clear: The wildlife trade in China had brought live animals, an obvious source of disease, into dangerously close proximity with people. Years earlier, something similar had happened with SARS, which spilled over into multiple different markets that sold live animals across Guangdong Province over the course of months.

But the interim report also highlights questions that soon arose regarding the market theory. If the wildlife trade was the culprit, where was the trail of infected animals? And where was the animal host?

The question of where COVID-19 came from has never been a purely scientific one. From the start, in both China and the US, it has been politicized almost beyond recognition.

In April 2020, Trump declared at a press conference that COVID-19—or “kung flu,” as he soon began calling it—had come from a lab in China. When pressed on the evidence for this claim, he declared: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”

As a conspiratorial rabble trained its sights on the WIV generally, and Shi Zhengli specifically, Western scientists rushed to their defense. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” read a statement signed by 27 scientists and published by the Lancet medical journal on February 19, 2020. It would later emerge that one of the scientists who’d signed that statement had sought to conceal his own role in orchestrating it and creating the impression of a consensus, as Vanity Fair has reported previously. That scientist didn’t address this issue when he replied to our request for comment for this article.

By then, however, the battle lines had been drawn. If you backed the lab-leak theory, you were with Trump. If you believed in science, you supported the natural-origin theory generally and the market-spillover theory in particular.

“The WIV is under the thumb of the party state,” says Reid. “American scientists have been slow to realize that.”

On February 25, 2022, a team of researchers from China’s CDC published a preprint revealing that of the 457 swabs taken from 18 species of animals in the market, none contained any evidence of the virus. Rather, the virus was found in 73 swabs taken from around the market’s environment, all linked to human infections. And although some seafood and vegetable vendors in the market tested positive, no vendors from animal stalls did.

The next day, a team of scientists including Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, published a preprint identifying the Huanan market as the “unambiguous epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Using mapping software, they analyzed the locations of 155 of the earliest known cases reported by the Chinese authorities to the World Health Organization and found them to be centered on the market. A companion analysis led by Jonathan Pekar, a bioinformatics graduate student at the University of California San Diego, said there had been not one but “at least two” spillover events at the market.

The Worobey paper described its findings as “dispositive evidence” for a market origin. The New York Times catapulted the preprints to international attention. When the peer-reviewed version was published in Science in July, the “dispositive evidence” language was gone. In a detailed response to our request for comment, Worobey said that the removal of those words was the authors’ editorial choice and that the language in Science was “no less definitive” than the preprint: “It was replaced with similar language: ‘our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China.’”

By contrast, the interim Senate report concludes that “the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy.” The available evidence doesn’t fit the patterns of previous outbreaks, it states, including outbreaks of SARS in 2003 and avian influenza in 2013. Those outbreaks saw many independent spillover events in multiple locations, and those viruses “exhibited much greater genetic diversity than early SARS-CoV-2 strains.” And within six months of the first known case of SARS, the report says, Chinese health officials found evidence of the virus in palm civets and raccoon dogs.

The interim report also points out that, “almost three years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, there is still no evidence of an animal infected with SARS-CoV-2, or a closely related virus, before the first publicly reported human COVID-19 cases in Wuhan in December 2019.”

Worobey said, “Our two recent papers establish that a natural zoonotic origin is the only plausible scenario for the origin of the pandemic.” Before this story ran, Worobey posted his comments to us, as well as additional ones, on Twitter, so they would not be “ignored or filtered,” and stated he had not been given sufficient time to respond.

While the China CDC found no evidence of the virus in animals in the market, Pekar told Vanity Fair and ProPublica that the removal of animals from the market by the start of 2020 made it difficult to “actually sample the correct animals for SARS-CoV-2.”

The Senate’s interim report is no likelier than the Worobey and Pekar studies to close the book on the origins debate, nor does it attempt to. If anything, it seems destined to escalate the battle just as Republicans in Congress hope to retake the majority in the midterm elections. They aim to haul Dr. Anthony Fauci, the outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, into Benghazi-style hearings.

The dispute over COVID-19’s origins, fought in the halls of Congress and on the web pages of scientific preprints, has become more toxic and divisive as time has passed. On Twitter, what should be scientific debate has devolved into a mosh pit of poop emojis and middle school insults. It is unclear what is driving the animus, but political advantage, egos, scientific reputations, and research dollars all hang in the balance.

“Under the Thumb of the Party State”

In early February 2020, as COVID-19 was spreading beyond China, James LeDuc of the Galveston National Laboratory began fielding calls from journalists asking if SARS-CoV-2 could have originated from a lab.

He didn’t think so. Nonetheless, on February 9, he emailed his longtime colleague and mentee at the WIV, Yuan Zhiming. LeDuc encouraged him to “conduct a thorough review of the laboratory activities associated with research on coronaviruses so that you are fully prepared to answer questions dealing with the origin of the virus.” He included a three-page list of “some areas where you may wish to investigate.”

Included in LeDuc’s proposed review were the following questions: “Is there any evidence to suggest a mechanical failure in biocontainment during the time in question? -were biological safety cabinets used and appropriately certified? -Exhaust air filtration systems working correctly?”

The questions were apt. Two and a half months earlier, according to the interim report, procurement officials at the WIV posted a call for bids on a government website seeking a costly air incinerator. The post was dated November 19, 2019, the very day that the visiting CAS safety official arrived to address a “complex and grave” situation there.

Prior to the wider adoption of HEPA filters in the 1950s, air incinerators were used to “superheat air coming from one place and going to another, in order to render them free of any microbial agent,” said Bob Hawley, the former safety chief at the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease. “If somehow the HEPA filter system failed, because there was a tear or breach…then your quick fix would be to bring in an air incinerator.”

LeDuc says he never heard back from Yuan.

The Nonprofit at the Center of the COVID Lab-Leak Controversy

Toy Reid, who is now in Jakarta resuming his work for the State Department, says that WIV scientists are not “free agents” who can candidly share what occurred in their laboratories. “The WIV is under the thumb of the party state,” he says. “Just because you can’t see the political pressures they’re under doesn’t mean they’re not under them. American scientists have been slow to realize that.”

Without the cooperation of China’s government, we can’t know exactly what did or didn’t happen at the WIV, or what precise set of circumstances unleashed SARS-CoV-2. But the dispatches that Reid unearthed, when overlaid with additional evidence the Senate team compiled, point to a catastrophe in the making: political pressure to excel, inadequate resources to safeguard risky work, and an effort to skirt blame once a crisis hit.

As Reid sees it, the international community must continue to demand answers.“If you just throw your hands in the air and say, ‘We’ll never know because it’s China,’ and just move on—if you take that defeatist approach to things—you can’t prepare yourself to prevent something like this from happening in the future.”

Clarification, October 28, 2022: This story has been updated to clarify that Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, said two recent papers by him and his colleagues established “that a natural zoonotic origin is the only plausible scenario for the origin of the pandemic.”

Investigating COVID Origins

VF contributing editor and award-winning journalist Katherine Eban covers medical and scientific mayhem. Read the full series of her in-depth COVID reporting.

READ MORE

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Vanity Fair · by Condé Nast · October 28, 2022

17. Why The Naivete In Misreading Xi’s Furtherance of One-Man Rule and State-Domination Of The Economy?

Excerpts:

As in the past, Xi did not take advantage of this pivotal opportunity to finally bite the bullet and signal the need to unwind some of the most egregious contradictions inherent in the Party’s ‘socialist market economy’ paradigm underway since the early 1990s, which, year after year, have become increasingly evident as structural constraints on China’s long run growth.

Three of the most prominent of these are: (i) the incestuous relationship between the four large state-owned banks and the largest state-owned enterprises (SOEs), where the banks pretend that the money they give to SOEs are loans, and the SOEs make believe they pay back these debts to the banks; (ii) the inability to fulfill the government’s stated goal of transforming China into a bona fide consumer-led economy as long as the Party continues to hold dear and make sizeable capital investments in the already bloated industrial sector; and (iii) the inevitable tug of war between the interests of government and those of business that arises when the former, which is imbued with a focus on attaining social and political objectives, is the latter’s primary shareholder and slated to pursue commercial ends.

Unfortunately, it’s because of these unaddressed contradictions that over the last several years China’s economic chickens have begun to come home to roost. As the country continues its shift towards a lower pattern of growth and potentially an economic crisis, Xi may well regret that at the beginning of his third term, just as he did at the beginning of his second term, he has chosen to simply kick the economic reform can down the road.

Does this seem to worry Xi? Not one bit. At the closing of the Congress, he proclaimed: “Just as China cannot develop in isolation from the world, the world’s development also needs China.”

Why The Naivete In Misreading Xi’s Furtherance of One-Man Rule and State-Domination Of The Economy?

Harry G. BroadmanContributor

I write and speak on global business, innovation, and sustainability.

Oct 31, 2022,10:46pm EDT

Forbes · by Harry G. Broadman · October 31, 2022

... [+]Getty Images

It is hard to find a Western observer surprised by Xi Jinping’s “election” to an unprecedented third term at October’s twice-a-decade session of China’s Communist Party’s National Congress. Outcomes of the Party’s important meetings are always highly choreographed.

But Xi’s elevation of his closest—and relatively unknown—cronies into the Party’s inner-most circle of power, the Standing Committee, by replacing four widely familiar veterans of the Committee’s seven members was seen as a shocker to most outsiders. It shouldn’t have been. Xi was formalizing his already entrenched one-man rule.

At the same time, his pronouncements before the Congress about the urgency to redouble reforms to reinforce the state’s role as the primary engine to spur China’s economic growth—which Party members wholeheartedly endorsed—also seemed like news, especially those who for years, if not decades, have been hoping against hope that market forces in Communist China were on the ascendency.

Xi’s Consolidation of One-Man Rule Is Not Surprising, But Entails Significant Risks

The perception that the most important policy decisions Xi took over his previous two terms were the product of collective decision-making was naïve. Now to mitigate any risk of the emergence of such a dynamic going forward, especially as he ages, Xi has moved decisively to surrounded himself by a group of his own “yes-men.” Literally. In contrast to the past twenty-five years, not a single woman is now a member of the Standing Committee. So much for today’s brand of Chinese Communism having any semblance of gender equality.

In contrast to the outside world, few of these changes have gone unnoticed by an increasing swath of Chinese society—although it is highly rare, if not dangerous, for discussion of such matters to take place publicly. Why? Because China’s populace is well aware of Xi’s unabashed drive—and ability—to transform China into a totalitarian state, a metamorphosis that has intensified unchecked throughout his tenure.

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The ubiquitous presence of multiple government surveillance cameras at every street corner, building entrance or transport hub throughout China’s urban and rural areas equipped with sophisticated facial recognition technologies has hardly been lost on the citizenry. While still exceedingly rare, that eruptions of public discontent have begun to emerge, such as protest banners draped from a bridge as well as loudspeaker chants blasting Xi at a major thoroughfare in Beijing at the onset of the Party Congress, were very limited in scale, they do reflect increased brashness by a part of the domestic population.

While the rest of the world may not yet have fully caught on—or refuses to believe the era of a façade plurilateral government in China is over—for many Chinese, collective rule was largely a mirage for years under Xi. I say this based on many years working on the ground across China—visiting large and small cities, in the North, the East, the South, the West and in the Center; being inside numerous Chinese state-owned enterprises, banks and investment funds, as well as in Sino-foreign joint ventures; and in many meetings with government officials, at the Central, Provincial, and City and town levels.

While most Chinese publicly expressed the perspective that the country was collectively governed (and still do so), in private—at least among friends they trust—there is an acknowledgement that one-man rule was—and remains—the reality. In my last visit to China, just prior to the onset of the Covid pandemic, one of my Chinese friends in Beijing referred to Xi as a “thug.”

Like some of his smarter predecessors, Xi is no dummy. He made (and makes) his colleagues feel as if important policy decisions were (are being) collectively decided. While the execution of policies was (and still is), carried out by officials at different levels subordinate to Xi, underlings rarely had (have) the autonomy to wholly call the shots themselves.

Here’s the rub—or more accurately the rubs—for Xi:

First, he needs to walk a fine line creating incentives for subordinates to discharge their duties in a manner consistent with the dictates coming from above. In part, those incentives stem from fear of retribution if policy implementation does not go as planned. Colleagues are not immune from telling superiors when they witness decisions/conduct that are inconsistent with orders from above. It is not difficult to believe that in such an environment, payments can be made to quash informants. As in other countries, China is not immune to the practice of corruption.

Second, it goes without saying that the scale of China is huge—both spatially and in terms of size of population. Unless the strong man at the top is able to institute credible mechanisms of sufficient depth and breadth nationwide to ensure there is effective centralized discipline, with rigorous checks and balances, errant conduct will undoubtedly take place. The real question then becomes one of: how much of such conduct occurs, especially conduct that is ultimately central to the success or failure of the set of decisions at hand.

Finally, increasing numbers of Chinese—especially those that are the most educated—travel widely around the world, including performing research in advanced foreign laboratories, attending Western universities, working in some of the largest Western multinational companies, and travelling as tourists.

The result? They experience firsthand cultures where there is decentralized decision-making; where procedures are questioned and, indeed, can well change; and where heterogeneity of thought and self-empowerment are often the order of the day. Upon their return to China, such experiences invariably color these persons’ thought processes and influence their expectations. To be sure, some of fully reassimilate; but for others, their expectations may well have permanently changed.

These pose fundamental dilemmas for Xi’s rule: How will he address, if not contain, the inevitable challenges engendered by this process? History teaches countries’ leaders that trying to put that genie back in the bottle is fraught with significant risks to their tenure.

Did Markets in Modern China Ever Triumph Over the State?

In the 1980s and 1990s, in the aftermath of the economic havoc wrought by Mao Zedong’s sweeping command and control regime, Deng Xiaoping initiated market-oriented reforms of China’s lumbering state-owned-enterprises (SOEs).

Some of these initiatives were truly creative, for example allowing SOE managers to enter into contracts permitting them to exercise some discretion in setting prices; choosing certain cities as testbeds to experiment in other forms of liberalization, which, depending on their outcomes would be replicated (or modified) and deployed elsewhere in the country; opening up certain portions of the country (and sectors) to foreign investment; and allowing for the creation of “non-state” enterprises, especially in townships and villages.

Couched as “experiments” by Deng’s economic tsar, Zhu Rongji, the enthusiasm generated by these reforms was palpable. But they also engendered rivalry. In time, tensions arose within the Party between the politically powerful bureaucrats overseeing the moribund SOEs obligated to carry on their payrolls underemployed (or unemployed) workers “from cradle to grave,” and the officials in charge of enterprises engaging in the profitable entrepreneurial activities engendered by these reforms, especially regarding the allocation of investment capital by the state.

Not surprisingly, the interests of the SOEs claimed the upper hand of the Party, by then firmly under the control of Xi Jinping during his first term. While Xi mouthed the words of reform, his actions have been a far cry from those of Deng; and the actions of Xi’s lieutenants bear little resemblance to those of Zhu.

Observers of the outcomes from the Party Congress who expressed surprise over Xi’s continued embrace of a state-dominated “socialist market economy” where the private sector plays a minority role clearly have not been paying attention to the circuitous, if not contradictory, actions taken by Xi in the two years running up to the Congress. In particular, in September 2020 under Xi’s direction, the Party issued in the Peoples’ Daily a formal “Opinion,” followed by a set of “Instructions,” that declared the “non-public sector is a critical part of the Socialist Market Economy”. Indeed, the Party placed emphasis on a dictum that the private sector will be crucial for building a “modern socialist power.” In a word, the Party has embellished Xi’s economic philosophy that China can have its cake and eat it too.

With the decisions taken by the Congress, Xi has surely succeeded in further consolidating his political authority in China so that he is second to none. He believes he has ushered in an era that for the foreseeable future he will be both insulated from any political intrusions at home and can operate on the world stage, especially in the business and economic arena, with a long leash.

While Xi proclaimed at the recent Party Congress that China’s economy is “resilient,” the fact is there are very high economic stakes associated with Xi’s exaltation. He faces the challenge of now bearing sole responsibility for making a multitude of leadership decisions in the most complex political economy environment modern China has ever witnessed. His task is to ensure that every step of the way China’s intertwined state-dominated financial and industrial sectors, which still comprise the country’s backbone and are the Party’s raison d’etre, do not come undone and push the Chinese economy into a hard landing. Should that occur, that would be Xi’s downfall.

In effect, owing to the machinations Xi undertook during the previous Party Congress—in 2017—to ensure his ideology was enshrined while he was still alive, he was able to accomplish the amazing feat of formally placing himself and Mao on equal footing as the principal co-architects and co-thought-leaders of what is today the second largest economy on earth.

Most important for those looking for further movement by China towards a more open economy—one where competitive forces are able to flourish, there is adherence to transparent, rules-based transactions and property rights, and governance institutions are in sync with international norms—Xi’s newly elevated status at the more recent Party Congress will surely be a significant disappointment.

As in the past, Xi did not take advantage of this pivotal opportunity to finally bite the bullet and signal the need to unwind some of the most egregious contradictions inherent in the Party’s ‘socialist market economy’ paradigm underway since the early 1990s, which, year after year, have become increasingly evident as structural constraints on China’s long run growth.

Three of the most prominent of these are: (i) the incestuous relationship between the four large state-owned banks and the largest state-owned enterprises (SOEs), where the banks pretend that the money they give to SOEs are loans, and the SOEs make believe they pay back these debts to the banks; (ii) the inability to fulfill the government’s stated goal of transforming China into a bona fide consumer-led economy as long as the Party continues to hold dear and make sizeable capital investments in the already bloated industrial sector; and (iii) the inevitable tug of war between the interests of government and those of business that arises when the former, which is imbued with a focus on attaining social and political objectives, is the latter’s primary shareholder and slated to pursue commercial ends.

Unfortunately, it’s because of these unaddressed contradictions that over the last several years China’s economic chickens have begun to come home to roost. As the country continues its shift towards a lower pattern of growth and potentially an economic crisis, Xi may well regret that at the beginning of his third term, just as he did at the beginning of his second term, he has chosen to simply kick the economic reform can down the road.

Does this seem to worry Xi? Not one bit. At the closing of the Congress, he proclaimed: “Just as China cannot develop in isolation from the world, the world’s development also needs China.”

Forbes · by Harry G. Broadman · October 31, 2022

18. The nuclear threats that hang over the world

​Excerpts:

The fear of such effects is leading to increasing chatter about the need to start peace negotiations with Russia. But western officials are resistant to that move now for fear of a third scenario — successful nuclear blackmail.

If Russia discovers that it can succeed in wars of aggression by simply threatening to use nuclear weapons, another dystopian future beckons. What would stop Moscow from making further nuclear threats, perhaps aimed at eastern Europe? And what conclusions would China or North Korea draw about future conflicts over Taiwan or the Korean peninsula?

The three darkest scenarios — Armageddon, normalisation and successful nuclear blackmail — are all far more possible than they should be. But, collectively, they remain less likely than the fourth possibility — that nuclear war is avoided.

In all previous nuclear crises since 1945, the leaders of great powers have drawn back from the brink. The knowledge that a false move could cause millions of deaths — or even destroy the planet — is enormously sobering. It has kept the world from sliding into nuclear conflict since 1945. It should work again. Probably.

​

The nuclear threats that hang over the world

Even a limited strike in Ukraine would have catastrophic global effects

Financial Times · by Gideon Rachman · October 31, 2022

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” That joint statement was issued at the beginning of this year by China, France, Russia, the UK and the US — the five official nuclear weapons states.

The following month, Russia invaded Ukraine. Ever since, world leaders have been grappling with the threat that a nuclear war might indeed be fought — quite soon.

From the outset, Vladimir Putin has described the conflict as existential for Russia and hinted that he might use nuclear weapons to prevail.

A little more than a week ago, western security officials rushed into their offices over the weekend — alarmed that Moscow’s accusations that Ukraine was poised to use a “dirty bomb” might be a signal that Russia itself was seeking a pretext to go nuclear.

Although that immediate crisis receded, the overall threat that Russia will use a nuclear weapon is still judged to be rising. One scenario discussed in the US government is that a humiliating Russian defeat in the battle for Kherson might persuade Putin to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troops in an effort to reverse the tide on the battlefield.

It is sometimes counter-argued that Putin would not use nuclear weapons so close to Russian territory, for fear of contaminating his own country. But senior US officials point out that the smallest tactical nuclear weapons might kill hundreds of people, rather than thousands — and devastate and irradiate just a few square miles.

The US and its allies are focused on preventing Russia from making that fatal step across the nuclear threshold — through a mixture of deterrence and diplomacy. But they are also already thinking hard about the global aftermath of the use of a Russian nuclear weapon. This is unknown territory and the pressure is intense. As one senior US official puts it: “People will be studying how this crisis was handled for decades to come.”

Broadly speaking, there are four main scenarios to consider: nuclear normalisation, nuclear blackmail, avoidance of war, and Armageddon.

It is not hard to see how the use of a Russian nuclear weapon could spiral into an all-out nuclear war — leading to what President Biden himself has termed “Armageddon”. Washington has warned that if Moscow were to use a nuclear weapon, there would be a response with “catastrophic” consequences for Russia.

The Americans have not spelt out in public what that response would be. Many commentators think that it would be military, but non-nuclear. General David Petraeus, a former CIA head, has talked of Nato forces attacking Russian troops on the ground in Ukraine with conventional weapons and sinking the Russian Black Sea fleet.

The argument for a western military response is that if Russia got away with using a nuclear weapon — and even succeeded in reversing the course of the war — then the nuclear taboo that has held since 1945 would be smashed.

But direct western military involvement would probably trigger a further Russian response. The west and Russia might then rapidly move up the “escalation ladder”, making the nightmare of all-out nuclear war distinctly possible. As one US official puts it: “I don’t think anyone should be confident that we can control the escalation risks.”

Recommended

Rachman Review podcast30 min listen

Russia’s nuclear threat

Because the prospect of escalation to Armageddon is so horrific, there is also a real possibility that even the use of a Russian nuclear weapon would not trigger a direct western military response — with the US instead trying to organise the complete economic and diplomatic isolation of Russia. But that would open the door to another disturbing future: “nuclear normalisation”.

Nuclear weapons would have been shown to be tools that can be used in a war of aggression — not just for deterrence. Russia, and even China, might be tempted to cross the nuclear threshold again. And non-nuclear states — such as Japan, South Korea, Germany and a host of others — would rush to acquire nuclear weapons to protect themselves.

Global turmoil would follow the use of a nuclear weapon. Markets would crash and publics might panic across the world, with the possibility of large-scale population movements out of cities.

The fear of such effects is leading to increasing chatter about the need to start peace negotiations with Russia. But western officials are resistant to that move now for fear of a third scenario — successful nuclear blackmail.

If Russia discovers that it can succeed in wars of aggression by simply threatening to use nuclear weapons, another dystopian future beckons. What would stop Moscow from making further nuclear threats, perhaps aimed at eastern Europe? And what conclusions would China or North Korea draw about future conflicts over Taiwan or the Korean peninsula?

The three darkest scenarios — Armageddon, normalisation and successful nuclear blackmail — are all far more possible than they should be. But, collectively, they remain less likely than the fourth possibility — that nuclear war is avoided.

In all previous nuclear crises since 1945, the leaders of great powers have drawn back from the brink. The knowledge that a false move could cause millions of deaths — or even destroy the planet — is enormously sobering. It has kept the world from sliding into nuclear conflict since 1945. It should work again. Probably.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

Financial Times · by Gideon Rachman · October 31, 2022

19. CTG #24 A Return to the SOF Truths

The below is only available via newsletter and not online.

​I just made a comment yesterday during an email discussion that we should re-read the late COL John Collins seminal work comparing US and USSR SOF in 1987 (which in the Congressman Earl Hutto's forward included COL Collins' 5 SOF truths)

But please have a look at the PSYOP discussion excerpted below. As the author notes: 

That is just well written and succinct, while also providing concrete examples. It’s good.

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Carrying the Gun <admin@carryingthegun.com>

Date: Tue, Nov 1, 2022 at 7:58 AM

Subject: A Return to the SOF Truths | CTG #24

To: <david.maxwell161@gmail.com>

If you call something a truth, it proves itself. CTG #24

A Return to the SOF Truths

"I don't think they play at all fairly," Alice began in a rather complaining tone, and "they don't seem to have anyrules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them--and you've no idea how confusing it is..."

-Lewis Carroll

Alice in Wonderland

In this month's newsletter:

• A Return to the SOF Truths - When you call something a truth, it becomes self-evident with no further explanation needed. But where do these "truths" come from? And what might we glean from what got left behind?
• Carrying the Gun - The things that captured my attention this past month.
• Projects, hobbies, updates - Making this thing better - kaizen.

Thanks for being here. Let me know what you think.

-Don A Return to the SOF Truths

The SOF Truths:

1. Humans are more important than hardware. 

2. Quality is better than quantity. 

3. Special Operations Forces cannot be mass produced. 

4. Competent Special Operations Forces cannot be created after emergencies occur. 

5. Most special operations require non-SOF assistance.

Over the years, the SOF Truths have become boilerplate and often used as a way to make or finalize a point without having to offer any further evidence.

They have been co-opted, modified and deployed all over the place, for just about whatever purpose is desired - from the "OIE Truths" to the "USSOF-Embassy Truths."

There's nothing wrong with using these as a peg for something else - they are good, after all. But if you're going to call something a "truth" it's worth doing a little digging to understand what makes it so in the first place.

The truth is, these were initially not truths at all, but "findings" that appeared in the short foreword of a Congressional Research Service study titled United States and Soviet Special operations, a study. The author, John M. Collins, was a retired Army Colonel who served a second career as a researcher (and a third career as a Warlord). The purpose of the study was to provide policymakers an understanding of US and Soviet special operations capabilities and offer recommendations to improve US competence. The study is easy to read and accessible. It uses non-specialized language, and where ti does, offers clear definitions. The study is full of areas worth exploring - especially in the realm of psychological warfare (much more on that below).

Shortly after the study was published, SOCOM was established, as was the Special Forces branch. There were lots of conversations and meetings being held at Fort Bragg on building a SOF vision - what is it, exactly, that makes SOF unique?

Thus came the SOF Imperatives, and according to then Brigadier General Dave Baratto (Commander USAJFKSWCS, 1988), his staff “may have” picked up the "truths" by reading Collins’ study.

Those findings in the foreword made it into a brief, and before you know it, you’ve got the SOF "Truths."

Interestingly, the fifth truth about needing non-SOF assistance was initially jettisoned and didn’t return until 2009.

The thrust of the study that informs the findings concerns the unique skills employed by SOF, the length of time it takes to generate them, and the fact that there is/was large gaps in training, education, and resources.

Ok, what about PSYOP?

When most people think of special operations, they likely think about the direct-action aspects. Zero Dark Thirty. The Bin Laden Raid. Call of Duty. 

Nothing wrong with that, that’s the exciting stuff, after all.

But there is this other part of special operations that doesn’t look like that at all. And Collins' study captures it.

Reading through the study paying careful attention to topics concerning political warfare, subversion, and psychological operations - there’s plenty there. Below are some of the choice excerpts that stood out.

On US "peacetime" PSYOP efforts:

Peacetime psyop to support U.S. strategies is low priority, compared with focused Soviet efforts, despite increased emphasis since President Reagan took office. Theater tactical applications, often after-thoughts, are usually slighted. (p. 4-5).

 On Soviet military PSYOP:

Soviet military psyop remain a mystery. Unclassified sources mention no specialized units, which may be administered at many levels by Deputy Political Officers. (p. 20)

On the purpose of Army PSYOP:

The purpose of Army psyop units, expressed simply, is to apply overt, covert, and clandestine propaganda, or provide advice and hardware for others to do so, in ways that improve U.S. and allied security postures. (p. 25)

That might actually be one of the best definitions I’ve ever read.

Further: 

Perhaps 90% support conventional operations; the remainder complement SOF. Psyop commonly may be more important than military action in special operations. Civilian audiences may be more important than those in uniform. Typical tasks in support of unconventional warfare (UW), for example, are to help insurgents or resistance groups strengthen their cause, encourage civil disobedience, publicize successes, and disguise or soften failures. Tasks associated with foreign internal defense (FID) conversely assist host country efforts to undercut rebel causes, enlist and consolidate approval of the incumbent regime, encourage defections from the enemy camp, and maintain a favorable U.S. image. (p. 25)

That is just well written and succinct, while also providing concrete examples. It’s good.

And then the coup de grace:

Army psyop and civil affairs forces have been historically understrength and undertrained (p. 25).

Collins has a special category for “Strategic PSYOP” which covers national level information efforts, mostly of a civilian flavor:

Strategic psychological operations at national and theater levels overlap all other special operations. The American apparatus is predominantly civilian. (p. 29)

On Soviet Political Warfare:

Words are the principal weapon system. White, gray, and black propaganda, which respectively publicize, conceal, and misrepresent the true source, are insutrments the Soviets use to manipulate public opinion in wyas they hope will divide opponents and consolidate support…

The Soviets particularly try to turn key individuals into “agents of influence” (Lenin called them “useful idiots”) who, for reasons that vary from altruism to avarice, attack their own social institutions and/or defense establishment. (p. 40)

On the preparation and education of Soviet propagandists:

Preparations are extensive and continuous. Many Soviet students prepare for careers in political agitation and propaganda, which are considered professions comparable in prestige to medicine, law, and engineering. The Lenin School, founded in 1926, trains cadres from other countries. (p. 40)

Fascinating - I had never heard of The Lenin School before.

On U.S. Passivism:

The climate in any case is inclement. Secrecy is most difficult to maintain in this open society, whose citizens generally regard such machinations as imprudent, immoral, or both, and expect Congress, as well as the news media, to root out and report potential “scandals.” Disgruntled former agents expose erstwhile colleagues and mechanisms with impunity. (p. 42)

More:

Distaste for covert direct action during “peacetime” carries over to surreptitious psyop. Psychological warfare is not a major instrument of U.S. statecraft, centrally controlled and globally employed. No college or university offers courses, much less confers degrees in psyop. Clinical psychologists, whose vocation is human behavior, and cultural anthropologists, who compare different cultures, write few handbooks on that subject and rarely counsel professional planners. (p. 42-43)

And more:

Congress and the people disapprove of U.S. “propaganda” which has a pejorative connotation, and disallow disinformation; the slightest indication causes clamor. America’s public information media, a dominant influence on domestic and world opinion, freely criticizes official policies and practices. (p. 43)

On the "most important" special forces instrument:

Truth, in the final analysis, has proved to be America’s most important cold war special operations instrument. It exposes Soviet falsehoods (if and when discovered) and publicizes U.S. foreign policy/national defense positions in positive ways. (p. 43)

On the importance of cross-cultural and area studies:

…military personnel officers treat training foreign national as a routine requirement that any competent specialist can satisfy. Effective communication in fact depends on cross-cultural understanding, a face that gets short shrift. U.S. armed forces, as a result, lack sufficient area-oriented cadres whose members can design and conduct FID programs tailored to suit the needs of particular clients and conditions (p. 55)

On artificial distinctions:

The artificial distinctions between military special operations and civilian special activities confuses covert/clandestine issues. America’s media, fed by security violators, make it virtually impossible to keep secrets very long. (p. 66)

The problem, as always, comes down to people:

Personnel policies that prohibit stabilized assignments prevent active UW, FID, and psyop specialists from attaining required cultural expertise, including language proficiency, in respective areas of responsibility. (p. 66)

On the “war called peace”:

Nonviolent special operations, particularly psyop and preparations for irregular combat, predominate the war called “peace.” (p. 81)

---

There's more - much more - but these were some of the things that jumped out. There's also terrific footnotes from which to go deeper, if interested.

  I'm currently reading American Caesar, so when clips of the Battle at Lake Changjin started making the rounds on Twitter with odd references to General MacArthur being introduced like a Metal Gear villain, well, it all kind of came together.

Carrying the Gun

Say it with pictures. There's a new National Security Strategy. I haven't read the whole thing yet. But I saw the picture.

Political Psoriasis. Something struck me at the end of this episode (IWI: After Mali: Learning From the French Experience of Irregular Warfare in the Sahel). Do we have a doctrine that captures an exquisitely small advising mission? It's not quite COIN. It seems like this might be something worth investigating. Small, elite, persistent. What would the Afghanistan mission look like without the massive conventional presence to support the SOF mission? Is that doable? Should it be?

The Definition of Propaganda. "Propaganda is an attempt to influence public opinion usually using appeals to something other than logic... propaganda tends to be particularly political in nature..." 

The GAO Report on the Information Environment. And the discussion. 

"Nowhere land." Russian propaganda attempts to muddy the waters. You don't need to believe anything, and that's kind of the point.

The Belt & Road Initiative is a concept, like the GWOT. Too often I hear people say "belt and road initiative" and it is supposed to be taken as a real, tangible thing that exists. And yes, there are elements that are real and tangible. But much of it is conceptual.

BBC World Service Terminates Arabic radio after 84 years. But much of the programming will continue in its digital form. Is this surprising?

Learning Arabic. "The first 10 years is the hardest part."

More learning Arabic | Fantastic new podcast discovery, Short episodes about monsters, legends, myths, spirits, and more from around the world. Modern Standard.

The Art of Losing. We have to become better losers. I've always enjoyed stories, games, and media that capture this. Sometimes, despite your best effort, winning just isn't possible. Did you watch Twin Peaks? Did you make it to the very end? Absolutely terrifying.

Brazilian PSYOP. Can't believe I've never read this (fixing that now).

Spotlight Ranger. Also known as the "Hawthorne Effect." ...the increase in performance of individuals who are noticed, watched, and paid attention to by researchers or supervisors."

The Masks We Wear. Oof. Another gut punch. Conversation with the author of "The Masks We Wear," a raw account of a Special Forces soldier dealing with the mental anguish of military service.

The Army Values. This author contends that "Duty" shouldn't be one of them. How does that make you feel? If you're like me, a little odd. But it is worth exploring. 

Be Your Own #1 Fan. Episode #76 of the Kojima Frequency. What I love about this one is the incantation to make content for yourself first. Have no doubt, there are others out there that are into the same thing that youre' into. But someone has to put it out there.

Smear War. Buried deep, but if you follow the links you'll get to my article from last year. The weaponization of benign information, used to activate administrative systems. Our adversaries are paying attention. 

The Strategic (Online) Corporal. Like COIN, remember: there are no big wins, just a slow, steady grind. And catastrophic failures. The strategic corporal never works in the positive.

Not Your Kind of People. Last newsletter I talked about the "unrealness" of soldiers (to the wider community). Well that's a phenomenon that is happening all over the place. To others, you are like an "NPC" - non-player character - just here to move the story forward for the main character (not you). This showed up in two places: How Corporations and Governments Use Games to Control Us (Cyber) and At What Cost? (On the Media).

Flywheel 

They Saw a Game. Princeton vs. Dartmouth. One game, one reality, two very different stories. But it's the story that matters, after all, right?

Can't get enough of Smith-Mundt. Matt Armstrong, adding another layer to the neverending battle to correct the record on Smith-Mundt.

What the public doesn't know about Colin Powell. "Can you write a speech for a black Baptist Church? Don't worry, I can do that." Grinding through Nier:Automata. Not enjoying it as much as Replicant, but I'm hoping it will get better. Tactics Ogre: Reborn releases on November 11th, and I'm looking to make the jump.

Updates, Projects, Hobbies

So many changes.

My goal has been to pare down this hobby to the things I actually enjoy. Writing this newsletter and amplifying the voices and content that resonates with me is what does that. I like experimenting with different formats, but I've found myself thinking way too much on projects and initiatives that just weren't bringing me joy while soaking up way too much time.

A few months ago I thought it would be better to have a shorter newsletter. And I was right - back then - when I was posting to the main site just about daily. Now, with everything here in the newsletter, it makes sense to expand. 

As always, thanks for your support!

If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider sharing the sign-up link with your network. 

-Don

P.S. Looking for old CTG content? Click here to access the "Explore" page.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of the US Army, the Department of Defense, or the US Government.

Copyright © 2022 Carrying the Gun, All rights reserved.

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20. Biden must act on Iran’s drone and missile transfers

Excerpts:

America should also coordinate designations with European partners to multi-lateralize this blacklisting and expand the “no-go” zone for Iranian technology procurement agents and foreign suppliers. This offers policymakers an opportunity to share best practices on sanctions implementation and enforcement, as well as enhanced Iran and Russia export and financial controls.

Washington and the E3 can move this cooperation further by enacting the snapback mechanism in resolution 2231 to restore all prior UN penalties on the Islamic Republic, including permanent arms transfer and ballistic missile testing prohibitions.

With protests raging across Iran and Tehran’s support for Putin’s imperial war in Ukraine deepening, the Biden administration should seize the opportunity to reset the chessboard against the Islamic Republic. Step one requires recognizing that Iranian weapons proliferation will increase so long as Washington sits on the sidelines.

Biden must act on Iran’s drone and missile transfers

BY BEHNAM BEN TALEBLU AND ANDREA STRICKER, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 10/31/22 10:30 AM ET

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3711698-biden-must-act-on-irans-drone-and-missile-transfers/

“The fact is this: Tehran is now directly engaged on the ground and through the provision of weapons that … are killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.” That’s how National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby framed Iran’s growing involvement in Russia’s war on Ukraine. Fast-emerging facts on the ground support his assertion.

Ukrainian forces reportedly have killed ten Iranian advisors in a strike against Russian positions. In recent weeks, the Russian military bombarded Ukraine with Iranian-made kamikaze drones like the Shahed-136 – more aptly called a loitering munition. Procured from Tehran this summer, Vladimir Putin’s forces began using the Shahed against key energy infrastructure in Ukraine in September, killing at least five civilians.

Tehran’s transfer of these weapons violates UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 2231, the resolution enshrining the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which also bans Tehran until 2023 from importing or exporting specific missile and military-related hardware. While the Biden administration has expressed interest in countering Iranian precision-strike capabilities, the pressure it has levied thus far has been inadequate to counter Tehran’s evolving unmanned aerial threats.

Washington must do better.

In fact, Iran is set to transfer more Shahed-136s to Russia, allowing Putin to conserve his long-range strike assets and also fight in a more cost-efficient manner. Case in point: The Shahed reportedly costs only around $20,000 apiece. Rebranded as the Geran-2, the propeller-powered Shahed can travel an estimated 1,000 kilometers carrying a small warhead weighing under 50 kilograms.

Tehran reportedly also will soon provide to Moscow precision-strike short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), known as the Fateh-110 and Zulfiqar. Both are single-stage solid-propellant projectiles, variants of which Iran has used in recent military operations. This missile transfer would be a historic first between the Islamic Republic and the Russian Federation, and also constitutes a violation of UNSC resolution 2231.

The United States, as well as Britain, France, and Germany (the “E3”), have decried the Iranian drone transfers as a violation of resolution 2231. The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, as well as the EU Council, sanctioned three Iranian persons and one entity supporting Tehran’s drone efforts. Yet America and the E3 could penalize Iran’s violations and prevent them from becoming legal internationally by triggering the reimposition of UN sanctions that were lifted by the Iran nuclear deal — but they have failed to do so. This is in spite of the fact that Iran is in flagrant non-compliance with the atomic accord and, during 18 months of talks, has refused to revive it.

The drone and missile transfers specifically violate key clauses in Annex B of resolution 2231, provisions that remain in effect only until October 2023. Paragraph 4 of the annex states that nations require permission from the UNSC to engage in “the supply, sale or transfer directly or indirectly from their territories, or by their nationals or using their flag vessels or aircraft to or from Iran, or for the use in or benefit of Iran, and whether or not originating in their territories, of all items, materials, equipment, goods and technology set out in S/2015/546” — which contains the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which was submitted to the Security Council when it passed resolution 2231 in July 2015. Its provisions lay out equipment and technologies that the UNSC agreed were prohibited for transfer to or from Iran: Category II, Item 19.A covers both the missiles and drones that Iran is transferring to Russia.

Russia and Iran have not sought written permission from the UNSC for drone or prospective missile transfers.

The drone transfers also would have violated a past arms embargo on Iran contained in resolution 2231. The embargo, which expired in October 2020, had similar language regarding permission for states to import from or export to Iran weapons categorized under the UN Register of Conventional Arms. Category IV of the register includes combat aircraft and unmanned combat aerial vehicles, whereas Category VII includes missiles and missiles launchers “capable of delivering a warhead or weapon of destruction to a range of at least 25 kilometres.”

Iran’s expanding arms proliferation radius reflects the lack of constraint the Islamic Republic feels from the Biden administration’s overall Iran policy. Iranian drones are not just a Middle Eastern battlefield phenomenon as they can be found as far away as Venezuela, Ethiopia, and now among Russia’s forces in Ukraine.

To date, team Biden has only twice sanctioned elements of Tehran’s drone program. In October 2021, it designated key persons and entities leading and supporting the program, and acted again in September 2022 after Iran’s transfer of these systems to Russia. Washington should increase the pace, scale, and scope of these designations to expose and penalize the supply chains and financial entities that feed it.

America should also coordinate designations with European partners to multi-lateralize this blacklisting and expand the “no-go” zone for Iranian technology procurement agents and foreign suppliers. This offers policymakers an opportunity to share best practices on sanctions implementation and enforcement, as well as enhanced Iran and Russia export and financial controls.

Press: The inevitable result of years of attacking Speaker Pelosi

Biden has it backwards on Iran, Saudi Arabia

Washington and the E3 can move this cooperation further by enacting the snapback mechanism in resolution 2231 to restore all prior UN penalties on the Islamic Republic, including permanent arms transfer and ballistic missile testing prohibitions.

With protests raging across Iran and Tehran’s support for Putin’s imperial war in Ukraine deepening, the Biden administration should seize the opportunity to reset the chessboard against the Islamic Republic. Step one requires recognizing that Iranian weapons proliferation will increase so long as Washington sits on the sidelines.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Andrea Stricker is a research fellow and deputy director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program. They both contribute to FDD’s Iran program. Follow Andrea on Twitter @StrickerNonpro.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com