Quotes of the Day:

“When men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.”

- Benjamin Franklin

“Every man is guilty of all that he did not do”

- Voltaire

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

- Plato

​1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 23 (Putins' War)

2. China strengthens warning to US about Pelosi’s planned Taiwan trip

3. Opinion | Pelosi’s Taiwan trip puts the Biden administration in a bind

4. Chinese military "noticeably more aggressive," Gen. Mark Milley warns

5. China’s Poor Global Image Is Undermining Its Strategic Goals

6. Lawmakers want US military advisers sent to Ukraine

7. Iran is already a nuclear weapons state: ex US diplomat warns

8. Inside the Pentagon slugfest over the future of the fleet

9.  CNN Exclusive: FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear arsenal communications

10. House intelligence committee speaks about new DNA bio-weapons

11. Taras Borovok -- "HIMARS" song (English subtitles)

12. White House’s concern over Pelosi’s visit hints at danger of miscalculation; time to ‘test Biden’s commitment’ made to China

13. Actually, the Russian Economy Is Imploding

14. Brit special forces 'helped liberate Ukraine's Snake with Bond-style submarines'

15. China’s Military Aid Is Probably Less Than You Think

16. HIMARS "game changer" in Ukraine war, Russia "in dire shape": Ex-general

17. Ukrainian intelligence suggests Putin used a body double in Iran talks

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 23 (Putins' War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-23

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 23

Jul 23, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

July 23, 6:00 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.

Ukrainian forces are likely preparing to launch or have launched a counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast as of July 23, but open-source visibility on the progress and tempo of the counteroffensive will likely be limited and lag behind events. Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Administration Adviser Serhiy Khlan stated on July 23 that Ukrainian forces have seized unspecified settlements in Kherson Oblast but called on Ukrainian civilians to remain silent on the progress of the counteroffensive until Ukrainian authorities release official statements.[1] Foreign Policy National Security Reporter Jack Detsch reported on July 22 that an unspecified senior US defense official stated that Ukrainian forces have recaptured unspecified “portions of Russian-occupied villages” in Kherson over the past week of July 15-22, indicating that Ukrainian forces have made some unspecified territorial advances along frontlines.[2] The area between the front line and Kherson City is rural and primarily composed of small settlements that are less likely to report on force movements and engagements, allowing control-of-terrain in this area to change without evidence appearing in open-source reporting. Russian authorities additionally have no incentive to report on Ukrainian territorial gains. The informational dynamics that allow ISW to report on Russian offensive operations with relatively little lag are thus inverted in this situation. ISW will report on the progress of any Ukrainian counteroffensives to the best of its ability within these constraints.

Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov seemingly confirmed that Colonel General Sergey Kuzovlev has replaced Army General Aleksandr Dvornikov as acting commander of Russia’s Southern Military District (SMD).[3] Kadyrov stated that Kuzovlev, to whom he explicitly referred as acting commander of the SMD, visited Chechnya on July 23 in order to inspect Kadyrov’s “Akhmat” battalions.[4] Kuzovlev had previously served as chief of staff of the SMD and commanded the Russian grouping in Syria from November 2020 to February 2021.[5] Kuzovlev’s visit and inspection of Kadyrov’s forces, which comes two days after Kadyrov announced that these battalions will not be immediately deploying into Ukraine, may support other hints that Kadyrov is facing mounting domestic pressure.[6] The anti-Kadyrov Sheikh Mansour battalion reportedly announced an insurgency against Kadyrov’s regime on July 21, and Kadyrov may want to hold the newly formed Akhmat battalions in Chechnya to handle any local unrest.[7]

Key Takeaways

• Ukrainian forces are likely preparing to launch, or have already launched, a counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast.
• Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov indicated that Colonel General Sergey Kuzovlev is the acting commander of the Southern Military District.
• Russian forces conducted limited reconnaissance operations east of Bakhmut and continued limited ground attacks northwest of Slovyansk, east of Siversk, and south of Bakhmut.
• The Kremlin continued to form regional volunteer battalions and likely intends to have 16 such battalions formed by the end of July.
• Russian occupation authorities are continuing to prepare for referenda on the annexation of occupied areas into the Russian Federation and are taking measures to isolate occupied areas from the non-Russian information space.

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

• Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
• Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
• Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
• Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
• Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces conducted a limited ground assault northwest of Slovyansk and shelled settlements to the southeast and southwest of Izyum on July 23. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Ukrainian troops neutralized a Russian reconnaissance group in Bohorodychne, about 20 km northwest of Slovyansk.[8] Russian forces shelled Dibrovne, Krasnopillya, and Mazanivka, all northwest of Slovyansk along the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border, as well as areas southwest of Izyum in the vicinity of Barvinkove.[9]

Russian forces conducted ground attacks east of Siversk in an attempt to directly advance on the city on July 23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops tried and failed to advance in the directions of Verkhnokamyankse and Siversk. The language of this report suggests that Russian forces may be advancing closer to the outskirts of Siversk itself from positions in the east.[10] Russian forces also continued air and artillery strikes to the north, south, and east of Siversk.[11]

Russian forces conducted limited reconnaissance operations to the east of Bakhmut and continued unsuccessful ground attacks south of Bakhmut on July 23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces stopped Russian reconnaissance groups from probing Ukrainian positions around Pokrovske (5 km east of Bakhmut) and Soledar (10 km northeast of Bakhmut) and that Russian forces continued unsuccessful attacks near the Vuhledar Power Plant in Novoluhanske, about 20 km southeast of Bakhmut.[12] Russian forces continued artillery and airstrikes on and around Bakhmut to continue to set conditions for advances directly on the city.[13]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in the Avdiivka area and continued to fire on Ukrainian positions along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline.[14] NASA FIRMS data from July 15-23 shows consistently fewer fires along the entire frontline in the Donbas, which strongly suggests that HIMARS are having a continued impact on Russian artillery capabilities.

Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Donbas, July 15 – July 23 and Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community]

Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)

Russian forces did not conduct any ground assaults on the Kharkiv City Axis on July 23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to focus on restraining Ukrainian advances toward the international border.[15] Russian forces conducted an airstrike on Verkhnii Saltiv and continued shelling Kharkiv City and the surrounding settlements.[16]

Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)

Ukrainian forces struck a bridge over the Inhulets River less than 10 km from Kherson City in Dariivka, Kherson Oblast on July 23. Footage shows six equidistant points of impact on the bridge and that passenger vehicles are able to cross the bridge but must evade the holes.[17] Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Administration Adviser Serhiy Khlan stated that Ukrainian forces struck the Dariivka Bridge as part of a sustained operation to cut the supply lines of Russian forces in Kherson City.[18]

Russian forces conducted strikes on rear areas of the Southern Axis on July 23, likely to stymie Ukrainian preparations for a counteroffensive on this axis. Russian forces launched four Kalibr missiles at the port of Odesa, striking a pumping station and granary without significant damage.[19] Footage of the strike shows Ukrainian air defense intercepting at least two missiles.[20] Kirovohrad Oblast Head Andriy Raikovych stated that Russian forces also struck the Kanatove military airfield and a Ukrzaliznytsia rail transport facility in Kirovohrad Oblast with eight sea-launched Kalibr missiles and five air-launched Kh-22 missiles.[21] Ukrainian Mykolaiv Oblast Head Vitaly Kim stated that Russian forces again struck Mykolaiv City with six S-300 anti-air missiles.[22]

Russian forces did not conduct any ground assaults on the Southern Axis on July 23 and continued shelling along the entire line of contact.[23]

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

The Kremlin is continuing efforts to form regionally-based volunteer battalions. Spokesperson for Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Vadym Skibitskyi gave an interview to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFERL) on July 23 wherein he indicated that the Kremlin is planning to form 16 new volunteer battalions by the end of this month.[24] Skibitsky also noted that the Kremlin is forming another corps in Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, which seemingly supports prior statements made by the former Kyiv defense force commander Oleksandr Pavlyuk that Russia is forming a 3rd Army Corps (the forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics currently form the 1st and 2nd Army Corps, respectively) with up to 15,000 servicemen in Mulino.[25] Skibitksy stated that eight volunteer battalions have already been formed as of July 23. The Kremlin has not yet formed a volunteer battalion in St. Petersburg, the birthplace of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Authorities in Russia’s Tyumen Oblast additionally announced the formation of three volunteer units in Tyumen Oblast on July 22.[26] Alexei Kulichkov, Tyumen’s Military Commissar, stated that the first company of the “Tobol” separate engineering battalion, comprised of over 50 people, has already deployed to unspecified training grounds and that Tyumen is also forming the “Taiga” volunteer sniper unit (echelon unspecified) and “Siberia” artillery battalion (”артиллерийский дивизион“) for deployment to Donbas after two or three weeks of training.[27] Russian federal subjects are notably forming combat, combat support, and combat service support units, so not all 16 new battalions (or 85 if and when all federal subjects form units) will be combat battalions.

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Russian occupation officials continued to set conditions for referenda on the integration of occupied areas into the Russian Federation. Russian-backed head of Zaporizhia’s occupation administration Yevheny Balitsky stated on July 23 that he signed a decree to initiate preparations for a referendum on the integration of occupied Zaporizhia Oblast into Russia by the autumn of 2022.[28] Balitsky claimed that this decree eliminated existing election bodies and created an entirely new election commission.

Russian-backed occupation administrators escalated measures to further isolate occupied areas from the non-Russian information space. Occupation heads of Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts announced on July 23 that they will start restricting the use of Google and YouTube in occupied areas in order to limit the ability of residents to search for Ukrainian websites on Google.[29] Kherson occupation Head Kirill Stremousov stated that he additionally banned the use of the Viber messaging app and that YouTube video hosting has been slowed down. The Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LNR and DNR) blocked Google on July 21 and 22, respectively.[30] Russian authorities are likely to keep enacting such controls on the information space in order to curb the dissemination of any anti-Russian messaging.

[19] https://suspilne dot media/263702-bez-poranenih-ale-z-pozezeu-stali-vidomi-naslidki-raketnogo-udaru-po-odeskomu-portu/

[26] https://www.kommersant dot ru/doc/5479576; https://ria dot ru/20220722/vs-1804400109.html; https://tumentoday dot ru/2022/07/23/miting-priurochennyj-k-otpravke-dobrovolcev-inzhenernogo-podrazdeleniya-tobol-proshel-v-tyumeni/; https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1550720867461652481

[27] https://www.kommersant dot ru/doc/5479576; https://ria dot ru/20220722/vs-1804400109.html; https://tumentoday dot ru/2022/07/23/miting-priurochennyj-k-otpravke-dobrovolcev-inzhenernogo-podrazdeleniya-tobol-proshel-v-tyumeni/; https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1550720867461652481

[29] https://tass dot ru/ekonomika/15291345; https://t.me/epoddubny/11682; https://ria dot ru/20220722/google-1804407696.html

[30] https://ria dot ru/20220722/google-1804407696.html; https://t.me/pushilindenis/2463; https://t.me/glava_lnr_info/213; https://t.me/stranaua/53592; https://www.interfax dot ru/world/853228

understandingwar.org

2. China strengthens warning to US about Pelosi’s planned Taiwan trip

"Stark private warnings." I guess China really wants her to travel to Taiwan. There is no way she can back down now.

​

China strengthens warning to US about Pelosi’s planned Taiwan trip

Financial Times · by Demetri Sevastopulo · July 23, 2022

China has issued stark private warnings to the Biden administration about the upcoming trip to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, triggering alarm bells among White House officials who oppose her visit.

Six people familiar with the Chinese warnings said they were significantly stronger than the threats that Beijing has made in the past when it was unhappy with US actions or policy on Taiwan.

China has publicly threatened “strong measures” if Pelosi proceeds with the planned visit in August. But one person said China had expressed “stronger opposition” to the US in private than before. Several other people familiar with the situation said the private rhetoric went even further by suggesting a possible military response.

Beijing has not been explicit about its potential responses. Its military could try to block Pelosi from landing in Taiwan or take other actions to impede her visit, such as using fighter jets to intercept her US military aircraft.

Several people said the White House was trying to assess whether China was making serious threats or engaging in brinkmanship in an attempt to pressure Pelosi to abandon her trip.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and other senior National Security Council officials oppose the trip because of the risk of escalating tension across the Taiwan Strait, according to two people familiar with the debate.

The NSC declined to comment on whether the administration had urged Pelosi to cancel her trip. John Kirby, NSC head of strategic communications, said on Friday the NSC team provided “context, facts and geopolitical relevant information”, and that the Speaker made her own decisions.

The controversy over the trip has sparked concern among Washington’s allies who are worried that it could trigger a crisis between the US and China, according to several of the people with knowledge of the situation.

In another illustration of the heightened concern, US ambassador to China Nick Burns abruptly cut short a visit to Washington this week and returned to Beijing, partly because of the mounting concerns over Taiwan and also to prepare for an upcoming phone call between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. The state department declined to comment.

Biden this week said he expected to speak to Xi by the end of the month. The two leaders are expected to discuss Taiwan, which has emerged as a serious flashpoint.

China has flown an increasing number of warplanes into Taiwan’s “air defence identification zone” since Biden came to office. In May, Biden said the US would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan from any Chinese attack.

The controversy about Pelosi’s trip erupted after the Financial Times revealed that she planned to visit Taiwan to show support as it comes under rising pressure from China in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has elevated fears about Chinese military action. Pelosi and her delegation will also visit Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The timing of the visit is sensitive for China. It will come in the same month as the August 1 anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army. It may also coincide with the Communist party leadership’s annual conclave in the coastal resort of Beidaihe where cadres discuss policy but also sometimes tackle power struggles.

The conclave is even more important this year as Xi will have to lay the ground for securing an unprecedented third term as party head at the Chinese Communist party’s 20th Congress in November.

Since the US normalised relations with China and switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, it has maintained a “one China” policy under which it recognises Beijing as the sole government of China while only acknowledging Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China.

Beijing has accused Biden of diluting that policy by taking steps such as sending a high-profile delegation of former US officials to Taipei earlier this year.

Pelosi would be the most senior US politician to visit Taiwan since then-Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich travelled to Taipei in 1979. Beijing is opposed to any moves that appear to confer legitimacy on Taiwan as an independent country or make the US relationship more formal.

Some experts say China erroneously believes the White House is co-ordinating the visit because Pelosi and Biden belong to the same party, even though Congress is independent and Biden has no power to block her travel plans.

The Pentagon this week briefed Pelosi on the scenarios that could occur if she travels to Taipei. Following that briefing, Biden told reporters that “the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now” for Pelosi to proceed. But US officials have said that the military simply outlined the various risks attached to such a visit.

At a news conference the following day, Pelosi said Biden had not raised any concern about the trip, which she refused to confirm. However, she indirectly referred to it by saying that Biden appeared to be pointing to some of the scenarios that could occur if she visited Taiwan.

“I think what the president was saying is [that] maybe the military was afraid our plane would get shot down or something like that by the Chinese,” she said. “I’ve heard it anecdotally, but I haven’t heard it from the president.”

Pelosi’s office did not respond to a request for comment about whether she might abandon her trip.

People briefed on national security affairs in Taipei said the risk that Beijing might markedly step up military aggression in response to Pelosi’s visit was more pronounced than last year given the rising tension.

“Previously the gangster was wearing a suit, but now he is directly taking the knife out,” said a senior Taiwanese official.

Financial Times · by Demetri Sevastopulo · July 23, 2022

3. Opinion | Pelosi’s Taiwan trip puts the Biden administration in a bind

No bind. There is only one option. Pelosi must go (to taiwan I mean).

Opinion | Pelosi’s Taiwan trip puts the Biden administration in a bind

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · July 23, 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plans to become the highest-ranking lawmaker ever to visit Taiwan have been long in the making. Now, as she finalizes those plans, the Chinese government is threatening massive retaliation and the Biden administration wants her to delay. Taiwan is caught in the middle. All sides are bracing for a possible crisis that nobody really wants.

This delicate situation raises important questions. Is China bluffing or could Pelosi’s visit really spark a confrontation? Are the benefits of Pelosi visiting at this time worth the risk? And foremost: In our democracy, which branch of government has the final say when they disagree on a matter of foreign policy?

On Wednesday, when President Biden casually confirmed reporting that Pelosi was planning to visit Taiwan in August (she canceled a planned April trip after testing positive for covid-19), he inadvertently revealed the internal U.S. government conflict over the still-unannounced trip. “The military thinks it’s not a good idea right now,” Biden said, adding that he wasn’t sure “what the status of it is.” His comments have complicated already uncomfortable discussions about the potential visit between Biden’s senior national security officials and Pelosi’s office, several administration officials told me.

Of course, Pelosi — as the elected leader of a democratic body — has every right to travel to Taiwan, and Beijing has no right to interfere. A visit by her would be a strong sign of support for Taiwan’s democracy, which is being menaced by China. But the Biden team can’t afford to ignore the associated risks. The Chinese Communist Party is planning to grant President Xi Jinping a third term in November and Biden’s officials believe the period until then is especially dicey.

There are risks to postponing as well. If Pelosi does delay the trip now (even though it has yet to be announced), Beijing could conclude that its strong-arm tactics have worked. China can’t be allowed to think it has a veto every time a congressional delegation wants to visit Taiwan.

“I think that it’s important for us to show support for Taiwan,” Pelosi said at her Thursday news conference, though she declined to confirm that she was planning the trip, citing security reasons. “None of us has ever said we’re for independence when it comes to Taiwan. That’s for Taiwan to decide.”

While it is true that some military leaders are concerned about the trip, they are not the only ones. Over the past several weeks, officials including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. John C. Aquilino, NSC Asia czar Kurt Campbell and others have briefed Pelosi or her staff about the intelligence assessments of the risks and the military planning that would be necessary if she goes.

Chinese authorities always complain when congressional delegations visit Taiwan. But administration officials tell me that they have particular cause for concern right now. China, they say, is planning a potentially destabilizing response. They don’t know exactly what Beijing will do, but at least one Chinese state-media commentator has suggested that the Chinese air force might send planes to intercept Pelosi, which could spark a showdown.

The U.S. military is devising options for protecting Pelosi’s delegation, who — as is normal procedure for congressional delegations to Taiwan — would be flying on a military plane. The measures under consideration include moving aircraft carriers or sending fighter planes for close air support. That, in turn, could be misinterpreted by the Chinese side as an aggressive rather than a defensive measure.

Key U.S. allies in Asia have expressed concerns about a visit that they believe will be viewed provocatively, officials said. That could undermine efforts to increase cooperation with some countries over Taiwan in the region, administration officials said.

U.S. officials are also concerned that the Chinese government believes (incorrectly) that Biden supports Pelosi’s trip, contradicting the administration’s current drive to ramp down tensions in the bilateral relationship. As the White House knows well, the speaker can and will make her own decisions on travel. But Beijing may (wrongly) see it as an intentional escalation.

“Who knows, maybe the Chinese back down and there’s nothing there,” said Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “But it’s clear Beijing sees this trip by Pelosi differently and as a much more severe break with past policy than some Americans appreciate.”

The White House can’t publicly say that it wants Pelosi to delay, because Biden would be attacked for looking soft on Taiwan. The Biden team has showed overall robust support for Taiwan, including arms sales, military training, diplomatic engagement and consistent U.S. naval missions patrolling the Taiwan Strait as recently as this week.

Taiwan also faces risks, because it could end up bearing the brunt of China’s displeasure. But Pelosi might resist delaying her plans, wanting to assert the independence of the legislative branch and avoid accusations that she caved in to China’s bullying.

The best-case scenario would be for Pelosi and the Biden team to work out a compromise so that America can speak with one voice. For example, if Pelosi does delay, she could send other lawmakers in her place and promise to visit in a few months, to save face and ensure no bad precedent is set.

But if Pelosi goes ahead and visits Taiwan next month, the governments in Washington, Beijing and Taipei will just have to accept it. In democracies, the people and their representatives can visit other democracies whenever they want, without being punished by neighboring dictatorships. That’s a strength, not a weakness, of free societies.

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · July 23, 2022

4. Chinese military "noticeably more aggressive," Gen. Mark Milley warns

Chinese military "noticeably more aggressive," Gen. Mark Milley warns

Axios · by Ivana Saric · July 24, 2022

China's military has become significantly more aggressive and dangerous in the past five years, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley told reporters Sunday, AP reported.

Driving the news: Milley is currently on a trip to the Indo-Pacific to shore up the U.S.' alliances with nations in the region and act as a counterbalance to China. While in Indonesia Sunday, Milley will head to Australia later this week to meet with Indo-Pacific chiefs of defense, per AP.

• The Biden administration has made the Indo-Pacific a top geostrategic focus, warning that there remains a narrow window of time to prevent China from transforming the region into its own sphere of influence.

What they're saying: The Chinese military has been conducting an increasing number of "dangerous intercepts" against U.S. and other allies' military aircraft, including those of Canada, Australia, Japan, among others, Milley told reporters aboard his plane en route to Asia, the Financial Times reported.

• Milley added that the number of unsafe interactions, as when Chinese military aircraft get too close to a US aircraft, has risen by similar proportions, per the Financial Times.
• “The message is the Chinese military, in the air and at sea, have become significantly more and noticeably more aggressive in this particular region,” Milley said, AP reported.

The big picture: Earlier this month, Milley ordered a comprehensive review of U.S. military interactions with Chinese forces over the past five years with the intent of deciphering any change in pattern of Chinese military activity, CNN reported.

• Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned in April that China is exerting “enormous pressure” on Pacific island nations, per the Guardian.
• More than once this year, China has sent groups of warplanes near Taiwan. The governments of China and Russia also sent jets over the seas near Japan during President Biden's visit to the region in May.

Axios · by Ivana Saric · July 24, 2022

5. China’s Poor Global Image Is Undermining Its Strategic Goals

The PRC (CCP) must not be effectively employing soft power.

​Excerpts:

To be sure, China’s deteriorating global image will never fully negate its ability to wield vast military and economic power in its own neighborhood or further abroad. China is already the dominant economic power in Asia, especially given the U.S. government’s refusal to join Asia-Pacific trade deals or make any binding concessions to Asian states in the Biden administration’s proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. In the Taiwan Strait, China is increasingly shifting the balance of power and using land reclamation and a range of other tactics to move toward militarily dominating the South China Sea. Its deteriorating public image, statist economics, and isolation are not going to fully stop its continued economic rise, its military modernization, or Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power at home. China’s increasingly skillful use of “sharp power” will likely also remain unaffected. Even if China’s popularity were to fall even further, it still would possess all of these economic, trade, strategic, and military tools.

Yet Beijing’s collapsing popularity is having immense ramifications for China in many areas. Its terrible public image creates roadblocks for its foreign policy aims, in realms from diplomacy to economics to global governance to strategy. For one, as Beijing becomes more of a pariah, especially in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China is losing significant trade supporters in other countries, such as Germany’s major industrial groups, who helped foster economic ties in the past between the two giant economies. Recent data from the Rhodium Group shows German direct investment in China, which had been enormously attractive to German firms, is now slowing. Similar slowdowns in foreign direct investment into China are happening from the U.S., some Asian democracies, and other European states beyond Germany, as their trade organizations increasingly divorce themselves from advocating for China, and as governments become more antagonistic toward Beijing. These advanced democracies also are inaugurating tougher policies toward Chinese inbound investment and generally adopting more hawkish foreign policies toward Beijing.

​

China’s Poor Global Image Is Undermining Its Strategic Goals

From Europe and North America to the Global South, trust in Beijing has rapidly deteriorated over the past few years.

thediplomat.com · by Joshua Kurlantzick · July 22, 2022

Advertisement

In the past four years, China’s global image, which had been positive or at least neutral in many parts of the globe for the prior two decades, has deteriorated extensively. This deterioration has occurred not only among leading democracies such as the United States and Japan, with whom China already had prickly relations, but also among developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. China enjoyed positive relations with states in these regions between the 1990s and late 2010s. In some parts of the world, China now has its worst public image in many decades.

From more favorable perceptions between the 1990s and mid-2010s, Beijing’s public image and overall soft power now have bottomed out, even as it has boosted its foreign assistance through the Belt and Road Initiative; billions spent on state television, radio, and other mass communication; and a wide range of efforts to expand its cultural diplomacy, visitor programs for foreigners, and scholarships for students to attend university in China.

The scale of China’s negative public image today is staggering. A 2021 Pew study of public in seventeen different countries, including the United States, found that “unfavorable views of China are … at or near historic highs. Large majorities in most of the advanced economies surveyed have broadly negative views of China.”

There is no one reason for China’s plummeting global image. It stems from a combination of poor diplomacy, the increasing use of economic coercion, its failing soft power efforts, and its growing ties to Russia, among other factors.

Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.

In recent years, China has shifted from more modest diplomacy rooted in Deng Xiaoping’s post-Tiananmen maxim for China to seem humble and bide its time, to its current form of aggressive, often belligerent, diplomacy. This new diplomatic approach, combined with the growing use of state economic coercion against countries and foreign and domestic Chinese multinationals, certainly plays a central role in rising negative sentiments.

There were some signs of China’s growing belligerence before the Xi era began in 2012–13, but overtly aggressive diplomacy has blossomed under his leadership. In 2010, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi unleashed a diatribe at Southeast Asian leaders at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Hanoi, providing a preview of the new approach Beijing intended to take. As Xi has consolidated power domestically, eliminating potential opponents and ending consensus authoritarianism for what is now essentially one-man rule, he demonstrated, via speeches and actions, that he wanted China to reclaim its status as a dominant regional and global power and to promote its model to the world. He openly voiced nationalist sentiments and, unlike leaders since the early Mao period, promoted a Chinese model of development. With Xi leading the way, Chinese diplomacy shifted dramatically toward the types of statements that Yang had made back in 2010; under Xi, some of the most vitriolic diplomats have moved up quickly through the foreign ministry, showing other Chinese diplomats that acting this way is an avenue to promotion. Other ministers and ambassadors, inculcated in China’s increasingly nationalistic domestic politics and following Xi’s example, began regularly venting prickly, nationalist, bombastic rhetoric at foreign states.

In 2018, for instance, as the journalist Peter Martin chronicled in his book “China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy,” at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Papua New Guinea, four Chinese diplomats reportedly tried to physically push their way past guards and into the house of Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister. They were apparently trying to enlist help in changing the joint communique that usually results from the summit, which contained a line about unfair trading practices. Eventually, no joint communique was released, but the incident showed the aggression of some Chinese diplomats.

Advertisement

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic and now the war in Ukraine, China’s increasingly bold diplomats have verbally attacked foreign countries and spread disinformation about the origins of COVID-19, the U.S. response to the pandemic, and numerous other topics. In recent months, they also have spread Russian disinformation about the Ukraine war, while domestic Chinese media outlets suggest that Russia is the real victim. This signifies a further step in Chinese diplomats’ use of disinformation, one in which Beijing acts to amplify the falsehoods of another major authoritarian power – one with whom it has become extremely close. China’s role in pushing Russian disinformation online is critical to the spreading of these falsehoods: many Russian outlets are being censored or banned by governments and tech platforms, but China’s outlets are not.

At the same time, China has become increasingly blatant about its use of economic coercion against countries that criticize its foreign and domestic policies. Beijing has used coercion against dozens of states and multinational companies that take critical stances on issues Beijing views as essential, including Taiwan, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang, or that critique Xi’s leadership or demand investigations into the origins of COVID-19 or push China to change its disastrous zero-COVID approach.

Australia provides an important example of China’s attempted economic coercion. Following Australia’s stated desire for a more transparent investigation into the origins of COVID-19, as well as the prior Morrison government’s critiques of China’s rights abuses, China retaliated with tariffs on a range of Australian exports, including barley. It also created non-tariff barriers to other products such as timber and coal, as the Lowy Institute has noted. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, so Beijing could have assumed that this economic coercion would force Canberra to return to a more accommodating approach.

Beijing’s rising authoritarianism, its current isolation from the world, and its increasingly monomaniacal focus on Xi Jinping’s campaign to restructure China’s economy, pursue zero-COVID, solidify his third term, and entrench his rule, are also hurting China’s image. China’s authoritarianism – particularly in Hong Kong, where repression has been more widely exposed because of the city’s media base – has proven a factor in Beijing’s deteriorating image in the world’s democracies.

Meanwhile, China’s zero-COVID strategy has virtually cut the country off from foreigners and is hurting its soft power efforts. It has curtailed many of the student and visitor programs for foreigners that once helped boost its image abroad, particularly in developing states. There also has been a sharp drop in outbound Chinese tourists who had served as important people-to-people contacts with the world (and major sources of revenue for many countries in Europe, Asia, and other regions).

Beyond visitor and student programs, and outbound tourism, China’s other soft power tools are also failing compared to their performance in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Beijing has tried to modernize China Global Television Network (CGTN), Xinhua, and China Radio International (CRI), its major state outlets, as well as China Daily, its major global English-language print outlet. It sought, at least until recent years, to make these outlets relatively reputable. With Al Jazeera as a kind of model, Chinese state outlets hired respected local journalists and reporters from major global outlets. Beijing also boosted its state media’s presence on Facebook and other social media.

In the early 2010s, it seemed like some of those brands, such as CGTN, had the potential to challenge channels such as CNN and the BBC, at the very least in developing regions where outlets like CGTN often focused their resources. Yet other than Xinhua, which has the potential to become a global news leader and major soft power tool, most of these state outlets have failed to achieve high levels of viewership or listenership. Sarah Cook of Freedom House, who has closely studied Chinese media in the United States, believes that CGTN’s actual viewership numbers in the U.S. lag behind even those of New Tang Dynasty TV, an independent Chinese-language station available in far fewer U.S. households. A comprehensive study of CGTN-Español, CGTN’s Spanish-language channel, by Peilei Ye and Luis A. Albornoz, suggests that the network’s “audience and visibility was still low.” The continuing climate of self-censorship at CGTN, which has only gotten worse as the war in Ukraine has polarized the world and seemed to make the Chinese leadership more paranoid, further threatens to undermine whatever credibility remains.

Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.

Growing Backlash

To be sure, China’s deteriorating global image will never fully negate its ability to wield vast military and economic power in its own neighborhood or further abroad. China is already the dominant economic power in Asia, especially given the U.S. government’s refusal to join Asia-Pacific trade deals or make any binding concessions to Asian states in the Biden administration’s proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. In the Taiwan Strait, China is increasingly shifting the balance of power and using land reclamation and a range of other tactics to move toward militarily dominating the South China Sea. Its deteriorating public image, statist economics, and isolation are not going to fully stop its continued economic rise, its military modernization, or Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power at home. China’s increasingly skillful use of “sharp power” will likely also remain unaffected. Even if China’s popularity were to fall even further, it still would possess all of these economic, trade, strategic, and military tools.

Yet Beijing’s collapsing popularity is having immense ramifications for China in many areas. Its terrible public image creates roadblocks for its foreign policy aims, in realms from diplomacy to economics to global governance to strategy. For one, as Beijing becomes more of a pariah, especially in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China is losing significant trade supporters in other countries, such as Germany’s major industrial groups, who helped foster economic ties in the past between the two giant economies. Recent data from the Rhodium Group shows German direct investment in China, which had been enormously attractive to German firms, is now slowing. Similar slowdowns in foreign direct investment into China are happening from the U.S., some Asian democracies, and other European states beyond Germany, as their trade organizations increasingly divorce themselves from advocating for China, and as governments become more antagonistic toward Beijing. These advanced democracies also are inaugurating tougher policies toward Chinese inbound investment and generally adopting more hawkish foreign policies toward Beijing.

Advertisement

China’s growing belligerence, outspokenness, and use of coercion have worked in some industries and with some countries that are heavily dependent on Beijing. China has silenced some leading multinationals, who now avoid any criticism of the country, most notably Hollywood, but also the National Basketball Association, hotel chains, and some major global tech companies.

But with many other states and corporations, China’s tougher approach is backfiring. Hollywood may have given in, but many foreign companies, alienated by Xi’s increasing authoritarianism and statism, are growing wary about making new investments in China. Increasingly, they are diversifying their manufacturing to other locations such as the Balkans, Central America, Thailand, and Vietnam. Some countries and regional groups, meanwhile, are already freezing major deals with Beijing as it becomes more isolationist, statist, aggressive, and close to Moscow. The European Union has frozen a major planned bilateral investment deal with China, one that promised massive economic benefits for both sides.

With China refusing to back down from what it has called its “no limits” strategic partnership with Russia, European countries could take further steps to chill trade relations with China, too – just as the U.S. is increasingly decoupling its economy from that of China. European firms could shift manufacturing back to parts of Europe or to other locations, while European states could impose other types of trade pressure on China. Brussels already has moved to prevent China from bidding on major infrastructure projects in the European Union’s public procurement market.

Other countries, enraged by Beijing’s behavior, are realizing that they can stand up to its economic coercion, weakening Beijing’s threats. Had China not been so aggressive, these states could never have realized they could reduce trade with Beijing. Australia is a prime example of shifts in public opinion leading to changes in trade policies with China, and to strategies beyond dependence on bilateral trade with Beijing. As Ye Xue noted in a recent article for the Lowy Interpreter, China’s sanctions on Australia did not significantly harm the Australian economy, lowering Australia’s overall exports to China by only two percent. But they did prod the Australian government, and Australian industry, to aggressively cultivate new markets as alternatives to China. Ye Xue notes that the Australian industries most heavily targeted by Chinese coercion have, in the past two years, begun to make effective shifts to other markets. China, Ye Xue writes, “has only succeeded in making its market matter less to Australia and [lessening] the fear of trade as a weapon.”

A poor public image hinders China’s strategic aims as well. In democracies from the Czech Republic to the Philippines to Italy, politicians cannot build closer strategic ties with China once its image with their publics becomes negative, or they risk the wrath of voters. To take one example, although Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte pushed hard early in his term as president to build closer links to Beijing and reduce Manila’s dependence on the U.S., China’s belligerence, inability to complete major infrastructure deals, and increasing unpopularity among the Philippine public limited Duterte’s room to maneuver Beijing had an opportunity in the Philippines. As the prominent Philippine analyst Richard Heydarian notes, ordinary Filipinos were open to boosting strategic links with China early in Duterte’s presidency: “The number of Filipinos preferring engagement over confrontation with Beijing dramatically increased from 43 percent in 2015 to a steady majority of 67 percent in 2017.”

Yet, Heydarian adds, China’s aggressive diplomacy, continual expansion of its South China Sea claims, and inability to provide the Philippines with much aid or infrastructure led to a shift in public opinion: “Halfway into Duterte’s presidency [i.e., around 2019], however, it … became clear that China’s promises of large-scale investments were largely illusory.” Anti-China sentiments in the country skyrocketed and Duterte himself was forced to take a tougher rhetorical approach to Beijing’s South China Sea actions and, ultimately, to continue and even bolster strategic links to the United States.

Beyond the Philippines, countries terrified of Beijing’s belligerence, power, and growing coercion are building informal coalitions against China in a wide range of areas. These range from control of semiconductor production, excluding China, coalitions to stop major Chinese firms like Huawei from building the next generation of wireless technology in many countries, to new types of military relationships, like AUKUS and an upgraded Quad, designed to constrain Beijing.

Growing fear of China controlling wireless networks, for instance, has led the U.S. to ban Huawei and many European states that considered allowing Huawei to erect their 5G broadband cellular systems to change course and choose other companies instead. Even in parts of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, where Chinese telecommunications companies had made much greater inroads, fear of China has helped shift attitudes against Chinese-built telecoms infrastructure. States including Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam, wooed heavily by Huawei, have chosen other 5G providers to build out their networks. Overall, as many as 60 percent of countries in the global cellular market now have banned or imposed restrictions on Huawei, according to Tufts University’s Michael Beckley.

China’s negative image is also undermining its soft power, making it harder to repair its negative reputation in the next five years. A lack of soft power in the zero-COVID era – visitor programs, journalism training programs, Confucius Institutes, programs for students to come to China – makes it harder for Beijing to spread its developmental model. Beijing’s image has become so toxic that countries are closing Confucius Institutes, banning or reducing the reach of Chinese state media outlets, and limiting other potential sources of Chinese soft power. Many universities in the U.S. and Europe have shut down Confucius Institutes and also begun cutting links with sister programs in China, sometimes moving the sister programs to Taiwan instead.

Leadership Vacuum

Perhaps most problematic for the world, and the many crises it faces today, China remains vastly powerful, but its weak soft power and negative image are constraining its international influence and global leadership. Having alienated so many countries in its region, China has weakened its ability to lead Asia on trade integration, though with the U.S. out of the picture, China could still be able to exert some leadership. Nonetheless, China’s poor image has allowed other regional powers such as Japan to become more active in leading Asia-wide trade integration.

On public health in general, the global lack of trust in China and Beijing’s own failures to move away from a zero-COVID strategy have undermined Beijing’s efforts at leadership. Beijing’s health leadership is failing even as China donates sizable amounts of vaccines, masks, and other supplies to other countries. It does not help, of course, that the Chinese vaccines do not match the efficacy of the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna. Indeed, some countries, such as Malaysia, which initially received Chinese vaccines, have decided instead to rely on mRNA vaccines from these manufacturers.

Advertisement

Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.

Worst of all, enjoying so little trust among other countries, and with Xi and other leaders remaining in China for years because of the zero-COVID policy, China has weakened its ability to lead on issues such as climate change, where it once seemed focused on taking a major global role. Yet at the same time, the Biden administration’s key bill to address climate change failed in Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court may soon drastically limit U.S. regulators’ ability to control greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Given those problems, China’s collapsing image, closer links to Russia, and the general decline in its ability to play any coherent global leadership role is a tragedy for all, not just for Beijing.

This article is excerpted from the Council on Foreign Relations Discussion Paper entitled “China’s Collapsing Global Image: How Beijing’s Unpopularity Is Undermining Its Strategic, Economic, and Diplomatic Goals.” The paper can be found here.

Portions of the paper will appear in the forthcoming book by Joshua Kurlantzick, “China’s Global Media Offensive,” to be released by Oxford University Press in the fall of 2022.

thediplomat.com · by Joshua Kurlantzick · July 22, 2022

6. Lawmakers want US military advisers sent to Ukraine

We should never be afraid to send advisers to train, advise, assist, and support our friends, partners, and allies.

Lawmakers want US military advisers sent to Ukraine

US military advisers in Ukraine would help coordinate logistics, not fight on front lines

foxnews.com · by Lucas Y. Tomlinson , Melissa Chrise | Fox News

Video

Day 150 of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine

Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson detailed a summit in Kyiv hosted by President Zelenskyy and the first lady of Ukraine, and shared reactions to Russia's attack on Odesa on 'Fox News Live.'

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Kyiv, Ukraine--The Biden administration should allow the Pentagon to deploy U.S. military advisers to Ukraine to help coordinate the billions of dollars of arms flowing into the country and to keep better tabs on the weapons, members of a bipartisan congressional delegation visiting Kyiv said Saturday.

"I think we should do more," Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., the first Green Beret elected to Congress, told Fox News after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"That said," Waltz continued, "it should come with appropriate safeguards, with appropriate oversight and the only way we can get that oversight is to actually have some advisors in Ukraine helping their military with the planning and logistics."

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, listens to a servicemen report close to the front line in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sunday, June 5, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP, File)

Asked if that includes sending U.S. military personnel to Ukraine, Waltz said it might.

"It could be contracted, it could be civilian, but it could be military as well," Waltz said. Those advisers running logistics and weapons transfers are currently deployed to Germany and Poland.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., also traveled to Ukraine Saturday as part of the delegation. She signaled her support for a larger American presence on the ground as well.

"It would be good to have a logistics officer here to make sure that we understand and track the weaponry that we're sending," Sherrill told Fox News.

US MUST SEEK INTERNATIONAL CYBERSPACE NORMS WITH CHINA, RUSSIA: EXPERTS

Both lawmakers said the advisers would help beef up the presence at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv and assist in other areas.

"I don't think anybody is advocating for any [American] military on the front line, but helping with logistics, planning those operations, integrating the intelligence is incredibly important right now," said Waltz.

"The Ukrainians are doing a very good job," Sherrill said, "But they even said they would like to pass on the information about how they're tracking [weapons] but they need someone to pass that on to."

Waltz also called for Europe to "step up" and contribute more weapons and aid to help Ukraine. The United States has committed three times more money for Ukraine than the entire 27-nation European Union combined, according to the New York Times.

Waltz noted Britain’s contributions to the war effort by sending billions in weapons. The British government has been one of the few in NATO nations calling on Russia to be routed completely in Ukraine, including calling for its occupied territory in Crimea and eastern Ukraine to be recaptured.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks, Wednesday, June 1, 2022, during a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, at the State Department in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The Biden administration should "not just help Ukraine play for a time, but help them go for a win," Waltz said. "At a minimum, what we talked about today was getting them back to that 2014 line."

Asked if current rules of engagement restrictions should be lifted barring U.S.-supplied weapons for striking targets inside Russian territory, Waltz said there were plenty of targets inside Ukraine to destroy first.

RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR: WHITE HOUSE STILL HELPING TO ‘FACILITATE’ ZELENSKYY PROTECTION

Saturday, Russia launched a missile strike on Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port, less than 24 hours after both countries separately signed a U.N.-brokered agreement in Turkey Friday allowing both countries to export grain.

"This is critical for world food supplies and the fact that just a day after this negotiation, Russia in bad faith would then do exactly what they had just agreed not to do," Sherrill said. "The day after is really shocking and quite frankly, quite depressing."

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also condemned the strike in a statement Saturday, "Russia breached its commitments by attacking the historic port from which grain and agricultural exports would again be transported under this arrangement."

Russian forces have expanded its missile strikes in recent days to cities across Ukraine killing dozens, including children.

The Biden administration announced late Friday it would send four more satellite-guided rocket launchers, known as HIMARS, to Ukraine --bringing the total to 16. Experts say Ukraine needs at least 60. Ukraine's defense minister says he needs 100.

President Biden will turn 80 in November. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

In the latest weapons package to Ukraine hundreds of drones and 36,000 artillery rounds were also included. An American fighter on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, who asked not to be named, told Fox News Ukrainian drones are shot down by the Russians every "four or five" missions.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Ukraine has enough weapons to keep them from losing, but not enough to defeat Russia who continues making incremental gains in the eastern Donbas region, some American officials admit.

Asked this week if Ukraine’s Donbas region was lost, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters it was not lost "yet."

Lucas Y. Tomlinson serves as a correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews

foxnews.com · by Lucas Y. Tomlinson , Melissa Chrise | Fox News

7. Iran is already a nuclear weapons state: ex US diplomat warns

Iran is already a nuclear weapons state: ex US diplomat warns

Iran has enough uranium to build 'one, if not two' nuclear bombs and is already a 'nuclear state', ex-US diplomat warns

• EXCLUSIVE: Iran at 'breakout point' in developing nuclear weapons: ex-US envoy
• Nuclear diplomat tells MailOnline Iran 'already a virtual nuclear weapons state'
• Comments came as Free Iran World Summit cancelled due to terror threat
• Joseph was Bush's Libya envoy, credited with persuading Gaddafi to ditch bomb
• Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton and ex-NATO general James Jones were to attend

By TOM BROWN IN TIRANA and ADAM SOLOMONS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 04:23 EDT, 24 July 2022 | UPDATED: 04:34 EDT, 24 July 2022

Daily Mail · by Tom Brown In Tirana · July 24, 2022

Iran is already a nuclear weapons state with enough uranium to build 'one, if not two' bombs, an ex-US diplomat and nuclear weapons expert has warned.

Former Washington official Robert Joseph told MailOnline: ‘The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has documented that Iran has 60% of enriched uranium, enough for at least one if not two bombs.

'We have been saying for years "they're approaching this breakout point and we've really got to negotiate with them." They're there.'

The ex-United States Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security was speaking ahead of the 'Free Iran' summit in Albania, which was abruptly cancelled due to a terror threat.

Joseph is pictured at a State Department press conference on Iran during the Bush presidency

The US Department of State issued a security alert ahead of the summit this weekend, urging officials - including Joseph - not to attend.

Fellow Washington officials including former national security adviser John Bolton, senator Joe Lieberman and former NATO General James Jones were set to attend.

‘I am the last person who would suggest the use of force, either there or with North Korea,’ Joseph said in Tirana. ‘But rather to support the opposition in overthrowing this regime.’

Joseph was the chief negotiator to Libya in 2003 and is credited with convincing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons programme.

He has been strongly critical of former president Barack Obama’s regime and in its actions in aiding the overthrow of Gaddafi’s government in 2011, as well as the 2015 nuclear deal, which the administration agreed to prevent Iran from developing weapons of mass destruction.

The Iranian military fires ballistic missiles into the year in the Great Salt Desert last January

There are growing fears that Iran has the capacity to build its own nuclear bombs (2010 image)

The conference was being hosted by an exiled Iranian opposition group living in exile in the Ashraf 3 camp in Tirana, with some former US officials backing the campaigners as a potential replacement for the Islamic Republic currently running Iran.

‘The US government is aware of a potential threat targeting the Free Iran World Summit to be held near Durres, Albania on July 23-24, 2022,’ said the US Embassy in Albania one day prior to the event, asking US citizens to avoid the summit and ‘be aware of your surroundings’.

The IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, said in May that Iran’s ‘breakout time’ — the time theoretically required for the regime to produce a nuclear weapons — had shrunk to two weeks.

But the Institute for Science and International Security said a month later the breakout time had hit zero.

‘We hear that they are regularly testing ballistic missiles, and they are seeking to get enough uranium that they are able to produce a weapon,’ said MP Matthew Offord, who had been scheduled to attend the event.

‘The issue with the ballistic missiles is that they would be longer range,’ he added. ‘It wouldn’t be in the immediate area, say as far as Israel, it could go a lot further than that.’

The MP said he has been ‘taking preventative actions’ after the death of his friend David Amess last year, a fellow MP murdered by an Islamist extremist.

Iranian agents have previously targeted events hosted by the members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the exiled opposition that relocated to Tirana after thousands of its members were executed during the 2013-2017 War in Iraq.

John Baird, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada who was also scheduled to attend, said the terror threat was only the second time in his career when a summit was cancelled because of a credible threat to attendees, the first also involving the NCRI.

In 2018, French police arrested an Iranian agent trying to bring explosives and a detonator to a NCRI rally in Paris.

Assadollah Assadi, 49, who worked at the Iranian embassy in Vienna, was given a 20-year jail term by the court in Antwerp in Belgium, the first time an Iranian official had faced such charges in the EU since the 1979 revolution.

But on Thursday the Belgian parliament ratified a treaty to swap the convicted terrorist with a Belgian citizen held hostage in Iran, a move strongly opposed by the Iranian opposition.

‘We need to stand with Iran in this great struggle. The people of Iran have got to know that the world recognises this regime for what it is,’ Baird added. ‘I strongly support regime change, not outside with military force, but the National Council is probably the biggest and most effective opposition to the regime, so we need to support them.’

The IAEA said in May that Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent had grown to 95 pounds, an increase of more than 300% compared to the previous three months.

NCRI originally revealed the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons programme to the world in 2005, providing evidence to international bodies that the regime has worked on production of a neutron initiator by using Polonium 210 and Beryllium — granting it the capacity to enrich uranium and eventually acquire nuclear weapons.

Daily Mail · by Tom Brown In Tirana · July 24, 2022

8. Inside the Pentagon slugfest over the future of the fleet

​We have to get our Navy right. ​It is critical to our national security. And not just on the number of amphib though that is a critical capability.

Excerpts:

And the discord at the top has real-world consequences for America’s sea service, denying lawmakers a number to shoot for as they figure out how many ships to buy in the fiscal year that starts in October, and beyond.

At issue, according to six people with knowledge of internal discussions, is the desired number of amphibious warships, which carry Marines and can launch warplanes and landing craft.

Inside the Pentagon slugfest over the future of the fleet

Politico

By LARA SELIGMAN, LEE HUDSON and PAUL MCLEARY

07/24/2022 07:00 AM EDT

No one can agree on how many ships the Navy needs, and Congress isn't pleased.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 22, 2021. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

07/24/2022 07:00 AM EDT

The Navy of the future needs 316 ships. Actually, make that 327. No, more like 367. You know what? Let’s make it 373, or maybe even 500.

At different points this year, the Pentagon and Navy leaders have floated all five numbers as the desired size of the Navy, the result of a high-stakes — and still raging — internal battle among top Navy, Marine Corps and Pentagon leaders.

And the discord at the top has real-world consequences for America’s sea service, denying lawmakers a number to shoot for as they figure out how many ships to buy in the fiscal year that starts in October, and beyond.

At issue, according to six people with knowledge of internal discussions, is the desired number of amphibious warships, which carry Marines and can launch warplanes and landing craft.

On one end is Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who is spearheading an effort to cut the number of traditional, large-deck amphibs and invest in uncrewed ships and other lighter vessels, the people said. But Hicks’ vision is at odds with plans put forth by Navy and Marine Corps leaders, who want to keep dozens of the ships they say are a key component to moving Marines and aircraft around the Indo-Pacific as the U.S. seeks to deter an aggressive China.

The debate comes at a fraught time for the Navy as it struggles to grow the size of its fleet amid a series of shipbuilding failures that have drained congressional confidence in the service’s ability to both put new ships in the water and maintain the ships they have.

“The Navy is broken. Shipbuilding is broken,” said John Ferrari, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “Every two years the Navy is forced to come up with a 30-year plan that needs to be built and really needs to be planned for over two decades.

“We’ve gone 30 years without an actual national consensus on Navy shipbuilding.”

Some critics see the large ships as easy prey for Chinese long-range missiles, while being too big to get close to the small island chains of the Pacific to safely put Marines ashore and resupply them. Instead, the idea is for the Navy to get smaller, faster and develop more uncrewed systems.

But Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, a Biden appointee and retired naval officer, has been a proponent of keeping the number of amphibs around its current strength of 31, a vision shared by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger who won support in Congress this year to block Pentagon plans to have the fleet shrink to 25 ships in the coming years.

Yet Marine and Navy leaders are at odds with each other over another issue: Berger also wants to add 35 new light amphibious warships to allow his Marines to move through island chains more quickly while presenting less of a target. That’s a vision Navy leadership has never fully supported.

Differing opinions at the top of the Pentagon and Navy leadership chains is nothing new. Given the huge costs involved in designing and building new ships, the overall size and shape of the fleet has always been a politically fraught issue. And the constantly shifting global security dynamic often leads to clashes between the admirals and civilians at the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.

But what is new is the lack of a united front in public when numbers are supplied to Congress.

“The longer they wait to get on the same page, the higher the risk will be for our sailors and our nation,” Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. His home state includes Ingalls Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries.

A spokesperson for Hicks did not return a request for comment. A spokesperson for Del Toro, Capt. Jereal Dorsey, told POLITICO that “it would be inappropriate to speculate or comment on conversations regularly held between the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Navy.”

The Marine Corps did not reply to a request for comment.

Study, study, study

The Navy’s own targets for building its fleet of the future have been in constant flux since it declared the need for 355 ships in 2016. There has never been a workable plan to get there, and successive administrations have failed to fund a fleet of that size or sign off on a viable plan to build more ships.

During the Trump administration, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Defense Secretary Mark Esper seized on the 355 figure — as Trump did in his presidential campaign — but then oversaw successive budgets that actually cut shipbuilding funding by billions of dollars. At one point in early 2020, Esper rejected the Navy’s annual shipbuilding plan, taking control over the process and holding up its release for almost a year, only to release it in December 2020 — a month before Joe Biden moved into the White House, all but ensuring they would be scrapped immediately by the new team.

The plan was also likely impossible to implement, calling for a fleet of over 500 ships by 2045, a dramatic increase from the 298 ships in service today. To get there, it proposed building 82 new ships by 2026, doubling the Navy’s previous plan to manufacture 44 new ships by 2025, a pace of building that would likely be unachievable for the U.S. shipbuilding industry.

While that plan didn’t survive the transition between administrations, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday has continued to defend it well into the new administration, saying as recently as February that it remains “the one that I’ve based my best advice on,” even as he was proposing a new budget along with another new shipbuilding plan, which incorporated nothing from Esper’s wishlist.

And through it all, Congress and the defense industry have grown tired of the Navy’s shifting numbers. Putting forward a new shipbuilding plan every year makes it impossible to maintain a stable supply line and keep ships rolling out of the shipyards, and the constantly moving target confuses both lawmakers and contractors.

In April of this year, the Navy released its latest 30-year shipbuilding plan that contained three options: 316 ships, 327 ships, and 367 ships, all with different assumptions over budget and what kinds of ships were purchased. Then in June, the Navy sent Congress a classified report saying its plans called for 373 ships, USNI News reported. But a Navy official told POLITICO that the new report focused only on operational needs, and ignored budgets and shipyard capacity, giving it no real connection to the realities of budgets or the industrial base. The Navy plans to send an update of that report to the Hill this year.

Through it all, Gilday continues to insist that, given the Chinese threat, the Navy needs more than 500 ships in the fleet.

“The mismatch on where the Biden Pentagon team and the Navy-Marine Corps [stand], that’s the source of that tension,” said one person with knowledge of the internal discussions, who, like others, asked for anonymity to speak candidly about the debate. “[Hicks’] thesis and where she thinks the department needs to go does not necessarily involve a Navy with larger numbers.”

There is friction not just between the Navy and Pentagon leadership, but within the service as well. The Marine Corps’ plan for the light amphibious warship was pushed out of the Navy shipbuilding budget two years in a row. The fiscal 2023 budget request shows the new ship being funded in fiscal 2025 — after Berger is slated to retire.

The move also throws cold water on Berger’s plan to give units of 75 Marines the flexibility to carry a wide range of weapons with them at sea, including anti-ship missiles, drones and supplies to rearm friendly forces.

That ship, however, is the cornerstone of the Marine Corps’ modernization priorities. The Marine Corps envisions using the light amphibious warship to ferry Marines from beach to beach while hiding in plain sight, as the new vessel is the size of other commercial ships.

The plan also has implications for the shipbuilding industrial base. Since the size of these vessels is smaller compared to traditional amphibs, that opens the door for more prospective builders, including companies that are not equipped to build large military vessels, to bid on the contract.

Personnel moves

Complicating matters is the fact that the Biden administration has yet to put forth a nominee for the top Navy acquisition job, which is currently held on a temporary basis by Tommy Ross. Del Toro recently moved Ross, his former chief of staff, out of his front office because the two do not see eye-to-eye on the future of Navy shipbuilding, two former DoD officials said.

Instead, Ross was relocated to the acquisition job where he does not have authority to sign off on major deals, the two people said.

Ross is more aligned with Hicks’ vision for the fleet, the people said.

“There is tension between Carlos and Tommy Ross and by extension between Del Toro and Kath Hicks,” said one former Pentagon official familiar with the discussions. “Del Toro wants to go a different direction and he feels like he’s being constrained by Kath Hicks.”

Still, in his temporary role Ross does not have acquisition authority and is overseeing the Navy’s $140 billion portfolio by name only, according to two internal memos announcing the changes.

“I reserve the right to exercise any and all of the authorities temporarily assigned to you,” Del Toro wrote in a May memo announcing Ross’s new title.

Instead that authority rests with Ross’ deputy, Jay Stefany, a 37-year career Navy civil servant who entered the senior executive service in 2012. He is cleared to award contracts over $100 million to a single vendor and approve contracts in the $100 million to $500 million range that bypass the traditional acquisition process using what’s known as other transaction authority.

The differing views inside the Pentagon on the future of Navy shipbuilding is not a bad thing, but leadership must come to a consensus, according to one of the people. What they decide will set the tone for the industrial base, the person added.

But what is concerning, once a path is chosen, is that the Navy lacks a Senate-confirmed acquisition executive to engage with industry to carry out the plan, the person said.

In the end, Congress will have the final say over how large the Navy budget is and how many ships it can afford. While the Hill looks to pump tens of billions into President Joe Biden’s latest defense budget, the Navy is hardly in their good graces given massive cost overruns and schedule slippages on new ship programs over the past 20 years.

“Congress remains very skeptical about the Navy’s ability to complete new shipbuilding programs and carry them through,” one congressional staffer said. “Lawmakers are certainly very skeptical that the Navy can do it on time and on budget, and some members of Congress wonder whether the Navy can do it at all.”

POLITICO

Politico

9. CNN Exclusive: FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear arsenal communications

Excerpts:

As early as the Obama administration, FBI agents were monitoring a disturbing pattern along stretches of Interstate 25 in Colorado and Montana, and on arteries into Nebraska. The heavily trafficked corridor connects some of the most secretive military installations in the US, including an archipelago of nuclear missile silos.

For years, small, rural telecom providers had been installing cheaper, Chinese-made routers and other technology atop cell towers up and down I-25 and elsewhere in the region. Across much of these sparsely populated swaths of the west, these smaller carriers are the only option for cell coverage. And many of them turned to Huawei for cheaper, reliable equipment.

Beginning in late 2011, Viaero, the largest regional provider in the area, inked a contract with Huawei to provide the equipment for its upgrade to 3G. A decade later, it has Huawei tech installed across its entire fleet of towers, roughly 1,000 spread over five western states.

As Huawei equipment began to proliferate near US military bases, federal investigators started taking notice, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Of particular concern was that Huawei was routinely selling cheap equipment to rural providers in cases that appeared to be unprofitable for Huawei — but which placed its equipment near military assets. ​

CNN Exclusive: FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear arsenal communications

CNN · by Katie Bo Lillis

Washington (CNN)On paper, it looked like a fantastic deal. In 2017, the Chinese government was offering to spend $100 million to build an ornate Chinese garden at the National Arboretum in Washington DC. Complete with temples, pavilions and a 70-foot white pagoda, the project thrilled local officials, who hoped it would attract thousands of tourists every year.

But when US counterintelligence officials began digging into the details, they found numerous red flags. The pagoda, they noted, would have been strategically placed on one of the highest points in Washington DC, just two miles from the US Capitol, a perfect spot for signals intelligence collection, multiple sources familiar with the episode told CNN.

Also alarming was that Chinese officials wanted to build the pagoda with materials shipped to the US in diplomatic pouches, which US Customs officials are barred from examining, the sources said.

Federal officials quietly killed the project before construction was underway.

The canceled garden is part of a frenzy of counterintelligence activity by the FBI and other federal agencies focused on what career US security officials say has been a dramatic escalation of Chinese espionage on US soil over the past decade.

Read More

Since at least 2017, federal officials have investigated Chinese land purchases near critical infrastructure, shut down a high-profile regional consulate believed by the US government to be a hotbed of Chinese spies and stonewalled what they saw as clear efforts to plant listening devices near sensitive military and government facilities.

Among the most alarming things the FBI uncovered pertains to Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers near US military bases in the rural Midwest. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, the FBI determined the equipment was capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defense Department communications, including those used by US Strategic Command, which oversees the country's nuclear weapons.

While broad concerns about Huawei equipment near US military installations have been well known, the existence of this investigation and its findings have never been reported. Its origins stretch back to at least the Obama administration. It was described to CNN by more than a dozen sources, including current and former national security officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

F.E. Warren Air Force Base, a strategic missile base, is located in Cheyenne, Wyoming, an area near a host of cell towers using Huawei equipment.

It's unclear if the intelligence community determined whether any data was actually intercepted and sent back to Beijing from these towers. Sources familiar with the issue say that from a technical standpoint, it's incredibly difficult to prove a given package of data was stolen and sent overseas.

The Chinese government strongly denies any efforts to spy on the US. Huawei in a statement to CNN also denied that its equipment is capable of operating in any communications spectrum allocated to the Defense Department.

But multiple sources familiar with the investigation tell CNN that there's no question the Huawei equipment has the ability to intercept not only commercial cell traffic but also the highly restricted airwaves used by the military and disrupt critical US Strategic Command communications, giving the Chinese government a potential window into America's nuclear arsenal.

"This gets into some of the most sensitive things we do," said one former FBI official with knowledge of the investigation. "It would impact our ability for essentially command and control with the nuclear triad. "That goes into the 'BFD' category."

"If it is possible for that to be disrupted, then that is a very bad day," this person added.

Turning doves into hawks

Former officials described the probe's findings as a watershed moment. The investigation was so secret that some senior policymakers in the White House and elsewhere in government weren't briefed on its existence until 2019, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

That fall, the Federal Communications Commission initiated a rule that effectively banned small telecoms from using Huawei and a few other brands of Chinese made-equipment. "The existence of the investigation at the highest levels turned some doves into hawks," said one former US official.

In 2020, Congress approved $1.9 billion to remove Chinese-made Huawei and ZTE cellular technology across wide swaths of rural America.

But two years later, none of that equipment has been removed and rural telecom companies are still waiting for federal reimbursement money. The FCC received applications to remove some 24,000 pieces of Chinese-made communications equipment—but according to a July 15 update from the commission, it is more than $3 billion short of the money it needs to reimburse all eligible companies.

Absent more money from Congress, the FCC says it plans to begin reimbursing approved companies for about 40 percent of the costs of removing Huawei equipment. The FCC did not specify a timeframe on when the money will be disbursed.

In late 2020, the Justice Department referred its national security concerns about Huawei equipment to the Commerce Department, and provided information on where the equipment was in place in the US, a former senior US law enforcement official told CNN.

After the Biden administration took office in 2021, the Commerce Department then opened its own probe into Huawei to determine if more urgent action was needed to expunge the Chinese technology provider from US telecom networks, the former law enforcement official and a current senior US official said.

That probe has proceeded slowly and is ongoing, the current US official said. Among the concerns that national security officials noted was that external communication from the Huawei equipment that occurs when software is updated, for example, could be exploited by the Chinese government.

Depending on what the Commerce Department finds, US telecom carriers could be forced to quickly remove Huawei equipment or face fines or other penalties.

Reuters first reported the existence of the Commerce Department probe.

"We cannot confirm or deny ongoing investigations, but we are committed to securing our information and communications technology and services supply chain. Protecting US persons safety and security against malign information collection is vital to protecting our economy and national security," a Commerce Department spokesperson said.

Inside Huawei's connection to rural America 02:55

US counterintelligence officials have recently made a priority of publicizing threats from China. This month, the US National Counterintelligence and Security Center issued a warning to American businesses and local and state governments about what it says are disguised efforts by China to manipulate them to influence US policy.

FBI Director Christopher Wray just traveled to London for a joint meeting with top British law enforcement officials to call attention to the Chinese threats.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Wray said the FBI opens a new China counterintelligence investigation every 12 hours. "That's probably about 2,000 or so investigations," said Wray. "And that's not even talking about their cyber theft, where they have a bigger hacking program than that of every other major nation combined, and have stolen more of Americans' personal and corporate data than every nation combined."

Asked why after years of national security concerns raised over Huawei, the equipment is still largely in place atop cell towers near US military bases, Wray said that, "We're concerned about allowing any company that is beholden to a nation state that doesn't adhere to and share our values, giving that company the ability to burrow into our telecommunications infrastructure."

He noted that in 2020, the DOJ indicted Huawei with racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to steal trade secrets.

"And I think that's probably about all I can say on the topic," said Wray.

Critics see xenophobic overreach

Despite its tough talk, the US government's refusal to provide evidence to back up its claims that Huawei tech poses a risk to US national security has led some critics to accuse it of xenophobic overreach. The lack of a smoking gun also raises questions of whether US officials can separate legitimate Chinese investment from espionage.

"All of our products imported to the US have been tested and certified by the FCC before being deployed there," Huawei said in its statement to CNN. "Our equipment only operates on the spectrum allocated by the FCC for commercial use. This means it cannot access any spectrum allocated to the DOD."

"For more than 30 years, Huawei has maintained a proven track record in cyber security and we have never been involved in any malicious cyber security incidents," the statement said.

In its zeal to sniff out evidence of Chinese spying, critics argue the feds have cast too wide a net — in particular as it relates to academic institutions. In one recent high-profile case, a federal judge acquitted a former University of Tennessee engineering professor whom the Justice Department had prosecuted under its so-called China Initiative that targets Chinese spying, arguing "there was no evidence presented that [the professor] ever collaborated with a Chinese university in conducting NASA-funded research."

And on Jan. 20, the Justice Department dropped a separate case against an MIT professor accused of hiding his ties to China, saying it could no longer prove its case. In February, the Biden administration shut down the China Initiative entirely.

The federal government's reticence across multiple administrations to detail what it knows has led some critics to accuse the government of chasing ghosts.

"It really comes down to: do you treat China as a neutral actor — because if you treat China as a neutral actor, then yeah, this seems crazy, that there's some plot behind every tree," said Anna Puglisi, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. "However, China has shown us through its policies and actions it is not a neutral actor."

Chinese tech in the American heartland

As early as the Obama administration, FBI agents were monitoring a disturbing pattern along stretches of Interstate 25 in Colorado and Montana, and on arteries into Nebraska. The heavily trafficked corridor connects some of the most secretive military installations in the US, including an archipelago of nuclear missile silos.

For years, small, rural telecom providers had been installing cheaper, Chinese-made routers and other technology atop cell towers up and down I-25 and elsewhere in the region. Across much of these sparsely populated swaths of the west, these smaller carriers are the only option for cell coverage. And many of them turned to Huawei for cheaper, reliable equipment.

Beginning in late 2011, Viaero, the largest regional provider in the area, inked a contract with Huawei to provide the equipment for its upgrade to 3G. A decade later, it has Huawei tech installed across its entire fleet of towers, roughly 1,000 spread over five western states.

As Huawei equipment began to proliferate near US military bases, federal investigators started taking notice, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Of particular concern was that Huawei was routinely selling cheap equipment to rural providers in cases that appeared to be unprofitable for Huawei — but which placed its equipment near military assets.

Federal investigators initially began "examining [Huawei] less from a technical lens and more from a business/financial view," explained John Lenkart, a former senior FBI agent focused on counterintelligence issues related to China. Officials studied where Huawei sales efforts were most concentrated and looked for deals that "made no sense from a return-on-investment perspective," Lenkart said.

"A lot of [counterintelligence] concerns were uncovered based on" those searches, Lenkart said.

By examining the Huawei equipment themselves, FBI investigators determined it could recognize and disrupt DOD-spectrum communications — even though it had been certified by the FCC, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

"It's not technically hard to make a device that complies with the FCC that listens to nonpublic bands but then is quietly waiting for some activation trigger to listen to other bands," said Eduardo Rojas, who leads the radio spectrum lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. "Technically, it's feasible."

To prove a device had clandestine capabilities, Rojas said, would require technical experts to strip down a device "to the semi-conductor level" and "reverse engineer the design." But, he said, it can be done.

And there was another big concern along I-25, sources familiar with the investigation said.

Weather camera worries

Around 2014, Viaero started mounting high-definition surveillance cameras on its towers to live-stream weather and traffic, a public service it shared with local news organizations. With dozens of cameras posted up and down I-25, the cameras provided a 24-7 bird's eye view of traffic and incoming weather, even providing advance warning of tornadoes.

But they were also inadvertently capturing the movement of US military equipment and personnel, giving Beijing — or anyone for that matter — the ability to track the pattern of activity between a series of closely guarded military facilities.

The intelligence community determined the publicly posted live-streams were being viewed and likely captured from China, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Two sources briefed on the investigation at the time said officials believed that it was possible for Beijing's intelligence service to "task" the cameras — hack into the network and control where they pointed. At least some of the cameras in question were running on Huawei networks.

Viaero CEO Frank DiRico said it never occurred to him the cameras could be a national security risk.

"There's a lot of missile silos in areas we cover. There is some military presence," DiRico said in an interview from his Colorado office. But, he said, "I was never told to remove the equipment or to make any changes."

In fact, DiRico first learned of government concerns about Huawei equipment from newspaper articles — not the FBI — and says he has never been briefed on the matter.

DiRico doesn't question the government's insistence that he needs to remove Huawei equipment, but he is skeptical that China's intelligence services can exploit either the Huawei hardware itself or the camera equipment.

"We monitor our network pretty good," DiRico said, adding that Viaero took over the support and maintenance for its own networks from Huawei shortly after installation. "We feel we've got a pretty good idea if there's anything going on that's inappropriate."

Scouring the country for Chinese investments

By the time the I-25 investigation was briefed to the White House in 2019, counterintelligence officials begin looking for other places Chinese companies might be buying land or offering to develop a piece of municipal property, like a park or an old factory, sometimes as part of a "sister city" arrangement.

In one instance, officials shut down what they believed was a risky commercial deal near highly sensitive military testing installations in Utah sometime after the beginning of the I-25 investigation, according to one former US official. The military has a test and training range for hypersonic weapons in Utah, among other things. Sources declined to provide more details.

Federal officials were also alarmed by what sources described as a host of espionage and influence activities in Houston and, in 2020, shut down the Chinese consulate there.

US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Richard P. Donoghue announcing indictments against China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, several of its subsidiaries and its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on January 28, 2019.

Bill Evanina, who until early last year ran the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told CNN that it can sometimes be hard to differentiate between a legitimate business opportunity and espionage — in part because both might be happening at the same time.

"What we've seen is legitimate companies that are three times removed from Beijing buy [a given] facility for obvious logical reasons, unaware of what the [Chinese] intelligence apparatus wants in that parcel [of land]," Evanina said. "What we've seen recently — it's been what's underneath the land."

"The hard part is, that's legitimate business, and what city or town is not going to want to take that money for that land when it's just sitting there doing nothing?" he added.

A complicated problem

After the results of the I-25 investigation were briefed to the Trump White House in 2019, the FCC ordered that telecom companies who receive federal subsidies to provide cell service to remote areas — companies like Viaero — must "rip and replace" their Huawei and ZTE equipment.

The FCC has since said that the cost could be more than double the $1.9 billion appropriated in 2020 and absent an additional appropriation from Congress, the agency is only planning to reimburse companies for a fraction of their costs.

Given the staggering strategic risk, Lenkart said, "rip and replace is a very blunt and inefficient remediation."

DiRico, the CEO of Viaero, said the cost of "rip and replace" is astronomical and that he doesn't expect the reimbursement money to be enough to pay for the change. According to the FCC, Viaero is expected to receive less than half of the funding it is actually due. Still, he expects to start removing the equipment within the next year.

"It's difficult and it's a lot of money," DiRico said.

Some former counterintelligence officials expressed frustration that the US government isn't providing more granular detail about what it knows to companies — or to cities and states considering a Chinese investment proposal. They believe that not only would that kind of detail help private industry and state and local governments understand the seriousness of the threat as they see it, but also help combat the criticism that the US government is targeting Chinese companies and people, rather than Chinese state-run espionage.

"This government has to do a better job of letting everyone know this is a Communist Party issue, it's not a Chinese people issue," Evanina said. "And I'll be the first to say that the government has to do better with respect to understanding the Communist Party's intentions are not the same intentions of the Chinese people."

A current FBI official said the bureau is giving more defensive briefings to US businesses, academic institutions and state and local governments that include far more detail than in the past, but officials are still fighting an uphill battle.

"Sometimes I feel like we're a lifeguard going out to a drowning person, and they don't want our help," said the current FBI official. But, this person said, "I think sometimes we [the FBI] say 'China threat,' and we take for granted what all that means in our head. And it means something else to the people that we're delivering it to."

"I think we just need to be more careful about how we speak about it and educate folks on why we're doing what we're doing."

In the meantime, the "rip and replace" program has remained fiercely controversial.

"It's not going to be easy," DiRico said. "I'm going to be up nights worrying about it, but we'll do what we're told to do."

CNN's Sean Lyngaas contributed to this report.

CNN · by Katie Bo Lillis

10. House intelligence committee speaks about new DNA bio-weapons

Here are some comments from a friend and colleague who flagged this article for me. We are only limited by our imaginations.

There is a positive to this. Targeted killing with a DNA-signature-enabled warhead on a small drone would make collateral damage or the unintended killing of others almost impossible. In the not too distant future, will we have an 'aircraft carrier' at the edge of space - - that will open its bay doors and all kinds of drones, with all kinds of shapes and missions will be deployed in warfare. Or in this case, a large mother drone at 120K feet deploys a smaller mid-size drone that descends to 15K feet and self-destructs so an adversary's radar, if it sees this smaller drone, also sees it implode. But, before self-destructing, this mid-size drone deploys a smaller drone the size of a beer mug, that flies to its intended target. "This drone's for you."

House intelligence committee speaks about new DNA bio-weapons

'You can take someone's DNA and design a weapon that can kill them': House intelligence committee member warns people not to share health data with sites like 23andMe because it can be used to program new bio-weapons to target them

• US Rep Jason Crow warned that bio-weapons are being made that use a target's DNA to only kill that person during the Aspen Security Forum on Friday 
• The congressman said the development of the weapons is worrisome given the popularity of DNA testing services like 23andMe
• 23andMe has stated that it does not sell off customer's private information, but the company is one of many that has provided information to police
• In 2019, it was found that several Russian and Chinese labs were processing DNA tests for Americans through Medicare and Medicaid
• Officials warned the bio-weapons could also target animals and disrupt food supplies around the globe  

By RONNY REYES FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 21:15 EDT, 23 July 2022 | UPDATED: 03:28 EDT, 24 July 2022

Daily Mail · by Ronny Reyes For Dailymail.Com · July 24, 2022

A member of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee warned that bio-weapons are being made that use a target's DNA to only kill that person.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, US Rep Jason Crow of Colorado warned Americans to not be so cavalier about sharing their DNA with private companies due to the coming of the new type of weapon.

'You can actually take someone's DNA, take, you know, their medical profile and you can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable,' Crow said.

The congressman said the development of the weapons is worrisome given the popularity of DNA testing services, where people willingly share their genetic mapping with businesses to gain insight on their genealogy and health.

'You can't have a discussion about this without talking about privacy and the protection of commercial data because expectations of privacy have degraded over the last 20 years,' the Democratic lawmaker said.

'Young folks actually have very little expectation of privacy, that's what the polling and the data show."

Crow, a former Army Ranger who served three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, continued: 'People will very rapidly spit into a cup and send it to 23andMe and get really interesting data about their background.'

U.S. Rep Jason Crow, of Colorado, warned that bio-weapons are being made that use a target's DNA to only kill that person during the Aspen Security Forum on Friday

The congressman said the development of the weapons were worrying given the popularity of DNA testing services like 23andMe

23andMe has repeatedly stated that it does not sell off customers' private information, but the DNA company is one of many that has provided information to police upon request

'And guess what? Their DNA is now owned by a private company. It can be sold off with very little intellectual property protection or privacy protection and we don't have legal and regulatory regimes to deal with that.'

'We have to have an open and public discussion about... what the protection of healthcare information, DNA information, and your data look like because that data is actually going to be procured and collected by our adversaries for the development of these systems.'

23andMe has repeatedly stated that it does not sell off customers' private information, but the DNA company is one of many that has provided information to police upon request.

US Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the US rivals could use such DNA bio-weapons to target food supplies on a vast scale.

Ernst warned that biological weapons could be used to target specific animals that citizens, troops or cities depend on, bringing about scarcity and food insecurity to weaken people.

'Food insecurity drives a lot of other insecurities around the globe,' Ernst said.

'There's a number of ways we can look at biological weapons and the need to make sure not only are we securing human beings, but then also the food that will sustain us.'

US Senator Joni Ernst, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the US rivals could use such DNA bio-weapons to target food supplies on a vast scale

Earlier this week, the Washington Examiner reported on just how easy it could be for privately-owned databases to be used to develop bioweapons such as the ones touted by Crow.

The publication explained how DNA belonging to a target - or the close relative of a target - could be stolen and used to form a biological weapon effective against that person only.

That technology could lead to highly-targeted assassination programs, and also make it much harder for killers to be tracked down.

Similar technology could be deployed against US agriculture by designing weapons which target only a certain breed of farm animal, or crop.

That could plunge the country into famine, and leave the US on its knees in the face of hostilities from a rival like Russia or China.

Army General Richard Clark, commander of the US Special Operations Command, highlighted how Russia had already shot to infamy with a less-sophisticated version of the same scheme.

Discussing the nerve agent poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal in England in 2018, he said: 'Russia is willing to use those against political opponents. They're willing to use them on their own soil, but then to go in on the soil of a NATO ally in the UK and use those ... and as we go into the future, we have to be prepared for that eventualities.

'And I don't think we talk about it as much as we should and look for methods to continue to combat.'

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in the English town of Salisbury, and almost died from their injuries. Britain's then-Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Russia for the outrage days later.

Last year, US Sen. Marco Rubio sounded the alarm that Russian and Chinese labs were processing the DNA tests of Americans through Medicare and Medicaid.

'It is ridiculous that our current policies enable the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans' genomic data,' Rubio said in a statement.

'There is absolutely no reason that Beijing, which routinely seeks to undermine US national security, should be handed the genomic data of American citizens.

In 2018, Ancestry, 23andMe, Habit, Helix, and MyHeritage all signed on to the policy drafted with the help of The Future of Privacy Forum, a non-profit, in support of 'advancing responsible data practices in support of emerging technologies,' according to Gizmodo.

The guidelines, titled Privacy Best Practices for Consumer Genetic Testing Services and released on Tuesday, deal with scenarios where users' personally identifiable and anonymous genetic information might be shared with law enforcement (without a warrant) and other third parties.

The new voluntary policies call for requiring separate consent from users before sharing 'individual-level information' with other businesses and more transparency about the number of requests for data received by, and fulfilled for, law enforcement.

While all the companies have said they agree to these standards of practice, there is no law enforcing the rules.

Daily Mail · by Ronny Reyes For Dailymail.Com · July 24, 2022

11.  Taras Borovok -- "HIMARS" song (English subtitles)

From our Ukrainian friends using their soft power to show off their hard power capabilities. This is a gift to the US Army Artillery School and Lockheed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t89Q1W4GkXw

Taras Borovok -- "HIMARS" song (English subtitles)

2,751 views Jul 19, 2022 HIMARS!

12. White House’s concern over Pelosi’s visit hints at danger of miscalculation; time to ‘test Biden’s commitment’ made to China

From a Chinese propaganda mouthpiece:

White House’s concern over Pelosi’s visit hints at danger of miscalculation; time to ‘test Biden’s commitment’ made to China - Global Times

globaltimes.cn

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi departs the White House in Washington DC following a signing event for a postal service reform act on April 6, 2022. Pelosi tested positive for COVID-19 on April 7 and postponed her Asia trip and reported visit to the island of Taiwan. Photo: VCG

After the US government received an unprecedentedly strong message from the Chinese side regarding US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's planned visit to the island of Taiwan, the Biden administration appears to be increasingly concerned that the visit could lead to catastrophic consequences for China-US relations. Although the two top Democratic leaders share the same interest in using Taiwan question to serve their political goals ahead of the midterm elections, they are apparently not on the same page on how to play the Taiwan card.

Unlike US lawmakers who only take into account domestic political demands, the White House has to consider broader security concerns and the danger of miscalculation, as an escalating confrontation with the Chinese government over the Taiwan question will only hurt US own interests, experts said.

By using the excuse of separation of powers, the Biden administration reportedly hinted at the inability to control fellow Democrat Pelosi regarding trips she would undertake. Some Chinese experts said that if the Biden administration is determined to oppose it, the trip can't be made as such high-level visit needs the coordination with the administration in terms of security.

It is time to see if US President Joe Biden can fulfill his promises on US-China relations especially on the Taiwan question by dissuading this visit, which is widely seen as a severe provocation that could trigger an overwhelming response from the Chinese side, some experts warned, and the reaction of the Chinese side could become a game-changer for cross-Straits relations.

Growing concerns

The Biden administration is increasingly concerned that the planned trip by Pelosi to the island in August could spark a major crisis across the Taiwan Straits, and the White House and an array of national security officials have briefed Pelosi and her team about the risks of traveling now, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing administration officials.

Defense, military and intelligence officials have "tried to explain the risks associated with the timing of her proposed trip," and Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff, was among those officials, according to the US media report.

For now, administration officials are walking delicately - hoping to dissuade Pelosi without causing a public dust-up - but concerns about the potential fallout from her trip are widespread within the executive branch, the Washington Post said.

Also on Saturday, the Financial Times, citing several people familiar with the matter, said China has issued stark private warnings to the Biden administration about Pelosi's upcoming trip to Taiwan, triggering alarm bells among White House officials who oppose her visit.

Beijing has not been explicit about its potential response. Its military could try to block Pelosi from landing in the island or take other actions to impede her visit, such as using fighter jets to intercept her US military aircraft, the FT said.

"It shows that China's response is beyond the expectation of the US side, and Pelosi's plan has put Biden in a passive position given that the US military acknowledged the grave risks the trip could trigger," Lü Xiang, an expert on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday.

It is believed the Chinese side will act on what it has said, given the sensitivity and severity of the matter, and its reaction to her trip could be the most severe in decades, marking a game-changer for the relations between the mainland and Taiwan, Lü said.

Biden said on Wednesday that the military thinks this planned trip is "not a good idea right now." US media outlets also pointed out that the White House clash with Pelosi over the matter has spilled into the open. The Washington Post said in an editorial that the trip "puts the Biden administration in a bind."

Lawmakers including Pelosi rarely consider national interests at a global level, they only care about their own political agenda, a Beijing-based expert on China-US relations who preferred not to be named told the Global Times on Sunday.

"Pelosi playing the Taiwan card aims to instigate military confrontation between China and the US, which is an incomprehensible move that not only hurts China-US relations but also the US itself, toward which the White House should have deeper understanding than Pelosi," he said.

Confusing signals

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently told the Aspen Security Forum that the US policy concerning the Taiwan question remains unchanged and Biden remains committed to a policy of "strategic ambiguity" regarding the matter, according to media reports.

Bloomberg also said in an article on Friday that Taiwan has been left "hurt" and confused by contradictory signals coming out of Washington over the possible visit.

Some Chinese experts said from what Biden has said over Pelosi's plan, they could tell the US President understands the severe consequences of the visit on which he appears to disagree, but the US top leader needs to play a more active role within the Democratic Party to prevent it from causing a catastrophic impact on US-China relations.

"Perhaps, the White House is not truly opposed to such a visit, but they don't want Pelosi to interrupt the Biden administration's agenda on the Taiwan question," Diao Daming, an associate professor at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Hopefully, the US government will fulfill its promises on China-US relations including not seeking conflicts with China and not supporting "Taiwan independence", but we need to fully prepare with the bottom-line thinking, Diao said.

Even though the Biden administration appears to understand the severity of the matter, the US official stressed that the administration cannot tell Pelosi what to do. In the Washington Post article, an unnamed official claimed that "we have to respect separation of powers."

"It's a bluff to use the excuse of separation of powers," Lü said, noting that a House Speaker would not be able to make a foreign visit without the coordination of the executive branch due to security issues.

"If the Biden administration firmly opposes it, the trip won't be made," he said.

If Pelosi visits Taiwan, no one will believe it is because Biden "cannot control her." People are more likely to believe that her visit is part of Washington's tactic of "good cop/bad cop," Hu Xijin, a commentator for the Global Times, recently said.

He also suggested that China establish a no-fly zone over Taiwan, or that the People's Liberation Army should send military aircraft to accompany Pelosi's plane when it enters the island and fly cross the island

globaltimes.cn

13. Actually, the Russian Economy Is Imploding

Nine myths:

Myth 1: Russia can redirect its gas exports and sell to Asia in lieu of Europe.

Myth 2: Since oil is more fungible than gas, Putin can just sell more to Asia.

Myth 3: Russia is making up for lost Western businesses and imports by replacing them with imports from Asia.

Myth 4: Russian domestic consumption and consumer health remain strong.

Myth 5: Global businesses have not really pulled out of Russia, and business, capital, and talent flight from Russia are overstated.

Myth 6: Putin is running a budget surplus thanks to high energy prices.

Myth 7: Putin has hundreds of billions of dollars in rainy day funds, so the Kremlin’s finances are unlikely to be strained anytime soon.

Myth 8: The ruble is the world’s strongest-performing currency this year.

Myth 9: The implementation of sanctions and business retreats are now largely done, and no more economic pressure is needed.

Actually, the Russian Economy Is Imploding

Nine myths about the effects of sanctions and business retreats, debunked.

By Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Lester Crown professor in management practice and a senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, and Steven Tian, the director of research at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.

Foreign Policy · by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Steven Tian · July 22, 2022

Five months into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there remains a startling lack of understanding by many Western policymakers and commentators of the economic dimensions of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion and what it has meant for Russia’s economic positioning both domestically and globally.

Far from being ineffective or disappointing, as many have argued, international sanctions and voluntary business retreats have exerted a devastating effect over Russia’s economy. The deteriorating economy has served as a powerful if underappreciated complement to the deteriorating political landscape facing Putin.

That these misunderstandings persist is not entirely surprising given the lack of available economic data. In fact, many of the excessively sanguine Russian economic analyses, forecasts, and projections that have proliferated in recent months share a crucial methodological flaw: These analyses draw most, if not all, of their underlying evidence from periodic economic releases by the Russian government itself. Numbers released by the Kremlin have long been held to be largely if not always credible, but there are certain problems.

First, the Kremlin’s economic releases are becoming increasingly cherry-picked—partial and incomplete, selectively tossing out unfavorable metrics. The Russian government has progressively withheld an increasing number of key statistics that, prior to the war, were updated on a monthly basis, including all foreign trade data. Among these are statistics relating to exports and imports, particularly with Europe; oil and gas monthly output data; commodity export quantities; capital inflows and outflows; financial statements of major companies, which used to be released on a mandatory basis by companies themselves; central bank monetary base data; foreign direct investment data; lending and loan origination data; and other data related to the availability of credit. Even Rosaviatsiya, the federal air transport agency, abruptly ceased publishing data on airline and airport passenger volumes.

Since the Kremlin stopped releasing updated numbers, constraining the availability of economic data for researchers to draw upon, many excessively rosy economic forecasts have irrationally extrapolated economic releases from the early days of the invasion, when sanctions and the business retreat had not taken full effect. Even those favorable statistics that have been released are dubious, given the political pressure the Kremlin has exerted to corrupt statistical integrity.

Mindful of the dangers of accepting Kremlin statistics at face value, our team of experts, using private Russian-language and direct data sources including high-frequency consumer data, cross-channel checks, releases from Russia’s international trade partners, and data mining of complex shipping data, have released one of the first comprehensive economic analyses measuring Russian current economic activity five months into the invasion, with contributions from Franek Sokolowski, Michal Wyrebkowski, Mateusz Kasprowicz, Michal Boron, Yash Bhansali, and Ryan Vakil. From our analysis, it becomes clear: Business retreats and sanctions are crushing the Russian economy in the short term and the long term. Based on our research, we are able to challenge nine widely held but misleading myths about Russia’s supposed economic resilience.

Myth 1: Russia can redirect its gas exports and sell to Asia in lieu of Europe.

This is one of Putin’s favorite and most misleading talking points, doubling down on a much-hyped pivot to the east. But natural gas is not a fungible export for Russia. Less than 10 percent of Russia’s gas capacity is liquefied natural gas, so Russian gas exports remain reliant on a system of fixed pipelines carrying piped gas. The vast majority of Russia’s pipelines flow toward Europe; those pipelines, which originate in western Russia, are not connectable to a separate nascent network of pipelines that link Eastern Siberia to Asia, which contains only 10 percent of the capacity of the European pipeline network. Indeed, the 16.5 billion cubic meters of gas exported by Russia to China last year represented less than 10 percent of the 170 billion cubic meters of natural gas sent by Russia to Europe.

Long-planned Asian pipeline projects currently under construction are still years away from becoming operational, much less hastily initiated new projects, and financing of these costly gas pipeline projects also now puts Russia at a significant disadvantage.

Overall, Russia needs world markets far more than the world needs Russian supplies; Europe received 83 percent of Russian gas exports but drew only 46 percent of its own supply from Russia in 2021. With limited pipeline connectivity to Asia, more Russian gas stays in the ground; indeed, the Russian state energy company Gazprom’s published data shows production is already down more than 35 percent year-on-year this month. For all Putin’s energy blackmail of Europe, he is doing so at significant financial cost to his own coffers.

Myth 2: Since oil is more fungible than gas, Putin can just sell more to Asia.

Russian oil exports now also reflect Putin’s diminished economic and geopolitical clout. Recognizing that Russia has nowhere else to turn, and mindful that they have more purchasing options than Russia has buyers, China and India are driving an unprecedented approximately $35 discount on Russian Urals oil purchases, even though the historical spread has never ranged beyond $5—not even during the 2014 Crimean crisis—and at times Russian oil has actually sold at a premium to Brent and WTI oil. Furthermore, it takes Russian oil tankers an average of 35 days to reach East Asia, versus two to seven days to reach Europe, which is why historically only 39 percent of Russian oil has gone to Asia versus the 53 percent destined for Europe.

This margin pressure is felt keenly by Russia, as it remains a relatively high-cost producer relative to the other major oil producers, with some of the highest break-evens of any producing country. The Russian upstream industry has also long been reliant on Western technology, which combined with the loss of both Russia’s erstwhile primary market and Russia’s diminished economic clout leads to even the Russian energy ministry revising its projections of long-term oil output downward. There is no doubt that, as many energy experts predicted, Russia is losing its status as an energy superpower, with an irrevocable deterioration in its strategic economic positioning as an erstwhile reliable supplier of commodities.

Myth 3: Russia is making up for lost Western businesses and imports by replacing them with imports from Asia.

Imports play an important role within Russia’s domestic economy, consisting of about 20 percent of Russian GDP, and, despite Putin’s bellicose delusions of total self-sufficiency, the country needs crucial inputs, parts, and technology from hesitant trade partners. Despite some lingering supply chain leakiness, Russian imports have collapsed by over 50 percent in recent months.

China has not moved into the Russian market to the extent that many feared; in fact, according to the most recent monthly releases from the Chinese General Administration of Customs, Chinese exports to Russia plummeted by more than 50 percent from the start of the year to April, falling from over $8.1 billion monthly to $3.8 billion. Considering China exports seven times as much to the United States than Russia, it appears that even Chinese companies are more concerned about running afoul of U.S. sanctions than of losing marginal positions in the Russian market, reflecting Russia’s weak economic hand with its global trade partners.

Myth 4: Russian domestic consumption and consumer health remain strong.

Some of the sectors most dependent on international supply chains have been hit with debilitating inflation around 40-60 percent—on extremely low sales volumes. For example, foreign car sales in Russia fell by an average of 95 percent across major car companies, with sales ground to a complete halt.

Amid supply shortages, soaring prices, and fading consumer sentiment, it is hardly surprising that Russian Purchasing Managers’ Index readings—which capture how purchasing managers are viewing the economy—have plunged, particularly for new orders, alongside plunges in consumer spending and retail sales data by around 20 percent year-over-year. Other readings of high-frequency data such as e-commerce sales within Yandex and same-store traffic at retail sites across Moscow reinforce steep declines in consumer spending and sales, no matter what the Kremlin says.

Myth 5: Global businesses have not really pulled out of Russia, and business, capital, and talent flight from Russia are overstated.

Global businesses represent around 12 percent of Russia’s workforce (5 million workers), and, as a result of the business retreat, over 1,000 companies representing around 40 percent of Russia’s GDP have curtailed operations in the country, reversing three decades’ worth of foreign investment and buttressing unprecedented simultaneous capital and talent flight in a mass exodus of 500,000 individuals, many of whom are exactly the highly educated, technically skilled workers Russia cannot afford to lose. Even the mayor of Moscow has acknowledged an expected massive loss of jobs as businesses go through the process of fully exiting.

Myth 6: Putin is running a budget surplus thanks to high energy prices.

Russia is actually on pace to run a budget deficit this year equivalent to 2 percent of GDP, according to its own finance minister—one of the only times the budget has been in deficit in years, despite high energy prices—thanks to Putin’s unsustainable spending spree; on top of dramatic increases in military spending, Putin is resorting to patently unsustainable, dramatic fiscal and monetary intervention, including a laundry list of Kremlin pet projects, all of which have contributed to the money supply nearly doubling in Russia since the invasion began. Putin’s reckless spending is clearly putting Kremlin finances under strain.

Myth 7: Putin has hundreds of billions of dollars in rainy day funds, so the Kremlin’s finances are unlikely to be strained anytime soon.

The most obvious challenge facing Putin’s rainy day funds is the fact that of his around $600 billion in foreign exchange reserves, accumulated from years’ worth of oil and gas revenues, $300 billion is frozen and out of reach with allied countries across the United States, Europe, and Japan restricting access. There have been some calls to seize this $300 billion to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine.

Putin’s remaining foreign exchange reserves are decreasing at an alarming rate, by around $75 billion since the start of the war. Critics point out that official foreign exchange reserves of the central bank technically can only decrease due to international sanctions placed on the central bank, and they suggest that nonsanctioned financial institutions such as Gazprombank could still accumulate such reserves in place of the central bank. While this may be technically true, there is simultaneously no evidence to suggest that Gazprombank is actually accumulating any reserves given sizable strain on its own loan book.

Furthermore, although the finance ministry had planned to reinstate a long-standing Russian budgetary rule that surplus revenue from oil and gas sales should be channeled into the sovereign wealth fund, Putin axed this proposal as well as accompanying guidelines directing how and where the National Wealth Fund can be spent—as Finance Minister Anton Siluanov floated the idea of withdrawing funds from the National Wealth Fund equivalent to a third of the entire fund to pay for this deficit this year. If Russia is running a budget deficit requiring the drawdown of a third of its sovereign wealth fund when oil and gas revenues are still relatively strong, all signs indicate a Kremlin that may be running out of money much faster than conventionally appreciated.

Myth 8: The ruble is the world’s strongest-performing currency this year.

One of Putin’s favorite propaganda talking points, the appreciation of the ruble is an artificial reflection of unprecedented, draconian capital control—which rank among the most restrictive of any in the world. The restrictions make it effectively impossible for any Russian to legally purchase dollars or even access a majority of their dollar deposits, while artificially inflating demand through forced purchases by major exporters—all of which remain largely in place today.

The official exchange rate is misleading, anyhow, as the ruble is, unsurprisingly, trading at dramatically diminished volumes compared to before the invasion on low liquidity. By many reports, much of this erstwhile trading has migrated to unofficial ruble black markets. Even the Bank of Russia has admitted that the exchange rate is a reflection more of government policies and a blunt expression of the country’s trade balance rather than freely tradeable liquid foreign exchange markets.

Myth 9: The implementation of sanctions and business retreats are now largely done, and no more economic pressure is needed.

Russia’s economy has been severely damaged, but the business retreats and sanctions applied against Russia are incomplete. Even with the deterioration in Russia’s exports positioning, it continues to draw too much oil and gas revenue from the sanctions carveout, which sustains Putin’s extravagant domestic spending and obfuscates structural economic weaknesses. The Kyiv School of Economics and Yermak-McFaul International Working Group have led the way in proposing additional sanctions measures across individual sanctions, energy sanctions, and financial sanctions, led by former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and the experts Tymofiy Mylovanov, Nataliia Shapoval, and Andriy Boytsun. Looking ahead, there is no path out of economic oblivion for Russia as long as the allied countries remain unified in maintaining and increasing sanctions pressure against Russia.

Defeatist headlines arguing that Russia’s economy has bounced back are simply not factual—the facts are that, by any metric and on any level, the Russian economy is reeling, and now is not the time to step on the brakes.

See Also: Is It Time for the U.S. to Issue a Digital Dollar?

Foreign Policy · by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Steven Tian · July 22, 2022

14. Brit special forces 'helped liberate Ukraine's Snake with Bond-style submarines'

​From UK tabloid media. Circular reporting among other tabloid like outlets. based on the article below. I have not seen this in any mainstream media reporting (yet).

Photos at the link: https://www.the-sun.com/news/5846398/british-special-forces-train-ukraine-with-underwater-vehicles/

Brit special forces 'helped liberate Ukraine's Snake with Bond-style submarines'

the-sun.com · by Elsa Buchanan · July 23, 2022

BRITISH special forces reportedly trained Ukrainian commandos for their massive assault on Snake Island, it has been revealed.

The Special Boat Service, the special forces unit of the Royal Navy, allegedly showed the troops how to use James Bond-style underwater vehicles.

7

Snake Island, also known as Serpent Island or Zmiinyi Island, belongs to UkraineCredit: AP

7

A massive attack launched by Ukraine caused “significant losses” to the Russian armyCredit: Reuters

7

The Navy's special forces unit showed Ukrainian troops how to use James Bond-style underwater vehicles (screenshot taken from the 1965 Thunderball Bond film)Credit: Amazon Prime

7

The Special Boat Service allegedly helped Ukrainian troops retake Snake IslandCredit: Alamy

Known as Diver Propulsion Devices or sea scooters, the vehicles are designed to transport frogmen from a combat swimmer unit or naval Special Forces underwater, over long distances.

It has now been revealed that the Dorset-based Special Boat Service travelled to war-torn Ukraine to train the Ukrainian 73rd Naval Special Purpose Centre.

An Army source told Sunday Mirror: “The 73rd became the tip of the sword and provided the fighting force that landed on the island.

“The Ukrainian special forces are as tough as they come but what they have missed out on is our specialist kit and training.

READ MORE IN UKRAINE WAR NEWS

PAIN OF WAR

“It has paid dividends with the recapture of Snake Island.”

Snake Island is a small but strategic rocky piece of land, near the Danube Delta, in the Black Sea 22 miles off Ukraine’s south coast.

Snake Island was seized by Russia just days after Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine in 2022.

With the British Navy's help, however, the Ukrainian frogmen surveyed the coast for landmines then gave the signal for the main group to attack the Russian garrison.

On June 30, Russia announced it would be withdrawing its forces from the island.

The island caught the world's imagination when Putin's murderous men captured it as 13 defiant Ukrainian border guards refused to give up the territory, and replied: "Go f**k yourselves!" over loudspeakers.

Ukraine recaptured the island last month after its attack caused "significant losses" to the Russian army.

Ukrainians bombarded the enemy positions with rockets, missiles and drones with commanders saying they launched an “intense strike by various forces and methods of destruction”.

And just a few days later Russia was forced to retreat in a devastating blow to Vladimir Putin's war- an act that was branded " a gesture of goodwill".

The Russian defence ministry was quoted as saying: “As a gesture of goodwill, the Russian military completed their tasks on Zmeiny [Snake] Island and withdrew the garrison stationed there.”

The Ministry of Defence said: “We do not comment on Special Forces.”

7

Russia was forced to retreat from Snake Island in a devastating blow to Putin's warCredit: AP

7

Troops hang up the Ukrainian flag on Snake Island after its recaptureCredit: Cover Images

7

Ukrainian troops after their retaking of the key strategic outpost of Snake IslandCredit: Cover Images

the-sun.com · by Elsa Buchanan · July 23, 2022​

15. China’s Military Aid Is Probably Less Than You Think

China’s Military Aid Is Probably Less Than You Think

Put simply, China is not a world leader in military aid.

thediplomat.com · by Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga · July 23, 2022

Advertisement

The central role of Western military aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia has highlighted military aid as a critical part of broader U.S. security cooperation efforts. Amid strategic competition with China, one might assume that Beijing would have a large military aid program as part of its own approach to winning friends and influence through military diplomacy, its somewhat analogous version of security cooperation. That might not be a safe assumption.

A new RAND report explores security cooperation by the United States, China, and Russia amidst strategic competition and finds that “the United States and its allies enjoy a significant competitive advantage.” As part of this new report, we researched and compiled the first comprehensive assessment of Chinese military aid.

China’s $560 million total military aid during 2013-2018 pales in comparison to the U.S. total of over $35 billion over the same period, with U.S. military aid to the top five recipients in just the Indo-Pacific Command region totaling over $1 billion. Beijing’s total is also perhaps less than half of Russia’s total over the same timeframe. France and Germany each contributed almost $2 billion in 2017 alone. Put simply, China is not a world leader in military aid.

The report defined military aid as military equipment given to another country as a donation, not a sale or even a no-cost loan, and our data includes not just actual donations but also commitments. Though the time period covered for this report was 2013-2018, we have continued to watch Chinese military aid deliveries and commitments since that time and have not seen a dramatic departure from this pattern.

The top recipients of Chinese foreign military aid over the 2013-2018 period were Cambodia, with a reported $100 million pledged in 2016 ahead of elections for Prime Minister Hun Sen (plus more in 2018), and the African Union, with $100 million pledged in 2015 by Xi Jinping during his big United Nations speech. These reflect two different apparent motivations for Beijing. For Cambodia, Beijing likely sought to maintain its influence with the Cambodian government. For the African Union, Beijing was likely seeking to build its soft power in Africa. Another apparent motivation, though much less common, could be improving China’s own security via improving stability along its borders. This motivation could explain the $73 million China pledged to Afghanistan in 2016 for countering the Taliban.

Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.

Graphic by the RAND corporation.

The countries missing from the list of recipients of Chinese military largesse are equally interesting, though perhaps not surprising. We found no evidence that Beijing gave its only ally, North Korea, any military aid over 2013-2018, a period when bilateral relations were generally poor. We also did not identify any military aid to China’s top arms buyers of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria, and others – why give when you can sell?

There is little known about Russia’s recent request for military aid from China, which apparently was rejected. Even if China was warm to the idea of helping Russia, it seems unlikely it would have actually provided “aid” for free – Moscow has plenty of things like energy resources and military hardware that Beijing could have asked for in return, even if it didn’t want to ask Russia for cash.

Advertisement

There are several important caveats to these numbers. First, the Chinese government has never released its own total, and very rarely actually confirms, much less provides a value for, its military aid publicly – the commitments to Cambodia and Afghanistan, for example, were announced by the recipient governments. This means it is possible our estimate understates Chinese totals, though it is difficult to imagine Beijing and recipients hiding sufficient enough donations to change our estimated total by an order of magnitude.

Second, our estimate includes both commitments and actual donations – and given Beijing’s track record on other aid pledges, it is quite possible that not all of these commitments will materialize.

Lastly, this is only the first attempt at a comprehensive count of Chinese military aid, and there is room for this research to be expanded and updated.

The Philippines is a good example of media hype obscuring the reality of limited Chinese security cooperation. Just like Beijing has not delivered on its 2016 economic promise of $24 billion to Manila during Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s early flirtation with China, a 2017 Chinese offer of a $500 million loan to buy Chinese military equipment has gone unused. Beijing did donate $21 million over 2013-2018, including $7 million worth of rifles and ammunition in 2017 for counterterrorism and $14 million worth of patrol boats in 2018. Since our research was completed, Beijing has continued sending military aid, including almost $12 million worth of “rescue and relief equipment” in January 2022. Yet this again pales in comparison to the $496 million of U.S. military aid to the Philippines over 2013-2018 (and $770 million over 2015-2020).

We identified several longstanding, and well known, issues that still may need to be resolved. Perhaps most importantly, legacy U.S. commitments dating to the War on Terror era and even earlier could be reconsidered as the Biden administration continues to focus on strategic competition with China and Russia, and Washington might also develop targeted programs for priority countries. The United States also could do better in coordinating with allies and partners – Japan, for example, has donated equipment to the Philippines and Indonesia, among others in Southeast Asia. Finally, such aid does not always have to be focused on warfighting capabilities, as it has been for Ukraine. As most countries in Asia hedge in the China-U.S. strategic competition, supporting peacetime priorities such as maritime domain awareness is also important and may be even more welcome by those capitals.

While the United States could do better, the report illustrates that it has dramatically outspent China in military aid around the world and this should offer significant advantages in the intensifying China-U.S. strategic competition.

Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga

Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga is a policy researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation, where he focuses on Asian security issues.

thediplomat.com · by Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga · July 23, 2022

16. HIMARS "game changer" in Ukraine war, Russia "in dire shape": Ex-general

HIMARS "game changer" in Ukraine war, Russia "in dire shape": Ex-general

Newsweek · by Jason Lemon · July 23, 2022

Retired U.S. Army General Mark Hertling said Saturday that High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) given to Ukraine to assist in its fight against Russia are a "game changer," contending that Moscow's forces are now "in dire shape."

The White House on Friday announced that an additional $270 million in security assistance would be sent to Ukraine, including four additional HIMARS. The rocket systems have been seen as crucial to helping Kyiv's forces repel Moscow's military.

That announcement from the Biden administration came after a senior U.S. defense official told journalists Friday that Ukraine had utilized HIMARS to take out more than 100 "high value" targets. Those strikes effectively destroyed ammunition depots, long-range artillery positions, command posts, air-defense sites, and radar and communications nodes, the official said.

"As for HIMARS - w/ fewer rounds, greater range, precision accuracy - it's a game changer," Hertling tweeted in a lengthy thread Saturday, providing analysis on the war. The retired general previously served as the commander of the U.S. Army Europe and the Seventh Army.

As for HIMARS - w/ fewer rounds, greater range, precision accuracy - it's a game changer.

But…a pet peeve of mine (for reporters & others):

“Taking out” implies dating.

“Taking down” implies wrestling.

HIMARS destroys things, kills people. We ought use those terms. 10/ pic.twitter.com/BvvVQ6mZkR

— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) July 23, 2022

"Russia is in dire shape & losing, Ukraine is adapting to the fight & winning," he asserted.

Earlier on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared his appreciation for the new HIMARS being sent by the U.S.

Thank you @POTUS for the new defense aid package for Ukraine. Critically important, powerful arms will save our soldiers' lives, speed up the liberation of our land from the Russian aggressor. I appreciate the strategic friendship between our nations. Together to victory!

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 23, 2022

"Thank you @POTUS [Biden] for the new defense aid package for Ukraine. Critically important, powerful arms will save our soldiers' lives, speed up the liberation of our land from the Russian aggressor. I appreciate the strategic friendship between our nations. Together to victory!" Zelensky wrote on Twitter several hours after the White House made the announcement.

Lithuania's Minister of Foreign Affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis touted the delivery of HIMARS to Ukraine as successfully pressuring Russia, leading to a diplomatic breakthrough regarding the port in Odessa, Ukraine.

"The agreement to unblock Odesa would have been impossible without HIMARS. It's now very clear that the war will end earlier if we arm Ukraine faster," Landsbergis tweeted Friday.

The agreement to unblock Odesa would have been impossible without HIMARS. It's now very clear that the war will end earlier if we arm Ukraine faster.

— Gabrielius Landsbergis (@GLandsbergis) July 22, 2022

The U.S. has provided Ukraine with billions of dollars in military and humanitarian assistance as it defends itself against Moscow's aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the internationally condemned war five months ago on February 24, bizarrely claiming that Kyiv's government is led by Nazis. In reality, Zelensky is Jewish and had family members killed in the Holocaust genocide perpetuated by the German Nazis in World War II.

Retired U.S. Army General Mark Hertling called the HIMARS used by Ukraine against Russia a "game changer" in a Saturday tweet. Above, HIMARS launchers fire salvoes during the "African Lion" military exercise in the Grier Labouihi region in southeastern Morocco on June 9, 2021. FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images

On Wednesday, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that Ukraine's use of HIMARS was "degrading" Russia's capabilities.

"These strikes are steadily degrading the Russian ability to supply their troops, command and control of their forces, and carry out their illegal war of aggression," he said.

Russia claimed on Friday that it had destroyed four HIMARS this month that were utilized by Ukraine. However, U.S. and Ukrainian officials have disputed those reports.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian foreign ministry for comment.

Newsweek · by Jason Lemon · July 23, 2022

17. Ukrainian intelligence suggests Putin used a body double in Iran talks

Grain of salt (or perhaps boulder) but you never know.

Photos at the link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11041917/Vladimir-Putin-replaced-BODY-DOUBLE-flew-Iran-Ukrainian-intelligence-claims.html

Ukrainian intelligence suggests Putin used a body double in Iran talks

Vladimir Putin was replaced by a BODY DOUBLE when he flew to Iran to meet Turkey's President Erdogan, Ukrainian intelligence claims

• Ukraine intelligence sources claim Vladimir Putin may have used a body double  
• Major-General Kyrylo Budanov raised suspicions about his behaviour on air
• Putin met President Raisi and Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran to forge closer relation

By WILL STEWART FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 09:48 EDT, 23 July 2022 | UPDATED: 12:11 EDT, 23 July 2022

Daily Mail · by Will Stewart for MailOnline · July 23, 2022

A Vladimir Putin body 'double' may have been used for his arrival at a summit in Tehran this week, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence.

While the Russian leader looked awkward as he came down the steps of his presidential plane in Tehran, Ukrainian sources noted he moved unusually quickly and was more alert than in prior public appearances.

The Russian premier looked animated when greeting the waiting party, before removing his jacket and clambering into a heavily armoured limousine.

Intelligence supremo Major-General Kyrylo Budanov was suspicious in a live interview on Ukraine's 1+1 news channel.

Ukrainian reports said Budanov suggested a Putin lookalike could have flown to Tehran to meet with the presidents of Iran and Turkey.

'I will only hint,' he said.

'Please look at the moment of Putin's exit from the plane. Is it Putin at all?'

A Vladimir Putin body 'double' may have been used for his arrival at a summit in Tehran this week, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence

While the Russian leader looked awkward as he came down the steps of his presidential plane in Tehran, Ukrainian sources noted he moved unusually quickly and was more alert than in prior public appearances

Major-General Kyrylo Budanov (right) raised suspicions over an alleged body double of the Russian premier, whose health has been the subject of intense speculation in recent months

The Russian leader's visit to Tehran where he met Iran's leadership, plus Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, attracted worldwide attention.

It is only the second time Putin has been abroad since launching his brutal invasion of Ukraine five months ago.

In one video, Erdoğan kept Putin waiting, with the Russian ruler appearing ill at ease as he shuffled his feet and made strange facial movements.

But earlier Ukraine did not suggest this was a Putin double.

At the time, official Anton Gerashchenko posted on Telegram: 'Erdogan made Putin wait during the meeting in Tehran.

'The whole spectrum of emotions of the humiliated and insulted Führer is on his face.

'The bunker is indeed the best place to stay with such a face.'

The Russian leader's visit to Tehran where he met Iran's leadership, plus Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, attracted worldwide attention

It marked just the second time Putin has been abroad since launching his brutal invasion of Ukraine five months ago

Ukrainian news agency UNIAN commented: 'The dwarf doesn't like to be disrespected.'

Putin two years ago admitted that officials had considered using doubles, but he claimed the idea was rejected.

'I discarded the idea of any doubles,' he said.

He was advised in the early 2000s when Russia was hit by terrorist attacks that a lookalike should take his place at events where the head of state might be at risk, he said.

'This was during the toughest time of our war against terrorism,' he said.

Body doubles were reportedly used by former Kremlin leaders, for example longtime Soviet supremos Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev.

Meanwhile, a Russian expert on Putin has strongly disputed a CIA claim that the Kremlin leader is 'too healthy' and showing no evidence of multiple medical problems.

Political scientist Valery Solovey challenged a claim by CIA director William Burns this week that there was no intelligence to suggest Putin was seriously ill.

Solovey, who has long claimed the Russian leader is ailing, said: 'The Americans, the CIA particularly, have information on the real state of health of the Russian president.

'They definitely know that he has serious troubles, including mental ones.'

Putin two years ago admitted that officials had considered using doubles, but he claimed the idea was rejected

Putin arrived in Iran to forge a fearsome new alliance, with both sanction-hit countries united by their hatred for the West

Political scientist Valery Solovey (pictured) challenged a claim by CIA director William Burns this week that there was no intelligence to suggest Putin was seriously ill

Solovey, a former professor at Moscow's prestigious Institute of International Relations, suggested that the 'too healthy' comment was made because the US is behind the scenes negotiating with Russia.

Burns had said: 'There are lots of rumours about President Putin and as far as we can tell he's entirely too healthy.'

Solovey countered: 'The Putin's health topic is one of the [most] central in Russian policy discussions.'

The Iranian Army launches a drone carrying a missile during military drills, with Russia expected to receive a shipment

A Russian delegation visited an Iranian airfield on June 8 and July 5 to inspect the drones which could be used to direct artillery fire and destroy Ukrainian military hardware

He claimed the denials of medical issues 'only reinforce suspicions that there is some problem'.

'[When] Putin shows up, what do we see?

'A man who limps, a man with dark spots, a man who has to interrupt meetings for ostensible "consultations".

'In reality, he needs medical assistance at that moment… People make conclusions based on what they see.

'TV is a big liar, but it becomes more difficult to hide the real state of affairs.'

Solovey, like channel General SVR, has claimed previously that Putin is suffering from serious illnesses including cancer, Parkinson's disease and a schizoaffective disorder.

Daily Mail · by Will Stewart for MailOnline · July 23, 2022

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

VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com