Quotes of the Day:
ARTICLE IV
Recommendations to the Governments Concerned on Both Sides
60. In order to insure the peaceful settlement of the Korean question, the military Commanders of both sides hereby recommend to the governments of the countries concerned on both sides that, within three (3) months after the Armistice Agreement is signed and becomes effective, a political conference of a higher level of both sides be held by representatives appointed respectively to settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, the peaceful settlement of the Korean question, etc.
-1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement
"Our soldiers fought in the Korean War to push back communism. As a result of their effort and the effort of our allies, South Korea is free today."
- Pierre Poilievre, Canada
"East Asia has prospered since the end of the Vietnam War, and Northeast Asia has prospered since the end of the Korean War in a way that seems unimaginable when you think of the history of the first half of the century."
- William C. Kirby
1. A 2nd New Nuclear Missile Base for China, and Many Questions About Strategy
2. China floods: ‘Digital dark age’ after disaster wreaks havoc on internet and electricity
3. ‘It Failed Miserably’: After Wargaming Loss, Joint Chiefs Are Overhauling How the US Military Will Fight
4. Full Spectrum: Capabilities And Authorities In Cyber And The Information Environment
5. Cuba and How Biden Can Avoid Another Mariel Boatlift
6. The Rising Risk of China’s Intellectual-Property Theft
7. Why China Will Not Cooperate with the West: The Pandemic Made Things Worse
8. President Biden, Keep China Away From American Farmland
9. U.S. allegations of China hacking disingenuous and self-defeating
10. In Stinging Rebuke, China Tells U.S. Diplomat That Its Rise Can’t Be Stopped
11. U.S., China square off in rare diplomatic meeting in Tianjin
12. Critics say Biden missing a chance to back freedom movement in Cuba
13. How to Avert Disaster in Afghanistan
14. A U.S. Defense Budget That Makes China Smile
15. Exclusive: Spec Ops Vets on why we must save Afghan Interpreters
16. Joe Biden’s Afghan pullout could end in tragedy
17. We’re Not Prepared to Live in This Surveillance Society
18. During Latest Exchange, China Presents US With 2 Lists of Grievances
19. The Problem with Biden’s Democracy Agenda
20. BRI vs New Quad for Afghanistan’s coming boom
21. We're Designing Ourselves to Lose
22. MC-145B Wily Coyote Special Ops Planes Will Be Able To Launch Stealth Cruise Missiles
23. Strategic Outpost’s Sixth Annual Summer Vacation Reading List
1. A 2nd New Nuclear Missile Base for China, and Many Questions About Strategy
Seems like a very important question. Is China adopting a new nuclear strategy?
A 2nd New Nuclear Missile Base for China, and Many Questions About Strategy
By William J. Broad and David E. Sanger
July 26, 2021
Is China scrapping its “minimum deterrent” strategy and joining an arms race? Or is it looking to create a negotiating card, in case it is drawn into arms control negotiations?
Chinese engineers erected an inflatable dome over the construction site of an underground missile silo, left, to hide the work below. Support facilities and temporary storage for construction equipment are seen at right.Credit...Planet Labs Inc.
July 26, 2021Updated 8:03 p.m. ET
In the barren desert 1,200 miles west of Beijing, the Chinese government is digging a new field of what appears to be 110 silos for launching nuclear missiles. It is the second such field discovered by analysts studying commercial satellite images in recent weeks.
It may signify a vast expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal — the cravings of an economic and technological superpower to show that, after decades of restraint, it is ready to wield an arsenal the size of Washington’s, or Moscow’s.
Or, it may simply be a creative, if costly, negotiating ploy.
The new silos are clearly being built to be discovered. The most recent silo field, on which construction began in March, is in the eastern part of Xinjiang province, not far from one of China’s notorious “re-education” camps in the city of Hami. It was identified late last week by nuclear experts at the Federation of American Scientists, using images from a fleet of Planet Labs satellites, and shared with The New York Times.
Source: The Federation of American Scientists and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
By Scott Reinhard
For decades, since its first successful nuclear test in the 1960s, China has maintained a “minimum deterrent,” which most outside experts judge at around 300 nuclear weapons. (The Chinese will not say, and the U.S. government assessments are classified.) If accurate, that is less than a fifth of the number deployed by the United States and Russia, and in the nuclear world, China has always cast itself as occupying something of a moral high ground, avoiding expensive and dangerous arms races.
“The silo construction at Yumen and Hami constitutes the most significant expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal ever,” Matt Korda and Hans M. Kristensen wrote in a study of the new silo field. For decades, they noted, China has operated about 20 silos for big, liquid-fuel missiles, called the DF-5. But the newly discovered field, combined with one hundreds of miles away in Yumen, in northeast China, that was discovered by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., will give the country roughly 230 new silos. The existence of that first field, of about 120 silos, was reported earlier by The Washington Post.
The mystery is why China’s strategy has changed.
There are several theories. The simplest is that China now views itself as a full-spectrum economic, technological and military superpower — and wants an arsenal to match that status. Another possibility is that China is concerned about American missile defenses, which are increasingly effective, and India’s nuclear buildup, which has been rapid. Then there is the announcement of new hypersonic and autonomous weapons by Russia, and the possibility that Beijing wants a more effective deterrent.
A third is that China is worried that its few ground-based missiles are vulnerable to attack — and by building more than 200 silos, spread out in two locations, they can play a shell game, moving 20 or more missiles around and making the United States guess where they are. That technique is as old as the nuclear arms race.
The new silos, top left, bottom left and bottom right, are situated a bit less than two miles from one another. A forthcoming construction site for another missile silo is visible at top right.Credit...Planet Labs Inc.
“Just because you build the silos doesn’t mean you have to fill them all with missiles,” said Vipin Narang, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who specializes in nuclear strategy. “They can move them around.”
And, of course, they can trade them away. China may believe that sooner or later it will be drawn into arms control negotiations with the United States and Russia — something President Donald J. Trump tried to force during his last year in office, when he said he would not renew the New START treaty with Russia unless China, which has never participated in nuclear arms control, was included. The Chinese government dismissed the idea, saying that if the Americans were so concerned, they should cut their arsenal by four-fifths to Chinese levels.
The result was a stalemate. At the very end of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his arms control envoy, Marshall Billingslea, wrote that “we’ve asked Beijing for transparency, and to join the United States and Russia in crafting a new arms control agreement covering all categories of nuclear weapons.”
“It is time that China stopped posturing and began to comport itself responsibly,” they wrote.
But the Biden administration had concluded that it would be unwise to let New START expire with Russia simply because China refused to join. Once in office, President Biden moved quickly to renew the treaty with Russia, but his administration has said that at some point it wants China to enter into some kind of agreement.
Those conversations have yet to begin. The deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, is in China this week for the first visit of a senior American diplomat since Mr. Biden took office, though it is not clear that nuclear weapons are on the agenda. She is headed next to nuclear discussions with Russia.
At the White House, the National Security Council declined to comment on evidence of the expanding Chinese arsenal.
It is likely that American spy satellites picked up the new construction months ago. But it all became public after Mr. Korda, a research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, used civilian satellite images to examine the arid hinterlands of Xinjiang province, a rugged area of mountains and deserts in northwestern China. He was hunting for visual clues of silo construction that matched what researchers had already uncovered.
In February, the Federation of American Scientists reported the expansion of missile silos at a military training site near Jilantai, a city of Inner Mongolia. The group found 14 new silos under construction. Then came the discovery in Yumen.
In scanning the wilds of Xinjiang province, Mr. Korda was specifically looking for inflatable domes — not unlike those that house some tennis courts. Chinese engineers erect them over the construction sites of underground missile silos to hide the work below. Suddenly, about 250 miles northwest of the recently discovered base, he found a run of inflatable domes that were nearly identical to those at Yumen, at what turned out to be another sprawling military site.
The sprawling construction site covers roughly 300 square miles in the eastern part of Xinjiang province.Credit...Planet Labs Inc.
The new construction site is in a remote area that Chinese authorities have cut off from most visitors. It sits roughly 60 miles southwest of the city of Hami, known as the site of a re-education camp where the Chinese government detains Uyghurs and members of other minority groups. And it is roughly 260 miles east of a tidy complex of buildings with large roofs that can open to the sky. Recently, analysts identified the site as one of five military bases where the Chinese forces have built lasers that can fire beams of concentrated light at reconnaissance satellites, mostly sent aloft by the United States. The lasers blind or disable fragile optical sensors.
The new silos are a bit less than two miles from one another, their report said. Overall, it added, the sprawling construction site covers roughly 300 square miles — similar in size to the Yumen base, also in the desert.
Mr. Narang said the two new silo fields gave the Chinese government “many options.”
“It’s not insane,” he said. “They make the United States target a lot of silos that may be empty. They can fill these silos slowly if they need to build up their force. And they get leverage in arms control.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t do this a decade ago,” he said.
2. China floods: ‘Digital dark age’ after disaster wreaks havoc on internet and electricity
I hope our intelligence community is observing to determine how China reacts to not having electricity and internet connectivity for some time in a "smart city." A smart city is vulnerable to natural disasters but also cyber attacks.
China floods: ‘Digital dark age’ after disaster wreaks havoc on internet and electricity
Published: 4:27pm, 26 Jul, 2021
Millions of people in Zhengzhou just discovered how reliant they had become on the internet after major flooding killed service, as well as electricity, across the city.
People ride on a rubber boat to cross a flooded street following heavy rain that flooded Henan province last week. Photo: AFP
Over the past decades, China has transformed many of its urban centres into full-scale “smart cities”, and digitalisation has seeped into every part of life. The vast majority of people use their smartphones to buy goods, hail taxis, make hospital appointments, commute on subway trains and pay for their utilities.When Zhengzhou lost its power and internet, the public suddenly found themselves thrown into a “digital dark age”.
For some, it was an inconvenience, but for others, it became a matter of life and death.
Those patients could not get out of bed. We had to carry everything.
Wang, a doctor battling electricity shortages at his hospital
A doctor, who wished to be identified by his surnamed Wang, who works at the accident and emergency of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, said as the power went out, so did the ICU life support equipment.
The hospital had to quickly divert its emergency power source to the most severe patients. The hospital had to relocate more than 10,000 patients to a newer district hospital, where electricity was more predictable.
Lifts in hospital building had stopped working and Wang, along with volunteers and firefighters, carried the ICU beds, with the patients still in them, down 20 floors to the transport vehicles.
“Those patients could not get out of bed,” he said. “We had to carry everything.”
Thousands of residents in central China's Xinxiang city band together to fight rising floodwaters
Across the city, a woman named Qinwen found herself cut off from her electricity and internet. With no broadband, it suddenly became impossible to call or message her friends and family to tell them that she was safe.
She wandered around the city, found a place on the street with a sporadic signal and made a few calls. Later, when her phone died, she could not find a working socket.
During a brief moment of internet connection on Wednesday afternoon, a friend asked Qinwen on WeChat, “Is it still raining? Do not go wandering around. Did your flat get flooded?”
She tried to reply: “I just do not have cell phone signal and electricity, no flood.” A red exclamation mark appeared next to the message, indicating it hadn’t gone through.
Gradually, Qinwen found out the inconvenience had seeped into every corner of her life.
In a story that may become humorous in hindsight, Qinqwen went to work the second morning following the floods. When she reached her office, she learned that the company was closed due to the extreme weather. But without the internet, she never got the message.
Flooding in Zhengzhou prompted panic shopping in the city after the flooding receded. A situation made more complicated by intermittent access to electricity. Photo: Getty Images
When she went to the supermarket, she could not pay with her phone and did not have any cash. Typically, it is uncommon for the average urban Chinese citizen to carry a credit card or cash with them.
“Without the internet, my phone has turned into a brick that glows,” she said.
Across the city, others lined up at grocery stores and opened tabs, leaving their phone numbers and promises that they would come back to settle the debt.
Transport was down as well. Tencent News reported that ride-hailing apps halted services in Zhengzhou due to safety concerns. The few taxis that still run on the streets ask people to pay upfront with cash.
“When I use up all my electricity, I don’t even know where I can recharge,” a driver said. According to the report, Zhengzhou had switched more than 80 per cent of its taxis to electric engines.
People charge mobile phones outside a shop in Zhengzhou that had electricity. Photo: Getty Images
Others went on an active hunt for modernity.
Zhao Keluo, a director of an accounting firm in Zhengzhou, said that, after buying food and water on credit, he climbed 19 floors to discover that his flat still had no water or electricity.
Over the next couple of days, he became a vagabond in his own city, searching for random places with electricity or the internet.
Sometimes Zhao went to a teahouse his friend owned and on other occasions a hotel lobby with the internet, water, and intermittent electricity.
“I drove my car around, just to check if there were any place I could recharge my phone or any hotel that was not full,” he said.
Residents of Xinxiang in China's Henan province cope with continued threat of floodwaters
After the floods, the government sent people working day and night to restore power and the internet. By the weekend, about 90 per cent of Zhengzhou was back online, the government said.
Qinwen’s internet and power came back late Thursday night. She felt grateful that people were working that late to restore her modern comforts.
Others felt this was a wake-up call to be prepared for disasters in the future.
“After seeing what happened in Zhengzhou, I added ‘portable power bank’ to my survival list,” one person wrote on Weibo.
They included a list of 20 other survival necessities, including canned food, a first aid kit, walkie-talkies, cash and even gold bricks.
3. ‘It Failed Miserably’: After Wargaming Loss, Joint Chiefs Are Overhauling How the US Military Will Fight
War games are the time for failure. I would be worried if we "won" and all was well. Of course do we really want to be this transparent and let our competitors and adversaries know our weaknesses? Or perhaps (hopefully) we are conducting deception operations.
One element that is missing when they talk about information advantage - influence. But it is very hard to simulate and war game the effects of influence which is probably why we do not place influence in a high enough priority.
‘It Failed Miserably’: After Wargaming Loss, Joint Chiefs Are Overhauling How the US Military Will Fight
In a fake battle for Taiwan, U.S. forces lost network access almost immediately. Hyten has issued four directives to help change that.
A brutal loss in a wargaming exercise last October convinced the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John Hyten to scrap the joint warfighting concept that had guided U.S. military operations for decades.
“Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably. An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we're going to do before we did it,” Hyten told an audience Monday at the launch of the Emerging Technologies Institute, an effort by the National Defense Industrial Association industry group to speed military modernization.
The Pentagon would not provide the name of the wargame, which was classified, but a defense official said one of the scenarios revolved around a battle for Taiwan. One key lesson: gathering ships, aircraft, and other forces to concentrate and reinforce each other’s combat power also made them sitting ducks.
“We always aggregate to fight, and aggregate to survive. But in today’s world, with hypersonic missiles, with significant long-range fires coming at us from all domains, if you're aggregated and everybody knows where you are, you're vulnerable,” Hyten said.
Even more critically, the blue team lost access to its networks almost immediately.
“We basically attempted an information-dominance structure, where information was ubiquitous to our forces. Just like it was in the first Gulf War, just like it has been for the last 20 years, just like everybody in the world, including China and Russia, have watched us do for the last 30 years,” Hyten said. “Well, what happens if right from the beginning that information is not available? And that’s the big problem that we faced.”
In response, the Joint Chiefs have since October been shifting the U.S. military to a new concept of warfighting operations they call “Expanded Maneuver.” It’s not exactly what he would call a clean-sheet approach because they used the year 2030 as their mark—meaning they had to use systems, airframes, and ships that are already in use.
Earlier this month, Hyten released four directives to the services: one each for contested logistics, joint fires, Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and information advantage. On Monday, he revealed new details about these “functional battles.”
Contested logistics. Creating new ways to deliver fuel and supplies to front lines. U.S. Transportation Command and the Air Force are working on using rockets and a space trajectory to get large cargo spaceships into and out of battlefields.
Joint fires: “You have to aggregate to mass fires, but it doesn't have to be a physical aggregation,” Hyten said. “It could be a virtual aggregation for multiple domains; acting at the same time under a single command structure allows the fires to come in on anybody. It allows you to disaggregate to survive.” Hyten said the joint fires concept “is aspirational. It is unbelievably difficult to do.” And the military will have to figure out what part will be affordable and practical, he said.
JADC2: The Pentagon’s push to connect everything demands always-on, hackerproof networks, Hyten said.
“The goal is to be fully connected to a combat cloud that has all information that you can access at any time, anyplace,” so that, like with joint fires, the data doesn’t get exposed or hacked because it’s housed in one centralized location, he said.
Information advantage: This element is the sum of the first three, Hyten said: “If we can do the things I just described, the United States and our allies will have an information advantage over anybody that we could possibly face.”
The new operating concept comes as the U.S. military reshapes its footprint in the Middle East to better prepare for a fight with China. On Monday, President Joe Biden announced U.S. troops will end their combat role in Iraq by the end of the year; the announcement comes just two months after Biden announced a full withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“You've seen it in Afghanistan and you're seeing it play out now in Iraq.” Hyten said. “We have to not ignore the threats in the Middle East, but deal with the threat to the Middle East in a different way, with a smaller footprint, so we can divert more of our body on threats in China and Russia."
4. Full Spectrum: Capabilities And Authorities In Cyber And The Information Environment
For all those who focus on cyber there links below to 18 papers. We have sent some of these out but this provides a useful roll-up reference for some key articles.
Thanks to the Modern War Institute at West Point for putting these together.
Full Spectrum: Capabilities And Authorities In Cyber And The Information Environment
5. Cuba and How Biden Can Avoid Another Mariel Boatlift
We need to be preparing for the full range of contingencies. These situations can get real bad real quick.
Are we executing an IO plan now? (hopefully we have been executing one for some time that considered this possibility and now we can increase the effort to focus on the current situation and what might happen in the near future) Have we made contact with elements of the resistance? What public and private messages are we sending to the regime? What are we doing in terms of working with friends, partners and allies in the region?
Excerpts:
But it would also make sense to appoint a high-level, well-respected Latin America expert to go to Havana and open a serious channel of communication. (Roberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico, comes to mind — she has deep experience in dealing with the Cuban regime.) A stick-and-carrot approach might ultimately reduce the regime’s grip on power. This would be somewhat similar to the two-pronged approach that ultimately resulted in ending the insurgency in Colombia.
The administration should also re-emphasize the importance of the naval station at Guantanamo Bay, but not for holding the remaining handful of terrorism detainees, who could be relocated to supermax U.S. prisons. The naval base has an abiding strategic value given its crucial location in the heart of the Caribbean and its symbolic role as a foothold for freedom there.
However the administration decides to respond to the protests, they are a significant crack in the wall of the regime, even if it doesn’t topple soon. Over time, as we have seen in nonviolent protests in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere, the people’s voice can change history.
Cuba and How Biden Can Avoid Another Mariel Boatlift
A compromise between Trump’s harsh measures and Obama’s outreach can aid democracy on the island.
July 24, 2021, 8:00 AM EDT
The last two weeks witnessed widespread protests against the authoritarian Cuban regime, with thousands taking to the streets in Havana to express dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis and — above all — the torpid economy.
Hit by the collapse of tourism, a mainstay of the economy, the government has struggled to maintain even the very low standard of living the Cuban people have endured for decades. With former U.S. President Donald Trump’s sanctions still in place, Raul Castro — brother of the regime’s revolutionary founder, Fidel Castro — shifted to a symbolic leadership role, and a wave of Covid’s delta variant roiling the island, unrest has bubbled over.
What should the U.S. be doing to capitalize on the chaos, weaken the Communist government, and help the people of Cuba?
When I was commander of U.S. Southern Command, headquartered in Miami, I spent a great deal of time traveling throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. I visited almost every country and territory in that vast world to the south that was my responsibility for military-to-military operations.
People would ask me which country I visited the most in the three years of the four-star assignment. Most would guess Colombia (it was the height of the insurgency there), Brazil (the superpower of the south), or Honduras (we had important aviation units assigned in that troubled nation at Soto Cano Air Base). The answer may surprise you: Cuba.
That is because the U.S. military maintains an important base at the eastern end of the 800-mile-long island, Guantanamo Bay. It has, of course, been infamous since the Sept. 11 attacks as the detention center for hundreds of captured enemy fighters in the global war on terrorism. But for far longer it has been a vital strategic location for military logistics, communications nodes, disaster-relief supplies, and as a possible location for thousands of migrants if either Cuba or Haiti were to have another boatlift.
Naturally, I spent significant amounts of time poring over the intelligence concerning the regime in Havana. It was harsh, corrupt and unyielding in its dominance over the Cuban people. The Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, were also interested in exporting communism, and — with the financial support of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez’s petrodollars — sought to undermine other democracies in the region.
Each time I traveled to Guantanamo Bay, I studied the problems of the nation, speaking with defectors and coordinating with the State Department (which had a significant diplomatic presence in Havana even though there was no U.S. embassy).
Even more than a decade ago, it was clear that the regime would one day face a reckoning with the increasingly dissatisfied populace. While it is tempting to say that day has come, my assessment is that the regime still has firm control and will be able to weather the current storm.
Following the demonstrations, the government was able to orchestrate counter-protests. It arrested, detained and charged many of the protest leaders. The current regime, led by President Miguel Diaz-Canel, still holds all the levers of power.
The Cuban-American community in Miami, as always, strongly supports an activist U.S. policy to help the people of Cuba topple the regime. With a million and a half highly educated and politically active Cuban-Americans in South Florida, their representatives in Washington are pushing President Joe Biden’s administration to help the cause of freedom on the island.
Senator Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants, has called for significant support to the protesters, warned that the Cuban regime may force mass emigration on the scale of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, and insisted that the U.S. must not “cave to blackmail.” Most in the Republican Party want to continue the travel sanctions and other punitive policies of the Trump administration; some have urged the White House to find a way of restoring the protesters’ internet access. Governor Rick DeSantis and Senator Rick Scott, both Republicans of Florida, have called on the Cuban military to rise up against the government.
The dilemma for the Biden administration is that there is at best tepid support among Democrats for aggressive intervention. There’s little doubt that concerns over the Democrats’ commitment to toppling the regime were responsible for Trump’s winning the votes of a majority of Florida Cuban-Americans in the 2020 election.
On the left, there is even advocacy for lifting the sanctions, on the theory that it would allow engagement and eventual changes in the regime. That was the approach of President Barack Obama’s administration before the Trump team reversed course. Biden initially signaled he would return to the Obama approach, but before the changes could be put in place, the protests have kicked off a significant internal debate about the right approach. On Thursday, Biden announced some targeted sanctions on a few regime officials in response to the crackdown on protestors.
The best way to move forward may be to split the difference in the parties’ positions. This would mean maintaining the current sanctions to keep pressure on the regime; increasing the political pressure by partnering with other nations in the region to shame the regime for the harsh crackdown on demonstrators; focusing U.S. intelligence-gathering on the island; imposing more individual sanctions on Cuban leaders directly involved in crushing protests; and using the Organization of American States as a forum to criticize the government in Havana.
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But it would also make sense to appoint a high-level, well-respected Latin America expert to go to Havana and open a serious channel of communication. (Roberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico, comes to mind — she has deep experience in dealing with the Cuban regime.) A stick-and-carrot approach might ultimately reduce the regime’s grip on power. This would be somewhat similar to the two-pronged approach that ultimately resulted in ending the insurgency in Colombia.
The administration should also re-emphasize the importance of the naval station at Guantanamo Bay, but not for holding the remaining handful of terrorism detainees, who could be relocated to supermax U.S. prisons. The naval base has an abiding strategic value given its crucial location in the heart of the Caribbean and its symbolic role as a foothold for freedom there.
However the administration decides to respond to the protests, they are a significant crack in the wall of the regime, even if it doesn’t topple soon. Over time, as we have seen in nonviolent protests in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere, the people’s voice can change history.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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To contact the editor responsible for this story:
6. The Rising Risk of China’s Intellectual-Property Theft
Excerpts:
To shield research-program results from Chinese acquisition and the resulting predatory competition, an outright ban is needed on ensuing exports to the PRC and to countries that lack adequate controls on resales that end in Chinese hands. The term of the ban would be limited and depend on the evolution of the specific technology, but no discretion should be granted for exemptions. Otherwise, developers will take taxpayer funds, then lobby Commerce or another implementing agency to favor their business interests in China at the expense of the economic and strategic interests of the United States. As with the breaking of rules on participation in research and development, export violations by Americans must be subject to severe punishment.
Enforcement within the U.S. is the easier part. With regard to PRC beneficiaries of illegal IP acquisition, the starting point should be to treat their behavior as criminal and to recognize that the U.S. has no obligation to allow new business of any kind with accused criminals.
Penalties should feature prohibition of all new transactions with American counterparts anywhere in the world, including transactions through third parties. This must extend to barring receipt of U.S. capital, directly or indirectly, and prohibition of all sales in the American market. The idea is to erase the commercial advantages of using illicitly acquired technology. New or small-scale violators could receive short suspensions. Repeat violators should face indefinite exclusions from global transactions and blocks on their assets, like any other criminal entity.
American participants in the new federally funded research programs should be obliged to provide information about both the status of their research and any PRC contacts. This will make it more difficult for Chinese entities to pretend that, amazingly, they had an independent research program in the same field at approximately the same stage. American companies later alleging losses to Chinese competitors using illegally acquired technology will have a base of evidence available.
The Rising Risk of China’s Intellectual-Property Theft
July 15, 2021 2:15 PM
U.S. and Chinese flags are seen in front of a U.S. dollar bank note and a yuan bank note. (Jason Lee/Reuters)
Congress must protect new intellectual property while promoting its development
T
he most important dimension of U.S.–China relations is technology, which is vital to economic, military, and even ideological competition.
In the economic competition, the main American challenge is not, as is sometimes implied, inadequate innovation. The U.S. is the world’s wealthiest country by tens of trillions of dollars. The number of U.S. patents granted to Americans set a record in 2019 and nearly matched it in 2020. That more than tripled the number of patents granted to second-place Japanese filers in our market.
The main challenge is not even Chinese innovation. Beijing’s preference for large firms and state funding at the expense of genuine competition ensures it will struggle in key areas, from aircraft development to shale. The main challenge is China’s acquisition of intellectual property (IP) and use of regulatory and financial subsidies to develop products from that IP to drive the U.S. out of global markets.
Pending legislation may, if passed, increase these risks. The United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) has passed the Senate, while the National Science Foundation for the Future Act has passed the House. Each spends at least $100 billion over five years on U.S. research and development, but the Senate included many more provisions attempting to limit Chinese access than the House has to date. Without stronger safeguards than even the Senate currently includes, China will be able to capture the technology developed by additional U.S. research, subsidize its deployment, and actually bring harm to American companies and workers rather than the benefits Congress imagines.
That the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will continue seeking to acquire American research is not seriously debatable. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 80 percent of its economic-espionage cases involve the PRC. There are multiple documented cases of Chinese trade-secret theft for almost every year this century, from Datang’s receipt of information stolen from now-defunct Lucent in 2001 to China State Nuclear Technology’s receipt of information stolen from Westinghouse in 2010 to X-Motors’ receipt of information stolen from Apple in 2019.
In the area of capturing personal data, Chinese hackers attacked the Office of Personnel Management starting in late 2013 and Equifax in 2017, among other incidents.
Theft of military secrets is nominally a separate topic but is related to commercial theft and appears to be extensive. Technology with dual military and commercial uses must be transferred on demand from Chinese firms to the People’s Liberation Army under the PRC’s much-discussed “military–civil fusion,” a policy and a term created by the Chinese government. It also must be transferred on demand to any other entities the Chinese government considers suitable. When confronted by the government, there is no recourse for a Chinese firm holding American IP.
Despite this pointed and multifaceted threat, almost no Chinese beneficiary of illegal IP acquisition has faced even the mildest of consequences (that are publicly known). The U.S. has been unwilling to create policy tools to target recipients of stolen IP. For instance, the Trump administration’s investigation into this huge problem, conducted under Section 301 of the U.S. Code, degenerated into the poor policy of across-the-board tariffs punishing everyone regardless of behavior.
What happens post-theft is vital and often overlooked. Having spent less on innovation, Chinese firms have more resources available for production. If the sector in question is deemed valuable by the central or local government, firms will receive heavy subsidies. As a result, they can underprice foreign competitors, driving these competitors first out of the PRC, then out of overseas markets. Legal and illegal technology acquisition followed by enormous state support helps account for the speed and extent of the rise of Chinese telecom-equipment makers, for example. It might enable China to copy mRNA technology and then try to bankrupt American vaccine-makers.
Technology loss is thus only the first risk. Defenders of a system of globally open innovation, where American research is easily shared with foreign counterparts, acknowledge Chinese pilfering but see research protections as worse. They argue that the U.S. should maximize innovation and accept some leakage. But they underestimate the danger. The PRC’s record is clear: New technology is not primarily a means to improve people’s lives; it’s primarily a means to enhance party supremacy. The commercial dimension of that is the CCP’s use of anticompetitive practices to create Chinese-dominated global industries, undercutting the benefits from developing new products and services.
This one-two punch justifies strenuous efforts to protect American IP. As it stands, USICA is inadequate to that purpose, while the House process is embryonic. There are USICA sections banning transfer of IP to Chinese entities, but they entail no punishment for American violators, much less for foreign beneficiaries, and will hardly slow Chinese acquisition. Another provision creates a list of Chinese state-owned beneficiaries of IP violations but entails no action. Finally, there are sections using existing authority more fully to punish violators, but those options feature near-useless sanctions on individuals, when the threat from Chinese subsidies instead indicates that the target should be global sales by beneficiaries of IP theft.
The key, as it always is with IP, is enforcement. Enforcement with respect to PRC entities is difficult and will require the American government’s attention not just now but for the full lifespan of any USICA-like spending program.
At the moment, even existing enforcement possibilities are being ignored. China can offer access to a very large market in which to sell products developed from the IP, with no questions asked. In the case of its citizens or American citizens with family in the PRC, Beijing can also coerce IP transfer. Any Chinese participation in American technology ventures is therefore a risk. If blocking all Chinese participation in federally funded research is undesirable, enforcement of no-transfer rules must be vicious. To have any chance of matching Chinese inducements, a final version of the bill must prescribe felony criminal penalties as well as heavy fines. As always with industrial policy, those who object to these laws are free to opt out.
Another important aspect of enforcement is export control. In principle, exports can occur without involving technology transfer. Yet the U.S. does not have a properly functioning export-control regime. Congress, eyeing China, voted overwhelmingly to tighten export controls in August 2018. Yet the Department of Commerce has failed to take any action on “foundational” technologies — established technologies that should not be freely shared, such as high-performance semiconductors. And, after originally identifying 45 “emerging” technologies whose export might need restriction, Commerce now claims that no specific actions are required.
To shield research-program results from Chinese acquisition and the resulting predatory competition, an outright ban is needed on ensuing exports to the PRC and to countries that lack adequate controls on resales that end in Chinese hands. The term of the ban would be limited and depend on the evolution of the specific technology, but no discretion should be granted for exemptions. Otherwise, developers will take taxpayer funds, then lobby Commerce or another implementing agency to favor their business interests in China at the expense of the economic and strategic interests of the United States. As with the breaking of rules on participation in research and development, export violations by Americans must be subject to severe punishment.
Enforcement within the U.S. is the easier part. With regard to PRC beneficiaries of illegal IP acquisition, the starting point should be to treat their behavior as criminal and to recognize that the U.S. has no obligation to allow new business of any kind with accused criminals.
Penalties should feature prohibition of all new transactions with American counterparts anywhere in the world, including transactions through third parties. This must extend to barring receipt of U.S. capital, directly or indirectly, and prohibition of all sales in the American market. The idea is to erase the commercial advantages of using illicitly acquired technology. New or small-scale violators could receive short suspensions. Repeat violators should face indefinite exclusions from global transactions and blocks on their assets, like any other criminal entity.
American participants in the new federally funded research programs should be obliged to provide information about both the status of their research and any PRC contacts. This will make it more difficult for Chinese entities to pretend that, amazingly, they had an independent research program in the same field at approximately the same stage. American companies later alleging losses to Chinese competitors using illegally acquired technology will have a base of evidence available.
That base of evidence will justify an initial suspension of transactions. American companies have found it difficult to prove criminal Chinese behavior to a high standard of evidence given the lack of the rule of law in the PRC. But when technologies developed in a new federal program show up in China, the presumption for a certain number of years (varying by sector) should be that the PRC acquired them illegally. Over time, the base of evidence could expand to include the records of the Chinese entities and industries involved — are they clear or tarnished? If further incriminating evidence does not come to light, the ban should be removed. If it does, assets should be seized, or the transaction ban should be made global.
Even if the legislative process yields ideal IP rules and penalties, the actual implementation will still be challenging. Business lobbying of executive-branch regulatory agencies can undermine congressional intent. Executive offices must be properly funded, staffed, and monitored. And the nature of commercial research means this will be a long-term effort — Congress must ensure that rules are followed and penalties are applied years down the road.
Funding basic research is a legitimate function of government. If IP is left unprotected, however, the results will be the opposite of what Congress desires. It is certain that China will try to acquire IP generated through new American research and then subsidize goods produced using that IP. The U.S. must be far better at countering the PRC at both the acquisition and the sales stages, or American research success will again lead to Chinese economic and strategic success.
This article appears as “Theft as Trade Policy” in the August 2, 2021, print edition of National Review.
7. Why China Will Not Cooperate with the West: The Pandemic Made Things Worse
Excerpt:
Two major events are worth keeping tabs on. One is the CCP’s recently concluded one-hundred-year anniversary on July 1 where the Chinese government burnished and reinforced its credentials as the ultimate savior of the nation. The second will be the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022. In the first, the CCP showcased its domestic success, including its victory over the coronavirus pandemic. This can be most vividly seen in the spectacle of tens of thousands gathering at Tiananmen Square cheering and celebrating—all without masks—thus validating the CCP’s ability to govern China. In the case of the second, the CCP will attempt to tell the world the story of a mighty and powerful China which is able to overcome the odds of history and other geopolitical pressures to arrive at where it is, including having Beijing as the first city in history to ever host both the Summer and Winter Olympics. This would be a feather in Xi’s cap and would mark a remarkable milestone in his vision of national rejuvenation. Similarly, for the CCP, it will further validate its claim to ruling China and improve the lives of Chinese citizens. With so much at stake, China will want to do things on its own terms, and to forge its own path—with or without the West.
Why China Will Not Cooperate with the West: The Pandemic Made Things Worse
Beijing sees vaccine diplomacy as a crucial means with which to convince other countries of its goodwill and friendship. It wants to seize the moral high ground to claim that it is superior to the West.
Thirty years ago, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his book The End of History and the Last Man made the argument of the inevitability of Western liberal democracy and the universalization of democratic values worldwide. The publication of the book was heavily criticized by many, including luminaries like Samuel Huntington, Fareed Zakaria and Benjamin Barber, who interpreted Fukuyama’s ideas as naively optimistic, which failed to recognize fundamental fault-lines dividing not only the West from the Rest, but also among Western societies itself.
However Fukuyama’s vision of a liberal West that would act as a beacon of hope and promise for other nations to emulate ultimately won out, at least among liberals in America. The idea that American values (democracy, freedom, right to choose) were not just contained to Americans but reflected universal aspirations and goals (so long as political institutions could be reformed) became a central theme and worldview governing American foreign policy. The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations—to varying degrees—all maintained such a way of thinking, and Washington’s diplomatic playbook was largely premised on a highly missionizing philosophy: America would win its foes over by the attractiveness of its values and way of life, with democracy as its chief emphasis.
Such a vision, however, did not square with the realities of international life, and the United States paid a heavy price for its political vision in the Middle East where the War on Terror (started by George W. Bush) saw the United States spending the next twenty years in a costly war in Afghanistan and Iraq combating Islamic terrorism. This period of America’s involvement in the fight against terror coincided with China’s rise and as the story goes, Beijing saw a golden opportunity to assert and promote its interests first in Asia, and then more globally.
China Enters the Game
The entry of the People’s Republic of China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 marked an important milestone in global forays. Ironically as it may seem today, the United States was one of the strongest supporters of China’s WTO participation. In a speech, then-President Bill Clinton described this as a “historic step toward continued prosperity in America, reform in China and peace in the world . . . it will open new doors of trade for America and new hope for change in China.” For Washington, China’s presence in the WTO validated America’s engagement strategy as the correct one, and that America and China would both prosper economically if China would follow the American playbook. But Beijing had other ideas.
On the surface, China was still adhering largely to Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of taoguangyanghui (hide light and nourish obscurity), but there were a number of clues that signaled Beijing’s grander ambitions and which Washington did not pay sufficient attention to. For instance, many international relations scholars in China suddenly paid strong attention to the notion of soft power in the early years of the twentieth century, despite the idea being coined by the Harvard don Joseph Nye in the late 1980s. As the Singapore-based scholar Li Mingjiang at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies puts it, the primary purpose of soft power was to refute China’s threat thesis. Chinese leaders were all too cognizant of the threat perceptions that its rise had brought about and thus pursued soft power as a means to discredit that threat.
The Beijing Olympics in 2008 further solidified China’s confidence that its time had come, and that it was ready to take the next step to challenge the United States for global supremacy. Coincidentally or otherwise, China topped the United States at the medal table, winning forty-eight gold medals to the latter’s thirty-six, thus becoming the first country to dislodge Washington since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Prior to that, the United States had won the most gold medals in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games.
The third sign of China’s growing challenge to the United States, and the West, in general, came during the 2008–09 global financial crisis. While Washington and many Western countries were trying hard to put their own countries in order, a key narrative that emerged within China was that the United States—and its brand of global financial capitalism—could not be trusted. In Beijing’s eyes, the financial crisis showed up the flaws and blind spots of the United States and the West. In the relentless pursuit of wealth, Western economies had over-leveraged and underperformed, and like a house of cards, it was only time that such a system would unravel.
With this in mind, China saw the need to create its own global institutions, one which were untethered to Western rules and arrangements, but which reflected characteristics that were non-Western and preferably reflected Chinese interests and priorities. But given the highly connected nature of the globalized world, China could not do without hurting its own interests significantly. In other words, there were few, if any, viable alternatives for China to pursue even though it was dissatisfied with what the West had to offer.
All these changed with the rise of Chinese technology giants in the early 2010s, which allowed China to challenge the monopoly of Western companies, providing Chinese citizens to operate on Chinese-designed systems. The story of Alipay and Jack Ma’s rise to international prominence is well known and requires little explanation. But what truly propelled China to the forefront of the high-tech world was the Chinese government’s involvement in these companies and its insistence that it would harness the power of technology to serve the needs of China, its citizens, and most importantly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, this also coincided with the power transition from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Party and the President as Sacred
While President Xi Jinping’s personal beliefs and worldview are certainly worth mining and investigating to uncover clues relating to Chinese political behavior and foreign policy, a more accurate assessment of China must first acknowledge the centrality of the CCP and the symbiotic relationship between Xi and the CCP, one that is akin to that of the relationship between lips and teeth. As the Chinese saying goes, “the teeth becomes cold without lips,” or more literally “when the lips die, the teeth becomes cold.” Seen this way, Xi is undoubtedly a product of the CCP and would defend the party at all cost. This includes defending the sacred image of the CCP (the party is infallible), the benevolence of the CCP (the party is good), and the all-knowing/all-powerful image of the party (the party is omniscient and omnipotent). This elevation of the CCP to god-like status—in China—is also the source whereby Xi derives his ultimate authority from. Sans the party, Xi would be relegated to another politician-bureaucrat, one who derives their authority and legitimacy from factional struggles and petty disputes. Likewise, the sacred image that the CCP seeks can be achieved only if it has a god-like figurehead in the person of Xi to incarnate its beliefs and worldview in everyday life.
Given this need to preserve a sacralized image of both the party and its leader, it is not surprising that China—in its current relationship with the United States—seeks to promote the idea that it is exceptional, in that it is better and different from the West. One reason why this is the case is that the United States has frequently touted the Western liberal international order and the promotion of democracy as a universal good. This has been a constant thorn in Beijing’s flesh, not least because of its own authoritarian system which is often being criticized by Western powers for its violation of human rights. So long as this democratic deficit exists, China’s international image would always be somewhat tainted which would, in turn, affect the sacralized image of Xi and the CCP. After all, one can only be considered divine if one is both good and powerful. In the case of China, having the latter without the former means that China’s claim to superpower status is only partial, which is not good enough for Xi and the party.
Why China Does not Trust the West
Seen this way, it is not surprising that China fundamentally does not trust the United States. Not only does Beijing see Washington’s objective as wanting to keep it down and preserving its international primacy, it also views the current Biden administration—and its emphasis on democracy promotion—as an existential threat to its political worldview. Indeed, Western criticisms of Beijing on Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Tibet all feed into the CCP’s central narrative: the United States and the West want to challenge the Party’s grip on power and to remake China in the image of the West. Such a siege mentality means that Beijing is unlikely to find any common ground with the United States insofar as key strategic interests are concerned. Consequently, the CCP also views statements made by the United States and the West as trying to drive a wedge between itself and its citizens—which would effectively destroy its sacralized image and its paramount leader that has been so carefully and painstakingly built up over the years. Indeed, Chinese political observers—in their recount of the fall of the Soviet Union—often point not to Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika, rather they attribute it to Nikita Khrushchev’s denouncement of Stalin as the start of the Soviet long decline. Unity is paramount to preserving the sacralized image of the party, and the CCP will go all out to defend this.
China, Coronavirus, and Great Power Competition
The events of the coronavirus pandemic have further exacerbated the tensions between China and the United States, not least because of the sky-high implications that are at stake. Given that China wants to portray itself as a responsible nation, one that is better than the West, it has spared no effort to promote its vaccines worldwide, particularly in countries who for various reasons are unable to procure the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. While most foreign ministers would prefer to defer knowledge of vaccine science to health experts, in China, the foreign ministry has been on the forefront of vaccine promotion. The implications are obvious: Beijing sees vaccine diplomacy as a crucial means with which to convince other countries of its goodwill and friendship. Paired together with its Wolf Warrior diplomacy, in which China seeks to rebut what it sees as unfair allegations by unfriendly nations, Beijing intends to seize the moral high ground to claim that it is superior to the West.
To this end, it is likely that Chinese leaders are aware that it is being perceived somewhat in a negative light by its neighbors and they see the need to remedy it. In a June 2021 politburo study session, Xi exhorted party leaders to have better international communication in order to repair the country’s coronavirus-hit image and to win a battle of narratives with the United States and its allies. This is vital for China especially in terms of cross-strait relations which are presently at a low and which the possibility of conflict between Beijing and Taipei cannot be ruled out. Indeed, if war happens, China would have to demonstrate that it is the victim—either as a result of Taiwan’s intransigence—or because of the United States interfering in its internal affairs. While most countries in the region are unlikely to want to be drawn into a hot conflict (with the exception of Japan), the more China is able to present a positive image of itself, the more likely it is able to convince its neighbors of its just cause (jus bellum justum). This would increase both regional and international pressure on the United States not to put boots on the ground and thus further isolate Taipei from any external support.
Two major events are worth keeping tabs on. One is the CCP’s recently concluded one-hundred-year anniversary on July 1 where the Chinese government burnished and reinforced its credentials as the ultimate savior of the nation. The second will be the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022. In the first, the CCP showcased its domestic success, including its victory over the coronavirus pandemic. This can be most vividly seen in the spectacle of tens of thousands gathering at Tiananmen Square cheering and celebrating—all without masks—thus validating the CCP’s ability to govern China. In the case of the second, the CCP will attempt to tell the world the story of a mighty and powerful China which is able to overcome the odds of history and other geopolitical pressures to arrive at where it is, including having Beijing as the first city in history to ever host both the Summer and Winter Olympics. This would be a feather in Xi’s cap and would mark a remarkable milestone in his vision of national rejuvenation. Similarly, for the CCP, it will further validate its claim to ruling China and improve the lives of Chinese citizens. With so much at stake, China will want to do things on its own terms, and to forge its own path—with or without the West.
Image: Reuters
8. President Biden, Keep China Away From American Farmland
Excerpt:
Right now, in the United States, only six states have laws forbidding foreign ownership of land. The CCP, no doubt, is fully aware of this rather alarming fact. The U.S. also happens to have almost 18 percent of the world’s arable land, another fact that has not escaped the attention of the CCP. Millions of Americans think President Biden is weak on China, and unless he takes action to protect the physical country from those who would buy it up and extract its bounty, millions more will soon feel the same.
President Biden, Keep China Away From American Farmland | The American Conservative
Now, though, according to a recent Politico report, the Biden administration has woken up to the threat posed by Beijing. Action, it seems, will be taken.
Ryan McCrimmon, the author of the piece, claims that the “push to drain China’s influence from the U.S. economy” has reached America’s farmland. Congressional lawmakers “from both parties” are now considering measures “to crack down on foreign purchases of prime agricultural real estate.”
With Chinese influence, a “push”—or, more specifically, a shove—is most definitely needed.
Beijing’s Big Land Grab
Since 2009, the CCP has purchased enormous amounts of farmland around the world. In fact, over the last decade, spending has increased tenfold, from $300 million to $3 billion. This, of course, is highly strategic. With land comes influence, and with influence comes greater levels of political capital.
In the Politico article, McCrimmon quotes Rep. Dan Newhouse as saying that “the current trend in the U.S. is leading us toward the creation of a Chinese-owned agricultural land monopoly.” This current, deeply worrying trend can be seen in other countries around the world. In 2016, a major Chinese company, Hongyang Group, acquired hundreds of hectares of farmland in central France. This purchase, according to reports, went unchecked by French authorities.
As the journalist Marine Jovert wrote at the time, the “reaction of the French National Federation of Land Management and Rural Development Agencies (SAFER) was simple outrage.” In a press release, the organization stated, rather bluntly: “It is possible to buy 1,700 hectares of cereal farmland in France unchecked!” Jovert also mentions Emmanuel Hyest, the president of SAFER (the French regulatory body responsible for overseeing land acquisitions), and the fact that he openly admitted to not knowing “what sort of activity” Hongyang was engaged in.
What Does China Want?
The acquisition of American farmland by the Chinese has been occurring for years. In 2013, WH Group, a Chinese company, bought Smithfield Foods. By acquiring the company, WH Group also acquired close to 150,000 acres of prime farmland.
In 2019, six years after the acquisition, NPR interviewed Angela Huffmann, a lifelong farmer from Wyandot County, Ohio. She had this to say: “Right out my back door here, Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the world, has recently bought out a couple grain elevators.” A deflated-sounding Huffman continues, saying that this is “basically extracting the wealth out of the community.”
The acquisition of land is part of a much broader plan. As Clara Ferreira Marques wrote in the Japan Times last year, “the real great game is about securing a Chinese candidate at the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization; getting a friendly one at the World Health Organization; and landing the country’s first overseas military base. Considering more countries attended President Xi Jinping’s 2018 African summit than the U.N. General Assembly held a few weeks later, there’s plenty to build on.” Well, with Tedros Adhanom, whom the CCP appears to have bought, the mission to secure “a friendly one” at the WHO has already been accomplished.
Although the purchasing of land is indeed strategic, it is also necessary. Much has been made about China’s declining birth rates, but it’s important to remember that the country’s population is yet to peak. With close to 20 percent of the world’s population, how is China supposed to feed its people with only 8.5 percent of the world’s arable land? This is an existential question for the CCP. With declining employment opportunities and higher costs of living, a crop crisis could push the country to a tipping point. A decade ago, in Egypt and Tunisia, food shortages sparked revolutions. Hungry people are dangerous people. Hunger is what topples tyrannical regimes. The CCP is all too aware of this, meaning it will do whatever it takes to feed its people.
Lie, Steal, Cheat
In 2019, the Washington Examiner published an interesting interview with Senator Tom Cotton. The interview focused heavily on China’s penchant for intellectual property theft, with the outspoken politician warning readers that espionage tactics were being used “to steal modern techniques and strategies of growing crops from places like Arkansas.” That same year, Christopher Wray, the current director of the FBI, echoed Cotton’s warnings: “Put plainly, China seems determined to steal its way up the economic ladder, at our expense.” 2019 was an eventful year, with a federal grand jury in St. Louis indicting Haitao Xiang, a former Monsanto researcher. According to Chemical & Engineering News, “Xiang was accused of stealing predictive algorithms with the intention of handing them over to a Chinese government research institute.”
The attempted theft, I argue, can be linked with the “Made in China 2025” initiative, which aims to make China the dominant player in areas like AI and agriculture. To achieve this goal, the Chinese regime is prepared to do whatever it takes—lie, steal, cheat. If in doubt, please consider the recent Microsoft hack, which the Chinese regime vehemently denies playing any part in. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise. The CCP’s denial was pathetic, but it was also understandable.
With China’s population still growing, this means more mouths to feed. China is not producing enough grains to feed its animals or its people. With less and less land for domestic agriculture, the CCP is becoming increasingly desperate, hence the desire to acquire American farmland (and French, Brazilian, Colombian, Ethiopian, Jamaican, etc.).
Right now, in the United States, only six states have laws forbidding foreign ownership of land. The CCP, no doubt, is fully aware of this rather alarming fact. The U.S. also happens to have almost 18 percent of the world’s arable land, another fact that has not escaped the attention of the CCP. Millions of Americans think President Biden is weak on China, and unless he takes action to protect the physical country from those who would buy it up and extract its bounty, millions more will soon feel the same.
John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the likes of bitcoin magazine, New York Post, South China Morning Post, and the Sydney Morning Herald.
9. U.S. allegations of China hacking disingenuous and self-defeating
Admit nothing. deny everything. Make counter accusations.
China doth protest too much,
U.S. allegations of China hacking disingenuous and self-defeating
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Opinion 19:15, 21-Jul-2021
U.S. allegations of China hacking disingenuous and self-defeating
Andy Mok
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Editor's note: Andy Mok is a research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
The Biden administration has scored a diplomatic victory of sorts by strong-arming the EU, NATO and a handful of other countries into blaming China for the Microsoft exchange server hack that was revealed early this year and patched in March. But beyond the verbiage, there is no real substance behind the allegations. In fact, these allegations are only the latest installment of the administration's doomed-to-fail ideological crusade to confront and contain China with a shaky coalition of the unwilling.
We must recognize that cybersecurity is indeed an increasingly important concern for individuals, companies, businesses and governments around the world with Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cybersecurity and anti-virus provider, estimating millions of unique viruses in the wild today. Also, cyber-warfare has not only become a legitimate means of combat but perhaps even the arena in which the fate of nations will be decided. As such, any country that values its sovereignty must ensure that it possesses balanced and effective capabilities in cyber-warfare are sufficient to meet the geopolitical challenges which it faces.
And so, when I say that there is no substance behind these allegations, I am not offering an opinion or verdict on whether or not any Chinese-affiliated entities conducted these hacks. Instead, I am saying that the blame levied by the U.S. against China is disingenuous and hypocritical in a self-defeating way.
In fact, the U.S. has been the most aggressive and reckless in developing and deploying offensive cyber-capabilities. For example, ECHELON, which began in the late 1960s as a way to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War, subsequently morphed into a worldwide electronic system to conduct mass surveillance by surreptitiously intercepting and examining private and commercial communications.
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And these capabilities were also used to conduct industrial espionage as outlined in a report published by the European Parliament. The report lists numerous abuses with these two as illustrative. It accuses the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1994 of stealing information about an aircraft order placed by Saudi Arabia for an Airbus and sharing it with Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas, its American competitors, which resulted in McDonnell-Douglass winning the contract. The report also describes an instance of the CIA hacking into the computer system of the Japanese trade ministry in 1996 to advantage Mickey Kantor, the U.S. negotiator, in setting import quotas for American cars in the Japanese market.
More recently, the U.S. has been implicated in cyber attacks against Iran. For example, in 2010 Iran's nuclear site at Nantanz was severely damaged by the Stuxnet worm, which has been attributed to the U.S. and Israel. And in April 2012 a virus forced the country to disconnect its main oil terminals and facilities from the Internet to protect them from damage. After conducting investigations, the attacks were attributed by Iran to the U.S.
In terms of recklessness, the U.S. has also been the biggest contributor to worsening the threat environment by not adequately securing its cyber-weapons. Like many major powers, it has stockpiled zero-day bugs and weaponized them. But it has also allowed these destructive tools to fall into the wrong hands. For example, the Equation Group, which is suspected of being affiliated with the NSA, is described by Kaspersky Labs as "one of the most sophisticated cyber-attack groups in the world and the most advanced we have seen." But in August 2016, the Shadow Brokers, a hacking group, released malware that it had stolen from the Equation Group.
The Biden administration may have scored a hollow diplomatic victory against China; but it also recognizes that this is perhaps the only kind possible here. As such, the U.S. must be careful to not miscalculate as it continues this disingenuous rhetorical barrage.
(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)
10. In Stinging Rebuke, China Tells U.S. Diplomat That Its Rise Can’t Be Stopped
Ouch. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you" is apparently the Chinese view.
Excerpt:
“It seems that a whole-of-government and whole-of-society campaign is being waged to bring China down,” Mr. Xie told Ms. Sherman, according to the summaries of his comments, which were also issued on the Chinese foreign ministry website. “Do bad things and get good results. How is that ever possible?”
I think Xie may be mirror imaging. Perhaps it is China with a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. to bring down the US.
In Stinging Rebuke, China Tells U.S. Diplomat That Its Rise Can’t Be Stopped
By Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers
July 26, 2021
Updated 4:58 p.m. ET
Beijing accused Washington of a “thinly veiled attempt to contain and suppress China,” in remarks released before talks with a visiting U.S. diplomat had ended.
The entrance to a hotel where the officials are meeting in Tianjin, an eastern Chinese city.Credit...Tingshu Wang/Reuters
July 26, 2021, 1:35 a.m. ET
A senior Chinese diplomat on Monday bluntly warned the visiting American deputy secretary of state, Wendy R. Sherman, that the Biden administration’s strategy of pursuing both confrontation and cooperation with Beijing was sure to fail.
China’s assistant foreign minister, Xie Feng, told Ms. Sherman that the United States’ “competitive, collaborative and adversarial rhetoric” was a “thinly veiled attempt to contain and suppress China,” according to a summary of Mr. Xie’s comments that the Chinese foreign ministry sent to reporters.
Ms. Sherman’s meetings offered the latest gauge of the Biden administration’s strategy of stepping up pressure against the Chinese government on several fronts, including human rights and internet hacking, while seeking to work together on global problems like climate change and international health threats. Mr. Xie’s remarks underscored the anger that has been building in China toward the United States, undermining the chances that the approach will work.
“It seems that a whole-of-government and whole-of-society campaign is being waged to bring China down,” Mr. Xie told Ms. Sherman, according to the summaries of his comments, which were also issued on the Chinese foreign ministry website. “Do bad things and get good results. How is that ever possible?”
The Chinese foreign ministry’s volley of combative comments, issued before and during Ms. Sherman’s talks in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, suggested that her visit was unlikely to ease the disputes that have festered between Beijing and Washington. The State Department said last week that she would discuss Washington’s “serious concerns” about Chinese actions, as well as “areas where our interests align.”
But Chinese people “feel that the real emphasis is on the adversarial aspect; the collaborative aspect is just an expediency,” Mr. Xie told Ms. Sherman, according to the summary.
Ms. Sherman during her visit to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on Saturday. She rose to prominence during the Obama administration as a leading negotiator of a nuclear agreement with Iran.Credit...Byamba-Ochir Byambasuren/EPA, via Shutterstock
The acrimony echoed the opening of high-level talks between senior Chinese and Biden administration officials in March, when Beijing’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, delivered a 16-minute lecture, accusing them of arrogance and hypocrisy.
Ms. Sherman rose to prominence during the Obama administration as a leading negotiator of a nuclear agreement with Iran reached in 2015 after years of contentious talks. Now as the No. 2 in the State Department, she is focused on managing tense relations with China.
While President Biden has largely avoided the heated ideological sparring with the Chinese Communist Party that the Trump administration pursued in its final year, relations remain strained.
Washington has drawn in allies to press Beijing over mass detentions and forced labor in Xinjiang and the rollback of freedom in Hong Kong.
The Chinese government has also bristled at calls from the United States, the World Health Organization and others for a fresh examination of whether the coronavirus may have slipped out of a lab in China, igniting the pandemic.
Last week, Chinese officials said they were “extremely shocked” by a W.H.O. proposal to take a fresh look at the lab leak theory. A report in March from an initial W.H.O. inquiry stated that it was “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus had jumped into the wider population through a lab leak.
Yang Jiechi, second from left, meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Anchorage, Alaska, in March. During the talks, Mr. Yang accused the United States of arrogance and hypocrisy.Credit...Pool photo by Frederic J. Brown
The Biden administration and a coalition of other governments, including the member states of NATO, last week also asserted that Chinese security services and their contract hackers were behind widespread breaches of Microsoft email systems.
Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has expressed impatience with criticism and demands from Washington, especially over what Beijing deems internal issues like Hong Kong, Xinjiang and human rights.
“We’ll never accept insufferably arrogant lecturing from those ‘master teachers!’” Mr. Xi said in a speech on July 1 marking 100 years since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. He also warned that foes would “crack their heads and spill blood” against a wall of Chinese resolve.
Beijing has repeatedly retaliated against sanctions over Hong Kong and Xinjiang with its own bans on Western politicians, human rights groups and academics.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, who was also scheduled to meet Ms. Sherman in Tianjin, said over the weekend that the United States needed to be taught some humility.
“If the United States still hasn’t learned how to get along with other countries in an equal manner, then we have a responsibility to work with the international community to give it a good catch-up lesson,” Mr. Wang said in talks on Saturday with his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting.
11. U.S., China square off in rare diplomatic meeting in Tianjin
Square off. Did they come out with guns at the ready?
Excerpt:
"The deputy secretary underscored that the United States welcomes the stiff competition between our countries, but that we do not seek conflict with the PRC," Price said, according to the Washington Post.
U.S., China square off in rare diplomatic meeting in Tianjin
By Elizabeth Shim
July 26 (UPI) -- A meeting of senior U.S. and Chinese diplomatic officials in the Chinese city of Tianjin ended without a joint statement and drew attention to ongoing disputes over human rights and foreign policy.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman tweeted Monday after meeting with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi that she addressed the U.S. commitment to "healthy competition, protecting human rights and democratic values, and strengthening the rules-based international order that benefits us all."
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But Sherman also said that the two sides were "quite direct with each other on the areas of great difference," the New York Times reported.
U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a read-out that the meeting stressed cooperation on climate change, counter-narcotics, North Korea and Iran.
"The deputy secretary underscored that the United States welcomes the stiff competition between our countries, but that we do not seek conflict with the PRC," Price said, according to the Washington Post.
Tensions rose ahead of Sherman's meeting with Wang, when Sherman's Chinese counterpart Xie Feng suggested the United States was lecturing the Chinese government.
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Xie claimed that the United States "wants to reignite a sense of national purpose by establishing China as an 'imaginary enemy'," the Financial Times reported.
Xie, who met with Sherman before Wang, told Chinese media that he had relayed Beijing's demands: lifting U.S. visa restrictions against Chinese Communist Party members, ending sanctions on designated Chinese officials and no longer requiring Chinese state media to register as foreign agents in the United States.
U.S.-China relations "are currently at a deadlock and face serious difficulties," Xie said.
Trade disputes that began during the Trump administration also remain unresolved. In 2018 the previous administration imposed trade tariffs on Chinese imports including steel and aluminum.
China has taken measures against U.S. goods. On Monday Beijing's commerce ministry said it has extended anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations into U.S. imports of polyphenylene ether, used in cars and electronics, Shenzhen Securities Times reported.
The probe has been extended to Feb. 14, according to the report.
12. Critics say Biden missing a chance to back freedom movement in Cuba
One of our American values (and a universal value) is the right to self determination of government. What do the Cuban people want?
Critics say Biden missing a chance to back freedom movement in Cuba
The Biden administration on Monday leveled fresh sanctions against Havana and aligned with 20 other democracies to collectively condemn the Cuban regime’s recent crackdown on protesters, but critics and anti-communism activists say the U.S. moves are not enough.
President Biden, they say, is missing a historic chance to back a major pro-freedom movement on the communist-controlled island, and that a few more sanctions on a country facing a 60-year U.S. embargo will not make a difference.
“Where is Joe Biden? Cuba needs him. Freedom needs him and we expect him to lead,” Rep. Mike Waltz, Florida Republican, told a crowd of demonstrators who gathered near the White House on Monday to call for an end to communist rule in Cuba.
The rally, featuring fiery remarks from several Cuban American activists, came as the administration sought to draw fresh attention to the nearly unprecedented protests that broke out in several Cuban cities in early July. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement Monday saying the U.S. “support[s] the Cuban people’s desire for freedom and to determine their own future.”
Foreign ministers from 20 other nations — though just five in Latin America — joined the U.S. in a separate collective statement condemning Havana’s mass arrest and detention of Cubans who partook in the July 11 uprising.
“We call on the Cuban government to respect the legally guaranteed rights and freedoms of the Cuban people without fear of arrest and detention,” the joint statement said. “We urge the Cuban government to release those detained for exercising their rights to peaceful protest. We call for press freedom and for the full restoration of Internet access, which allows economies and societies to thrive.”
The joint statement was signed by Mr. Blinken and foreign ministers from Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Guatemala, Greece, Honduras, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, South Korea and Ukraine.
The July 11 demonstrations in Cuba sparked global media attention, with protesters in some cities chanting “Libertad,” or “Freedom,” and demanding President Miguel Diaz-Canel to step down in the face of deteriorating economic conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The uprising was the biggest against the Cuban regime in nearly two decades. But after the regime’s swift arrest and detention of hundreds of demonstrators, there has yet to be a second wave of protests. Mr. Diaz-Canel, meanwhile, has claimed U.S. sanctions and the trade embargo in place against Havana for decades are to blame for economic woes that sparked the protests.
Monday’s joint statement by the U.S. and other democracies came as the Organization of American States — the main multinational institution in the Western Hemisphere — remained silent on the Cuba developments, with some members even appearing to stand up for the Cuban regime.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday that he thinks Mr. Biden must make a decision about the decades-old U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. “It is not conceivable that in these times they want to punish an independent country with a blockade,” Mr. Lopez Obrador said, according to Reuters.
He noted the entire U.N. General Assembly, with the exception of Israel and the United States, voted for a 29th consecutive year last month in favor of a resolution demanding the end of the embargo.
Some in Washington argue the White House needs to move quickly to offer tangible assistance to Cuban protesters calling for regime change. The administration says it is looking for ways to do that without enriching the communist authorities, or spurring false hopes and expectations among the protesters.
The administration last week imposed fresh sanctions on Cuba‘s defense minister and the Cuban military’s special forces brigade for their role in the recent crackdown on protesters.
Others say the administration is toeing a delicate line. Andres Oppenheimer, the syndicated foreign affairs columnist with the Miami Herald who was born in Argentina, argued in a column last week that Mr. Biden “deserves credit for his reaction to the Cuban regime’s crackdown.”
“He has resisted the calls by the Democratic Party’s far left and the Black Lives Matter Foundation to lift U.S. sanctions. That would amount to rewarding repression,” Mr. Oppenheimer wrote. Mr. Biden would do well to give Cuba‘s internal opposition more high-profile recognition and turn it into a key player in any dealings with the regime, he argued.
It’s a more nuanced approach than the approach favored by Cuban American protesters.
As first lady Jill Biden returned Monday to the White House from the Tokyo Olympics, her motorcade passed a demonstrator on the National Mall who said, “No negotiation with the Cuban regime.”
Congressional Republicans are expected to highlight the Cuba issue during a Washington demonstration on Tuesday that serves as counterprogramming to the first hearing of the committee probing the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
13. How to Avert Disaster in Afghanistan
Excerpts:
Finally, Washington should stop advocating actions that strengthen the Taliban and weaken the Afghan government and security forces. For example, responding to pressure from Washington, the Afghan government released 5,000 prisoners in accordance with the 2020 agreement. Many of them belonged to al Qaeda.
Additional releases would give the Taliban and al Qaeda more manpower. It is important to remember that in 2011 released al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists helped establish Islamic State. After Islamic State gained control of territory the size of Britain, U.S. and allied forces deployed to Iraq and Syria to halt the humanitarian disaster, regain control of territory, and ensure the enduring defeat of what had become the most destructive terrorist organization in history.
These actions may be insufficient to arrest the Taliban’s brutal offensive. But without them, what’s likely to come is a collapse in Afghanistan that will embolden the enemies of all civilized peoples and compel a much more costly intervention later.
How to Avert Disaster in Afghanistan
The least the U.S. can do is offer air support, intel and ensure proper logistics and maintenance contracting.
WSJ · by H.R. McMaster and Bradley Bowman
The Taliban and its allies have taken control of more than 145 districts over the past two months, according to Foundation for Defense of Democracies analysts. The Taliban now threaten half of Afghanistan’s provincial capitals. The Taliban offensive in the north is particularly consequential because it is designed to strike the Afghan government’s power base and pre-empt the reconstitution of an anti-Taliban “northern alliance.” The point is clear: The Taliban intends to isolate and overthrow the government in Kabul.
An American priority must be preventing the collapse of the Afghan government, lest the Taliban’s partners, including al Qaeda and other jihadist terrorists, re-establish a base to plan, prepare and direct attacks against the U.S., its allies and others who don’t conform to their perverted interpretation of Islam. Other objectives should include limiting the humanitarian disaster and ensuring that the gains the Afghan people—especially women and girls—made since 2001 aren’t lost.
Failing to help Afghans who reject the Taliban’s advocacy of hatred and violence would lead to an unmanageable refugee crisis, which would destabilize Afghanistan’s nuclear-armed neighbor, Pakistan. Refugees would continue their journey beyond Central and South Asia to Europe and beyond.
Pointing out the dire situation in Afghanistan and the threat it presents to American interests isn’t intended to relitigate President Joe Biden’s April 14 decision to withdraw. But the conditions in Afghanistan expose the flawed assumptions and self-delusion on which that decision was based. Reality demands a new set of actions to protect American security and humanitarian interests.
As a first step, the U.S. should station close air support assets in Afghanistan and make clear that America will provide air support to Afghan forces. By ending almost all U.S. air support, America has enabled the Taliban’s extraordinary gains and reduced the morale of Afghan partners who had already been bearing the brunt of the fight. Many Afghans were willing to fight and die—tens of thousands have made the ultimate sacrifice since 2001—on the assumption that support from the air was available when needed. The sudden end of that support demoralized many Afghan forces while encouraging the Taliban.
American air assets in Afghanistan should help Afghan forces defend Kabul and provincial capitals, as well as attack Taliban forces that target Afghan civilians or attempt to fire their newly captured artillery into population centers.
Some may cite the 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement as a reason not to take this step. But the Taliban never honored the agreement, continuing to work closely with al Qaeda and intensifying murderous attacks on Afghan civilians. Why should the U.S. adhere to an agreement that the other party has abrogated?
As a second step, the U.S. and its allies should ensure the Afghan Air Force has comprehensive contractor maintenance and logistics support based in Afghanistan. The Afghan Air Force provides Kabul a major advantage over an enemy whose principal tactic is murdering civilians. Afghan-provided close air support, air resupply and medical evacuation are possible only with well-maintained fixed and rotary wing aircraft.
Third, the U.S. and partners should provide Afghan security forces with extensive intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support. The Taliban are trying to stretch the Afghan military by forcing them to defend everywhere. Giving Afghan leaders a heads up about Taliban activities can help the Afghans to concentrate force against the enemy.
Finally, Washington should stop advocating actions that strengthen the Taliban and weaken the Afghan government and security forces. For example, responding to pressure from Washington, the Afghan government released 5,000 prisoners in accordance with the 2020 agreement. Many of them belonged to al Qaeda.
Additional releases would give the Taliban and al Qaeda more manpower. It is important to remember that in 2011 released al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists helped establish Islamic State. After Islamic State gained control of territory the size of Britain, U.S. and allied forces deployed to Iraq and Syria to halt the humanitarian disaster, regain control of territory, and ensure the enduring defeat of what had become the most destructive terrorist organization in history.
These actions may be insufficient to arrest the Taliban’s brutal offensive. But without them, what’s likely to come is a collapse in Afghanistan that will embolden the enemies of all civilized peoples and compel a much more costly intervention later.
Mr. McMaster, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, served as White House national security adviser, 2017-18. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and chairman of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Bowman is the center’s senior director.
WSJ · by H.R. McMaster and Bradley Bowman
14. A U.S. Defense Budget That Makes China Smile
Excerpts:
There is no replacement for the value of a ready, active force. In a pinch, a cook or a clerk—or a Congressional Liaison Officer—can pick up a rifle or stand a watch on a ship. But shock brigades of Principle Deputies and Vice Directors are unlikely to deter Russia in Europe or China in the Pacific. While a civilian may be cheaper to employ than an “equivalent” servicemember, it doesn’t make sense to grow one workforce at the expense of the other. If military requirements justify a smaller active force, so too should the military’s supporting workforces shrink accordingly.
Cutting active duty forces is a cut to active duty forces, and a recipe for a future hollow force given no letup in demand.
Securing complex interests will take both flexibility and commitment. While no one doubts the dedication or patriotism of the defense civilian workforce, an era of growing threats calls for more combat power—not less. More servicemembers and less force structure would reduce stress on people while allowing more time for training, maintenance, and deployment, according to Elaine McCusker and John Ferrari of AEI. It is time to arrest the Pentagon’s civilian bloat and invest those dollars into better manning of active duty units, ships, and squadrons.
A U.S. Defense Budget That Makes China Smile
“More tooth, less tail” is a common refrain from defense leaders in search of more combat power as budgets have flatlined. No matter the topline, it seems defense continues to get less for more. Except when it comes to civilians.
The President’s 2022 budget request proposes to grow the Pentagon’s army of civilians while shrinking active duty endstrength. Biasing one workforce over the other demonstrates an incoherence of priorities.
In the face of global threats, the Biden 2022 budget calls for cuts to the size, or endstrength, of every military service (except the fledgling Space Force), while the Department of Defense’s civilian workforce is set to grow. Active duty rolls will see a reduction of nearly 7,000 servicemembers across the combat-oriented branches. At the same time, the defense federal civilian population will grow by nearly 9,000 employees.
The combination of growing support structure and contraction of the active force is mismatched to global requirements.
Some, including at the Pentagon, contend that increasing defense bureaucrats relative to active military personnel provides cost savings and increased capabilities for the total force. The Government Accountability Office observed in 1994 that defense civilians cost the government approximately $15,000 less per year than a uniformed service member of equivalent seniority. Further, the Defense Department argues that the “use of civilians allows the Department to focus its Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Guardians on the tasks and functions that are truly military essential.” Despite these arguments, excessive investment in support threatens the flexibility of the total force.
Not mentioned by leaders are the very real costs of the expansion of the civilian workforce. A 2015 Defense Business Board report found that the Defense Department employed over a million civilians, contractors, and uniformed personnel in administrative positions to support just 1.3 million service members on active duty. The report further identified $125 billion in defense-wide savings over five years accessible without direct workforce cuts “through attrition and early retirements” and other cost improvements. In context, those savings could have funded the operations of 50 Army Brigade Combat Teams, 10 Carrier Strike Group deployments, or 83 F-35 Operations Groups. These reforms were never implemented, and the imbalance between active forces and support structure has only worsened.
One of the prime drivers of the bloat of civilian overhead has been a continuous increase of headquarters staffs. As Maj. Gen. (ret) Arnold Punaro notes in his new book The Ever-Shrinking Fighting Force, the staffs of Office of the Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs, Combatant Commands, and Defense Field Activities alone employ more than 240,000 defense civilians and contractors. From the 1950s onward, the growth of these staffs has helped push the defense-wide spending category from five percent of the defense budget to nearly 20 percent.
Unsurprisingly, the inflation of overhead costs has coincided with an accelerating decline in active-duty endstrength. The vast Defense Department’s employee balance has shifted away from combat power for the past decade. As the FY21 Green Book notes, the Pentagon fell below two servicemembers per civilian in 2011 and has not improved since. The President’s proposed force mix for 2022 offers a 1.7:1 ratio of active-duty military personnel to civilian employees, the least favorable ratio since before World War II. For perspective, the Pentagon maintained an approximately 2.2:1 ratio throughout the height of the Iraq War and a staggering 4.6:1 in 1945.
While the United States is not currently facing existential threats nor as intense combat as in World War II, the sheer multiplicity of potential challenges demands the versatility and prompt readiness that only uniformed, active servicemembers can provide. The contributions of defense civilians is valuable, but they are no substitute for uniformed servicemembers.
There is no replacement for the value of a ready, active force. In a pinch, a cook or a clerk—or a Congressional Liaison Officer—can pick up a rifle or stand a watch on a ship. But shock brigades of Principle Deputies and Vice Directors are unlikely to deter Russia in Europe or China in the Pacific. While a civilian may be cheaper to employ than an “equivalent” servicemember, it doesn’t make sense to grow one workforce at the expense of the other. If military requirements justify a smaller active force, so too should the military’s supporting workforces shrink accordingly.
Cutting active duty forces is a cut to active duty forces, and a recipe for a future hollow force given no letup in demand.
Securing complex interests will take both flexibility and commitment. While no one doubts the dedication or patriotism of the defense civilian workforce, an era of growing threats calls for more combat power—not less. More servicemembers and less force structure would reduce stress on people while allowing more time for training, maintenance, and deployment, according to Elaine McCusker and John Ferrari of AEI. It is time to arrest the Pentagon’s civilian bloat and invest those dollars into better manning of active duty units, ships, and squadrons.
A new 1945 Contributing Editor, Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a regular guest lecturer at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security.
15. Exclusive: Spec Ops Vets on why we must save Afghan Interpreters
Excerpts:
Several organizations have sprung up to advocate for the Afghan allies’ cause. No One Left Behind is one of those efforts. No One Left Behind has been leading the push to reform the SIV process and providing financial services and even job placement for SIV recipients and their families when they arrive in the U.S. In addition, the organization has been working with Congress and the current Administration to precipitate the evacuation of affected Afghans.
Another group that is helping in the effort is Combined Arms, a veteran group that serves as a one-stop shop for veterans, providing a full spectrum of services and opportunities to those transitioning off of active duty. Located in Houston, Texas, Combined Arms is slowly expanding across the U.S.
Exclusive: Spec Ops Vets on why we must save Afghan Interpreters
As the U.S. military is almost out of Afghanistan, and the Afghan government seems unable to fend off the Taliban onslaught, the fate of thousands of locals who fought alongside and helped American and Coalition forces looks dire.
The Pentagon and State Department have launched Operation Allies Refuge, an attempt to evacuate the approximately 18,000 Afghan interpreters, contractors, and security guards, and their 53,000 family members who have applied for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program by the end of the month. But once out of the country, their ordeal will not be over, as their SIV applications will still need to be approved for them to relocate to the U.S.
Several organizations have sprung up to advocate for the Afghan allies’ cause. No One Left Behind is one of those efforts. No One Left Behind has been leading the push to reform the SIV process and providing financial services and even job placement for SIV recipients and their families when they arrive in the U.S. In addition, the organization has been working with Congress and the current Administration to precipitate the evacuation of affected Afghans.
Another group that is helping in the effort is Combined Arms, a veteran group that serves as a one-stop shop for veterans, providing a full spectrum of services and opportunities to those transitioning off of active duty. Located in Houston, Texas, Combined Arms is slowly expanding across the U.S.
Sandboxx News spoke with special operations veterans from across the community who have fought alongside these Afghans to get their thoughts on the situation, and what we can all be doing to help.
No One Left Behind
Afghan interpreters have been key in U.S. and Coalition operations since the start of the war back in September of 2001. Attached to conventional and special operations units, these Afghans served as a bridge between the troops and the locals.
“I was virtually traveling every day around Afghanistan with our forces and in meetings with Afghan partners and what these interpreters did for me for me was invaluable,” General Joseph Votel (retired), a former commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), told Sandboxx News.
“It wasn’t just so much about the language aspects, certainly an important piece of it, but also of being able to translate and communicate effectively.”
General Votel, a staunch supporter of the effort to evacuate the Afghan Interpreters and their families (DVIDS).
“From my personal experience and perspective, working with Afghan interpreters has always been an incredibly affirming experience. They clearly understand and appreciate what the Coalition is attempting to achieve in Afghanistan, helping the Afghan people create an inclusive and representative society for all people,” Lieutenant Colonel Doug Livermore, a Green Beret serving in a National Guard Special Forces Group, told Sandboxx News.
“I found my Afghan interpreters to be some of the most earnest, enthusiastic people who deeply loved their families and only wanted the best for Afghanistan and its people. There are many whom I would trust with my life, and did, without hesitation.”
Afghan Interpreters have been invaluable to American and Coalition troops (U.S. Army).
Whether they were back in headquarters, translating between senior officers and Afghan elders, or in the field with the troops, the Afghan interpreters were often invaluable to the mission, and to their teammates.
“They are incredible people. Every interpreter I worked with was experienced and went above and beyond to put us in the best position to be successful. We became friends during the 7 months I was there,” Zach Asmus, a former Air Force Combat Controller, told Sandboxx News.
“We talked about our families, what we would do after the war, etc. They become part of your team and it’s no longer an ‘us’ or ‘them’ mentality when you are fighting a common enemy. So now, as the war is ending, many veterans, like me, feel like we are leaving our friends behind with targets on their backs.”
But despite the Administration’s and the State Department’s renewed efforts, time is running out for the Afghan allies and their families.
Targeting Afghan interpreters and their families is nothing new. For years, the Taliban have sought to frustrate U.S. and Coalition military efforts by killing interpreters, thus restricting the ability of American and allied troops to effectively communicate with the locals and alienating them in the process. Reports of retaliation against former and current interpreters are increasing, with some culminating in public beheadings.
“We made a promise to our friends in Afghanistan that if they helped us bridge the language and culture barrier that we would offer them a way out of there if they chose it. And don’t get me wrong, the SIV program can work, but it’s taking too long. These guys don’t have another day to spare, let alone 5 years of red tape,” Asmus explained.
“I talked to a gentleman who sent over 100 emails to the state department only clarifying a date on one section of his application. 100 emails. As we withdraw, no one has time for that sort of bureaucracy. The Taliban are literally knocking on the doors of these villages and executing or threatening anyone who served with coalition forces.”
An Afghan Commando between two Army Green Berets and Medal of Honor recipients. Afghan Interpreters have provided critical assistance to U.S. troops (U.S. Army).
The Day After
But relocating America’s Afghan allies to the States with a SIV isn’t the end. They need to be productive members of society once they arrive. Like anyone, they’ll need to have the opportunity to realize their full potential in order to find a fulfilling life on the other side of this war.
“Normally, when an Afghan ally is resettled in the U.S., they do so through the SIV program. When they arrive, they are immediately assisted by a refugee resettlement agency,” Cress Clippard, Marine Corps veteran and community group leader of the SIVs and Allies Group at Combined Arms, told Sandboxx News.
“They provide all of their basic needs for a few months and help them get culturally oriented. They sign them up for ESL classes, help with getting a driver’s license, and other basic things newcomers need. Because of their military connection, our group provides supplementary help alongside the refugee agencies. We connect them to additional resources from veteran organizations.”
These Afghans and their families can become productive members of society. But they also need some support once they arrive.
“Just getting them out isn’t enough. Once they get to America, we have to support them in getting used to our culture, involving them in veteran organizations, and getting them upskilled in order to get good jobs,” Asmus added.
“I can’t tell you how many amazing interpreters are stuck doing part-time warehousing work. We’re talking about guys that were trusted at the highest levels of both governments to organize the AV setups for international meetings and broadcasts, were doctors, have Master’s degrees, etc. So once we get everyone out of there, our next mission is to get them the resources and recognition they deserve here at home.”
Relocated Afghans who become Americans can offer great value to America’s national security apparatus. Besides their language skills and cultural expertise, for the majority, these are battle-hardened people who have fought for years against a determined enemy. Their skills could be valuable to the U.S. military and Intelligence Community in a wide variety of roles.
“Evacuating the Afghan SIV applicants and their families serves a national security imperative. These applicants and their families bring valuable experiences, skills, and awesome potential to add to the fabric of American society,” Livermore said.
U.S. Army photo
But it’s only the fate of Afghans and their families on the line. America’s reputation is also at stake. Votel likens the current situation to America’s efforts to relocate Vietnamese refugees in 1975. Growing up in St. Paul, the future general watched as the Vietnamese population became an important part of their new American community.
“When you see the influence they have here, it makes you think of America doing the right thing, even in the wake of a disaster like Vietnam was. We did the right thing. We stood by people that stood by us, that were going to be persecuted because of their association and support to us. We brought them to our country and then made them part of our society,” General Votel added.
“Keep pressure on the administration to get this done, to do this right, to follow through on our promises. This, I think, is the most important thing: It’s critical that we keep this at the front of the discussion here in the eyes of our political leadership. It’s really important.”
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16. Joe Biden’s Afghan pullout could end in tragedy
Excerpts:
The human rights consequences of the Taliban’s advance are likely to be appalling. There are already reports that the organisation is carrying out summary executions and forcing girls into sex slavery in areas that it has recaptured. Prominent Afghan women have often been targeted in Taliban attacks.
...
It is true that Biden’s first moral duty is to the American people. But that does not mean that, after a 20-year presence, the US has no continuing moral obligation to the people of Afghanistan. And, with troop losses at low levels, there was no real domestic pressure to pull out of the country completely.
There are also direct American national interests still at stake. The terrorist threat that drew the US into Afghanistan has not disappeared. If the Taliban once again controlled the country, it might well become a safe haven for the likes of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Jihadis all over the world will also draw heart from the spectacle of the defeat of Nato in Afghanistan.
The resurgence of the Taliban is also likely to cause a new refugee crisis, as millions of Afghans seek to leave the country. European governments now fear that 500,000 or more Afghans may arrive at the borders of the EU within months.
Biden may believe that drawing a line under the Afghan war will allow the US to concentrate on more urgent problems. Sadly, he may just have created a new Afghan crisis that will come back to haunt him.
Joe Biden’s Afghan pullout could end in tragedy
The country’s women will suffer from the Taliban’s resurgence and so will US interests
On his recent trip to Europe, Joe Biden lost no opportunity to proclaim “America is back”. But actions speak louder than words. In Afghanistan, America is out. The consequences could be tragic for the country and dangerous for the US and the wider world.
The US president is not even pretending that America is leaving behind a stable and successful Afghanistan. Talking to the press earlier this month, Biden conceded that the Taliban is “at its strongest militarily since 2001” — when US and allied forces invaded Afghanistan and ejected the Taliban government from Kabul.
Biden insists that it is “highly unlikely” that the Taliban will now reconquer the whole country. But Mark Milley, America’s most senior general, sounds less confident. His verdict last week was simply that “a Taliban automatic takeover is not a foregone conclusion”.
If the Taliban were to reconquer Afghanistan, it would be a disaster for the people of the country, in particular women, and a humiliation for the US. The baffling thing is the Biden administration could have avoided this risk, at a relatively low cost.
The US president has spoken movingly of the 2,448 Americans who have lost their lives over the course of a 20-year war, and the more than 20,000 who were wounded, as well as the mental toll on veterans of the war. America’s allies have also taken heavy losses, with the UK alone losing 457 troops.
But no American has been killed in Afghanistan for 17 months. Biden argues that this low level of casualties is a consequence of the fact that the US has been engaged in peace talks with the Taliban — posited on American withdrawal from the country. He believes that if the US announced that it intended to stay after all, the Taliban would resume assaults on US troops and casualties would rise again.
But direct talks between the US and the Taliban only really got under way in 2018 — and US casualties have been relatively low since 2015, with fewer than 100 US troops killed over the past five years.
The reality is that the few thousand US and Nato troops left in Afghanistan have not been engaged in direct combat for some years. The real fighting has been left to the Afghan army. However, the withdrawal of American and other Nato troops has had a disastrous effect on the morale of the Afghan government and military. Western experts speak of a surge of contacts from prominent Afghans, looking for any opportunity to get out of the country.
The Taliban, by contrast, sound triumphant and are making rapid gains on the battlefield. The Islamist militants have seized control of vital border crossings and now control roughly half of Afghanistan’s 419 districts. They have not captured any provincial capitals yet. But attacks on major towns could occur within weeks — with the capture of the capital, Kabul, the Taliban’s ultimate goal. Even if the Taliban prove incapable of holding major cities, Afghanistan is clearly in for a period of intensified civil war.
The human rights consequences of the Taliban’s advance are likely to be appalling. There are already reports that the organisation is carrying out summary executions and forcing girls into sex slavery in areas that it has recaptured. Prominent Afghan women have often been targeted in Taliban attacks.
In the 20 years since the fall of the Taliban, millions of Afghan girls have been able to go to school. Women make up over a quarter of the members of the Afghan parliament. If the Taliban retake power, all of these gains will be lost. This unfolding tragedy makes a mockery of the Biden team’s proclamation that it will be a “champion for women and girls around the world”.
The US president is not blind to all this. He recently described a “heartbreaking” encounter he had in Afghanistan with a schoolgirl, who wanted to be a doctor, and begged him to keep US troops in the country. But the US president believes that he cannot ask American soldiers to keep fighting and dying for the rights of people on the other side of the world.
It is true that Biden’s first moral duty is to the American people. But that does not mean that, after a 20-year presence, the US has no continuing moral obligation to the people of Afghanistan. And, with troop losses at low levels, there was no real domestic pressure to pull out of the country completely.
There are also direct American national interests still at stake. The terrorist threat that drew the US into Afghanistan has not disappeared. If the Taliban once again controlled the country, it might well become a safe haven for the likes of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Jihadis all over the world will also draw heart from the spectacle of the defeat of Nato in Afghanistan.
The resurgence of the Taliban is also likely to cause a new refugee crisis, as millions of Afghans seek to leave the country. European governments now fear that 500,000 or more Afghans may arrive at the borders of the EU within months.
Biden may believe that drawing a line under the Afghan war will allow the US to concentrate on more urgent problems. Sadly, he may just have created a new Afghan crisis that will come back to haunt him.
17. We’re Not Prepared to Live in This Surveillance Society
Conclusion:
The industrial scale of Pegasus and the breadth of its targets is a reminder that digital security lags far behind digital innovation. Spyware is the 21st century equivalent of arms: Its products are weapons of mass repression and surveillance. The whistleblowers on this occasion have done democracy a favor. Now, tardy governments need to act.
We’re Not Prepared to Live in This Surveillance Society
Democratic governments must do better to protect citizens from sophisticated spyware.
July 26, 2021, 3:00 AM EDT
Last week, an investigation by Amnesty International and several media outlets alleged that 37 heads of state, reporters, human rights activists and businessmen had been hacked with spyware developed by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group. The names came from a leaked list of 50,000 mobile phone numbers of individuals regarded “as people of interest” by NSO’s government clients. Around 600 of them are politicians or heads of state, ranging from French President President Emmanuel Macron to the King of Morocco.
NSO denies the charges. But the revelations as well as other evidence suggest that gross violations of privacy are becoming a norm rather than an exception. Traditional state agencies are struggling to keep pace.
The reason is simple: Most laws on privacy were passed in the age of postal services, landlines and physical newspapers. Today people conduct much of their lives online. They allow their mobile phones to record, wittingly or not, evidence of their deepest secrets. And the pandemic has moved more confidential business onto digital platforms that record their chats.
That makes our devices juicy targets for authoritarian states and bad actors, as well as for the private enterprise spies who have the tools to help them.
Yes, there are upsides to the prevalence of modern surveillance. More than 400 people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, for instance, were arrested and charged because they left their digital “fingerprints” at the scene. Their locations were confirmed by GPS satellites, WiFi signals, videos and metadata — all collected from internet giants. It was another Israeli security company, Cellebrite, that unlocked and copied the contents of their mobile devices. One of the Capitol insurgents was asked on Facebook whether he’d been arrested: “No not yet anyway, lol.” Shortly after he sent that message, he was.
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But the sophistication and ubiquity of surveillance techniques used by democratic policing agencies should raise questions about how far we’re willing to let governments listen in to our private lives.
Debate erupted when former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the vast scale of the U.S. government’s data collection program in 2013. Snowden’s revelations, however, did not show the government targeting individual reporters or human rights activists. The Amnesty International report from last week alleges that authoritarian governments such as Saudi Arabia used NSO’s Pegasus spyware on dissidents and journalists.
Pegasus was originally designed to help western governments target terrorists and major criminal networks. And NSO protests that it only sells spyware to governments approved by Israel. It also claims that its technology has saved many lives. But the balance of benefits and harms has to come under greater scrutiny. Amnesty claims that Pegasus has been used to target opponents of Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government and dissidents to Viktor Orban’s Hungarian populists, among others.
NSO is looking less like an innovative company doing necessary work and more like one finding excuses for unacceptable snooping.
Already embroiled in a lawsuit with WhatsApp over allegations that it sent malware to more than 1,000 customers via its messaging app, Pegasus has also been mentioned in connection with the data snatch revealing Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos’s extramarital affair. If Bezos isn’t safe from the snoopers, then who is?
And yet governments have been slow about figuring out how to control hacking software. Macron has shown seriousness by convening a rapid cyber-security meeting after the recent Pegasus allegations. And Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that export of NSO spyware should be restrained to democratic countries where there is judicial oversight.
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President Biden, anxious to avoid conflict with Israel, should nonetheless make clear to the new government in Jerusalem that NSO, regarded as a spearhead of Israeli innovation and security, risks damaging the interests and reputation of its home country. The reported abuses are too wide-ranging to dismiss. The swift convening of a parliamentary commission in the Knesset into the matter effectively concedes that, contrary to previous denials in the Netanhayu years, there are serious ethical issues to answer for here. Failing to address them will look like negligence or worse on the part of Israel and the U.S.
The industrial scale of Pegasus and the breadth of its targets is a reminder that digital security lags far behind digital innovation. Spyware is the 21st century equivalent of arms: Its products are weapons of mass repression and surveillance. The whistleblowers on this occasion have done democracy a favor. Now, tardy governments need to act.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author of this story:
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18. During Latest Exchange, China Presents US With 2 Lists of Grievances
Excerpts:
The State Department read-out does share one thing with the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s: Both read as little more than a laundry list of complaints. The State Department said that Sherman:
… raised our concerns about human rights, including Beijing’s anti-democratic crackdown in Hong Kong; the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang; abuses in Tibet; and the curtailing of media access and freedom of the press. She also spoke about our concerns about Beijing’s conduct in cyberspace; across the Taiwan Strait; and in the East and South China Seas.
Sherman also decried the arbitrary detentions of U.S. and Canadian citizens in China and “the PRC’s unwillingness to cooperate with the World Health Organization and allow a second phase investigation in the PRC into COVID-19’s origins.”
The blistering tone of the official read-outs on both sides is tough to square with Zhao’s comment that “On the whole, the talks have been profound, candid and helpful for the two sides to gain a better understanding of each other’s position and seek healthy development of China-U.S. relations going forward.”
During Latest Exchange, China Presents US With 2 Lists of Grievances
Based on the official read-outs from both sides, it seems Wendy Sherman’s trip to China didn’t go much beyond repeating lengthy lists of concern.
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On July 25 and 26, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was in Tianjin, China. While the State Department read-out characterized the trip as “meetings with State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other PRC officials,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry made it clear that Sherman’s primary interlocutor was Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng, the official responsible for North American affairs.
According to Xinhua, China’s state media agency, Xie presented Sherman with two lists: the “List of U.S. Wrongdoings that Must Stop” and the “List of Key Individual Cases that China Has Concerns With.” The full lists were not made available publicly, but Xinhua provided a summary:
In the List of U.S. Wrongdoings that Must Stop, China urged the United States to unconditionally revoke the visa restrictions over Communist Party of China (CPC) members and their families, revoke sanctions on Chinese leaders, officials and government agencies, and remove visa restrictions on Chinese students.
China also urged the United States to stop suppressing Chinese enterprises, stop harassing Chinese students, stop suppressing the Confucius Institutes, revoke the registration of Chinese media outlets as “foreign agents” or “foreign missions”, and revoke the extradition request for Meng Wanzhou [the CFO of Huawei, who was detained in Vancouver, Canada in December 2018].
The “List of Key Individual Cases that China Has Concerns With” apparently touched on similar themes, presumably with specific names attached: “some Chinese students’ visa applications being rejected, Chinese citizens receiving unfair treatment in the United States, Chinese diplomatic and consular missions being harassed and rammed into by perpetrators in the United States, growing anti-Asian and anti-China sentiment, and Chinese citizens suffering violent attacks.”
The mention of Chinese diplomatic missions being “harassed and rammed” is interesting as there have been no public reports of attacks on Chinese consulates or the embassy in the United States. Beijing may be obliquely referring to an uptick in protests outside Chinese missions in the United States.
The exchange recalls China’s aggressive stance on its relationship with Australia, where Beijing similarly released a list of grievances and placed the onus for repairing ties entirely on the other party.
China’s Foreign Ministry also released separate read-outs highlighting different barbs thrown by Xie during his meeting with Sherman, including attacks on the U.S. human rights record, Washington’s “coercive” and “bullying” diplomacy, and a rejection of the U.S. mantra of the “rules-based international order” as another name for “‘the law of the jungle’ where might is right and the big bully the small.”
Notably, Xie had nothing but contempt for the Biden administration’s rhetorical nods to cooperation: “U.S. policy seems to be demanding cooperation when it wants something from China; decoupling, cutting off supplies, blockading or sanctioning China when it believes it has an advantage; and resorting to conflict and confrontation at all costs.”
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Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian expanded on that in his press conference on July 26. “The U.S. side sought China’s cooperation and support on climate change, the Iranian nuclear issue, and the DPRK nuclear issue among others,” Zhao said. “In fact, China has been playing a responsible and constructive role on all these issues… The U.S. should adopt a correct view of cooperation. It simply won’t work when the U.S. seeks cooperation with China while harming China’s interests.” (Notably, the State Department also listed Afghanistan and Myanmar as areas where cooperation was discussed.)
Xie placed the full blame for the current “stalemate” in China-U.S. relations on Washington, saying, “Fundamentally, it is because some Americans portray China as an ‘imagined enemy.’”
“The U.S. side needs to change course and work with China on the basis of mutual respect and embrace fair competition and peaceful coexistence with China,” he said.
There was no read-out from China on discussions with Foreign Minister Wang, as though Beijing would prefer to pretend that meeting had not happened. As of this writing, there was no indication of the meeting on the Foreign Ministry’s list of Wang’s recent activities. On the other hand, reading only the U.S. statement gives no indication that Sherman ever met with Xie, who ranks several pegs below her (Sherman is the State Department’s No. 2, while Xie is the third-ranked of four Chinese vice foreign ministers. Sherman also posted a photo of her and Wang on Twitter, but no images of her with Xie.
Sherman’s stop in Tianjin reportedly almost didn’t happen because China wanted her to meet with Xie, while the U.S. demanded a more senior dialogue partner. The different read-outs allow both sides to pretend they won that particular battle.
The State Department read-out does share one thing with the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s: Both read as little more than a laundry list of complaints. The State Department said that Sherman:
… raised our concerns about human rights, including Beijing’s anti-democratic crackdown in Hong Kong; the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang; abuses in Tibet; and the curtailing of media access and freedom of the press. She also spoke about our concerns about Beijing’s conduct in cyberspace; across the Taiwan Strait; and in the East and South China Seas.
Sherman also decried the arbitrary detentions of U.S. and Canadian citizens in China and “the PRC’s unwillingness to cooperate with the World Health Organization and allow a second phase investigation in the PRC into COVID-19’s origins.”
The blistering tone of the official read-outs on both sides is tough to square with Zhao’s comment that “On the whole, the talks have been profound, candid and helpful for the two sides to gain a better understanding of each other’s position and seek healthy development of China-U.S. relations going forward.”
19. The Problem with Biden’s Democracy Agenda
Excerpts:
The Biden administration’s rhetoric of democracy versus autocracy seems to be a legacy of the previous bipolar era. Cutting deals with autocracies is an unfortunate necessity to best defend U.S. and allied interests, and has long been a feature of U.S. diplomacy. Extending that realism to China and other autocracies would be a wise move.
In light of the challenges threatening U.S. democracy, it is understandable why Biden has made demonstrating the success of democracies a central theme. If his main intent is rejuvenating U.S. democracy, however, Biden risks being faced with charges of hypocrisy and ineffectiveness as he tilts toward realism. If Biden wants to bring about a democratic revival — to lead, as he constantly (and rightly) says, by the “power of our example” — he should focus on getting America’s own house in order. Until then, less preaching and a little humility are called for.
The Problem with Biden’s Democracy Agenda - War on the Rocks
MATHEW BURROWS AND ROBERT MANNING
There is an ironic tension at the heart of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy. The president has said, “I think we’re in a contest — not with China per se, but a contest with autocrats, autocratic governments around the world — as to whether or not democracies can compete with them in the rapidly changing 21st century.” However, according to a Pew survey earlier this year, Americans consider promoting democracy abroad as one of the least important priorities for U.S. foreign policy.
Can Biden’s desire for a struggle between democracy and autocracy be the foundation of an effective grand strategy? Or is it a path toward hubris and conflict that is backed principally by Washington’s foreign policy elite?
On his recent trip to participate in Group of Seven (G-7), NATO, and E.U. meetings, Biden put democracy front and center. He argued that “market democracies, not China or any other country, will write the 21st-century rules around trade and technology.” The president has so frequently cast U.S. foreign policy as a contest between democracies and autocracies that some are calling it the “Biden Doctrine.”
Mobilizing allies and likeminded partners into a coalition to shape updated rules and norms on specific issues is, indeed, the requisite beginning of any viable U.S. strategy. But in a multipolar world of diffused power, it is not sufficient as an organizing principle for world order because dealing with any of the global challenges from climate change and nuclear proliferation to future pandemics will require establishing a basis for cooperation with China, along with other autocracies like Russia and the Gulf countries. Dividing the world on the basis of ideology is ill-advised since democracies are not identical and uniting them is hardly as easy or predictable as many seem to think. The past couple of decades of squabbling, sanctions, and tensions over gas pipelines, the Iraq war, and Western relations with Russia and China — to mention only a few contentious issues — demonstrate that shared values between the United States and its closest allies are no guarantee of comity. Other examples include the myriad U.S.-European disputes over climate policy, vaccine nationalism, tech taxation and regulation, Iran, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Nations, of course, have interests as well as values. Countries — regardless of political system — calculate their interests based on geography, economics, history, and culture as much as values. As Lord Palmerston famously said of the British Empire: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual.” Biden, and it seems much conventional wisdom in Washington, wants to turn Lord Palmerston’s words on their head. Promoting democracy has been a key part of U.S. foreign policy rhetoric ever since Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that the United States was making the world safe for democracy by entering World War I. However, the United States is no longer the dominant power it once was and the increasingly contested “rules-based order” is unraveling. The notion that an alliance of democracies can itself define the global order, excluding non-democratic major powers, threatens international stability and global cooperation on the major challenges facing humanity.
Moving forward, the Biden administration should certainly try to generate a common approach on global issues with its allies and partners. However, this should only be as a first step toward negotiating with China, Russia, and others on how to deal with pressing challenges like trade, international and regional security, and climate change. Believing that the United States or the world’s democracies writ large can sideline China and Russia is a recipe for division and strife.
Democracies versus Autocracies?
For many in Washington, international relations would be a lot simpler if we could confine the world to likeminded democracies. Taking this logic of a desired democratic order to an extreme, for example, a recent Atlantic Council report, while acknowledging the difficulties of Washington’s working with its traditional partners, advocates expanding the G-7 into a larger group of 10 leading democracies to create a “D-10” to shape a new global order. It suggests, “The D-10 could focus on developing an innovative new architecture—a revised Bretton Woods—for managing the global economy and aligning the free world through more fair and sustainable trade agreements.” It proposes a “Free World Trade Agreement.”
In reality, an integrated global economy and financial system already exists, and it does not necessarily favor the world’s democracies. China — an increasingly authoritarian, one-party communist state — is the most important driver of global economic growth. It is the world’s largest trading power and a leading capital exporter. Even as the U.S. dollar remains the global reserve currency, China is the leading trade partner of most of the D-10 as well as most U.S. Asian partners. Russia is a major trading partner of many E.U. states and has built up a currency reserve in excess of $600 billion. This is to say nothing of cross-investments, both direct investments and portfolio: China holds $1.1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, and American companies invested $116 billion of direct investment in China in 2019 alone. There are growing concerns about Beijing, fueling efforts to redesign supply chains, control technology, and avoid dependence on its technologies. Global interdependence may be reconfigured and circumscribed, but it is a discrete, issue-based phenomenon.
An alliance of democracies is not a new idea. In 2000, the Clinton administration set up a full-fledged organization, the Community of Democracies, which was continued in the Bush administration. The original idea was to be:
A forum in which to work together to learn from each other and identify global priorities for diplomatic action to advance and defend democracy, including through collective diplomatic action at the [United Nations] and in other multilateral fora.
After two decades, few know of the Community of Democracies, and it is bereft of demonstrable achievements, as democracy worldwide is being challenged by populist, authoritarian nationalism.
While advocates of a democratic order seek to avoid a new Cold War, it is difficult to see how their binary democracy or authoritarianism division of the world could avoid a bifurcated, conflict-prone future. Trying to sideline China because it isn’t a legitimate actor in a democratic order would likely push Beijing to be more activist in combating such a Western-dominated system. Currently, it is only selectively revisionist, adopting many rules and practices from the West that it sees are advantageous for its development.
Some argue that with China so integrated and such a force in the global economy, it is a far bigger challenge than was the Soviet Union. But, as evidenced in European and Asian behavior seeking to avoid binary choices, there is hardly a unitary view of the China question. Nor is it obvious that the China factor is sufficient to drive a significantly more consequential outcome for a community of democracies.
Biden’s decision to embrace the language of democracy promotion is particularly curious at a time when democracy is receding around the world, and has been for most of this century. The trend toward illiberal democracy with an authoritarian tinge is global in scope. According to the University of Gothenburg’s V-Dem Project, “The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2020 is down to levels last found around 1990.” With the recent decline in India’s democracy, some 68 percent of the world population now live in electoral autocracies. Consequently, the number of liberal democracies has dropped from 41 countries to 32 during the same time period: “In North America, and Western and Eastern Europe, no country has advanced in democracy in the past 10 years while Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, and the United States of America have declined substantially.”
Certainly Biden has every reason to highlight democracy’s problems, but there’s a leap in logic to suggest the United States can successfully promote democracy in other countries. Nicole Bibbins Sedaca, a democracy practitioner and executive vice president of Freedom House, made the point in her study of U.S. democracy promotion that while those efforts have “played a clear — albeit varying — role in supporting democratization in many countries … it cannot be seen as the primary cause in any one case.” Arguably, the most effective way the United States can promote democracy is to repair its own democracy.
Living in the Real World
How much of a threat is autocracy? Apart from China, with its global ambitions, there is a dearth of autocracies that offer themselves as models to challenge democracy. Most, like Russia, mainly seek to justify their authoritarian rule under the veil of nationalism and traditionalism. Autocracy is less an ideology than a means of socio-political control whose effort at self-justification plays on shortcomings of democracies. Certainly, China and Russia like dealing with autocracies and are committed to avoiding any U.S.-inspired regime change efforts against them, but they recognize — more than Biden and other Western commentators — how fragile and brittle authoritarian regimes can be in the face of domestic pressure.
Instead of overdoing the threat posed by autocracies, Washington needs to find ways of working with a range of countries on an issue-specific basis. Those countries — whether democratic or authoritarian — with ample weight on a given issue should have a seat at the table. The negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal are a good example, as was the previous Six-Party talks on North Korea. Both included China and Russia.
On climate, China, the United States, India, Russia, Japan, and the European Union account for some 85 percent of greenhouse gases. A smaller group bringing that much to the table is more likely to reach consensus and set standards than a 162-member U.N. conference. That’s why a major emitters group was created. More recently, the four leading Indo-Pacific maritime powers (United States, Japan, Australia, India) that together make up the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue could shape cooperation on key issues for the region, besides confronting China.
Biden wants democracies to write the rules of trade. Yet he arrived at the G-7 with little to say on advancing free trade beyond mitigating sanctions on allies by resolving the protracted Boeing-Airbus dispute over subsidies, and suspending tariffs. U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs on E.U. partners remain. Prio to the Trump administration, the United States had been negotiating a trans-Atlantic trade accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which both the Bush and Obama administrations defined as a pillar of U.S. Asia strategy, designed to pressure China into adopting high-standard trade rules or risk isolation. However, President Donald Trump rejected the trans-Pacific agreement, and the trans-Atlantic trade talks ended inconclusively.
As the United States took a holiday from major trade deals during the Trump administration, anxious E.U. and Asian partners went on a frenzy of trade deal-making. The European Union signed trade agreements with Japan, South Korea, Association of Southeast Asian Nations states, Mercosur in Latin America, and even an investment treaty with China, just to name a few. Asia forged two major regional trade accords, both without the United States. Japan took up the mantle of leadership and finalized the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and U.S. allies and partners worked with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China to launch the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The United States cannot make the rules if it’s not in the game. One vital issue where the logic of aligning democracies could show its value and reverse trade trends is whether the United States and European Union can reach a common stance on reform of the World Trade Organization. This step would not necessarily solve all the problems of China’s illegal trade practices, but it would increase leverage on China to alter its predatory industrial policies.
Similarly, if the United States, Europe, and Japan can align their policies, they can shape standards, constrain China from imposing its tech standards on others, and press Beijing to alter its policies. U.S. and E.U. tech regulatory policies currently have large gaps. Indeed, even as the U.S.-E.U. summit created a US-E.U. Trade and Technology Council to shape rules and standards, the United States admonished the European Union for anti-U.S. tech regulations and digital tax proposals. If democratic allies can help fashion more secure supply chains, and find common positions on tech standards and on some technologies (like 5G), they also can with some success counter China’s predatory industrial policies.
Nonetheless, the logic of uniting Western efforts against Chinese technology has limits. First, not all technologies are strategic or dominated by the West. Moreover, although the gap is narrowing, there are significant differences in export controls among the G-7, more so with other democracies, but China’s coercive economic policies are narrowing the gaps. Selling China chips for Huawei cellphones is not necessarily a national security threat, but some Huawei equipment may pose security risks. Technological decoupling should be discrete and selective, not broad-brush.
The Biden administration’s efforts on climate change may actually lead to more interdependence with China. As a recent Financial Times analysis explained, China dominates the sourcing, production, and processing of key clean energy minerals worldwide and is the leader in clean tech manufacturing. It controls some 70 percent or more of lithium-ion battery metals and processing and 90 percent of the rare earth elements that are used in both high-technology weapons systems and offshore wind turbines, and it makes three-quarters of the world’s solar panels.
Most of all, emerging technologies — including AI, 5G, and biosciences — require global standards. The United States and European Union need to overcome divergent technology and regulatory standards (e.g., on privacy and regulating U.S. Big Tech). Separate standards by allied democracies on the one hand and China/Russia on the other on AI or biotechnology would spark a lose-lose race to the bottom.
Rebuilding America’s Credibility
America’s domestic dysfunction has undermined its legitimacy and international influence. The country now appears to be a “dysfunctional superpower,” one unable to pass budgets, manage its debt, ratify treaties, or carry out a coherent and consistent foreign policy. Some might add an inability to put medical science ahead of polarized, tribal politics. Until these problems have been fixed, it is probably wise to tone down the over-the-top rhetoric as if Washington knows best.
Domestic and international polling indicates that many people around the world — not just adversaries, but also allied countries — perceive that the U.S. political system is broken. According to a recent Pew poll, 23 percent thought U.S. democracy was never a model, while 57 percent thought the United States was a model but no longer is. Mass shootings, the killing of George Floyd and continued police abuse of black people, an increasingly extreme Republican party, and not least the insurrection on Jan. 6, all contribute to such perceptions.
Improving governance in the United States would be a force multiplier for Washington’s foreign policy with regard to both soft power and a sense of legitimacy. To give Biden his due, he has made an effort, but the forces at play eroding democracy and stoking populism in the United States and abroad are formidable: the lingering backlash to globalization that hit the middle class; distrust from the invasion of Iraq and the 2008 financial crisis; the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic; and political and social polarization. These factors continue to fuel illiberalism. Fixing them is a sine qua non for championing democracy’s virtues. In fact, repairing U.S. democracy would do much to give the lie to authoritarianism.
Getting to a Democratic China
The United States may want a democratic China, but trying to isolate Beijing is a fool’s errand, likely to further bolster Xi Jinping and his regime in the eyes of the Chinese public, and undermine Biden’s desire for tackling major global challenges. Global problems such as climate change, pandemics, terrorism, and nonproliferation require an interest-based degree of cooperation regardless of political systems.
All countries have the right to voice their concerns and criticize others. We are not asking Biden or other Western countries to refrain from strong opprobrium or sanctioning of China or Russia for economic and political coercion and human rights abuses. Nevertheless, bad guys also have interests, and they get a vote, especially when, like China, they are the world’s soon-to-be largest economy as well as biggest trading power, a technology leader, and mature nuclear weapons state. History suggests that a stable global order is more likely if some balance among major powers is achieved, particularly those with large nuclear arsenals and survivable second-strike capabilities. Pursuit of a democratic order, problematic in and of itself, also risks a fragmented world order prone to conflict.
The Biden administration may well understand this. It may be that Biden’s rhetoric on democracy promotion is more an effort to reinforce faith in U.S. democracy than a global ideological crusade. Biden’s pragmatic summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and efforts to find areas of cooperation with China suggest such a possibility.
Whether Americans like it or not, market democracies will not be the only countries determining the rules of world order. China will soon have the world’s largest gross domestic product in market terms, is a leading tech power, and is already a key driver of the global economy. Unlike the former Soviet Union, China is dependent on global markets. Telling Beijing or other illiberal states (Turkey, Hungary, Poland, and increasingly India, for example) that they do not deserve to have a say in negotiating the rules of trade in the world because they are not democratic will not advance Western interests.
What’s the Solution?
U.S. foreign policy should balance values and interests. The United States has been most successful when it has done so — the 1972 opening to China and Cold War détente with the Soviet Union are good examples. The United States needs to understand its limits as well as its aspirations. Mobilizing democracies is a smart organizing principle for U.S. foreign policy to enhance its global leverage. But thinking that it is an organizing principle for a viable world order is taking a good idea to a counterproductive extreme. A stable world order is most likely when there is a balance of interests that the United States as well as other major powers can accept.
The results of the Biden-Putin summit set guardrails for stabilizing bilateral ties. Most notably, the United States and Russia agreed to resume a strategic stability dialogue, which suggests that in dealing with autocracies, the administration grasps the need for pragmatism. Achieving a stable balance of global power will require Washington to redefine America’s role in the world. Washington will have to transition from a worldview of primacy to one of primus inter pares (“first among equals”). This will be a difficult psychological shift, if recent U.S. foreign policy is an indication.. However, such a shift would mean a better understanding of the limits of U.S. power, more responsibility assumed by partners, pooling of power to address problems, and more selective engagement.
The Biden administration’s rhetoric of democracy versus autocracy seems to be a legacy of the previous bipolar era. Cutting deals with autocracies is an unfortunate necessity to best defend U.S. and allied interests, and has long been a feature of U.S. diplomacy. Extending that realism to China and other autocracies would be a wise move.
In light of the challenges threatening U.S. democracy, it is understandable why Biden has made demonstrating the success of democracies a central theme. If his main intent is rejuvenating U.S. democracy, however, Biden risks being faced with charges of hypocrisy and ineffectiveness as he tilts toward realism. If Biden wants to bring about a democratic revival — to lead, as he constantly (and rightly) says, by the “power of our example” — he should focus on getting America’s own house in order. Until then, less preaching and a little humility are called for.
Robert A. Manning is a senior fellow of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. He was a senior counselor to the undersecretary of state for global affairs from 2001 to 2004, a member of the U.S. Department of State Policy Planning Staff from 2004 to 2008, and on the National Intelligence Council Strategic Futures Group from 2008 to 2012. Follow him on Twitter @Rmanning4.
Mathew J. Burrows, Ph.D., serves as the director of the Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He retired in 2013 from a 28-year career at the CIA and the National Intelligence Council.
20. BRI vs New Quad for Afghanistan’s coming boom
BRI vs New Quad for Afghanistan’s coming boom
The race is already on to build and extend Afghanistan's shattered infrastructure as rival powers advance competing initiatives
Over a week ago the excruciatingly slow Doha peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban resumed, and then they dragged on for two days observed by envoys from the EU, US and UN.
Nothing happened. They could not even agree on a ceasefire during Eid al-Adha. Worse, there’s no road map for how negotiations might pick up in August. Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada duly released a statement: the Taliban “strenuously favors a political settlement.”
But how? Irreconcilable differences rule. Realpolitik dictates there’s no way the Taliban will embrace Western liberal democracy: They want the restoration of an Islamic emirate.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, for his part, is damaged goods even in Kabul diplomatic circles where he’s derided as too stubborn, not to mention incapable of rising to the occasion. The only possible solution in the short term is seen as an interim government.
Yet there is no leader around with national appeal – no Commander Massoud figure. There are only regional warlords – whose militias protect their own local interests, not distant Kabul.
Afghan militia gather with their weapons to support Afghanistan security forces against the Taliban, in Afghan warlord and former Mujahideen leader Ismail Khan’s house in Herat on July 9, 2021. Photo: AFP / Hoshang Hasimi
While facts on the ground spell out balkanization, the Taliban, even on the offensive, know they cannot possibly pull off a military takeover of Afghanistan.
The CSTO summit was 100% leak-proof. And yet, previously, they had discussed “possibilities of using the potential of the CSTO member states” to keep the highly volatile Tajik-Afghan border under control.
That’s very serious business. A task force headed by Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov, the chief of the CSTO Joint Staff, is in charge of “joint measures” to police the borders.
Now enter an even more intriguing shadowplay gambit – met with a non-denial denial by both Moscow and Washington.
The Kommersant newspaper revealed that Moscow offered some “hospitality” to the Pentagon at its military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (both SCO member states). The objective: keep a joint eye on the fast-evolving Afghan chessboard – and prevent drug mafia cartels, Islamists of the ISIS-Khorasan variety and refugees from crossing the borders of these Central Asian ‘stans.
What the Russians are aiming at – non-denial denial withstanding – is not to let the Americans off the hook for the “mess” (copyright Sergey Lavrov) in Afghanistan while preventing them from reestablishing any offshoot of the Empire of Bases in Central Asia.
They established bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan after 2001, although they had to be abandoned later in 2004 and 2014. What is clear is there’s absolutely no chance the US will re-establish military bases in SCO and CSTO member nations.
Birth of a new Quad
At the Central Asia-South Asia 2021 meeting in Tashkent, right after the SCO meeting in Dushanbe, something quite intriguing happened: the birth of a new Quad (forget that one in the Indo-Pacific).
This is how it was spun by the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs: a “historic opportunity to open flourishing international trade routes, [and] the parties intend to cooperate to expand trade, build transit links and strengthen business-to-business ties.”
If that sounds like something straight out of the Belt and Road Initiative, well, here’s the confirmation by the Pakistani Foreign Office:
“Representatives of the United States, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed in principle to establish a new quadrilateral diplomatic platform focused on enhancing regional connectivity. The parties consider long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan critical to regional connectivity and agree that peace and regional connectivity are mutually reinforcing.”
The US doing Belt and Road right into China’s alley? A State Department tweet confirmed it. Call it a geopolitical case of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
Now this is probably the only issue that virtually all players on the Afghanistan chessboard agree: a stable Afghanistan turbo-charging the flow of cargo across a vital hub of Eurasia integration.
Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen has been very consistent: the Taliban regard China as a “friend” to Afghanistan and are eager to have Beijing investing in reconstruction work “as soon as possible.”
The question is what Washington aims to accomplish with this new Quad – for the moment just on paper. Simple: to throw a monkey wrench into the works of the SCO, led by Russia-China, and the main forum organizing a possible solution for the Afghan drama.
In this sense, the US versus Russia-China competition in the Afghan theater totally fits the Build Back Better World (B3W) gambit, which aims – at least in thesis – to offer an alternative infrastructure plan to Belt and Road and pitch it to nations from the Caribbean and Africa to the Asia-Pacific.
What is not in question is that a stable Afghanistan is essential in terms of establishing full rail-road connectivity from resource-rich Central Asia to the Pakistani ports of Karachi and Gwadar, and beyond to global markets.
For Pakistan, what happens next is a certified geoeconomic win-win – whether via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is a flagship Belt and Road project, or via the new, incipient Quad.
China will be funding the highly strategic Peshawar-Kabul motorway. Peshawar is already linked to CPEC. The completion of the motorway will symbolically seal Afghanistan as part of CPEC.
And then there’s the delightfully named Pakafuz, which refers to the trilateral deal signed in February between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan to build a railway – a fundamentally strategic connection between Central and South Asia.
Full connectivity between Central Asia and South Asia also happens to be a key plank of the Russian master strategy, the Greater Eurasia Partnership, which interacts with Belt and Road in multiple ways.
Lavrov spent quite some time in the Central Asia-South Asia summit in Tashkent explaining the integration of the Greater Eurasia Partnership and Belt and Road with the SCO and the Eurasia Economic Union.
Lavrov also referred to the Uzbek proposal “to align the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Europe-West China corridor with new regional projects.” Everything is interlinked, any way you look at it.
Watching the geoeconomic flow
The new Quad is in fact a latecomer in terms of the fast-evolving geopolitical transmutation of the Heartland. The whole process is being driven by China and Russia, which are jointly managing key Central Asian affairs.
Already in early June, a very important China-Pakistan-Afghanistan joint statement stressed how Kabul will be profiting from trade via the CPEC’s port of Gwadar.
And then, there’s Pipelineistan.
On July 16, Islamabad and Moscow signed a mega-deal for a US$3 billion, 1100-kilometer gas pipeline between Port Qasim in Karachi and Lahore, to be finished by the end of 2023.
The pipeline will transport imported LNG from Qatar arriving at Karachi’s LNG terminal. This is the Pakstream Gas Pipeline Project – locally known as the North-South Gas project.
As much as the Kabul government, the Taliban seem to be paying very close attention to all the geoeconomics and how Afghanistan is at the heart of an inevitable economic boom.
Perhaps both sides should also be paying close attention to someone like Zoon Ahmed Khan, a very bright Pakistani woman who is a research fellow with the Belt and Road Initiative Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University.
Pakistani naval personnel stand guard near a ship carrying containers at the Gwadar port, 700kms west of Karachi, where a trade program between Pakistan and China operates. Photo: AFP/Aamir Qureshi
Zoon Ahmed Khan notes how “one significant contribution that China makes through the BRI is emphasizing on the fact that developing countries like Pakistan have to find their own development path, rather than follow a Western model of governance.”
She adds, “The best thing Pakistan can learn from the Chinese model is to come up with its own model. China does not wish to impose its journey and experience on other countries, which is quite important.”
She is adamant that Belt and Road “is benefiting a much greater region than Pakistan. Through the initiative, what China tries to do is to present the partner countries with its experience and the things it can offer.”
All of the above definitely applies to Afghanistan – and its convoluted but ultimately inevitable insertion into the ongoing process of Eurasia integration.
21. We're Designing Ourselves to Lose
A brutal critique of some of our new warfighting concepts.
Excerpts:
I'm sorry, but in spite of all the warnings provided about building an exquisite Tiffany force and shoveling billions in to critical peacetime capabilities that in war immediately are converted in to critical vulnerabilities with zero benefit and uncounted risk ... we are shocked?
Study for 20 years? Bullshit, you can see our vulnerabilities in open source in 20 minutes.
If we had a culture that allowed aggressive critique as opposed to obsequious agreement, we wouldn't be here. We let the military industrial complex sell of a bill of peacetime-only concepts about networks, real time video, invulnerable satellites, the whole transformational offsetting grabassery that no intelligent person expected to survive any near peer adversary.
We're Designing Ourselves to Lose
In a fake battle for Taiwan, U.S. forces lost network access almost immediately. Hyten has issued four directives to help change that.
An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we're going to do before we did it,” Hyten told an audience Monday at the launch of the Emerging Technologies Institute, an effort by the National Defense Industrial Association industry group to speed military modernization.
The Pentagon would not provide the name of the wargame, which was classified, but a defense official said one of the scenarios revolved around a battle for Taiwan. One key lesson: gathering ships, aircraft, and other forces to concentrate and reinforce each other’s combat power also made them sitting ducks.
“We always aggregate to fight, and aggregate to survive. But in today’s world, with hypersonic missiles, with significant long-range fires coming at us from all domains, if you're aggregated and everybody knows where you are, you're vulnerable,” Hyten said.
I'm sorry, but in spite of all the warnings provided about building an exquisite Tiffany force and shoveling billions in to critical peacetime capabilities that in war immediately are converted in to critical vulnerabilities with zero benefit and uncounted risk ... we are shocked?
Study for 20 years? Bullshit, you can see our vulnerabilities in open source in 20 minutes.
If we had a culture that allowed aggressive critique as opposed to obsequious agreement, we wouldn't be here. We let the military industrial complex sell of a bill of peacetime-only concepts about networks, real time video, invulnerable satellites, the whole transformational offsetting grabassery that no intelligent person expected to survive any near peer adversary.
No one here at least.
Again; if your entire warfighting CONOPS rests on the chalk-brittle supports of networks, GPS and satellite VOX/DATA, then at war I will blind you, confuse you, target you and kill you. We've been pointing this out here for a decade and a half, as have a legion of others.
We willfully ignored all the hard lessons of a challenged electro-magnetic spectrum. We've raised generations of "thought leaders" who decided it was not profitable to remember that if you leak you die ... instead we flood the air with proof of our location, and cannot fight without giving the enemy all they need to destroy us.
We need new elites. We need new processes. We need a new culture.
The fact that this is actually news, and people are acting as if this is a surprise - that alone should tell you how deeply corrupt and incompetent we have allowed our military to become.
Yes, I'm blogging tired and pissed off. You should be tired and pissed off too. Tired of being lied to, and pissed off at what has been done to the greatest military power by a generation of ill-focused, poorly selected, perversely incentivized leaders. Then when they can't hide it anymore, they expect you to give the system a pass.
Bullshit.
Just look at the state of it all; we have a CONOPS that two fundamentals of warfare teamed with two laughably intellectually prolapsed pipe dreams.
Earlier this month, Hyten released four directives to the services: one each for contested logistics; joint fires; Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2; and information advantage. On Monday, he revealed new details about these “functional battles.”
This is just painful.
Contested logistics. Creating new ways to deliver fuel and supplies to front lines. U.S. Transportation Command and the Air Force are working on using rockets and a space trajectory to get large cargo spaceships into and out of battlefields.
First of all, logistics in warfare has always been contested. Also - how about we invest in airlift, sea lift and land transport what can support and sustain a long war with attrition west of Wake by mid-decade first ... then ... for the love of Pete ... who lets this get proposed .... just look at it again.
...large cargo spaceships into and out of battlefields...
I'm sorry, but go fire yourself. That is along the lines of the worst ideas of the post-Korean War nuclear Army.
Joint fires: “You have to aggregate to mass fires, but it doesn't have to be a physical aggregation,” Hyten said. “It could be a virtual aggregation for multiple domains; acting at the same time under a single command structure allows the fires to come in on anybody. It allows you to disaggregate to survive.” Hyten said the joint fires concept “is aspirational. It is unbelievably difficult to do.” And the military will have to figure out what part will be affordable and practical, he said.
I'm sorry, but go fire yourself again. We proved over the last two decades we cannot make a simple imperial brushfire work, how we are going to fight and win with this fragile construct? I'll save everyone the trouble - you can't.
In the Terrible 20s budgetary environment with so many pressing needs for things to get ready for the fight, this is almost criminal. This is doubling down on the mistakes that made you lose your stupid wargame to begin with.
JADC2: The Pentagon’s push to connect everything demands always-on, hackerproof networks, Hyten said. “The goal is to be fully connected to a combat cloud that has all information that you can access at any time, anyplace,” so that, like with joint fires, the data doesn’t get exposed or hacked because it’s housed in one centralized location, he said.
This is what happens when people get high off their own supply. This will never happen. If it does, and you rely on it, you will not be able to fight without it ... as such, you lose.
Information advantage: This element is the sum of the first three, Hyten said: “If we can do the things I just described, the United States and our allies will have an information advantage over anybody that we could possibly face.”
Strategic over-promise and under-deliver. This is strategic Sea Monkeyism. We had a huge information advantage over the Taliban and how did that work out for us. We learn nothing.
The new operating concept comes as the U.S. military reshapes its footprint in the Middle East to better prepare for a fight with China. On Monday, President Joe Biden announced U.S. troops will end their combat role in Iraq by the end of the year; the announcement comes just two months after Biden announced a full withdrawal from Afghanistan.
If we think the above is what will defeat China, we've already lost the war.
Next slide.
As a military, we have learned absolutely nothing.
Sea Monkey marketing is an unattractive look for a superpower.
22. MC-145B Wily Coyote Special Ops Planes Will Be Able To Launch Stealth Cruise Missiles
MC-145B Wily Coyote Special Ops Planes Will Be Able To Launch Stealth Cruise Missiles
The ability to launch Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles could give the modified Polish transport aircraft a role in higher-end conflicts.
SNC
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The Sierra Nevada Corporation, or SNC, plans to integrate variants of the very capable and combat-proven AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile series of stealthy cruise missiles onto its MC-145B Wily Coyote armed light transport aircraft. The company says that the ability to deploy these weapons via the aircraft's rear cargo ramp will enable them to contribute to operations during higher-end conflicts, as well as support responses to lower-tier contingencies. U.S. Special Operations Command is presently testing an MC-145B prototype, among other types, as part of its Armed Overwatch program, as a potential replacement for the U-28A Draco aircraft, which will be primarily expected to operate in permissive environments.
SNC highlighted the planned Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) capability for the MC-145B in a recent press release and accompanying video. No mention was made of any plans to integrate this stealthy cruise missile in the materials that the company previously provided to The War Zone, which was the first to report in-depth on the Wily Coyote's configuration and expected capabilities. The aircraft itself is derived from the Polish-designed M28 Skytruck twin-engine turboprop light utility aircraft, an unarmed version of which, the C-145A Combat Coyote, U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) already operates.
SNC
A rendering of the MC-145B Wily Coyote.
"We can actually do palletized munitions," Mark Williams, SNC's Vice President of Aviation Strategic Plans and Programs, says in the recently released video. "We're going to be the only ones [in the Armed Overwatch competition] who can actually fire a JASSM out of the cargo bay."
SNC has not said what variant or variants of the JASSM series it is planning to integrate onto the MC-145B. The U.S. Air Force presently has two versions of the AGM-158 in inventory, the standard type with a range of around 230 miles and an extended-range one, or JASSM-ER, which can hit targets out to around 600 miles. Both of these are intended for use against targets on land. The U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy have also fielded an anti-ship derivative, the AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), and the latter service is now pursuing a variant that will be a hybrid of sorts between the JASSM-ER and the LRASM. An Extreme Range version, or JASSM-XR, is also under development and is expected to be able to strike threats more than 1,000 miles away.
It's also not clear how many of these missiles SNC expects that an MC-145B will be able to carry at once. Concept art that the company has released so far shows a single missile in the plane's main cargo bay. However, the weapon is depicted sitting between the two rows of four Common Launch Tubes (CLT) that the Wily Coyote can also be configured to carry. Each one of these tubes can be used to launch a variety of precision-guided munitions, as well as small drones. The aircraft also has four underwing hardpoints for additional stores.
SNC capture
A rendering of a JASSM in the main cargo bay of the MC-145B, with the two rows of four CLT launchers seen on either side.
"We've got the ability to shoot anywhere from 14 to 28 APKWS [Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System 70mm laser-guided rockets]. We also have the ability to shoot Hellfires, as well," SNC's Williams explained in the promotional video. "We can drop a Small Diameter Bomb. We have eight reloadable Common Launch Tubes in the cargo bay. You can launch a bunch of precision-guided munitions. You can launch UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] out of those CLTs."
SNC capture
A screen capture from SNC's recent MC-145B promotional video showing a store being launched from inside the main cargo bay on the demonstrator aircraft via a CLT.
The MC-145B is also designed to be able to accommodate a variety of different communications, data-sharing, and sensor packages. This includes provisions for sensor turrets with electro-optical and infrared cameras, as well as laser-designators, under the nose and in a retractable position under the fuselage. The aircraft will also be able to carry podded systems, such as the NSP-7 radar, which has synthetic aperture imaging and moving targeting indicator functionality.
SNC capture
The view from a sensor operator station on the MC-145B demonstrator aircraft showing that it has MX-15D and MX-20D sensor turrets from L3Harris installed and is also carrying a podded NSP-7 radar.
SNC capture
A podded NSP-7 radar on the MC-145B demonstrator aircraft.
When it comes to planned munition options, the JASSM is in a completely different category from the weapons that the other aircraft competing in U.S. Special Operations Command's (SOCOM) Armed Overwatch fly-off are capable of employing. In the promotional video, SNC's Williams made clear that the point of integrating this cruise missile onto the aircraft was so that it could "actually have an impact in the peer-to-peer fight," as well as support lower-end operations.
The marketing material SNC had previously released to The War Zone also mentioned the possibility of the MC-145B being able to deploy versions of the ADM-160 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD), as well as X-61A unmanned aircraft, via the rear ramp. The ADM-160 is, in many ways, a small cruise missile that carries an electronic warfare payload, which can jam or otherwise confuse enemy radars, depending on the version, instead of a traditional warhead. The X-61A is an experimental drone under development as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Gremlins program that is capable of operating as part of a networked swarm and that is designed to be air-launched and recovered in mid-air by a mothership aircraft.
As The War Zone noted in our initial coverage of the MC-145B, both of these systems are heavily geared toward defeating higher-end integrated air defense networks, something that seemed well beyond the scope of SOCOM's Armed Overwatch effort. The JASSM plans only further underscore that SNC is pitching the aircraft as a more robust platform that could have broader applications.
The Wily Coyote "can also do other missions that aren't even captured in the [Armed Overwatch] requirements," Williams, SNC's Vice President of Aviation Strategic Plans and Programs, said in the recent promotional video. The company has also been focusing heavily on other multi-mission capabilities that the MC-145B offers, including its ability to airdrop cargo and act as a casualty evacuation platform, compared to the other Armed Overwatch entrants, all of which are smaller, single-engine designs. SNC, which is also supplying A-29B Super Tucano light attack aircraft to the Air Force in cooperation with Brazil's Embraer, says that it looked at 44 different aircraft before ultimately settling on a converted M28 Skytruck for its Armed Overwatch submission.
It's also worth noting that AFSOC has been heavily involved in Air Force testing of palletized munition concepts in recent years, a program now known as Rapid Dragon. In June, the service disclosed that an MC-130J Commando II special operations tanker-transport had simulated the launch of a pallet load of JASSMs after receiving targeting information from offboard platforms during the most recent iteration of the biennial Northern Edge exercise. Last year, the service had also revealed an earlier test that involved a previously unknown prototype munition design called the Cargo Launch Expendable Air Vehicles with Extended Range, or CLEAVER.
USAF
An MC-130J releases a simulated payload of JASSMs during Northern Edge 2021.
The Rapid Dragon concept, broadly, envisions AFSOC MC-130Js, as well as standard C-130 Hercules and C-17A Globemaster III airlifters, being able to rapidly shift from transports to stand-off strike platforms in support of higher-end operations. In principle, this would provide valuable additional flexibility and overall strike capacity at a relatively low cost. At the same time, questions have already been raised about how useful this new capability might actually be during large-scale operations where there are likely to be significant demands for moving personnel and materiel by air, especially amid existing concerns about shortfalls in airlift capacity.
SNC is certainly touting the potential for the MC-145B to provide an additional layer of flexibility and capacity in these kinds of scenarios. However, the aircraft's value in this role could be limited by how many JASSMs, or other similarly large stores, it can carry at once and how readily it may be able to employ them, even in coordination with other assets providing the targeting information.
It will certainly be interesting to see whether or not the MC-145B's ultimately has a future as a cruise missile-slinging platform in addition to its other capabilities.
Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com
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23. Strategic Outpost’s Sixth Annual Summer Vacation Reading List
Strategic Outpost’s Sixth Annual Summer Vacation Reading List - War on the Rocks
DAVE BARNO AND NORA BENSAHEL
It’s the end of July – and that means it’s time for Strategic Outpost’s Sixth Annual Summer Vacation Reading List! We all need a break from Zoom squares, email overload, kids doing their science experiments on the dining room table, and worrying about what you’ll wear when you finally return to the office. We began these summer vacation reading lists in 2016 to help our fellow national security nerds to keep their high-powered brains engaged while hiding behind a pair of big sunglasses, and continued the tradition in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
So here’s our decidedly unscientific list of suggestions for your summer reading, watching, and listening. These books, podcasts, and videos will help to tone your brains as you suntan your pale work-from-home bodies when you head out this summer to the beach, the mountains, or just your local park.
The Recent Wars
Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALs, by Dave Philipps. You’re going to have to wait until Labor Day weekend to read this book by New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Philipps, since it won’t be released until the end of August, but make sure to pre-order it now. This devastating book tells the story of how the members of Gallagher’s platoon faced the horrors he committed during their deployment to Iraq in 2017, and the ways in which the Navy’s insular Special Warfare culture led so many of its leaders to cover up his criminal behavior. But it also shows how a few extraordinarily courageous SEALs fought their superiors every step of the way to ensure that Gallagher was brought to justice — and, at the end of the book, how senior SEAL leaders sought to ensure some form of accountability for Gallagher after he was pardoned by the president. Our friend and colleague Tom Ricks called Alpha “the best military-related book I have read this year, by far,” and we couldn’t agree more.
The Hardest Place, by Wesley Morgan. As the United States leaves Afghanistan after 20 years of conflict, pundits and professionals alike will spend years dissecting the reasons for the nation’s striking failure to win this war. Morgan’s book goes a long way to helping us to understand the ever-shifting shape of U.S. military operations by focusing on the fight for the Pech valley in remote eastern Afghanistan. Starting in 2001, Morgan takes us on a year-by-year journey that shows how the U.S. policy of constantly rotating units and commanders on an almost random basis undermined any possibility of achieving a successful and lasting outcome. The heroism and pure grit of the U.S. forces who fought there stand in stark contrast to the lack of any coherent strategic plan.
The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. The widely acclaimed author of Ashley’s War (which was featured on our 2016 list) tells an unexpected and compelling story of the fierce Kurdish female fighters who battled the Islamic State in northeastern Syria in 2014. She describes their battlefield prowess and shocking successes, as well as their battles against the male-dominated culture that marginalizes women in every part of society. It’s an extraordinary story of an all-female militia waging war against one of the most brutal foes in modern times, while at the same time elevating women’s rights and becoming an unexpected political force. If you don’t have time to read the whole book, you might want to check out the episode of the Irregular Warfare podcast that features the author alongside retired general and former U.S. Central Command commander Joe Votel.
History
The Splendid and the Vile, by Erik Larson. Best-selling author Larson takes us on a captivatingly intimate, almost day-by-day account of Winston Churchill’s first year as prime minister during the 1940-41 Blitz, as told through the diaries of his family members, personal servants, government luminaries, and average British citizens in the street. The horrors and heroism of meeting the German threat to Britain’s survival shine through in ways that uniquely bring home what life (and love) was like under incessant bombing. Of even more interest to those of us in the national security arena, the pressures and uncertainties of crafting successful strategies, cajoling balky allies, and leading a wavering nation under existential threat have never been told more strikingly.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A Memoir of Friendship, Loyalty, and War, by John “Chick” Donahue and J.T. Molloy. This story from the Vietnam War is so improbable, so ridiculous, and so absurd that it seems like it must be fiction — but it’s true. At the height of the Vietnam War protests in 1967, Donahue was a former Marine and active merchant seaman living in a blue-collar corner of New York City. Challenged in his local bar to do something to show the neighborhood’s support for three of their own young men serving in Vietnam, he promptly signs on to a merchant cargo ship headed for the war zone, packing several cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. The story gets even more astonishing from there as he tracks down each of his friends, at times in combat, and shares the beer with them. The entire adventure is totally and completely unbelievable, and it will send your heart soaring as you laugh out loud. Watch the 12-minute video of the story here if you don’t believe us. It’s also being made into a movie that will reportedly star Zac Efron as Donohue, and feature Russell Crowe and Bill Murray as well.
Lessons from the Pandemic
Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, by Niall Ferguson. Renowned historian Ferguson helps us to figure out why COVID-19 led to such a severe global pandemic, while suggesting ways to both prevent and mitigate future catastrophes. He examines a wide range of disasters throughout human history to provide some much-needed context. Ferguson cogently highlights the complex roots of disasters from plagues to earthquakes to the crash of the Challenger — finding “operator error” and “managerial error” in nearly all — and seeks to provide some commonsense remedies to make society more resilient for the inevitable calamities to come.
Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, by Fareed Zakaria. A chronicler of disparate trends that impact all of us, best-selling author and CNN host Zakaria tries to explain how the world is changing in the aftermath of the worst global pandemic in over a century. Rather than focus on immediate trends, his analysis helps us take the long view and reflect upon how COVID-19 will deeply re-shape our world for decades to come. Ranging across economics, diplomacy, politics, and health, this book starts an important assessment of the immense scope of disruptive changes — including many that would previously have been unimaginable. Though many books will eventually be written on the enduring and diverse global disruptions triggered by COVID-19, this is one of the best of the early entries.
Urban Policing
Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City, by Rosa Brooks. “A middle-aged female law professor decides to become a D.C. cop” may sound like the premise of a bad novel, but it is actually the true story that Brooks recounts in her latest book. The author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything provides an inside look at how she was trained to be a reserve officer at the police academy, and what it’s like to patrol the streets of Washington’s Seventh District — a predominantly black district that is the poorest and most violent in the city. Though her personal experiences are fascinating, the deeper value of this book lies in the insights that result from her unique ability to see the legal system from so many different perspectives. Perhaps most importantly, Brooks explores the very real problems of policing and race from many angles without any obvious bias. She offers a nuanced discussion, for example, about the reasons why black communities are so often overpoliced. And though she readily admits that there are “far too many” bad cops who target black people, she also notes that racism “seems like a non-issue to many street cops” because “it’s baked so deeply into the system that it’s invisible.” The book provides extraordinary personal insights into one of the nation’s most pressing challenges.
Leadership and Decision-Making
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, by Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein. The authors take us on a fascinating journey that explores an often invisible source of bad decision-making — random variability in our judgment — and how to overcome it. That variability leads to confusing and otherwise inexplicable deviations in human decision-making that seem to defy logic. They examine why doctors viewing identical medical tests make different diagnoses at different times, for example, and analyze colleges whose admissions criteria seem to vary based upon — amazingly — the weather. This important and entertaining book helps us to better understand how we make decisions, and provides a useful set of tools to improve them.
The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias, by Pamela Fuller and Mark Murphy, with Anne Chow. Before Kahneman wrote Noise, he was best known for his Nobel Prize-winning work on how all human beings have unconscious biases that systematically impair our judgment. (We’ve also written about how some of those biases can skew predictions of future war.) Here, Fuller and her co-authors focus on how leaders can help overcome such problems. They discuss ways to identify bias, to connect with others in deeper ways that overcome initial perceptions, to cope with bias and support those affected by it, and to apply these to improve recruiting and retention. Though tailored to a business audience, the ideas and exercises at the end of each chapter will help leaders of all kinds to think more objectively about themselves and the people they manage, and ultimately get the best performance from an increasingly diverse workforce.
Writing and The Creative Process
Jerry Seinfeld – A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success, episode 485 of the podcast The Tim Ferris Show. This funny and insightful interview is not just another Jerry Seinfeld standup routine, but an intriguing explanation of how a talented performer rigorously approaches his art. Even if you don’t like his sense of humor, his insights will surprise you and may even help you sharpen your own work habits. Seinfeld describes his own rigorous personal writing routine, which he still maintains every day. He also notes the painful truth that 95 percent of writing is actually rewriting, and surprisingly shares that experiencing abject failure in Hollywood as a rising young comic became the driving force behind his ultimate success. It’s a fascinating and engaging interview — and there’s also a transcript available if you prefer to read instead of listen.
A Classic Revisited
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. Though many of you are already very familiar with this classic, Strategic Outpost reader Matt Deffenbaugh offered this insightful reason to read it again. (Warning: spoilers follow!)
Ender’s Game has been a staple on military reading lists for entry-level officers and non-commissioned officers. But at the operational and strategic levels of command, senior leaders should consider Ender’s situation during the final problem. Much like today’s senior leaders during wargames, Ender was willing to risk his entire fleet to destroy the Formic civilization when he thought it was a simulation. However, he questioned whether the military was the right element of [national] power and second-guessed his risk decisions when he learned the stakes were real. Our senior leaders are taking the threats we as a nation face seriously; are they taking simulations designed to test the advice they will offer and the decisions they will make in combat just as seriously?
What to Watch After a Full Day at the Beach
Lupin, on Netflix. If you haven’t watched this terrific French show yet, you’re in for a treat! The phenomenal Omar Sy stars as Assane Diop, the son of a Senegalese immigrant who was deliberately framed for a crime he did not commit. Diop seeks revenge against those responsible by modeling himself after the classic French character of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar — who only steals from the rich and powerful who deserve it, through creative disguises and seemingly impossible escapes. The first episode involves an amazing theft from the Louvre that will keep you on the edge of your seats, and it only gets better from there. But the dazzling heists and beautiful shots of Paris and the French countryside remain leavened with the realities of race and class that motivate Diop in the first place. Ten episodes are now available, which makes this the perfect show to watch on your vacation evenings or to binge on a rainy day!
Still Our Favorite Book of the Year
Adaptation Under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime, by David Barno and Nora Bensahel. We confess that this is shameless self-promotion, but with all the years of work we put into our very first book, we had to include it on our annual reading list! In all seriousness: if you want to understand the central importance of adaptability in military operations, and read a no-holds-barred critique of recent U.S. military wartime adaptability, this is the book for you. We also render judgment on whether today’s U.S. military is adaptable enough to win the wars of the future, and what we can do to improve those chances. It’ll also be released as an audiobook in a few months, so you military types can listen to it while you work out!
Just For Fun: Space Edition
It was inevitable — every service has to have a song. And while the Space Force has now officially adopted this stirring John Philip Sousa piece as its official interim march, they still need a rousing anthem with inspiring lyrics to motivate their slowly growing legions of Space Guardians. Cue the Miami-based group Voices of Freedom, with their, um, spirited nomination for a Space Force anthem. Who wouldn’t be inspired by lyrics that include “We fly upwards, blast through the void,” and “Not a foe nor any terror, not an alien invader, shall hinder our destiny to go forth!” Yikes. We much prefer Space Force – The Theme Song, which has been out for a couple of years and is a whole lot catchier!
After that, settle down to watch one of the best songs about outer space, performed in outer space. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield filmed this stirring tribute to David Bowie that is a paean to our human resilience and our sometimes forgotten out-of-this-world accomplishments. This amazing music video truly warmed our hearts and souls, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. (And if you want some of Hadfield’s other-worldly insights, check out his book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth.)
And that’s a wrap! Strategic Outpost is now officially on its much-anticipated summer break! We hope your summer is filled with sun, fresh air, and cool breezes — and time to relax, refresh, and recharge your batteries. We have all been through an astonishingly stressful and challenging year and a half, and we hope that the time between now and Labor Day gives each of you some well-deserved time to recover. We thank all of you for your continued readership and support, and we look forward to continuing the conversation when Strategic Outpost returns in September!
* We thank Tom Ricks for recommending Alpha, Tim Anderlonis for The Greatest Beer Run Ever, and Mike Barno for the Bowie tribute video.
Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, U.S. Army (ret.) and Dr. Nora Bensahel are visiting professors of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and senior fellows at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies. They are also contributing editors at War on the Rocks, where their column appears monthly. Sign up for Barno and Bensahel’s Strategic Outpost newsletter to track their articles as well as their public events.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
