​​Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah 

Quotes of the Day:

"Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions." 

– Albert Einstein

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."

–Ernest Hemingway

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

– Albert Camus

1. SEAL captain in BUD/S inquiry being considered for top DOD post

2. Zelenskyy condemns Russian 'inhumane' Christmas attack on energy grid

3. Hamas, Israel trade blame over delay in finalising Gaza truce deal

4. Commentary: Chinese espionage creates a dilemma for Western countries

5. The truth about US bases on Okinawa

6. Once a war zone, southern Philippines rebrands as tourist destination

7. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 24, 2024

8. Iran Update, December 24, 2024

9. Abraham Lincoln Could Teach China, Russia and North Korea How to Take on America

10. Donald Trump to create "Iron Dome" missile defense shield for US

11. NATO’s Path Forward: Spending Money on Real Capabilities

12. The Fake Panama Canal Threat Only Hurts America

13. Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the Taliban

14. AI-enabled UAS platforms garner $8.8 million DoD contract

15. This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped.

16. How Trump’s tariffs can generate both economic and political reform in China

17. Trump 2.0 Portends Big Shift in Cybersecurity Policies

18. Trump's team appears annoyed with Ukraine for some of its recent attacks

19. The Roots of “Revenge Against Society” Attacks in China

20.  How Ukraine’s new drone-missile hybrids are changing long-range weapon technology

1. SEAL captain in BUD/S inquiry being considered for top DOD post

​I have not seen any other reporting on this.

SEAL captain in BUD/S inquiry being considered for top DOD post

Captain Bradley Geary is in the running for assistant defense secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict

https://theiceman.substack.com/p/seal-captain-in-buds-inquiry-being?r=9q8t0&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

Seth Hettena

Dec 23, 2024

SEAL Capt. Brad Geary

A Navy SEAL captain who was the subject of an inquiry involving the death of a trainee, which ended in dismissal earlier this month, is being considered for a senior defense post in the Trump administration.

Sources say Capt. Bradley Geary is a candidate for assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict (SOLIC). Discussions are still underway, but a source close to Geary said the ASD/SOLIC job is a “possibility.”

If nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, Geary would serve as the Pentagon’s principal civilian advisor on special operations, reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense.

A spokeswoman for the Trump transition did not respond to messages seeking comment. On Sunday, Trump announced plans to nominate billionaire investor Stephen Feinberg as deputy secretary of defense and named three others for undersecretary roles.

Congress established the ASD/SOLIC position in 1986 to provide civilian oversight of U.S. Special Operations Command. In recent years, lawmakers have given the office authority, direction, and control over the training, equipping, and organization of the more than 70,000 troops in the SEALs, the Army’s Delta Force, Rangers, Green Berets, and other special operations units.

Geary has ties to key figures who Trump wants in his incoming administration. His attorney, Tim Parlatore, also represents Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary. Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, helped Geary fight off the Navy’s efforts to hold him accountable for the SEAL trainee’s death.

Still, the news that the Trump transition was considering Geary for ASD/SOLIC was a stunning turn of events for the decorated Navy captain, whose 24-year SEAL career had hung in the balance until recently.

A 2000 Naval Academy graduate, Geary was part of a now-famous Basic Under Demolition/SEAL training class filmed for a documentary series aired on the Discovery Channel. From 2009 to 2012, he served as a troop commander and operations officer at SEAL Team Six. In 2020, he was awarded the Navy’s James B. Stockdale Award for leadership.

The death of SEAL trainee Kyle Mullen upended Geary’s career. A 24-year-old from New Jersey, Mullen died shortly after completing Hell Week in February 2022. At the time of Mullen’s death, Geary oversaw SEAL training as the commander of Naval Special Warfare Basic Training. A sweeping Navy investigation found that a “near-perfect storm” of missteps led to Mullen’s death and put other trainees at serious risk of injury.

In September, the Navy ordered Geary to appear before a panel of admirals for an administrative hearing known as a Board of Inquiry to answer for his role in Mullen’s death. Potential consequences included separation from the service with an other than honorable discharge and loss of all benefits.

Geary insisted that the Navy had been covering up the fact that steroids played a role in Mullen’s death and took his case to the public on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle and The Shawn Ryan Show. A day after Mullen died, agents with the Navy Criminal Investigative Service found a cooler containing vials of human growth hormone and testosterone in his car. Mullen had also been in touch with a civilian steroid dealer.

On Dec. 13, Vice Admiral Rick Cheeseman, deputy chief of naval operations, dismissed the hearing after a review without specifying a reason.

“Over time, the lies finally crumbled under the weight of truth, which we anchored ourselves to long ago,” Geary wrote on LinkedIn after the dismissal, which ended what he described as a "season of suffering.”

2. Zelenskyy condemns Russian 'inhumane' Christmas attack on energy grid

Zelenskyy condemns Russian 'inhumane' Christmas attack on energy grid

This was the 13th large-scale strike on Ukraine's energy system this year, the latest in Russia's campaign targeting the power grid during winter.

25 Dec 2024 04:48PM

(Updated: 25 Dec 2024 10:01PM)

channelnewsasia.com

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday (Dec 25) denounced an "inhumane" attack from Russia, which launched over 170 missiles and drones on his war-torn country's power grid on Christmas Day, killing an energy worker.

The country woke up at 5.30am local time to an air raid alarm, shortly followed by air force reports that Russia had launched Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea.

"Putin deliberately chose Christmas to attack. What could be more inhumane? More than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than a hundred attack drones. The target is our energy system," Zelenskyy said.

This was the 13th large-scale strike on Ukraine's energy system this year, the latest in Russia's campaign targeting the power grid during winter.

Russia meanwhile said five people had died in Ukrainian strikes and a falling drone in the border region of Kursk and in North Ossetia in the Caucasus.

Ukraine said its air force downed 58 out of 79 Russian-launched missiles. It did not, however, down the two Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles launched by Russia.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the strikes.

"I pay tribute to the resilience of the Ukrainian people, and the leadership of President Zelenskyy, in the face of further drone and missile attacks from Putin's bloody and brutal war machine with no respite even at Christmas," Starmer said.

Kyiv also said a Russian missile went through Moldovan and Romanian airspace, but Romania said it detected no such violation.

"Unfortunately, there are some hits. As of now, there are blackouts in several regions," he said.

Ukraine's DTEK energy company said the attack severely damaged equipment of thermal power plants.

"Denying light and warmth to millions of peace-loving people as they celebrate Christmas is a depraved and evil act that must be answered," DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko said, urging allies to send more air defence.

"NOTHING SACRED"

"Unfortunately, there are some hits. As of now, there are blackouts in several regions," Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine's DTEK energy company said the attack severely damaged equipment of thermal power plants.

"Denying light and warmth to millions of peace-loving people as they celebrate Christmas is a depraved and evil act that must be answered," DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko said, urging allies to send more air defence.

The employee of a Ukrainian thermal power plant was killed in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, over which 42 missiles were shot down, governor Sergiy Lysak said.

Lysak also said rescue operations had been completed on the site of a strike on Kryvyi Rig, which killed one person and wounded 17 others the day before.

Engineers have restored power to consumers in the Ivano-Frankisvk region.

"Christmas morning has once again shown that nothing is sacred for the aggressor country," Svitlana Onyshchuk, the head of the Ivano-Frankivsk region, said earlier.

Ukraine is officially celebrating Christmas on Dec 25 for the second time.

The government last year changed the date from Jan 7, when most Orthodox believers celebrate, as a snub to Russia.

"WON'T RUIN CHRISTMAS"

The Christmas day attack also targeted Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, located near the Russian border.

The missiles had targeted the city's boiler houses, thermal power plants and electricity facilities, mayor Igor Terekhov said, temporarily cutting power to 500,000 people.

One unexploded missile was found in a private yard in Kharkiv, Synegubov said.

Kharkiv's governor Oleg Synegubov also said authorities had evacuated 46 people from the area of Borivske and Kupiansk.

Moscow's forces are aiming to recapture the town of Kupiansk, which was occupied in the first year of the war.

Ukraine recaptured it in September 2022 as part of a lightning offensive that saw its forces regain large swathes of the Kharkiv region.

Outnumbered Ukrainian troops are on the back foot across the front line in the Kharkiv and Donetsk region further south, ceding ground to better-equipped Russian troops.

Both sides are scrambling to gain the upper hand ahead of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who boasted he would quickly end the war, raising fears that Washington may force Kyiv into a deal on Moscow's terms.

Ukraine has been urging allies to send more aid to fend off aerial strikes and push back troops on the ground.

"I am grateful to everyone who is working for the country, who is on combat duty, who is protecting our sky," Zelenskyy said.

"Russian evil will not break Ukraine and will not ruin Christmas," Zelenskyy said.

channelnewsasia.com

3. Hamas, Israel trade blame over delay in finalising Gaza truce deal

​Excerpts:

Netanyahu countered in a statement: "The Hamas terrorist organisation continues to lie, is reneging on understandings that have already been reached, and is continuing to create difficulties in the negotiations."

Israel will, however, continue relentless efforts to return hostages, he added.

Israeli negotiators returned to Israel from Qatar on Tuesday evening for consultations about a hostage deal after a significant week of talks, Netanyahu's office said on Tuesday.

The US and Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt have stepped up efforts to conclude a deal in the past two weeks.

Hamas, Israel trade blame over delay in finalising Gaza truce deal

The US and Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt have stepped up efforts to conclude a deal in the past two weeks.

25 Dec 2024 09:13PM

(Updated: 25 Dec 2024 11:40PM)

channelnewsasia.com

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JERUSALEM: The Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel traded blame on Wednesday (Dec 25) over failure to conclude a ceasefire agreement despite progress reported by both sides in past days.

Hamas said that Israel had set new conditions, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the group of going back on understandings already reached.

"The occupation has set new conditions related to withdrawal, ceasefire, prisoners, and the return of the displaced, which has delayed reaching the agreement that was available," Hamas said.

It added that it was showing flexibility and that the talks, mediated by Qatar and Egypt, were serious.

Netanyahu countered in a statement: "The Hamas terrorist organisation continues to lie, is reneging on understandings that have already been reached, and is continuing to create difficulties in the negotiations."

Israel will, however, continue relentless efforts to return hostages, he added.

Israeli negotiators returned to Israel from Qatar on Tuesday evening for consultations about a hostage deal after a significant week of talks, Netanyahu's office said on Tuesday.

The US and Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt have stepped up efforts to conclude a deal in the past two weeks.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, speaking with commanders in southern Gaza, said on Wednesday that Israel will retain security control of the enclave, including by means of buffer zones and controlling posts.

Hamas is demanding an end to the war, while Israel says it wants to end Hamas' rule of the enclave first, to ensure it will no longer pose a threat to Israelis.

ISRAEL KEEPS UP MILITARY PRESSURE

Meanwhile, Israeli forces kept up pressure on the northern Gaza Strip, in one of the most punishing campaigns of the 14-month war, including around three hospitals on the northern edge of the enclave, in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia.

Palestinians accuse Israel of seeking to permanently depopulate northern Gaza to create a buffer zone. Israel denies this and says it has instructed civilians to leave those areas for their own safety while its troops battle Hamas militants.

Israeli strikes killed at least 24 people across Gaza on Wednesday, health officials said. One strike hit a former school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City's suburb of Sheikh Radwan, they added.

The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas militant operating in the area of Al-Furqan in Gaza City.

Several Palestinians were killed and wounded in the Al-Mawasi area, an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, where the military said it was targeting another Hamas operative.

The war was triggered by Hamas' Oct 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's campaign against Hamas in Gaza has since killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.

Source: Reuters/fh

4. Commentary: Chinese espionage creates a dilemma for Western countries

​Excerpts:

The UK now must decide whether to paper over these unsightly activities by China for the sake of economic ties, or to make its position known to China.

A key moment will be whether the government allows a new Chinese embassy to be built on the site of the former Royal Mint, the maker of UK coins, in east London, despite objections from local authorities.

If approved, it would be China’s largest embassy in Europe and more than a third larger than the US’ own new embassy in south London. The number of diplomatic staff would give a huge boost to potential Chinese influence and espionage operations in the UK.

It remains to be seen if that is a price the Starmer government is willing to pay.

Commentary: Chinese espionage creates a dilemma for Western countries

Allegations of a Chinese spy linked to Prince Andrew underline the tough choices Western countries must make if they want to engage with Beijing, says foreign policy adviser Christian Le Miere.

Christian Le Miere

@c_lemiere

24 Dec 2024 06:00AM

channelnewsasia.com

LONDON: Is China a friend or foe to Europe?

For some European countries, China is one of the largest trade partners and investors. There could be a positive, symbiotic connection, but sometimes Beijing appears to undermine those relationships.

In the UK, details emerged in mid-December of an alleged Chinese spy who had developed close relations with, among others, Prince Andrew.

The case of Yang Tengbo, also known as Chris Yang, highlights the challenges that countries looking to build closer ties to China face. Concerns over espionage, unfair trading practices and cyberattacks all appear to be the price of access to China’s substantial market and investment opportunities.

The question countries such as the UK face is whether the costs are worth the benefits.

WHO IS YANG TENGBO?

Yang Tengbo is a 50-year-old Chinese businessman who has been a key figure in Sino-UK industrial relations for years. He serves as the executive chairman of the UK-Chinese Business Association and was a member of the 48 Group Club, another Sino-UK business association.

He first arrived in the UK in 2002 and by 2013 had gained indefinite leave to remain. Through his various firms, which aim to provide advice to facilitate interactions between Chinese and UK entities, and his association positions he developed a range of close relations with high-level political figures in the UK.

His relationship with Prince Andrew was so close as to be invited to the royal’s 60th birthday party and warrant the Duke of York’s senior advisor, Dominic Hampshire, to tell Yang that "outside of his closest internal confidants, you sit at the top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on".

Through this connection, Yang joined visits to St James’ Palace and Windsor Castle, and has been photographed alongside David Cameron, Theresa May and her husband in Downing Street.

Yang’s level of access alarmed UK security forces. In 2021, he was stopped at the border and his digital devices were taken. The data from those devices led UK security services to believe that Yang was linked to the United Front Work Department, a Chinese government agency that utilises overseas Chinese citizens to gain influence and spy on individuals and organisations overseas.

In 2023, Yang’s residency rights were cancelled and he was banned from the UK.

AWKWARD TIMING

While there are significant questions over Yang’s level of influence and any nefarious activity, it is far from the only incident of espionage or malign operations by China against the UK.

In May, the UK accused Chinese hackers of accessing 270,000 payroll records of the UK armed forces. In January 2022, MI5 issued a security alert about an alleged Chinese agent, Christine Ching Kui Lee, who was alleged to be attempting to gain influence with UK parliamentarians on behalf of the Chinese government.

These influence and espionage operations are not confined to the UK. Countries throughout Europe, North America and Asia have all attributed similar operations to some form of Chinese official backing.

But the Yang case comes at a particularly awkward time for the UK’s new Labour government. Under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the government is eager to foster growth at all costs, deepening trade relations with as many countries as possible, including the United States, European Union members, India and China.

The latest revelations about Chinese influence operations at the top of UK society is therefore embarrassing for the government as it attempts to smooth over its often bumpy relationship with Beijing.

The difficulties London faces in its relations with Beijing were highlighted by Starmer’s response to a question about Yang. Rather than openly criticise Beijing, Starmer chose instead to suggest that it was “better to engage” with China and that he was “pleased with the engagement and the progress that we’ve made”.

FRIEND OR FOE?

The problem for many countries, especially those in Europe struggling with tepid economic growth and facing the prospect of a hostile trade relationship with the US under Donald Trump, is that China is too big a market to ignore.

However, the price of doing business with China is often to downplay the influence operations, espionage, dumping and other malign activities that Beijing seems reluctant to dispense with.

From China’s perspective, the goal of such operations is to learn more about and gain more influence over countries in the West that are seen as competitors or rivals. London is a particularly good target, not only as a major economy and global power, but a close ally to the United States, major contributor to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and significant defence power in its own right.

The UK now must decide whether to paper over these unsightly activities by China for the sake of economic ties, or to make its position known to China.

A key moment will be whether the government allows a new Chinese embassy to be built on the site of the former Royal Mint, the maker of UK coins, in east London, despite objections from local authorities.

If approved, it would be China’s largest embassy in Europe and more than a third larger than the US’ own new embassy in south London. The number of diplomatic staff would give a huge boost to potential Chinese influence and espionage operations in the UK.

It remains to be seen if that is a price the Starmer government is willing to pay.

Christian Le Miere is a foreign policy adviser and the founder and CEO of Arcipel, a strategic advisory firm based in London.

channelnewsasia.com

5. The truth about US bases on Okinawa

The truth about US bases on Okinawa - Asia Times

US military presence on strategic Japan island is often misreported by foreign media while China sponsors local protests against the bases

asiatimes.com · by Grant Newsham · December 25, 2024

Okinawa isn’t in the news so much these days. Chinese efforts to grab Philippine territory and smother Taiwan get the most attention. That doesn’t mean Okinawa is any less important.

An American acquaintance who writes about foreign affairs turned his attention to Okinawa recently. He did some homework and then sent along a few questions.

Some are good ones, but some reflect common misunderstandings of Okinawa that are even perpetrated by certain Okinawan officials and activists. Here’s my attempt to set him straight.

Geostrategic Importance

What is Okinawa’s current importance in terms of potential Chinese aggression, and what role does it play geopolitically?

Okinawa (and other islands that are part of the prefecture) are strategic geography. They form part of the First Island Chain that blocks the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s easy access to the Pacific Ocean.

Similarly, bases on and in Okinawa are useful for the Americans and the Japanese conducting both defensive and offensive military operations. Those range from intelligence gathering and targeting to kinetic warfare.

What impact could a Chinese invasion of Taiwan have on Okinawa?

United States and Japanese bases on Okinawa and elsewhere in the Ryukyus would be essential for operations to defend Taiwan. However, they are also likely PLA targets if the Chinese attack Taiwan.

A related question is, what would a Chinese assault on Taiwan do to all of Japan?

If successful, it would allow the PRC to isolate and dominate Japan. And it would rattle and perhaps destroy the Japan-US defense relationship on which the broader political relationship is based.

US Bases on Okinawa

Reclamation work for the relocation of the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma continues in Oura Bay off the coast of Henoko, Nago City, in Okinawa, August 2024. Image: JAPAN Forward

How do Okinawans regard the bases in general, and the expansion of the US military base at Henoko?

It depends on which Okinawans you ask. Governor Denny Tamaki will claim that “all” Okinawans oppose the bases. That is, of course, untrue. Otherwise, only “anti-base” candidates would win Okinawa elections. They don’t. The “pro-base” candidates are doing rather well recently.

Also, if Tamaki’s claim was true, there would be widespread and constant protests. There are not and have not been for decades.

When considering the “protesters,” most are older people and many are from outside Okinawa. Younger Okinawans mostly just want to get on with life and they worry about jobs, taking care of children, and taking care of elderly parents. The bases are, by and large, just part of the woodwork.

The residents of Henoko, the village where the new US Marine air facility is being built mostly support the base. This gets little publicity.

Remember that in other parts of Okinawa Prefecture – say, farther down the chain – there is also considerable support for the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) and even the US military presence – to protect from China.

In some areas, Japanese fishermen can no longer access traditional fishing grounds because of harassment from the China Coast Guard and Chinese fishing and maritime militia boats. Locals want the government to do something – and dispatch the JSDF to protect them.

Why has the withdrawal, especially partial withdrawal, of the US military never been realized?

The American forces have, in fact, withdrawn, and there are far fewer compared to 40-50 years ago. Also, more are leaving – with the move of thousands of Marines to Guam just getting underway.

The number of US military facilities on Okinawa has shrunk, too. And the training activities US forces can conduct are similarly constrained. Indeed, to train to defend Japan, the US forces often have to leave Japan.

But at the end of the day, Japan’s central government wants the Americans in Okinawa to defend Japan. Nevertheless, the central government has too often declined to adequately support the Americans publicly. It prefers to use US forces as a buffer to absorb Okinawan complaints.

Protecting place and people

US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel visited Yonaguni Island and Mayor Itokazu celebrate good relations in May 2024. (Courtesy of USAmbJapan X)

Do local residents feel they are receiving adequate support from the Tokyo government?

Once again, it depends on which local residents you talk to. Some do, some don’t. Even guys like Governor Tamaki and the “anti-base” opposition know that they are handsomely compensated for hosting the bases. And all they have to do is “complain.”

The central government provides somewhere between US$1-3 billion a year in direct support payments alone and has for many years. That’s a lot of money for a small population. You’d think the island of Okinawa would be paved in gold.

One fairly wonders, what happened to all the money? The Okinawan government might not want auditors to come to ask. More than a few Diet members in Tokyo might feel the same way.

Why does it seem that tensions are rising on the island?

They aren’t rising. Foreign reporters often – if not always – tend to misread the situation on Okinawa. However, Chinese subversion is encouraging a small group of noisy local activists to protest the military bases and the Japanese military presence, and incoherently calling for ‘independence.’

Speaking of the Chinese influence… one might ask Governor Tamaki what he does on his visits to the PRC.

Is there a tendency for US military personnel to be granted immunity when they commit crimes?

No. US personnel are punished under either the Japanese or US system when they misbehave. They are not granted immunity.

The area around United States Marine Corps Air Station Futenma is densely populated. Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, May 28. Photo: ©Sankei by Naoki Otake via JAPAN Forward

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When the US military pollutes the environment, how is responsibility handled?

The Americans have been sensitive about these issues over the last 30 years. They try not to pollute, and if they do, they clean it up. Go back longer and recall that nobody – Japanese or American – was as cautious about environmental pollution as they should have been. The “pollution” argument is often used by the anti-base crowd and by other Okinawans trying to shake down the central government for money.

Why is Okinawa’s standard of living said to be among the lowest in Japan?

This isn’t accurate. The standard of living is, in fact, very good – and Okinawa is one of the more prosperous-looking prefectures. It has an air of vitality – even if it’s just a “sugar high” from central government payments. If you travel around Japan and visit sleepy, decaying regional towns, you’ll understand.

One does wonder why Okinawan educational achievement isn’t higher and the economy more diversified. Perhaps because central government financial support leads to a lack of imagination or urgency by local leaders.

Some of them figure it’s easier to collect the annual payments from the central government than to attract businesses that will provide opportunities for youth in particular.

Japan’s central government could play a more constructive role. For example, they could change regulations to allow more direct economic and commercial ties with Taiwan and otherwise free up business.

Hibiscus, a native flower ubiquitous on Okinawa. Photo: ©Agnes Tandler via JAPAN Forward

Grant Newsham, a retired US Marine colonel, is the author of “When China Attacks: A Warning to America.”

This article first appeared on JAPAN Forward and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here.

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asiatimes.com · by Grant Newsham · December 25, 2024

6. Once a war zone, southern Philippines rebrands as tourist destination

Those of us who have served throughout the Sulu Archipelago can tell you of the great beaches, food, and people (and the coffee is wonderful on Basilan - but I failed to get Starbucks to invest there - my pitch was support this GOWT, this the coffee US Special Forces drinks in the Southern Philippines). I loved all three islands: Baslian, Jolo. and Tawi-Tawi. When I left in 2007 I told my Filipino friends that it was my hope that someday I could return with my family as tourists in the Southern Philippines. Maybe my wish can come true.  

See photos at the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/24/philippines-tourism-sulu-jolo-tawi/

​​

Once a war zone, southern Philippines rebrands as tourist destination

New visitors are flocking to the Sulu archipelago. But the specter of violence -- both real and imagined -- persists.

Yesterday at 2:41 p.m. EST

6 min

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The Sheikh Karimul Makhdum Mosque on Simunul Island was constructed when a Syrian missionary, Sheikh Karimul Makhdum, arrived in the Philippine islands in 1380. Makhdum preached Islam and by the time Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived more than 140 years later, much of the archipelago was already following the Islamic faith. (Photos by Martin San Diego for The Washington Post)

By Martin San Diego and Rebecca Tan

TAWI-TAWI, Philippines — As rebrands go, the southern islands of the Philippines face what has to be among the toughest challenges.

For a long time, these jungled islands were known as sites of war between the Philippine military and Muslim Moro insurgents, including several radical groups that carried out kidnappings, beheadings and bombings in the name of the Islamic State. With that conflict now abating, the island provinces of Bangsamoro — or nation of Moros — are pitching a new image.

Paradise. Open for business.

If successful, this could be a path forward for one of Asia’s most beleaguered yet pristine and beautiful places. There are models to follow, such as Sri Lanka and Vietnam, which have remolded themselves as buzzy tourist spots after long periods of conflict. But having experienced nearly a half-century of violence, including decades caught up in the global “war on terror,” the southern Philippines faces an uphill climb, locals say.

Resorts, restaurants and markets have opened across the islands of Tawi-Tawi, Jolo and Basilan, which sit west of the main island of Mindanao in what’s called the Sulu Archipelago. Efforts are underway to preserve historic Islamic sites and the customs of ancient seafaring groups indigenous to these parts.

Tawi-Tawi residents enjoy the sea as the setting sun sets off a warm glow along the shores of Bongao.

Both the national and provincial governments have lent support, investing tens of millions of dollars to build roads, upgrade ports and incentivize more commercial flights to the islands.

Philippine Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco, who has made attracting more Muslim tourists a priority, said last year that she had visited the “beautiful province” of Tawi-Tawi. “I am very pleased to inform you that they are ready for tourism,” she said in Manila, the Philippine capital.

Tawi-Tawi residents dressed in different traditional attires participate in the commemoration of Sheikh Karimul Makhdum on Simunul Island.

Filipino history books teach Ferdinand Magellan's arrival as the first notable event in the country's history. Alkasbi Antung, tourism officer in Simunul, says he can't change what people already believe in, but asserts “our history here in Simunul is also the history of the whole country.”

The southern islands are endowed with natural beauty: Long, white-sand beaches that trim the edges of crystal waters filled with marine life; lush forests with dramatic waterfalls and rare birds. But locals are also emphatic that they’re not looking for their islands to become the next Boracay.

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“We have our own identity that is unique,” said Sitti Djalia Hataman, mayor of Isabela, a port city on Basilan. Muslims are a minority in the Philippines, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, and those in the southern islands have close ties with seafaring communities across Asia. This heritage and the lengths to which locals have gone to defend it are part of the region’s identity, Hataman said.

Tawi-Tawi residents dressed in different traditional attires participate in the commemoration of Sheikh Karimul Makhdum on Simunul Island.

On Jolo, there’s a recently completed replica of the Astana Darul Jambangan, or Palace of Flowers, where the Sulu sultanate commanded a powerful Muslim state centuries before the arrival of Portuguese and Spanish explorers and colonizers.

On Tawi-Tawi, there’s Sheikh Karimul Makhdum Mosque, the oldest site of Muslim worship in the Philippines, which locals say was built in the 14th century by Arab traders and missionaries, long before Christianity was spread across much of the archipelago.

And then there’s Bud Dajo, a mountain sacred to the local Muslim population that has drawn historians from the West and elsewhere because of a 1906 massacre, in which American soldiers killed, by some estimates, close to 1,000 Muslim Moros.

“Our history here … is also the history of the whole country,” said Alkasbi M. Antung, 36, a tourism officer in Tawi-Tawi.

A contemporary mosque still stands on the same location where the original Sheikh Karimul Makhdum Mosque was built.

There are signs the tourism drive is working. Isabela recorded 440,000 visitors in 2023, up from 30,000 in 2019, Hataman said. The city, which a decade ago fell silent after 5 p.m. because of curfews, now has night markets that run till the early morning. There are floating cottages that show off traditional weaving and wood-carving practices, and cafés and milk tea shops catering to young people.

Even some of the Philippine troops who used to sail to the Sulu Archipelago to root out insurgents now spend their days there diving and surfing. “I’m happy I lived to see this,” said Col. Allen Van Estrera, head of operations at the Philippine military’s Western Mindanao Command, which led the fight against the Moro rebels. Like his colleagues, he vacations in Tawi-Tawi. “I have high hopes that Mindanao is ready to fulfill the potential it has always had,” Estrera said.

Locals disembark a passenger ferry from Zamboanga City to Isabela City in Basilan. The island of Basilan earned its notoriety from kidnappings conducted by the Abu Sayyaf group (ASG), a designated foreign terrorist group according to the U.S. State Department, in the early 2000s.

Most visitors are from other parts of the southern Philippines who are persuaded to come through word-of-mouth, local officials say. People on the islands want to attract visitors from farther afield, but the perception of danger persists across much of the country and abroad.

Many foreign governments still advise citizens not to travel to the Sulu Archipelago. The State Department lists the islands here under “Level 4 — Do Not Travel,” the highest possible threat advisory, which is also applied to countries such as North Korea and Russia.

When Jackie Ramirez, 44, heard about an opening for a manager position at a resort on Tawi-Tawi, he was initially hesitant. People in his town in the north of the country had this notion that “there’s nothing but wars and terrorism in Mindanao,” he said. Arriving at the Bihing Tahik resort in May changed his mind.

Boats to and from neighboring islands in Tawi-Tawi dock at the Chinese Pier in the town of Bongao, the province's capital. Tawi-Tawi is the southernmost province of the Philippines, sharing maritime borders with Malaysia and Indonesia.

The sun sets on the villas at the Bihing Tahik resort in Tawi-Tawi, one of the province's newest attractions. “Everyone in north Philippines has this notion that there's nothing but wars and terrorism in Mindanao,” Jackie Ramirez, the resort's manager, said. But since his stint in the resort started 8 months ago, one of the most stark realizations Ramirez has learned is that the region has nothing to offer but peace, “wherever you go here, no one's going to harm you.”

The resort, renovated in 2021 by a boutique Manila-based design firm, has 26 villas with wavy, clamshell-inspired roofs priced between $60 and $90 per night — significantly more than what most locals can afford. It offers diving courses, dance parties and an infinity pool — the first one on Tawi-Tawi. “Bihing Tahik figuratively speaks on behalf of the province. And it says it’s safe,” Ramirez said.

Amin Hataman, a local official in Basilan who’s the son of Isabela’s mayor, said people in the north and abroad “aren’t aware of the strides we’ve taken.”

Basilan was the birthplace of the Abu Sayyaf group (ASG), considered by many to be the most violent militant group from the southern Philippines. But earlier this year, the island declared multiple cities, including Isabela, ASG-free. “We are trying to take back control over our own destiny,” Hataman said. Tourism, he added, can be a long-term driver for economic growth in the south, which has lagged behind other parts of the Philippines.

Colorful sails, called vinta, of the Sama Bajau line the shore of Zamboanga City during its weeks-long Hermosa Festival. Zamboanga is recovering from the image created by the Zamboanga Siege of 2013, when Moro rebels from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) attempted to occupy several coastal communities in protest of government policies.

Still, there are some watchdog groups and security analysts who say safety threats in the Philippine south can’t be written off yet. The dangers aren’t necessarily Islamist extremists but heavily armed politicians and common criminals.

Kidnappings have gone way down from a decade ago. But in October, an American living in Sibuco, a coastal town on the western tip of Mindanao, just opposite Basilan, was shot and abducted in the middle of the night. Elliot Eastman, 26, had been posting videos online of his life in the Philippines after moving there in May. He’s likely to be dead, Philippine authorities say.

Bobby Lagsa contributed to this report.

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By Rebecca Tan

Rebecca Tan is the Southeast Asia Bureau Chief, with occasional stints elsewhere. She was a Livingston Award finalist for her reporting on conflict in Myanmar and was previously part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in public service for coverage of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. follow on X@rebtanhs

7. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 24, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 24, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-24-2024

A senior Russian official reiterated Russian President Vladimir Putin's insistence that negotiations with Ukraine must be based on the same uncompromising demands he made before the full-scale invasion and at the moment of Russia's greatest territorial gains, despite the fact that Ukraine has liberated significant amount of territory since then. Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko stated on December 24 that Russia is open to compromise in negotiations with Ukraine, but that Russia will strictly adhere to the conditions that it laid out during negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022, when Russian troops were advancing on Kyiv and throughout eastern and southern Ukraine. Matviyenko added that Russia would not deviate from these conditions by "one iota." The partial agreement that emerged during the Ukraine-Russia negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022 stated that Ukraine would be a permanently neutral state that could not join NATO, and imposed limitations on the Ukrainian military similar to those imposed by the Treaty of Versailles on Germany after World War I, restricting Ukraine's Armed Forces to 85,000 soldiers. Russia's demands at Istanbul were mainly more detailed versions of the demands that Putin made in the months before he launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022, including Ukraine's "demilitarization" and neutrality. Matviyenko is reiterating Putin's demand from his annual Direct Line televised press conference on December 19, and more senior Russian officials are likely to make similar claims to domestic and foreign audiences in coming weeks. ISW continues to assess that senior Russian officials' references to conditions Putin attempted to impose on Ukraine when he believed his full-scale invasion could succeed in a few days in 2022 reflects his projected confidence that he can completely defeat Ukraine militarily despite the tremendous setbacks Ukraine has inflicted on Russian forces since then.

The Kremlin's economic limitations will likely hinder its efforts to impose policies combatting long-term demographic decline in Russia. Nizhny Novgorod Oblast Governor Gleb Nikitin stated on December 23 that Nizhny Novgorod Oblast would provide a maternity capital payment of one million rubles (about $10,000) for the birth of each child starting at an unspecified date in 2025. Nikitin stated that Nizhny Novogorod Oblast authorities would provide one million rubles for the first and second children with federal and regional funds and will provide one million rubles for the third and fourth children solely from the regional budget. Russian regional authorities will likely continue to expand maternity capital payments as part of a Kremlin directive to address long-term demographic issues. The Russian government may struggle to provide large maternity capital payments over time as the Russian economy is continually strained by its war in Ukraine, international sanctions, and rising labor shortages, however. Russian state newswire RIA Novosti reported on December 24 that it saw a letter that the Russian Central Bank sent in response to a request from Russian State Duma Deputy Denis Parfenov wherein the Central Bank stated that the lowering of the key interest rate in order to stimulate demand, when "demand already exceeds supply," is "dangerous." The Central Bank stated that Russia's current labor, equipment, and transport shortages mean that cheap loans will not immediately give producers additional resources and will only intensify competition for resources and increase prices. The Russian Central Bank raised the key interest rate to 21 percent in October 2024, and the bank's head, Elvira Nabiullina, has recently stated that the bank may raise it further. Russian President Vladimir Putin attempted during his Direct Line televised press conference on December 19 to portray the Russian economy as "stable and reliable," while also blaming the Russian Central Bank and Nabiullina for mishandling rising interest rates.

A Russian cargo ship sank in the Mediterranean Sea on December 23, possibly while traveling from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok via Syria and Libya. Spanish media reported on December 24 that the Russian Ursa Major cargo ship sank in the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and Algeria, and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) confirmed that the dry cargo ship sank after an explosion in the engine room. The Russian Ministry of Defense's (MoD) Oboronlogistika logistics company, which owns the Ursa Major, claimed in a press release from December 20 that the vessel was traveling to Vladivostok with two cranes necessary to expand the city's port terminal and 45-ton hatch covers for new icebreakers. Oboronlogistika claimed that the vessel was going to develop port infrastructure and the Northern Sea Route. Ship tracking services showed that the vessel left St. Petersburg on December 11. Russian media reported that the captain of the Ursa Major stated that the ship was carrying empty containers on board. The Maritime Executive reported that automatic identification system (AIS) data showed that the Russian cargo ship Sparta came to the aid of the Ursa Major following the explosion. Ukraine's Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) recently stated that the Sparta and the Sparta II cargo ships were en route from Russia to the Port of Tartus to evacuate Russian military assets from Syria. The presence of the hatch covers for new icebreakers on the Ursa Major is consistent with Oboronlogistika's statement that the ship was travelling to Vladivostok. Russia may have diverted the ship to the Port of Tartus to evacuate Russian military assets from Syria. Russia has reportedly started moving military assets from Syria to Libya, and the Ursa Major may have planned to relocate military assets from Syria to Libya before continuing on to Vladivostok. The sinking of the Ursa Major may complicate and slow Russian efforts to evacuate military assets from the Port of Tartus.

The United States provided Ukraine on December 24 with the first tranche of loans generated solely from profits from frozen Russian assets. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stated that the United States gave Ukraine a one billion dollar loan generated solely from profits from frozen Russian assets. This is the first loan out of a total $20 billion generated from profits from frozen Russian assets that the United States allocated to Ukraine on December 10. The United States transfer of revenues from Russian frozen assets is part of the larger G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) Loans initiative to send $50 billion worth of profits from frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine's budgetary, military, and reconstruction assistance throughout 2025.

Key Takeaways:

• A senior Russian official reiterated Russian President Vladimir Putin's insistence that negotiations with Ukraine must be based on the same uncompromising demands he made before the full-scale invasion and at the moment of Russia's greatest territorial gains, despite the fact that Ukraine has liberated significant amount of territory since then.

• The Kremlin's economic limitations will likely hinder its efforts to impose policies combatting long-term demographic decline in Russia.

• A Russian cargo ship sank in the Mediterranean Sea on December 23, possibly while traveling from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok via Syria and Libya.

• The United States provided Ukraine on December 24 with the first tranche of loans generated solely from profits from frozen Russian assets.

• Russian forces recently advanced near Pokrovsk, Toretsk, Vuhledar, Velyka Novosilka, and in Kursk Oblast.

• Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev claimed on December 24 that 440,000 recruits signed military service contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) in 2024.

8. Iran Update, December 24, 2024

Iran Update, December 24, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-december-24-2024

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) defended against Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) attempts to recapture SDF-held ground on the west bank of the Euphrates River near the Tishreen Dam and Qere Qozak Bridge. The SDF reported its forces defended against SNA assaults in Mahshiyet al Tawahin and Khirbet Tueni, approximately 5 kilometers west of the Tishreen Dam. The SDF conducted three separate FPV drone strikes targeting SNA vehicles west of the Tishreen Dam. The SDF reported that its fighters killed “dozens” of SNA fighters, seized two SNA tanks, and destroyed SNA equipment. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) reported that the SNA killed 16 of its fighters during the fighting.

SDF forces also defended against an SNA attack on Qabr Imo, approximately 4.3 kilometers west of the Qere Qozak Bridge. SDF fighters conducted an FPV drone strike targeting an SNA military vehicle less than a kilometer away from the Qere Qozak Bridge. The SDF reported that it also destroyed an SNA tank near the Qere Qozak Bridge.

HTS leader Ahmed al Shara may face resistance to the current moderate approach to governance from Salafi-Jihadi factions within the HTS-led coalition. Members of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in Syria, a member of the HTS-led military coalition with links to al Qaeda, set fire to a Christmas tree in Suqaylabiyah, Hama Governorate, on December 23. TIP in Syria is the local affiliate of the main TIP branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Qaeda appointed the overall TIP leader, Abdul Haq al Turkistani, to its Shura Council in 2005. Local footage posted after the incident showed a local HTS government official attempting to reassure locals that government security forces would pursue the perpetrators and that the government would repair the tree. TIP’s religiously motivated attack is an example of the inherent friction between the ideology and objectives of Salafi-Jihadi elements within the HTS-led coalition and HTS’s stated approach to respect and preserve the rights of Syrian minorities. Six Al Qaeda-affiliated groups TIP, Harakat al Islam, Jaysh al Muharijeen wal Ansar, Katibat al Tawhis wal Jihad, Katibat al Alban, and Maldivian Mujahideen have publicly supported HTS in the past. TIP itself has fought alongside HTS and its predecessor organizations since the mid-2010s.

The friction between the Salafi-jihadi ideologues and Shara’s relatively moderate governance could force Shara to compel Salafi-jihadists to adhere to his vision or take a more Salafi approach to preserve Shara’s coalition. Both al Qaeda-linked ideologues and ISIS have denounced HTS’s protection of religious minorities and engagement with the West. A “prominent” al Qaeda supporter publicly “advised” HTS to avoid the mistakes of the Taliban by adhering to “Islamic principles” and avoid “pleasing the West.” He added that Shara must adhere to Islamic principles because the West and “Jews and Christians” would not be pleased with moderate measures until Shara converted to Judaism or Christianity. ISIS similarly argued that HTS’s protection of religious minorities and engagement with “infidel” states is unacceptable. Other ISIS supporters are criticizing Shara’s Western dress — including suits and ties — and implying these make him unIslamic. These arguments may attract some Salafi-jihadists who are resistant to Shara’s approach. Shara has previously suppressed similar Salafi-jihadist opposition by force of arms. He will likely attempt to do so again if he believes he has the bandwidth to do so.

Key Takeaways:

• Syrian Democratic Forces: The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) defended against Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) attempts to recapture SDF-held ground on the west bank of the Euphrates River near the Tishreen Dam and Qere Qozak Bridge.

• HTS Governance: HTS leader Ahmed al Shara may face resistance to the current moderate approach to governance from Salafi-Jihadi factions within the HTS-led coalition. Members of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in Syria, a member of the HTS-led military coalition with links to al Qaeda, set fire to a Christmas tree in Suqaylabiyah, Hama Governorate, on December 23. The friction between the Salafi-jihadi ideologues and Shara over his relatively moderate governance could force Shara to compel Salafi-jihadists to adhere to his vision or take a more Salafi approach to preserve Shara’s coalition.

• ISIS Activity: ISIS may be attempting to resupply its forces with weapons captured from regime, Russian, and Iranian stocks in the central Syrian desert. CENTCOM targeted a “truckload of ISIS weapons” in Deir ez Zor. ISIS fighters−who have long fought under threat of airstrikes−would presumably avoid transporting large amounts of weapons from existing ISIS stocks, given the risk that US airstrikes would destroy much-needed weapons stockpiles. The decision to transport these weapons in a “truckload“ suggests that ISIS had captured a new stock of weapons and attempted to transport them to a safe location when CENTCOM struck the vehicle.

• Building Syria’s Army: Syrian armed groups agreed to “dissolve” themselves and merge under the HTS-led Defense Ministry, but this does not mean that Syrian opposition forces will answer to the Defense Ministry in practice. HTS will likely absorb the various armed groups and functionally reflag them as new Syrian army units as a way to ameliorate concerns about losing power among various leaders. Dissolving and integrating therefore does not necessarily mean that these armed groups will cease to exist entirely. This type of absorption and reflagging often results in armed group leaders failing to observe the actual chain of command. 

• West Bank: The IDF is executing its operation at the same time Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces are operating against Palestinian militias to regain security control of Jenin from the militias. Israeli forces launched an unusual "brigade-wide" counterterrorism operation in Tulkarm, in the northern West Bank, on December 23. It also conducted a separate operation in Nablus.

9. Abraham Lincoln Could Teach China, Russia and North Korea How to Take on America

Interior lines.

A sound conclusion.

Excerpt:

In short, we cannot do it all. Let’s rediscover the habit of setting and enforcing priorities, tending to what matters most ourselves while trusting to allies, partners, and friends to handle the rest.

Abraham Lincoln Could Teach China, Russia and North Korea How to Take on America

19fortyfive.com · by James Holmes · December 17, 2024

Lurkers in the wretched hive of scum and villainy—the Chinas, Russias, and North Koreas of the world—are channeling Abraham Lincoln.

During the American Civil War, President Lincoln divined that it verges on impossible for an outnumbered force to make itself strong enough everywhere along a distended defense perimeter to hold off a superior antagonist. Accordingly, he instructed Union generals to choreograph multiple, concurrent offensives around the Confederate perimeter, on the logic that one or more such probes would smash through the frontier. Southern armies would be too weak to defend everywhere. But where Lincoln wanted to break into hostile territory, red teams in Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang long to break out. They are mounting coordinated offensives around the Eurasian rim, reckoning that they can breach a line thinly defended by overstretched U.S. forces.

Strategic logic favored the Union cause back then. It could come to favor Eurasian malefactors today. To rebuff them, U.S. leaders need to discipline themselves. They need to husband finite resources, setting and enforcing priorities rather than demand that the U.S. military tamp down every crisis that comes along. No armed force is omnipotent. A force that tries to do it all, everywhere, at all times, ends up accomplishing little, anywhere, at any time. In other words, U.S. commanders and their political masters need to school themselves on strategy.

Fortunately, the strategic plight before Washington today is less dire than the one that confronted Confederate magnates. Leaders decked in gray faced an unenviable task. Their breakaway slave republic bestrode death ground. The Confederacy could fight to its utmost or die. Field commanders had little alternative other than to guard all along the Southern periphery, lest they cede home ground to a hostile army and hasten the defeat and downfall of their cause. And for some time they made a spirited struggle of it. Generals such as supreme commander Robert E. Lee mastered the art of maneuvering around the defense perimeter to meet imposing but sporadic Union thrusts.

In other words, Lee & Co. exploited the advantages of the interior position. Interior lines are like the radii of a circle. The combatant on interior lines enjoys short, direct routes from the center to battlegrounds around the circle’s circumference, which is equivalent to the interior contestant’s outer defense line. By contrast, the combatant ranging along exterior lines must move around the circle’s circumference to reach the same points of impact. Just to get to the battle, it must overcome all the geospatial and logistical headaches that go with moving lumbering forces across long distances.

Enter Lincoln. Old Abe was a self-educated strategist. At the outset of the Civil War, he basically had the Library of Congress send its collection on military affairs and history over to the White House. Then he read it. Among the strategic concepts Lincoln imbibed from his studies was “concentration in time.” Generally speaking, operational art involves mustering enough combat power at the time and place of battle to prevail. It’s the art of “concentration in space.” Force, space, time is the litany for practitioners of joint military operations. Now, employing the singular—“the” force, “the” place, “the” time—implies that a fighting force undertakes one battle or engagement at a time. Its commanders wage tactical encounters, one after the other, until the army reaches its final objective, whether that means vanquishing an enemy host or wresting away a piece of ground. This sequence of endeavors comprises a campaign.

And that way of looking at things makes perfect sense—in theory.

In the practical world, though, campaigns seldom if ever unspool so neatly. In part that’s because, no matter how desirable it might be, it’s hard to group all forces on one field of battle at the same time to overpower the foe. Military sage Carl von Clausewitz catalogs some reasons why. Terrain may inhibit movement to the battlefield. Command-and-control of large formations poses problems, making it hard to act in unison. A force must guard fragile supply lines, so it leaves behind soldiery to protect them. The firepower from soldiers overseeing supply lines is not present for the main show. Allies have their own political processes to abide by, and may not do the leading ally’s bidding instantly or to the full. Etc.

Concentration in space is an elusive ideal. So, out of expediency, forces commonly operate in units fragmented from one another.

But that need not mean they operate in random, uncoordinated fashion. From ransacking military history, Lincoln shrewdly observed that armies maneuvering independently in geographic space could still concentrate their efforts in time. And they should: it imposes dilemmas on the foe. Southern armies were adept at shifting from side to side along interior lines to meet offensives by the materially superior Union Army. They could handle Union advances one by one. But Lincoln reasoned that they would be hard pressed to meet multiple thrusts at different places at the same time. And the Union could afford to equip forces to stage multiple assaults. The North outclassed the South by most any index of physical strength, from economic productivity to military-related industry to manpower. It could scatter armies around on the map yet—given skillful commanders—orchestrate them to strike nearly simultaneously. Eventually a Northern army would break through a weak segment of the line into the backfield, seizing Southern ground and carrying the North toward victory.

U.S. Navy Assault Ship. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

And the scattershot approach worked—albeit not without four long years of bloodletting. Lincoln’s presidency is a case study on managing concentration and dispersal of armed might.

Today, U.S. forces are once again operating along exterior lines, this time in the marginal seas and skies adjoining the Eurasian supercontinent. By commanding offshore waters, U.S. forces can mold events in the rimlands to the advantage of America and its regional allies, partners, and friends. But this is a case of role reversal. The United States is now playing defense. It wants to uphold a longstanding, largely beneficial status quo. Preserving what is constitutes a strategically defensive aim by any standard. Meanwhile rimlands contenders are essaying a breakout from Eurasia. They aspire to drive U.S. maritime forces from the marginal seas. If successful they will deny the United States and its allies the maritime access they must possess to radiate power ashore, while at the same time guaranteeing their own access to the wider world.

If hostile capitals coordinate their efforts smoothly, they can concentrate in time along interior lines in pursuit of a breakout. They can rally Lincoln’s logic behind strategically offensive aims.

And it seems such an effort is afoot. I’m not one to affix cutesy labels like “axis” of this or that to describe the red teams, as many commentators have taken to doing. No solemn covenant unites them. Nevertheless, it is hard to construe the concurrent crises now convulsing the Eurasian rim except as a mutual effort by the supercontinent’s malefactors to puncture the U.S. cordon. These crises may be fragmented in geographic space, but they are suspiciously concentrated in time. And they come at a juncture when the red teams work together openly in the military realm. North Korea has sent troops to fight Ukraine. Iran has supplied Russia with aerial ordnance while sponsoring the Houthi assault on mercantile shipping. China furnishes Russia invaluable support for its aggression against Ukraine, touting the “no-limits” partnership Beijing and Moscow announced shortly before the invasion.

We are witnessing opportunism at a bare minimum. And signs of outright collusion are becoming too glaring to ignore.

Yet U.S. leaders have options. Unlike Confederate commanders in the Civil War, they don’t have to defend the line to the utmost everywhere around the Eurasian perimeter. They can be choosy, applying resources to the most critical flashpoints—chiefly East Asian flashpoints—while delegating lesser priorities to local allies, partners, or friends. Indeed, strategy demands they do so. If the Indo-Pacific is the prime theater for American endeavor, as successive administrations have agreed it is, then that’s where the bulk of U.S. resources must go.

Or the leadership can keep trying to do everything, everywhere, all the time—defining every commitment as commanding the same surpassing value and warranting the same burdensome, open-ended levy of martial resources. That would be strategic malpractice. Indiscipline among the leadership attenuates the resources available for genuinely compelling priorities such as the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea. It hobbles efforts to counter the gravest threats looming in world affairs.

In short, we cannot do it all. Let’s rediscover the habit of setting and enforcing priorities, tending to what matters most ourselves while trusting to allies, partners, and friends to handle the rest.

About the Author: Dr. James Holmes

Dr. James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Distinguished Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare, Marine Corps University. The views voiced here are his alone.

19fortyfive.com · by James Holmes · December 17, 2024

10. Donald Trump to create "Iron Dome" missile defense shield for US

​Star Wars or SDI II?

Donald Trump to create "Iron Dome" missile defense shield for US

Newsweek · by Ellie Cook · December 23, 2024

Published Dec 23, 2024 at 5:57 AM ESTBySecurity & Defense Reporter

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President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to start building a "great Iron Dome" air defense network for the U.S. without specifying how he will craft an Israeli-style missile defense shield.

"I will direct our military to begin construction of the great Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be made all in the USA, much of it right here in Arizona," the Republican said during a rally in Phoenix on Sunday.

Trump, who is less than a month away from his inauguration, has repeatedly said he will build a domestically made Iron Dome around the "entire country," with the pledge appearing in the Republican Party's preelection commitments and its leader's "core promises."

The Iron Dome is an Israeli air defense system that intercepts incoming short-range rockets and shells as part of the country's layers of advanced air defenses. It has a range of about 43 miles. Newsweek contacted the Trump transition team for comment via email.

President-elect Donald Trump at AmericaFest in Phoenix on December 22. Trump has pledged to start building a "great Iron Dome" air defense network for the U.S. without specifying how he will craft an Israeli-style missile... President-elect Donald Trump at AmericaFest in Phoenix on December 22. Trump has pledged to start building a "great Iron Dome" air defense network for the U.S. without specifying how he will craft an Israeli-style missile defense shield. AP Photo/Rick Scuteri

Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries developed the Iron Dome, although the U.S. had a hand in creating and supporting the system.

The U.S.'s geography has made experts question whether an Iron Dome would be a viable air defense system when the likely main threat would be intercontinental ballistic missiles, which primarily carry nuclear weapons. Israel, which is surrounded by hostile states, uses other systems—such as David's Sling system and the Arrow 3 system—to intercept longer-range missiles.

In mid-October, the U.S. sent Israel one of its Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense batteries, which are designed to boost Israel's air defenses against a range of ballistic missiles, after Iran launched a large-scale missile attack on the country a few weeks earlier.

Representative Mike Waltz, a Republican from Florida whom Trump tapped as his pick for national security adviser, said earlier this month that "we need an Iron Dome for America."

Trump told the crowd in Arizona on Sunday: "Ronald Reagan wanted to do it many, many years ago, but they didn't really have the technology … But they have it now, you can knock a needle out of the sky."

Reagan, the Republican president who stewarded Washington through the 1980s while the Cold War drew to an end, pushed for what he termed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), popularly dubbed "Star Wars."

Reagan intended for the SDI, partly based in space, to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles launched by the then-Soviet Union at different points in the missile's flight.

While the Soviet Union has since crumbled, relations between the U.S. and Russia dipped to their worst point since the end of the Cold War after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022. Trump has repeatedly vowed to end the conflict within 24 hours.

11. NATO’s Path Forward: Spending Money on Real Capabilities

NATO’s Path Forward: Spending Money on Real Capabilities

19fortyfive.com · by Andrew A. Michta · December 23, 2024

While NATO has largely maintained its unity against Moscow following Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine, the alliance’s political pronouncements of support have not been met with similar resolve when it comes to the appetite for risk-taking, with the absence of a workable strategy for victory in Ukraine and a focus on escalation management hampering Western efforts to defeat the invasion.

Equally concerning has been the relatively slow pace of rearmament and modernization among the allies themselves, with rhetoric again not matching the money that needs to be spent to overhaul the alliance’s military machinery. Almost three years since the Russian invasion, only 23 of the 32 NATO allies have met or promised to meet the minimum 2% of GDP to be spent on defense. It took a decade of US pressure, cajoling, and finally the growing threat posed by Russia for the European allies to reach this level, for in 2014 only three allies met the 2% minimum threshold. The estimated total investment in defense for the European NATO allies in 2024 stands at $430 billion, roughly half of what the United States will have spent this year.

And while the allies have earned plaudits for this accomplishment, it is worth noting that Russia currently spends over 6% of its GDP on defense this year, with a planned 25% increase in 2025—a new post-Soviet high.

NATO: Matching Arms and Goals

The key issue facing NATO today is the lack of exercised, conventional military capabilities to resource the new regional plans properly.

On paper, European NATO allies may be able to field between 100,000—200,000 troops, but even these numbers fall short of what is needed. Given that the United States’ active duty military stands at 1.3 million (in reality, probably less considering recruitment and retention shortfalls), of which the Army constitutes 443,000, and considering the fact that threats are rising in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, the burden of providing conventional capabilities for the European theater must fall on the European allies, with the United States providing its current conventional component, high-end enablers, C2 integration, and most of all the nuclear umbrella.

To put it differently, the path for NATO to retain its viability and effectiveness going forward will rest not on the perennial debates about percentages of GDP spent on defense or “burden-sharing,” but in effect on “burden-transferring” to allow the United States to maintain its commitment to European security and defense at an acceptable cost that also frees its military to focus its limited resources on the Pacific theater.

NATO, Russia and Politics

The fundamental challenge facing NATO is the question of political commitment. Europe is a wealthy continent, with vast economic and population resources—the population of the European Union member-states alone is close to 450 million. It is simply unacceptable that allies as wealthy as these continue to struggle to provide the requisite forces to deter and, should Putin decide to breach the NATO fence, resoundingly defeat the Russian Federation.

NATO M270 MLRS. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Today’s Russia is a pale shadow of the former imperial Soviet Union, with roughly half of the former USSR’s population, none of the East European satellite military power it once commanded, nor with its geopolitical advantage of controlling Eastern Germany. And while countries along the Northeast Corridor, especially Sweden, Finland, the Baltic States, and Poland, are arming at speed and scale, with Poland already spending 4% of GDP on defense and planning to reach 5% in 2025, the alliance as a whole continues to flounder when it comes to meeting its defense requirements.

At the Vilnius summit in 2023 all NATO governments signed on to the regional plans, including the capabilities requirements mandated by them. Not providing those military forces is in effect tantamount to reneging on their treaty obligations as NATO members. And while throughout the post-Cold War decades many countries were able to continue to avoid investing in defense – notwithstanding America’s pressure to do so – the arrival of the Trump administration marks the end of business as usual. How the European allies respond to this challenge, i.e., whether they get serious about rearmament or continue to dither, will define NATO’s future.

The ahead path for NATO is straightforward—it will hinge on transferring the burden from the US to the European allies regarding conventional capabilities. It is time for the allies to assume the core responsibility for generating these forces.

Suppose Europe signals its determination to move forward to rearm to meet NATO planning and capabilities requirements. In that case, the United States will doubtless assist in this effort, for the alliance secures the Atlantic theater and remains a force multiplier for the United States.

Maj. Barak Amundson and 1st Lt. Matthew Scott, 493rd Expeditionary Fighter Squadron pilots, fly over Lithuania during a training mission with the Lithuanian air force April 23, 2014. The 48th Air Expeditionary Group has been conducting the Baltic Air Policing mission here since January and will be handing over the mission to the Polish air force at the beginning of May. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Dana J. Butler/Released)

Let’s hope Europe heeds the call and rises to the occasion.

About the Author: Andrew A. Michta

Andrew A. Michta is a Senior Fellow and Director of the GeoStrategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council of the United States. Views expressed here are his own.

19fortyfive.com · by Andrew A. Michta · December 23, 2024

12. The Fake Panama Canal Threat Only Hurts America

The Fake Panama Canal Threat Only Hurts America

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Kelly · December 24, 2024

Would Donald Trump Really Take the Panama Canal? Not Exactly. Incoming President Donald Trump frequently threatened smaller countries and US allies during his first presidential term. This is one of his most unfortunate strategic behaviors. Basic intuition suggests that allies and partners help states project power, fend off challenges, and, if necessary, win wars. Both international relations theory and diplomatic history suggest this, as does the course of U.S. history. US allies played essential roles in securing World War I and II victory. They also aided in the Cold War and War on Terror’s long twilight struggles. In America’s looming struggle with China, partners will likely once again serve US national interests.

Donald Trump, The Bully, Is Back

So Trump’s recent threats leveled at nearby countries – Panama, Mexico, Canada, and Danish Greenland – are a disappointing return to form.

He suggested, for example, that Canada might like to join the U.S. as its fifty-first state. Were this remotely accurate, Canada has had a century to act on this impulse and has chosen not to. It is also wildly inappropriate for the U.S. president to suggest another country surrender its sovereignty.

This may seem irrelevant – typical Trumpian trolling – but since Trump will likely not act on his remarks, they serve no purpose other than to upset America’s neighbor with whom the U.S. shares a very long border and who has assisted America in conflicts for a century.

Alienating Canada serves no apparent strategic interest, but if it encourages Canada to pull back on cooperation – in NATO, in the Pacific, over the Great Lakes, and so on – then it hurts US interests. Bluster, for its own sake, is more like a dominance display for Trump’s psychic satisfaction than a strategic act.

The Strange Panama Canal Theat

Nowhere is the pointlessness of these threats more evident than in Panama, which Trump has recently threatened over canal access.

It is correct that Panama Canal access is strategically essential in a long-term naval competition with China. But China is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean – almost halfway around the world. For Beijing to project power to Central America, in force great enough to control the canal, would be a remarkable feat far beyond any reasonable assessment of China’s maritime capabilities. China struggles to project power into the nearby East and South China Seas, much less out to Guam or Hawaii. To reach Panama is a reach, to say the least.

China could indeed damage or even destroy the canal with missile strikes, probably from submarines and possibly with nuclear weapons. This is a credible contingency that the US should factor into planning for a full-scale Sino-U.S. conflict. However, direct US control of the Panama Canal would not mitigate this problem. Missile defense – not territorial control – is the issue in this scenario, and missile defense problems are well-known.

Finally, with direct territorial control of immediate strategic consequence, the US could far more easily project power into Panama than China could. During World War II, the British and Americans took Iceland to prevent Nazi military control. In dire Sino-US circumstances, the US could do something like that again in Panama. But talking up such extreme and unhappy scenarios serves no strategic purpose. It alienates Panama for no reason and encourages China to develop canal zone contingencies based on US anxieties. It should also be noted that a US peacetime move on the canal would likely provoke armed resistance, even an insurgency – precisely the type of ‘forever war’ Trump promised to end.

Cooperation is What Separates the U.S. from China

Trump has talked in a similarly belligerent manner about Greenland and Mexico. He has intimated that the US should control Greenland, and his political allies have discussed the US use of force against Mexican drug cartels. Such moves would be hugely disruptive – alienating countries near the US and reducing cooperation on all sorts of shared issues – terrorism, tourism, pollution, trade, etc. And US strikes on Mexico might produce a war and insurgency.

As always with Trump, though, this language appears to be bluster. Few think Trump would invade Panama or Mexico. But his willingness to talk like this has costs. Specifically, Trumpian belligerence drives away potential allies in America’s rising cold war with China. As in the first Cold War, both belligerents realize the risk of direct conflict. Instead, competition will be expressed through alignment. In Asia mainly, China will try to convince countries to accept its regional leadership, arguing that the US is a foreign interloper and a hypocrite who violates its own ‘liberal international order’ (LIO) rhetoric.

Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump’s belligerence toward small and US-friendly states bolsters that impression of hypocrisy and distrust. Without its liberal commitments, the US is just another powerful state. Without a commitment to the LIO and restrained behavior to match, there is no reason for countries to align with the US any more than with China.

In other words, it is US liberalism and respect for different countries – the exact values Trump’s rhetoric undercuts – that encourages states to align with Washington.

But Trumpian America will bully small states just like China will, then the US and China are the same. Intermediate states will have no particular cause to align with the US, and the costs to the US of competition with China will grow as potential allies either drop out or align with China for a better deal. Trump should stop talking like this.

About the Author: Dr. Robert E. Kelly

Dr. Robert E. Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly; RoberEdwinKelly.com) is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University and a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor.

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Kelly · December 24, 2024

13. Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the Taliban

T​hink about this excerpt and what it means:

“There was no doubt in my mind that Mr. Omar was a leader in that community,” said the now-retired officer, Lt. Col. Kenneth Payne, of the Second Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment of Georgia’s 48th infantry brigade combat team. “And I firmly believe that, at the time, he was saying all the right things.”

Colonel Payne had not been sent to the north to recruit militias. He was there to mentor the police. But he had a wide remit, and a big idea. He decided that activating Mr. Omar’s group was worth the risk.

“It was almost like, ‘If this works, if this is better for me, where I will get an advantage, then I will do it,’” he said.

Instead, he wound up unwittingly supporting the only group in the region less popular than the Taliban.

Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the Taliban

Trump blamed Biden. Biden blamed the Afghan military. Our investigation found that the U.S. unwittingly laid the groundwork for the Taliban’s victory long ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-us-militias.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

By Azam AhmedPhotographs by Bryan Denton

Azam Ahmed, a former Kabul bureau chief for The Times, returned to Afghanistan after the Taliban took control to report on the secrets the Americans left behind. He reported this story from Kunduz, Afghanistan.

• Dec. 24, 2024
• Updated 2:11 p.m. ET

The Taliban were inching closer, encroaching on land that had once seemed secure, the American officer warned. Four of his men had just been killed, and he needed Afghans willing to fight back.

“Who will stand up?” the officer implored a crowd of 150 Afghan elders.

The people in Kunduz Province were largely supportive of the Americans and opposed to the Taliban. But recruiting police officers was slow going and, by the summer of 2009, local officials and the American officer — a lieutenant colonel from the Georgia National Guard — landed on a risky approach: hiring private militias.

A murmur of discontent passed through the crowd.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” an old man stood up and said, according to four people at the meeting. “We have seen this before. The militias will become a bigger problem than the Taliban.”

Over the grumbling, a onetime warlord named Mohammad Omar sprung up and denounced the others as cowards.

“I will fight the Taliban!” he shouted.

The gathering in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, is not registered in any official history of the war. But people across the province say this seemingly unremarkable moment reshaped the conflict in ways that Washington has never truly understood.

Map locates the Kunduz Province and the city of Kunduz in Afthanistan. The map also shows the Khanabad District.

TAJIKISTAn

KUNDUZ

Kunduz

Khanabad

DISTRICT

PAKISTAN

AFGHANISTAN

50 miles

TURKMENISTAN

Area of

detail

Kabul

IRAN

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

By The New York Times

For years, the Americans supported militias in the north to fight the Taliban. But the effort backfired — those groups preyed on the populace with such cruelty that they turned a one-time stronghold of the United States into a bastion of the insurgency. People came to see the militias, and by extensions the Americans, as a source of torment, not salvation.

Image

The courtyard where Mohammad Omar volunteered to fight the Taliban at the urging of American military commanders, in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan.

Mr. Omar, for example, who was known as the Wall Breaker, became the poster child of an abusive militia commander, marauding his way into local lore by robbing, kidnapping and killing rivals and neighbors under the auspices of keeping them safe from the Taliban.

And he was just one of thousands of militia fighters unleashed in northern Afghanistan by the Americans and their allies — openly, covertly and sometimes inadvertently.

The consequences came to a head during the chaotic American withdrawal in 2021. The north was expected to be America’s rear guard, a place where values like democracy and women’s rights might have taken hold.

Instead, it capitulated in a matter of days — the first region to fall to the Taliban.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has blamed President Biden for the messy end to America’s longest war, vowing to fire “every single senior official” responsible for the disastrous exit. Mr. Biden, by contrast, blames the Afghans for surrendering to the Taliban so quickly.

“Political leaders gave up and fled the country,” Mr. Biden said after the withdrawal. “The Afghan military collapsed.”

But both renderings miss a more fundamental reason for the rapid fall: In places like Kunduz, a New York Times investigation found, the United States set the conditions for its defeat long before the Afghan soldiers laid down their arms.

For years, the Americans helped recruit, train and pay for lawless bands of militias that pillaged homes and laid waste to entire communities. The militias tortured civilians, kidnapped for ransom, massacred dozens in vendetta killings and razed entire villages, sowing more than a decade of hatred toward the Afghan government and its American allies.

The Afghan Army, already overwhelmed, recognized that it was defending a government with vanishingly little support. So, when the advancing Taliban offered Afghan soldiers a choice — their lives for their weapons — they lay down arms.

The regions plundered by Mr. Omar and other warlords were active battlefields during the war, mostly off limits to outsiders. But more than 50 interviews, conducted in Kunduz over 18 months, showed how American support for the militias spelled disaster, not just in the province but also across the rest of northern Afghanistan.

That state-sponsored misery was central to how the United States and its Afghan partners lost the north — and how, despite two decades and $2 trillion in American money, Afghanistan fell.

Image

A destroyed armored vehicle outside the police headquarters in Khanabad, a district in Kunduz, last year. The district was one of the most heavily contested areas during the war.

Other Times investigations this year have revealed how the United States underwrote atrocities by Afghan forces and recklessly killed its own allies, essentially authoring its own defeat in Afghanistan.

The fall of Kunduz in 2021 was the final word on another unforced American error — its use of criminals to carry out operations against the Taliban.

“The militias shot at civilians and killed innocents,” said Rahim Jan, whose mother, father and two brothers were killed by Mr. Omar, which other villagers confirmed. With no other choice, he said, “we supported the Taliban, because they fought the militias.”

Even the Taliban, normally eager to boast of battlefield exploits, credit their victory in the province to American missteps.

“The U.S. empowered bandits and murderers in the name of counterinsurgency,” said Matiullah Rohani, a former Taliban commander and the current minister of information and culture in Kunduz. “But it only pushed more people into the hands of the Taliban.”

Human rights groups, academics and journalists have published numerous accounts of atrocities by militias. But the extent of the abuse, and how it helped enable the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan, is a story the Americans left behind when they abandoned the country three years ago.

Today, with the militias gone, the scale of their acts — in both human and political costs — is visible.

Previous accounts have blamed Afghan officials in the north for raising their own militias. But The Times found that the United States had recruited militias in Kunduz far earlier than was known, with a fallout far worse than American officials have acknowledged.

During its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the United States pushed an ever-evolving series of programs to recruit, train and support local resistance to the Taliban. Some formally created armed groups under the auspices of the police, while other backing was ad hoc, with money and training provided here and there. In many cases, the Afghan government doled out American cash, giving militias the imprimatur of Washington’s support.

Almost all of the efforts were problematic. Militias soon grew too powerful to disarm. And while they did fight the Taliban, they fought one another even more, creating the kind of civil war turmoil that first helped bring the Taliban to power in the 1990s. Some Afghans were so disgusted by the predatory militias that they began to see the Taliban as their defenders and joined the insurgency.

One of the first militias was born in the Kunduz district of Khanabad, the brainchild of the Georgia National Guard officer desperate to beat back the Taliban. And one of the earliest efforts involved Mr. Omar, the Wall Breaker.

“There was no doubt in my mind that Mr. Omar was a leader in that community,” said the now-retired officer, Lt. Col. Kenneth Payne, of the Second Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment of Georgia’s 48th infantry brigade combat team. “And I firmly believe that, at the time, he was saying all the right things.”

Colonel Payne had not been sent to the north to recruit militias. He was there to mentor the police. But he had a wide remit, and a big idea. He decided that activating Mr. Omar’s group was worth the risk.

“It was almost like, ‘If this works, if this is better for me, where I will get an advantage, then I will do it,’” he said.

Instead, he wound up unwittingly supporting the only group in the region less popular than the Taliban.

The Wall Breaker

Months after the summer meeting, a Taliban fighter lay against the floor of a collapsed guesthouse. Outside, Mr. Omar, the newly minted militia leader, paced the street.

“Come out now, or I will blow the walls of this house down!” he shouted into a megaphone, as his men prepped mortars, witnesses said. “I am the Wall Breaker!”

The insurgent weathered round after round of mortars, each one collapsing nearby homes and terrifying residents with the indiscriminate explosions.

Image

Guldin, praying at right, a longtime Taliban fighter who was pursued and targeted by Mr. Omar.

Finally, Mr. Omar retreated with his men, fearful that the Taliban might send reinforcements. But on the way out of town, for good measure, his militia looted a local store and roughed up a few locals, residents said, actions that turned much of the community against him.

Mr. Omar had waged an all-day battle, blasting his way through an entire village, to chase down a single Taliban fighter. And still, somehow, his target had survived.

But the Wall Breaker moniker stuck. The name captured Mr. Omar’s capacity for wanton violence, though not necessarily effectiveness.

And that early foray was among his least offensive, many locals say.

In another early mission, in a neighboring district, he stole so brazenly and abused so widely that residents cite it as the moment the entire area turned toward the Taliban. “He even took people’s dogs,” one recalled.

Mr. Omar, who had first taken up arms against the Russians decades before, used his renewed power to exact vengeance on his enemies from past wars and past decades.

Akhtar Mohammad said that his father, uncle and brother had been rounded up and summarily executed, ostensibly for attacking Mr. Omar’s convoy with a roadside bomb. But Mr. Mohammad denied that his relatives were involved in the bombing, which he said was just pretext; the two families had feuded for three decades.

“Being part of a militia meant having the power and authority to settle scores,” Mr. Mohammad said.

Image

Akhtar Mohammad said that his father, uncle and brother were summarily executed by Mr. Omar’s militia.

In Colonel Payne’s estimation, “things went very well for a while.” But his deployment ended soon after Mr. Omar’s militia began and the area “had a hard time after we left,” he said.

“It really bothered me because I thought we had made a difference,” he added.

The United States knew about the debacle unfolding in Kunduz. A diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in November 2009 emphasized the importance of controlling the militias. If left to their own devices, they could “divide Afghan communities and spark additional violence,” the cable noted.

Two months later, the embassy seemed to confirm those fears: The government had no power over the militias, which fought among themselves and forced locals to pay them illegal taxes.

The cable mentioned Mr. Omar’s role in the chaos, but blamed an overzealous Afghan governor for hiring him. The diplomats seemed unaware that the Americans had empowered Mr. Omar themselves.

In 2013, four years after helping to arm the likes of the Wall Breaker in Kunduz, the United States left the north, handing control of security, and the militias, to the Afghan government.

In the criminal free-for-all that blossomed, new commanders emerged even worse than Mr. Omar. They leveled villages and massacred families, and fought one another, too: over territory or perceived slights.

Image

Bek Nazar, 55, by one of the buildings in the village of Dana that was destroyed during fighting between militias, killing his daughter, Baseera.

The Times spoke with dozens of families who had lost loved ones to those men and others, killings that tallied into the hundreds.

Forced conscription was common, they said. Men were killed for refusing to join one militia or another. Charges of supporting the Taliban were leveled against those who refused to pay taxes, and many were jailed.

“The militias would label anyone they didn’t like ‘Taliban,’ and then abuse them so much they had no choice but to join the Taliban,” said Mohammad Farid, a shopkeeper who said he was imprisoned for refusing to pay Mr. Omar a share of the proceeds from the sale of his store.

The Americans did not direct the abuse, but they funded the government with billions of dollars in cash and weapons, which officials then used to hire and arm the militias. As far as the villagers were concerned, this was an American project. And the Taliban increasingly seemed like a better option.

Shahd Mohammad, a tailor by trade, said he endured more than a year of beatings and abuse before he finally sold his shop in 2013, moved his family to another district and joined the Taliban.

For the next six years, he led a unit focused on fighting the militias in Khanabad.

“I went from living my life as a tailor to fighting on the front lines,” he said.

The Taliban Take Advantage

President Ashraf Ghani took office in Afghanistan in 2014 and realized the militias were running amok. With the Americans by his side, he loudly promised to bring security to Kunduz by bringing people like the Wall Breaker under control.

The effort proved disastrous.

Some militias, now maligned in public, soured on the government, former Afghan officials said. Some militias even switched sides, joining forces with the Taliban.

Seizing the moment, Taliban commanders began secretly calling militia leaders, sowing distrust by telling them that the government viewed them as the enemy, according to Taliban officials and former Afghan officials with access to classified intercepts. They, like some others, spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions.

The psychological tactic worked. Some militias stopped fighting for the government, while others kept clashing with one another, clearing the battlefield for the Taliban.

“The split between the militias was crucial for us,” said Hesmatullah Zalmay, a Taliban commander in Kunduz.

Within a year of Mr. Ghani’s threat to curtail the militias, Kunduz was on the verge of collapse.

Image

Ashraf Ghani during a campaign rally in Kabul, the Afghan capital, in 2014. As president, Mr. Ghani initially promised to rein in militias under commanders like Mr. Omar.

Mr. Ghani reversed course. His government secretly funneled the Wall Breaker and others like him more than $100,000 a month to prevent the Taliban from taking over Kunduz City, the provincial capital, according to a former government official.

It was too late. In August 2015, the Taliban stormed Kunduz City. Government forces and its militias fled until American airstrikes and special forces could help them retake the city.

Far from drawing lessons from the failed militia strategies, the Afghan government doubled down. To maintain order, Mr. Ghani’s government turned to a man even more ruthless than the Wall Breaker.

Haji Fateh

In a province shattered by ethnic and political divides, where factions of factions fought other factions, everyone agreed on one thing: Haji Fateh was the worst, most notoriously violent of all the militia commanders.

Accounts of his medieval torture methods — branding people with hot metal rods, burying them alive or keeping them chained in underground dungeons — still haunt the residents of Kunduz.

Mr. Fateh was widely seen as a scourge, a villain who killed innocents and charged their families to retrieve the bodies.

He was also an ally of the Afghan government and, by extension, their American backers.

Two former Afghan officials and several former militia commanders described years of government support for Mr. Fateh.

“We had a complicated relationship,” said one former high-ranking government official in Kunduz. “When the district came under attack, we gave him money and weapons to fight.”

Image

A Taliban fighter in Haji Fateh’s former base, an old school in Zahid, a town in Kunduz, last year.

The transfers were conducted in secret, he said, because Mr. Fateh was a wanted man.

Before the Taliban emptied the prisons in Kunduz during their brief takeover, Mr. Fateh had been locked up for killing a police officer while robbing a Kabul Bank truck.

“We supported him, yes, but it wasn’t like he could come to the governor’s house,” the official said.

How much the United States knew about the payments to Mr. Fateh is unclear. The money was given at a time when Afghan officials were under heavy pressure from Washington to take charge of their own security. The Pentagon did not respond to a list of questions about the militias.

After fleeing prison, Mr. Fateh set down roots in the braided hillsides of Deh Wayran, an area that was largely free of the Taliban.

He operated from a torture castle, according to residents, and demanded ransom payments for his kidnapping victims — men like Haji Wazir, a contractor for the Americans who said he was nearly starved to death by Mr. Fateh.

Mr. Fateh’s criminal empire was built on cruelty and swept up entire communities as he waged a brutal turf war with a rival militia.

Dozens died in scorched-earth battles between the two sides. Militias fired rockets and mortars into hillside villages and laced roads with bombs. They blamed the attacks on the Taliban, though they had no real presence there.

Almost nobody in Deh Wayran worried about the Taliban, residents said. To the contrary, they worried about the fight between two ostensible American allies.

Gul Afraz lived with her family in the village of Dana, a small community of Tajik families numbering fewer than 150 people.

Image

Taliban fighters in Dana, Kunduz, last year near a home adorned with colorful strips of cloth that are used by residents to denote where blood has been spilled. The building was the site of a massacre of young men by militia gunmen.

Mr. Fateh planted roadside bombs that killed her son and two of her nephews, she said. Fearing that the village might take revenge, Mr. Fateh bulldozed every home there, villagers said, sending survivors fleeing.

Rival militiamen moved in, committing their own offenses, a tit-for-tat brutality that pushed more of the locals who remained to support the one group that wasn’t murdering them — the Taliban.

Within a year of Mr. Fateh’s arrival, the entire village had all but been wiped out.

“There was no Taliban here at first,” Ms. Afraz said, “but I am so grateful they are here now.”

Mr. Fateh operated with impunity, running checkpoints along the highway and extorting motorists of thousands of dollars a day, according to his former friends who remain in the region.

Image

Herders on the highway from Kunduz to Takhar, a route on which Mr. Fateh maintained one of his most notorious checkpoints.

In a cynical twist, Mr. Fateh’s abuses made him ever more essential to the government: The more he pushed people into the arms of the Taliban, the more the government needed him to fight them.

The chief of police, the intelligence service and the army showered him with money and munitions, according to the former government officials and militia commanders. Even the highly trained Afghan Special Operations forces were supporting him.

And because the Afghan government was practically insolvent, it meant the Americans were paying for it all.

“We tried to capture him many times,” said Sadat, a former special operations commander, who like many Afghans goes by a single name. “But then the government began to support him.”

Prosecutors in Khanabad issued more than 100 warrants for Mr. Fateh’s arrest as complaints of robbery, extortion and murder poured in. But the local authorities refused to act.

One prosecutor gave his federal counterparts in the Ghani government 150 case files bearing evidence of Mr. Fateh’s crimes, to no avail. Mr. Fateh was untouchable, and he knew it.

Image

The central bazaar in Khanabad, Afghanistan. Prosecutors in the town issued more than 100 warrants for Mr. Fateh’s arrest as complaints of robbery, extortion and murder poured in. But the local authorities refused to act.

One day in 2020, the Shiite owner of an ice cream store in Khanabad complained that Mr. Fateh should stop stealing his ice cream. Mr. Fateh had the shop owner beaten in the street.

In response, Haider Jafari, a local Shiite leader, said he had no choice but to confront him. Mr. Fateh responded by shooting him in the chest, wounding but not killing him.

Mr. Fateh then burned Shiite homes in the town and ordered Mr. Jafari to flee. To reinforce his point, Mr. Fateh murdered his nephew, Mr. Jafari said.

“We went directly to the governor, and he could not do anything,” Mr. Jafari said. “We began to support the Taliban after that.”

American Withdrawal and the Fall of Kunduz

In February 2020, when the Trump administration reached a peace deal with the Taliban, the die was cast: the Americans were leaving.

The Taliban went from district to district, using elders to encourage the Afghan Army to lay down its arms. It was not much of a negotiation. Thanks to the militias, the Taliban were stronger than ever, and there was no good will left for the government.

By the time the United States announced its timetable for the withdrawal in 2021, the Taliban had all but taken most districts in Kunduz.

Khanabad was different, in part because men like Mr. Fateh and Mr. Omar dug in.

The Taliban and the government traded control of Khanabad three times during the second week of June.

Image

Vendors selling Taliban flags in Kunduz City’s central square last year.

Mr. Biden met Mr. Ghani in Washington that month, insisting that the war’s final act had not yet been written.

“Afghans are going to have to decide their future,” Mr. Biden said.

Mr. Fateh apparently did not share that optimism. Taliban officials say he tried to switch sides and even called a Taliban commander to offer his cooperation. But by then, the government was on its heels, and the Taliban saw no point in granting him quarter.

The militias abandoned Khanabad for Kunduz City, taking residence in whatever areas they could find. Mr. Fateh positioned himself in a home near the eastern edge of the city. Mr. Omar emptied a madrasa of students and claimed it as his headquarters.

Afghan commandos were dispatched to Kunduz to beat back the Taliban.

“They have the capacity. They have the forces. They have the equipment. The question is: Will they do it?” Mr. Biden said in July 2021. “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

But the fight in Kunduz was over before it began. Even as commandos fought to defend the city, the Taliban were negotiating with the Afghan Army to take over the province, Taliban officials said.

Everyone saw the writing on the wall. Even residents who loathed the Taliban were tired of years of abuse at the hands of militias. The Afghan military was easily persuaded not to die for a lost cause, former Afghan officials said.

“In the end, the militias were the undoing of the government,” said Abdul Rauf Charsari, a former police commander in Kunduz.

Aftermath

Some of the most notorious warlords and criminals who brought such misery to Kunduz — and ultimately did more to support the Taliban than defeat them — faded away without a final battle or trial.

Mr. Omar, the Wall Breaker, died of natural causes not long after the Taliban took over.

Haji Fateh fled to safety as the province fell and resettled in Iran, where he lives in a swanky home paid for by the money he earned brutalizing the people of Kunduz, according to one of his friends.

Mr. Fateh could not be reached for comment, but he welcomes visitors regularly for lavish meals or tea, said the friend, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of incurring his wrath.

Among his most frequent guests, the friend said, are former Afghan government officials, hoping to convince him once more to take up arms on their behalf.

Azam Ahmed is international investigative correspondent for The Times. He has reported on Wall Street scandals, the War in Afghanistan and violence and corruption in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. More about Azam Ahmed

​14. AI-enabled UAS platforms garner $8.8 million DoD contract

"precision strike indoor & outdoor (PSIO) small UASs (sUAS)"

AI-enabled UAS platforms garner $8.8 million DoD contract

https://militaryembedded.com/ai/cognitive-radar/ai-enabled-uas-platforms-garner-88-million-dod-contract

News

December 23, 2024

Lisa Daigle

Assistant Managing Editor

Military Embedded Systems

Image courtesy XTEND

HERNDON, Va. Autonomy company XTEND, which deals in artificial intelligence (AI) and tactical uncrewed aerial system (UAS) solutions, won a contract worth $8.8 million from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate (IWTSD) to deliver precision strike indoor & outdoor (PSIO) small UASs (sUAS).

According to the announcement from XTEND, its PSIO sUAS -- which it has been working on for two years with IWTSD -- integrates advanced AI with precise operational functionality that enables military units to execute complex missions effectively, even in the most demanding scenarios.

The PSIO sUAS is reported to be the first DoD-approved system in the indoor/outdoor category for a flying loitering munition platform, as it uses cutting-edge AI to enable real-time, high-precision strike capabilities across both urban and open-field environments with minimal human intervention. 

The DoD award follows the successful completion of rigorous live-fire testing and safety evaluations; deliveries are slated to begin in the first part of 2025.

Featured Companies

15. This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped.

​Please go to the link to view the charts and data.

Some fascinating information and analysis.

https://wapo.st/4gsEGhO

This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped.

NewsGuard, which prizes its nonpartisan criteria, has become a prime target of the GOP’s battle against disinformation watchdogs.

Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EST

Veteran journalists and news entrepreneurs L. Gordon Crovitz, left, and Steven Brill share responsibilities as chief executives and editors-in-chief of NewsGuard. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)

By Will Oremus and Naomi Nix

When veteran newsmen L. Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill started their news site rating company, they were prepared for the inevitable cries of bias from both sides.

What they didn’t anticipate was that NewsGuard, their company of about 50 employees, would become the target of congressional investigations and accusations from federal regulators that it was at the vanguard of a vast conspiracy to censor conservative views.

Since 2018, NewsGuard has built a business offering advertisers nonpartisan assessments of online publishers — backed by a team of journalists who assess which sites are reputable and which can’t be trusted. It uses a slate of nine standard criteria, such as whether a site corrects errors or discloses its ownership and financing, to produce a zero to 100 percent rating.

Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal and a Republican, and Brill, a left-tending independent who founded Court TV and the American Lawyer magazine, engaged with publishers wanting to understand subpar ratings, sometimes wrangling for hours by phone over the details of a site’s correction policy.

But conservatives now question the company’s premise. Brendan Carr, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, accused the company of facilitating a “censorship cartel,” in a November letter to leading tech platforms. Noting that key legal protections depend on tech executives operating “in good faith,” Carr continued: “It is in this context that I am writing to obtain information about your work with one specific organization — the Orwellian named NewsGuard.”

NewsGuard, backed by legal experts, argues that Carr’s letter may violate the First Amendment by threatening the speech rights of private companies.

“The only attempt to censor going on here is by Brendan Carr,” Crovitz said in an interview.

President-elect Donald Trump talks with Brendan Carr before the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024, in Boca Chica, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Pool/AP)

At a time when social media, podcasts and partisan outlets are displacing the mainstream media as news sources, the battle over NewsGuard’s future is symptomatic of a broader societal struggle over who gets to arbitrate the truth. And Carr’s letter potentially heralds a Trump administration prepared to wield state power to win that battle.

When NewsGuard launched, fighting disinformation was still a bipartisan battle. Revelations the year before that Kremlin-backed operatives had manipulated American social networks to mislead and divide Americans had shaken Silicon Valley and troubled Republicans and Democrats alike. Tech executives such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg were lambasted by lawmakers in testy televised hearings for their failure to fight fake news.

Despite the battering, tech giants didn’t particularly want to play truth police on their platforms. Crovitz and Brill offered them a solution: Pay NewsGuard to sift the real news sites from the propaganda peddlers.

“We’re going to apply common sense to a problem the algorithms haven’t been able to solve,” Brill told “CBS Mornings” that year. “It’s going to be very simple … telling the difference between the Denver Post and the Denver Guardian, which is a hoax site.”

Users of NewsGuard products — which include a free browser extension for Microsoft Edge and extensions you can buy for other major browsers — see each publisher’s credibility score beside any link to its articles in search results or on social media.

A recent Google search for “government shutdown,” with NewsGuard’s ratings enabled, turned up articles from Rolling Stone magazine, which scored 87.5 percent; NBC’s Austin affiliate, which scored 92.5 percent; and World Socialist Web Site, which scored 7.5 percent. Clicking on the rating for each brings up NewsGuard’s assessment of the site. (World Socialist Web Site, it warns, is a far-left, for-profit enterprise that has “published false claims about the Russia-Ukraine War.” Reached for comment, World Socialist Web Site spokesman Joseph Kishore said NewsGuard’s rating “is not based on objective assessment but political prejudice against our socialist perspective.”)

But if rating news sites seemed like a straightforward endeavor, navigating an increasingly fractured and partisan information landscape has turned out to be anything but.

Brand safety

NewsGuard landed a high-profile early client in Microsoft, which incorporated the company’s credibility ratings into its Edge browser. Google, Facebook and other internet giants opted to use their own opaque algorithms to decide which sites and posts would rise to the top of users’ search results and feeds.

Brill and Crovitz found more demand among online advertisers and brand safety groups looking for tools to ensure their ads don’t run on scammy news sites or alongside bogus claims. While other such tools existed, including Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify, NewsGuard stood out in the way that it publishes its assessments of media outlets.

Brill, left, and Crovitz, center join NewsGuard colleagues at a daily meeting in their New York offices. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)

In addition to its publisher credibility ratings, NewsGuard began tracking specific false narratives that it saw spreading across disreputable sites. Brill said NewsGuard keeps a “catalogue of provably false claims” — not matters of opinion, such as “abortion is bad,” but definitively debunked factual claims such as “the moon landing didn’t happen.”

“There are advertisers that don’t want to advertise on a website that has articles saying that Dominion voting machines were rigged or the coronavirus vaccine will kill you,” Brill said in an interview.

Jason Kint, CEO of the publisher trade group Digital Content Next, said marketers need to assure brand safety. “Given the Wild West nature of the web, it’s important to have tools that can provide accurate data,” he said, to “avoid harm to the brand and weed out fraudulent and illegal sites.”

The rise of generative artificial intelligence has expanded the potential market for NewsGuard’s products. No major AI company wants its flagship chatbot parroting falsehoods it found on fake news sites. Brill and Crovitz declined to say which ones they’re working with other than Microsoft.

Six years after its launch, NewsGuard has attained what Brill called “sustainable profitability.” But he and Crovitz no longer enjoy friendly bipartisan audiences in Washington.

Instead, they find themselves a central target of Republicans’ wide-ranging war on content moderation — a practice many on the right deem censorship — with their reputation and their business at stake.

Crovitz, a former publisher and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, co-founded NewsGuard with Brill in 2018. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)

The ‘censorship-industrial complex’

During his first term, Trump routinely clashed with the mainstream media and social networks over their attempts to fact-check his statements, especially when he began contesting the 2020 election as fraudulent. After the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the major social networks banned or indefinitely suspended Trump, earning his ire and stoking suspicion on the right that online content moderation was fundamentally a liberal plot to muzzle disfavored views.

That sense helped to motivate Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022 and intensified with the publication of the “Twitter Files,” a series of tweets by a group of journalists Musk handpicked to comb through internal Twitter documents for evidence of overzealous content moderation and anti-conservative bias. Among the documents was a 2021 pitch to Twitter executives by NewsGuard, which Twitter Files co-author Lee Fang called “an opaque proxy for its government and corporate clients to stifle views that simply run counter to their own interests.”

When Republicans took control of the House in 2023, newly installed committee chairmen including Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) of the Judiciary Committee, James Comer (R-Kentucky) of the Oversight Committee and Roger Williams (R-Texas) of the Small Business Committee launched investigations into what they deemed censorship of Americans’ views. Their targets included Big Tech companies, the Biden administration, misinformation researchers — and NewsGuard.

Williams’s Small Business Committee produced a 66-page report in September on what it called the “censorship-industrial complex,” which criticized the State Department and Defense Department for awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to NewsGuard. The report found that NewsGuard selects “winners and losers in the news media space” through its ratings and products for advertisers. It accused the company of bias for, among other things, giving high ratings to mainstream outlets such as the Associated Press and NPR that ran what the report deemed misleading headlines about Donald Trump’s comments on the 2024 campaign trail.

Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill last year. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

Since Trump’s election victory, some of his picks for top regulatory positions have made tackling online “censorship” a priority and cast NewsGuard as an emblem of the problem. His pick to succeed trustbuster Lina Khan as Federal Trade Commission chair, Andrew Ferguson, wrote in a December filing that he would support using antitrust laws to break up censorship “cartels,” mentioning NewsGuard by name.

Carr’s letter last month accused the tech executives of participating in “a censorship cartel that included not only technology and social media companies but advertising, marketing, and so-called ‘fact-checking’ organizations as well as the Biden-Harris Administration itself.” In mentioning that the tech industry’s prized liability shield, Section 230, only applies when they operate “in good faith,” Carr suggested that working with NewsGuard might be putting that protection at risk.

NewsGuard has also been targeted by conservative regulators over its grants from the Pentagon to track disinformation efforts by Russia, China and Iran targeting Americans and U.S. allies.

Crovitz and Brill said they fought off an attempt by Congress last year to add a restriction to a key defense funding bill that would have barred the Pentagon from using NewsGuard. They believe that effort and Carr’s letter followed inaccurate reporting about its work by right-leaning publisher Newsmax, which had expressed dissatisfaction with its low ratings from NewsGuard.

Brill founded the American Lawyer and Court TV before starting NewsGuard with Crovitz. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)

NewsGuard replied to Carr in a Dec. 10 letter, saying his letter cited factual errors about its work that had been reported by Newsmax. The claim that advertising firms use NewsGuard to censor conservative views, for instance, is belied by more conservative outlets being rated as credible than liberal ones, NewsGuard said.

Carr was also wrong about the companies that use its products, the company said. Of the four companies Carr wrote to — Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Google — only Microsoft has publicly acknowledged working with NewsGuard, though it declined to comment on that work for this article. Meta and Google told The Washington Post they do not use NewsGuard’s products.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment, and NewsGuard declined to say whether it works with Apple, citing a policy against discussing whether it works with specific companies unless those companies publicly disclose the relationship.

Reached by email, Carr said he had heard back from all four companies and had never assumed that all of them had ties to NewsGuard. “I wanted confirmation from the ones that I did not think worked with NewsGuard that they don’t actually work with NewsGuard,” he wrote. He said NewsGuard is purposely withholding information about its business.

“Suffice to say that NewsGuard’s response and its conduct since I raised these issues a few weeks back has only heightened and underscored my concerns,” he said. “NewsGuard’s response is a jumble of disinformation, deception and sleight of hand. In other words, it mirrors NewsGuard’s business model, in my opinion.”

Carr has not responded to NewsGuard’s request for a meeting, Crovitz said, “apparently preferring to continue to rely on falsehoods to censor us.” Brill said people on the Hill, whom he declined to name, told him Newsmax has been driving the Republican campaign against NewsGuard, offering legislators and regulators airtime whenever they criticize or take action against the company.

Reached via email, Newsmax chief executive Chris Ruddy called Brill “a longtime Democratic Party activist” and said: “Brill is free to make up any ratings he wants, but any business or ad agency that uses them is clearly taking political sides.”

Newsmax television personalities listen to a campaign speech by President-elect Donald Trump during the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

Jawboning

The kind of public pressure NewsGuard faces is making news a perilous environment for advertisers and their clients, industry insiders say.

“All of those companies have business with the government,” said one former ad executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for retribution by the Trump administration. “Nobody’s going to want to risk their ire. … What marketers will end up doing is avoiding news entirely.”

Musk, who has called NewsGuard “a propaganda shop that will produce any lies you want if you pay them enough money,” has already achieved that chilling effect. In August, his social media company X filed a lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), an industry coalition that develops brand safety guidelines, accusing the group of violating antitrust laws. Days later, GARM, which was led by the World Federation of Advertisers, shut down.

In October, another industry effort to encourage advertisers to buy ads on credible news outlets collapsed after one of the agencies involved got a letter from Jordan alleging their work could be illegal.

Some First Amendment experts say Carr leaning on tech companies to distance themselves from NewsGuard is closer to censorship than anything NewsGuard does.

Offering opinions as to news sites’ credibility, as NewsGuard does, “is emphatically speech,” said Ari Cohn, senior tech policy counsel at the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

“For Carr to write to the platforms and basically threaten them that if they utilize this protected expression he’s going to go after them is just First Amendment problem upon First Amendment problem,” Cohn said.

The irony, he added, is that it comes after four years in which Republican leaders criticized and even sued the Biden administration over allegations of “jawboning,” or applying undue government pressure to private entities to suppress speech. That’s exactly what Carr is doing now, Cohn argued.

Brill said the pressure from the right hasn’t cost the company any clients that he is aware of, but it has taken a toll on the company in other ways. Instead of focusing full-time on its misinformation research and news ratings, it has had to spend money on legal fees and time and energy explaining and defending its practices to politicians, clients and the public.

Crovitz had a more personal complaint about the criticism he has received from some fellow Republicans. “They refer to me as a liberal,” he said, “which I find to be slander.”

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By Will Oremus

Will Oremus writes about the ideas, products and power struggles shaping the digital world for The Washington Post. Before joining The Post in 2021, he spent eight years as Slate's senior technology writer and two years as a senior writer for OneZero at Medium. follow on X@willoremus

By Naomi Nix

Naomi Nix is a staff writer for The Washington Post, covering Meta and other social media companies. Before joining The Post in 2022, she was a reporter for Bloomberg News and the Chicago Tribune.follow on X@NaomiNixWrites

16. How Trump’s tariffs can generate both economic and political reform in China

How Trump’s tariffs can generate both economic and political reform in China 

by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributor - 12/24/24 10:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5053947-trump-china-revolutionary-change/?utm

Donald Trump may be the unlikeliest candidate imaginable to bring about revolutionary change in China, the world’s most powerful dictatorship. He is also the least interested in pursuing that end, given his deep personal admiration for Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Yet history may have placed him in the position to accomplish inadvertently for China what Ronald Reagan did intentionally for the Soviet Union. 

Reagan used soaring rhetoric to express the universal appeal of political freedom and to offer Moscow’s communist leaders a peaceful way out of their geopolitical and geoeconomic trap — America, “the shining city on the hill,” vs. “the Evil Empire” and ”Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” 

Trump eschews the noble sentiments and missionary zeal that made Reagan a global icon. He generally leaves it to other leaders to run their own countries without interference or preaching from Washington (with one temporary human rights exception noted below). He focuses instead on regaining America’s prosperity and power. As he sees it, U.S. global dominance — Theodore Roosevelt’s “big stick” — will speak for itself and keep adversaries at bay without intrusive adventures like U.S. democracy-implantation and nation-building. 

Opponents of U.S. intervention point to Iraq and Afghanistan as negative lessons: removal of obnoxious and dangerous regimes does not assure democratic outcomes. The demise of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan and their replacement with peaceful, flourishing democracies tell a different story, as does the more peaceful overthrow of Soviet-era dictatorships in Eastern and Central Europe and parts of the Mideast and Africa. 

Complex issues in diverse situations preclude rote solutions, and military force is the least desirable method of liberating oppressed populations — World War III is not the way to encourage democratic evolution in China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. The nature and degree of regime control and the likelihood of acceptable outcomes must inform any decision to help a population change its government. The most important factor is the commitment of the people themselves to make fundamental change, and the risks and sacrifices they are prepared to accept to achieve their goal. 

Americans met that test in 1776, and France willingly came to the aid of the colonies. Ukrainians have proved themselves as committed to defend their own independence from Russian aggression. The Biden administration has supported their resistance but seemingly prefers a stalemate to complete victory for Ukraine.

The other consideration in determining whether intervention is warranted is whether an odious regime carries its evil intentions beyond its own borders and threatens its neighbors, as did the Axis powers in World War II, North Korea in 1950 and Russia in 2008, 2014 and 2022. 

There are also unintended, if somewhat predictable, consequences to non-intervention, or to incomplete intervention — that is, without changing the regime at the root of the problem.  

After America and its allies stopped North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, they decided in 1953 that permanent removal of Kim Il Sung risked China’s further intervention and a prolonged and expanded war. So Kim was allowed to remain in power, succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Il, and his grandson, Kim Jong Un, each presenting the same ongoing threat to South Korea. Now, as a missile and nuclear power and with the same hateful ideology that motivated two earlier Kim generations, the Pyongyang regime presents an existential threat to Japan and other countries in the region, and endangers the U.S. North Korea is an active member of the new Axis of Evil, directly joining Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. 

Similarly, after the U.S.-led coalition ejected Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, it left the challenge unresolved with Saddam Hussein still in power, free to continue persecuting his population and pursue weapons of mass destruction to threaten his neighbors — requiring yet another U.S. intervention in 2003 and unforeseen regional consequences. 

Trump is opposed to “forever wars,” such as the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan after the September 11 terrorist attack. The last thing he would deliberately undertake now would be a policy to encourage regime change in China. Yet the economic pressures he intends to impose on China through sanctions and expanded tariffs — coming on top of deep domestic discontent with the communist economic system — have the potential to accelerate its demise. The Chinese people demonstrated their fervent desire for political reform when millions protested peacefully in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and hundreds of other cities in June 1989, only to be brutally gunned down by the People’s Liberation Army. 

Trump will surely shy away from any action that could contribute to a replay of that horribly tragic episode. But he would have to inform his respected Chinese friend that he has campaign promises to fulfill, and rebuilding the U.S. economy is critical to his commitment to Make America Great Again. 

Tariffs against China’s unfair trade practices are an essential component. To Xi’s complaint that tariffs hurt China’s economy and Xi’s domestic popularity, Trump need only remind him that the COVID pandemic he unleashed on the world in 2019 cost a million American lives, halted Trump’s economic progress and contributed to his 2020 reelection loss. Xi’s support for Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine, and for Iran, North Korea and other American enemies, strengthens Trump’s justification for a tough approach to Xi.

Trump can also recount for Xi his destructive intervention in U.S.-North Korean relations in 2019 when the countries were on the verge of a potential denuclearization breakthrough. That possibility had been achieved by Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign that included serious delegitimization of the Pyongyang regime. In three major speeches, Trump laid out the moral and international law case that Kim’s human rights depredations made him unfit to govern. The campaign was working until Xi summoned Kim to China for their very first meeting and apparently pulled him back into line as an intransigent opponent of the U.S. and its anti-proliferation, human rights advocacy.

If Trump is allowed by Elon Musk to stick to his guns, he can apply to China the principle he announced for his domestic opponents: “Success will be our retribution.” 

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of The Vandenberg Coalition. 

17. Trump 2.0 Portends Big Shift in Cybersecurity Policies

Trump 2.0 Portends Big Shift in Cybersecurity Policies

Changes at CISA and promises of more public-private partnerships and deregulation are just a few ways the incoming administration could upend the feds' role in cybersecurity.

darkreading.com

Becky Bracken, Senior Editor, Dark Reading

December 24, 2024

7 Min Read

Abaca Press via Alamy Stock Photo

Before it was subsumed by political commentary, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was a Trump accomplishment — signed into existence in 2018 during his first administration. But that was before accusations of dirty politics and free speech shenanigans turned CISA into a conservative pariah.

Now, CISA is facing an existential political clash with the incoming Trump administration, threatening to take much of the US federal government's involvement in cybersecurity along with it. The result could potentially increase cyber-risk, but also open up business, investment, and innovation opportunities. A lot of things can be true at once.

CISA's original mandate couldn't have seemed more apolitical: coordinate defending US infrastructure against cyberattacks, and then help share critical information among US enterprises to increase the nation's overall posture in the bargain. But then came the 2020 election, CISA's efforts to combat what the agency deemed "misinformation," and the subsequent conservative backlash.

Trump and the Politics of CISA

Chis Krebs, then the agency's director, was very publicly fired just weeks after the 2020 election for rejecting claims of fraud from the Trump administration, and has remained a high-profile political player ever since. Krebs is a regular on the cable news circuit, and in July 2023, he confirmed to CNN that he was interviewed by special counsel Jack Smith in the investigation into Trump and the 2020 election. In the runup to the 2024 election, Krebs appeared on outlets including Face the Nation to once again push back on Trump campaign claims of election fraud.

His replacement, Jen Easterly, took a more low-key approach. Her accessibility, deep military ties, and cybersecurity expertise — sprinkled with a dash of aspirational cool-girl charm — made her a hit among the cyber rank-and-file. She also mostly stayed away from politics, leading the fledgling agency through a crucial four years. But that effort, however disciplined and well intentioned, hardly spared Easterly or CISA from widespread conservative ire. In January 2024, Easterly was even targeted at home in a swatting incident.

"I think Jen Easterly had a tremendous challenge solidifying the role of a very young agency, and one mired in allegations from Republican politicians," cybersecurity expert Jake Williams tells Dark Reading. "Given those very real challenges, she did an outstanding job. I can only imagine what could have been with bipartisan support for CISA's many missions."

Following the 2024 election, Easterly said she will resign on Inauguration Day. But the agency is still at work, publishing a draft of an updated National Cyber Incident Response Plan for federal agencies and industry to work together during major cyber events, which is open for comments until January 2025.

That kind of coordination between CISA and the private sector was exactly what the agency was built to become under the Biden administration. It took a proactive role in developing cybersecurity standards, and offering cybersecurity grants to states to invest in their own cyber operations, led largely by the efforts of Easterly. During his administration, President Biden allocated billions to strengthen the US cybersecurity infrastructure, and signed a flurry of executive orders on everything from AI to zero trust in an effort to raise the country's level of cyber preparedness.

Some of the agency's notable accomplishments during the past four years included establishment of the joint cyber defense collaborative (JCDC) and the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) program, according to Casey Ellis, Bugcrowd founder. Ellis also worked with CISA on the federal CEB vulnerability disclosure program, where CISA serves as a repository for researchers who discover flaws in government systems so they can be reported and mitigated more quickly.

There have been setbacks as well. While the KEV list has been credited with speeding up remediation, it can take months to make the list. Much of that new cyber infrastructure and rulemaking also came with regulation and compliance headaches that some criticized as a barrier to innovation, particularly by Congress. Others defended the agency's moves as necessary to drive security investment.

"Under Jen Easterly, CISA's proactive initiatives such as Secure by Design and faster reporting of attacks by companies were positive for both the sell and buy side of the cybersecurity industry," says Jason Soroko, senior fellow at Sectigo. "What could be seen as regulatory burden was actually a positive call to arms to do the right thing."

Accomplishments and accolades aside, Easterly and CISA haven't been able to convince key conservatives like Sen. Rand Paul, who is about to chair the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which oversees CISA, that the agency is doing any good. After acknowledging he probably won't be able to eliminate CISA altogether, last month Paul vowed to inflict strict limits for actions he said the agency took to target conservative voices as part of its work in combatting foreign influence operations. At a minimum, CISA will likely be stripped of its mandate to investigate misinformation.

Williams also expects the agency will have a diminished role in overseeing election security, the very issue that catapulted the cyber agency into the national headlines in 2020.

Cybersecurity Opportunities Under Trump 2.0

A shrinking CISA footprint and the Trump administration's expressed distaste for regulation and interest in opening government operations to more public-private partnerships mean there are going to be potential opportunities in the next few months for the private sector that hadn't existed before.

"I expect we'll see a more direct set of conversations around cyber offense and deterrence, especially as it relates to countering Russia, Iran, and in particular, China," Ellis predicts. "This could include changes to the structure of [the National Security Agency] and Cyber Command, and the inclusion of the private sector in defend-forward and disruption operations."

Beyond new opportunities to work with government, Ellis adds cybersecurity deregulation is on the way.

"In general, I think we can expect a more overt and domestically deregulated approach to cyberspace, reflecting the general policy approach of the Trump administration and a more open acknowledgement that Cold War 2 is already underway."

The new administration also likely signals a change in federal enforcement of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations against chief information security officers (CISOs), like what security executives from SolarWinds and Uber experienced, according to expert John Bambenek.

"Regulatory enforcement on companies will lessen, for instance, [and] it is doubtful CISOs will see any government attempts to make them liable for breaches," Bambenek says. "I'm not sure any more antitrust action will commence against large tech companies either, which will fuel further consolidation of technology and security companies."

There is cautious optimism this more hands-off approach from the Trump administration will include maintaining a basic role for the federal government in cybersecurity. It's particularly necessary in terms of resources, according to Roselle Safran, the director of the White Office of the President security operations center under Barack Obama, and currently president of cybersecurity company KeyCaliber.

"While there are certainly plenty of other issues that appear to be top priorities for the next administration, it is my hope that cybersecurity will not be relegated to the back burner," Safran says. "It's important that there is recognition that cybersecurity needs significant and sustained resources."

Trump takes office against the backdrop of unprecedented numbers of cyberattacks, the rise of artificial intelligence, and cyber-military conflicts across the globe. Keeping politics out of the conversation is the best way for CISA to continue its work beyond the next election, experts advise. However, that might be an impossible challenge.

"I'm concerned about some of the negative sentiment around CISA impacting progress that has been made since 2018," Ellis adds. "However, I am cautiously optimistic that the priorities Trump had in mind when he formed the agency will see its overall defensive mission carry forward."

About the Author

Becky Bracken, Senior Editor, Dark Reading

Dark Reading

Becky Bracken is a veteran multimedia journalist covering cybersecurity for Dark Reading.

See more from Becky Bracken, Senior Editor, Dark Reading

darkreading.com

18. Trump's team appears annoyed with Ukraine for some of its recent attacks

​This is a troubling view:

President-elect Donald Trump's envoy to Ukraine, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, said on Wednesday that Ukraine's claimed killing of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov this week was contrary to the rules of war.

Who is providing information to the President-elect? I would think they would have knowledge of the timelines.

Excerpt:

"I don't think they should have allowed missiles to be shot 200 miles into Russia," he said. "I think that was a bad thing."

Trump claimed that the decision prompted North Korea to send troops to fight alongside Russia, though intelligence agencies said that North Korean troops were being deployed at least two weeks before the Biden administration's decision.

Trump's team appears annoyed with Ukraine for some of its recent attacks

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-team-quite-annoyed-ukraine-125149758.html?utm

Mia Jankowicz

Thu, December 19, 2024 at 7:51 AM EST3 min read

• Trump and his team have signaled opposition to some of Ukraine's recent attacks on Russian soil.
• Trump's Ukraine envoy said this week that the killing of a Russian general was outside the rules of war.
• Trump has also criticized Biden's decision to allow strikes on Russia using US-supplied missiles.

In a worrying sign for Ukraine, the incoming Trump administration has signaled its disapproval of recent attacks on Russian soil, including long-range strikes and the assassination of a top general in Moscow using a scooter bomb.

President-elect Donald Trump's envoy to Ukraine, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, said on Wednesday that Ukraine's claimed killing of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov this week was contrary to the rules of war.

Kirillov, who headed up Russia's chemical, nuclear, and biological protection troops, was killed by a bomb planted on a scooter in Moscow on Tuesday. Ukraine has claimed responsibility.

Speaking on Fox Business, Kellogg said, "There are rules of warfare and there are certain things you just kind of don't do."

He added: "When you're killing flag officers, general officers, admirals or generals in their hometown, it's kind of like you've extended it, and I don't think it's really smart to do it."

Russia said it had arrested a man in connection with the killing, saying he was suspected of a "terrorist attack," the BBC reported.

Kellogg said the events wouldn't be a setback for any peace talks.

The US State Department said it was unaware of the plot, with an unnamed official saying the US doesn't support this kind of action, according to Agence France-Presse.

Kellogg's remarks come after President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday that the decision to allow Ukraine to make long-range strikes on Russia with US-supplied missiles was "stupid," and that he might reverse it once in office.

"I don't think they should have allowed missiles to be shot 200 miles into Russia," he said. "I think that was a bad thing."

Trump claimed that the decision prompted North Korea to send troops to fight alongside Russia, though intelligence agencies said that North Korean troops were being deployed at least two weeks before the Biden administration's decision.

He also said that the Biden administration should have asked for his opinion "weeks before I take over."

"Why would they do that without asking me what I thought?" he added.

Trump has repeatedly stated he would end the war in Ukraine, without publicly saying how he would achieve it.

Plans under discussion have included establishing a demilitarized zone in the areas occupied by Russia and requiring a pledge from Ukraine not to join NATO, The Wall Street Journal reported in November.

In an interview with Le Parisien on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his stance that ceding territory to Russia in any talks would be unacceptable, along with any promise not to join NATO.

19. The Roots of “Revenge Against Society” Attacks in China

​Excerpt:

Together, these forces have resulted in an accumulation of economic, social, and psychological stresses with little chance for release. And unaddressed grievances have helped create a climate in which people embrace violence out of desperation. The CCP’s oppressive governance only compounds the crisis. Responding to violent attacks or mass expressions of discontent, the party, in a thirst for control, has historically relied on a few main strategies that are only likely to intensify. Among the most central are enhanced surveillance and policing. China’s already extensive surveillance infrastructure—advanced facial recognition, social-credit scoring, AI-driven monitoring—is expanding further. New technologies such as the Crowd Emotion Detection and Early Warning Device system, which officials claim can analyze the behavior and emotions of large groups of people, could be used to help detect unrest, underlining the state’s efforts not only to respond to attacks but to preempt them altogether. Additional measures, such as an increased police presence near schools and in public spaces and heightened monitoring during politically sensitive periods, evoke the security models in regions such as Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has for years systemically repressed Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in what has become a de facto provincial police state.

The Roots of “Revenge Against Society” Attacks in China

Foreign Affairs · by More by Peidong Sun · December 25, 2024

Repressive Rule Is Creating a Climate of Isolation and Grievance

Peidong Sun

December 25, 2024

A tribute at the site of a deadly car attack, Zhuhai, China November 2024 Tingshu Wang / Reuters

Peidong Sun is Distinguished Associate Professor of China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University.

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A series of violent attacks across China in recent months have pierced a tightly controlled society’s veneer of stability. In late September, a 37-year-old man killed three people and injured 15 others in a stabbing spree at a Shanghai supermarket. In October, a 50-year-old man injured five people in a knife attack in Beijing. Then, on November 11, a 62-year-old man drove into a crowd in the southern city of Zhuhai and killed 35 people and injured 43 others in what is thought to be one of China’s deadliest acts of criminal violence in decades. In the days that followed, a mass stabbing by a 21-year-old student killed eight and injured 17 at a vocational school in Wuxi, near Shanghai, and a car attack left several schoolchildren and parents injured outside an elementary school in northern Hunan Province.

There have been at least 20 such attacks in China this year, with a death toll of more than 90 people. Government officials have called these incidents “isolated” and offered explanations emphasizing individual motivations: the driver in the Zhuhai car attack was unhappy with his divorce settlement, for instance; the Wuxi attacker had failed his exams. But taken together, the attacks reveal deep and widespread ruptures in Chinese society fueled by economic stagnation, systemic inequality, and social immobility and exclusion. As a result, such incidents have come to be known as “revenge against society” attacks.

A comparative study published in the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management in 2022 found that China accounted for 45 percent of the mass stabbings reported across the globe between 2004 and 2017. Its share can be attributed not only to the widespread availability of knives and strict gun control but also to sociopolitical tensions, including severe financial stress. Violent acts in China often target random victims in public spaces and are sometimes performative; in other words, the point is not to accomplish a specific goal but to draw societal attention. Although the state’s extensive censorship apparatus effectively stifles extended public discourse on mass attacks, the California-based nonprofit China Digital Times has documented surges in online activity after such incidents—indicating intense public interest—before posts are erased by censors.

The Chinese Communist Party’s strict controls have only exacerbated the problem. Violence underpins China’s social order, and revenge against society attacks should be understood in part as a response to structural violence perpetrated by the state itself, including the silencing of dissent, and other strategies for control such as the one-child policy. Public attacks are often reactions to repression; the irony is that the government generally responds to them with even more repression. After the attack in Zhuhai, for instance, local authorities swiftly imposed a reporting ban, forbade mourning in public, and sanitized the site. And the state mobilized its legal and surveillance capacities in a top-down enforcement of short-term stability, a hallmark of the CCP’s crisis management.

Such responses come at the expense of steps that would address the underlying problems inciting revenge against society attacks. If the CPP clings to a centralized, authoritarian style of governance, societal fractures are bound to intensify. Without systemic reforms to deal with these issues, China risks fostering a cycle of frustration and unrest that could increasingly erupt into violence and even threaten the country’s long-term stability.

DEEP ROOTS

In recent years, China’s economy has struggled to fulfill the aspirations of an increasingly educated populace. There are projected to be more than 12 million new university graduates in 2025, a vast oversupply considering the country’s youth unemployment rate of 18.8 percent. (In reality, the rate is likely higher because the data excludes active students.) A dearth of meaningful employment opportunities has created limits on upward mobility. Grueling workloads and diminishing opportunities for advancement have taken a psychological toll on workers, especially younger ones. In response, many young people have embraced quiet defiance, including through the “lying flat” movement, which emerged in early 2020 and involves eschewing advanced careers (and even favoring blue-collar or gig work), adopting minimalist lifestyles, and renouncing traditional aspirations such as marriage or home or car ownership to protest social pressures that spur relentless competition and conformity. For others, the defiance has become louder. The researchers Ma Ziqi and Zhao Yunting have hypothesized that “social exclusion,” which can include feeling systemically barred from financial advancement or ostracized because of a socioeconomic position, is a driver of revenge against society attacks because such exclusion fosters isolation, resentment, and despair.

Economic stagnation only fans the flames. In China, increases in both GDP growth and wages are slowing, and the cost of housing and education are rising. These developments are driving financial insecurity among Chinese people, diminishing their hopes for a stable and prosperous future within the current system. The economic squeeze has also helped to exacerbate inequality. The richest one percent in China now controls more than 30 percent of the country’s wealth, whereas the bottom half of the population controls only six percent—a stark picture of resource polarization in a putatively communist country that values egalitarian outcomes and what the CCP calls “common prosperity.”

The legacy of state violence is also critical. China’s one-child policy, enforced from 1980 to 2016, disrupted family dynamics and relied on coercive, intrusive methods, including forced sterilizations and abortions. Although the policy achieved the goal of slowing population growth, one of the most significant threats to China’s economy today is the profound demographic imbalance that resulted: a vast number of aging retirees reliant on the state or their children for support, and too few people of prime working age. The state largely disregarded the longer-term human costs of the policy, including sustained inequality, deepened mistrust in the government, and the destabilization of societal cohesion and political order. Indeed, even after the government lifted the one-child policy, the birthrate continued its rapid decline, falling by half between 2016 (18.83 million births) and 2023 (9.02 million). This was due in part to the policy’s lasting socioeconomic effects: among other things, it both normalized small families and instilled a belief that having many—or any—children could derail a couple’s finances and careers.

One of the policy’s most devastating consequences is the plight of shidu (“bereavement”) parents, who have suffered the premature death of the only child allotted to them under the old system and cannot conceive another. Every year, more than 76,000 parents join this group, which faces particularly acute forms of marginalization. In traditional Chinese culture, children offer both emotional fulfillment and economic security for aging parents; they also confer social value, the absence of which can lead to ostracism. These problems are compounded by inadequate state support; aging parents who have lost an only child are eligible for a one-time state payment of around $4,600, a fraction of the financial support most parents would expect to receive from their offspring. Shidu parents embody the broader consequences of authoritarian governance, which by prioritizing control over welfare, fosters a systemic neglect that heightens social grievances and may ultimately contribute to the revenge against society phenomenon. A recent Chinese film documentary chronicled how the desperation of one shidu couple even pushed them to the brink of carrying out a public attack.

Structural inequalities have fueled a variety of demonstrations in recent years: shidu parents, for instance, protest annually in front of the headquarters of the National Health and Family Planning Commission in Beijing to demand that the state keep its promises of care and support; in 2022, people organized mass boycotts of mortgage payments to protest a housing crisis and “white paper” demonstrations against the strict measures imposed under China’s “zero COVID” policy. These outcries highlight growing discontent across diverse groups and, for many, represent a protest against decades of repression. For much of the Chinese public, the current state violence is a continuation of the more totalitarian repression suffered under Mao Zedong from the early 1950s through the decade-long Cultural Revolution, which ended with Mao’s death in 1976. People had no recourse during the brutal violence of that era, given the state’s total control of the country’s resources and narrative. Those days are long gone, but the legacy of that violence lives on.

FOOL ME ONCE

Together, these forces have resulted in an accumulation of economic, social, and psychological stresses with little chance for release. And unaddressed grievances have helped create a climate in which people embrace violence out of desperation. The CCP’s oppressive governance only compounds the crisis. Responding to violent attacks or mass expressions of discontent, the party, in a thirst for control, has historically relied on a few main strategies that are only likely to intensify. Among the most central are enhanced surveillance and policing. China’s already extensive surveillance infrastructure—advanced facial recognition, social-credit scoring, AI-driven monitoring—is expanding further. New technologies such as the Crowd Emotion Detection and Early Warning Device system, which officials claim can analyze the behavior and emotions of large groups of people, could be used to help detect unrest, underlining the state’s efforts not only to respond to attacks but to preempt them altogether. Additional measures, such as an increased police presence near schools and in public spaces and heightened monitoring during politically sensitive periods, evoke the security models in regions such as Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has for years systemically repressed Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in what has become a de facto provincial police state.

As the sociologist Xueguang Zhou has noted, the CCP’s approach relies not just on mobilization but also propaganda, which dovetails with the party’s censorship and narrative management. The swift deletion of critical commentary on social media and the suppression of public discourse ensure that mass attacks are framed as isolated incidents rather than symptoms of deeper systemic failures. By controlling the narrative, the CCP seeks to prevent public outrage and copycat incidents while maintaining its image of authority. But these heavy-handed measures, in turn, perpetuate feelings of alienation and agitation among China’s people, increasing the risk of more attacks.

Wu Si, the former editor in chief of the history journal Yanhuang Chunqiu, has said that “hidden rules” govern Chinese society—informal systems that are “neither ethical nor entirely legal” yet sustain the social structure. But the increasing frequency of revenge against society attacks suggests that the party’s indifference to certain rights and its squelching of dissent may be having an unintended effect: the rise of violence that may appear apolitical on its face but constitutes a desperate rejection of the political status quo. And if the party fails to expand economic opportunities and reduce structural inequalities and injustices, it may eventually find itself faced with greater challenges than revenge against society attacks.

Peidong Sun is Distinguished Associate Professor of China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Peidong Sun · December 25, 2024

​20. How Ukraine’s new drone-missile hybrids are changing long-range weapon technology

How Ukraine’s new drone-missile hybrids are changing long-range weapon technology

New technology behind Ukraine’s new “rocket-drones” is blurring the line between drones and cruise missiles.

kyivindependent.com · by Kollen Post · December 23, 2024

Ukraine has turbo-charged its long-distance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), making “rocket-drones” to compete with cruise missiles or save the trouble of asking for more Western-made ranged weapons.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has been showing off the latest results, with videos of the Peklo and Palianytsia missile-drones, which Ukrainian soldiers have begun deploying.

The “rocket-drone” project has become a key goal for Zelensky in 2025. In November, he told the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliamentary body, that he wanted to see Ukraine produce 30,000 long-distance drones, and 3,000 “cruise missiles or missile-drones” over the next year.

These “missile-drones” are a new genre of weapons that Ukraine is pioneering.

Deploying new weapons to offset the lack of traditional ones isn’t a new move for Ukraine. Just as Ukraine has deployed UAVs to take on roles traditionally reserved for an air force, such as aerial surveillance and targeted bombing, the rocket-drones are evolving to perform functions of cruise missiles, which Ukraine doesn’t produce.

“They are basically the next evolution step of long-range deep-strike suicide UAVs,” says Fabian Hinz, a research fellow with the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies who specializes in missiles. “As with so many things, because of technology, the lines are blurring.”

“Ukraine really is able to develop these small missile systems that are rather cheap, relatively easy to produce, but are still good enough to pack quite a punch and destroy some high-value targets, also deep inside enemy territory,” says Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo’s nuclear project, similarly specialized in missiles.

What is a drone missile?

“Missiles and drones. A combination of words that until recently was something from fantasy. But today, a reality,” Zelensky said in a Dec. 10 speech, highlighting that the Palianytsia had gone into production and the first Peklos had gone to the front. He also revealed that a mysterious analog called the Ruta had just passed testing.

These missile-drones are mostly an evolution from Ukraine’s existing arsenal of long-range drones into something resembling a small cruise missile. In that metamorphosis, the key is speed.

Some long-range drones that Ukraine uses can already theoretically make it thousands of kilometers. The evolution of these newer models is primarily one of speed. Palianytsia, Peklo and Ruta tout max speeds of, respectively, 500, 700 and 800 kilometers per hour.

That is largely thanks to jet motors, which allow the newer models to outfly the 200 or so kilometers per hour that the piston engines on most existing long-range drones offer. Even the Iranian Shaheds — remarkably good long-range kamikaze drones — typically max out in the 300 kilometers per hour range.

“When you have a jet-powered UAV or a cruise missile you can simply buy engines off the shelf. So a lot of these systems probably use commercial off-the-shelf engines which you can just buy,” says Hinz, naming various German, Dutch and Czech manufacturers as likely candidates.

As the speed has grown between these three models, so too has the sophistication of their engines.

Based on the government diagrams, Hoffman says there’s no sign of a true turbojet engine on the Palianytsias.

Meanwhile, with the Peklo, “the engine is actually top-mounted,” says Hoffman. “The engine is outside the fuselage. And that makes manufacturing easier because it's not as sophisticated, but a problem with that approach is that it creates a massive, massive radar cross section.”

A jet engine needs a fast stream of air to provide oxygen to its fuel supply. Other engines either work slower or require an oxidizer to accompany the fuel itself — a major add-on in weight for a rocket that needs to go hundreds of kilometers.

Other than the set-up of their propulsion, these rocket-drones are structurally almost identical. Based on the government-released diagrams, the Palianytsia is a slight standout in having much larger winglets — to compensate for less updraft as a result of going slower, says Hoffman.

Some of Ukraine’s models are touching down on the battlefield for the first time. The Peklo and Palianytsia have been causing a particular stir across social media amid recent Ukrainian attacks on Taganrog and Bryansk.

The actual deployment of these drones is tough to confirm. They seem to show up in swarms alongside foreign missiles like U.S.-made ATACMS in a barrage on an airfield in Taganrog, east of Mariupol.

A popular Russian news Telegram channel identified wreckage in a village in Kursk as “tentatively” one of these Palianytsias in September, based on the fact that it had a jet engine.

After a recent attack on Taganrog, a Russian military-tied Telegram channel Rybar roundly denied that the attack involved a Palianytsia or Peklo, or any other kind of drone, saying it was “only six ATACMS missiles.” That channel claimed that the one Peklo in the air for that attack was shot down by a Russian MiG-29 over the Black Sea.

Another popular channel tied to the Ukrainian military wrote “at the end of the day, they’ll say they were ATACMS to avoid shaming themselves by pronouncing ‘Palianytsia’.”

The rocket-missile’s name is a type of Ukrainian bread that Russians find famously difficult to pronounce. The Peklo is a Ukrainian word for hell.

The Ruta is similarly patriotically named, dubbed in honor of an herb from one of Ukraine’s most famous songs, “Chervona Ruta,” so popular it’s often mistaken for a folk song.

The mysterious new drone, Ruta

Based solely on Ukrainian government statements, the Ruta is the most mysterious of the drones under testing.

While Zelensky acknowledged testing a drone by that name, it may not be, strictly speaking, a Ukrainian project.

Destinus, a company with registrations in Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands, was showing off a drone called RUTA with a structure almost identical to the other newly rocket-drones and stamped with a Ukrainian flag at a weapons conference in France this summer. Destinus’ founder and CEO, Mikhail Kokorich, posted pictures of the drone at the conference on his LinkedIn.

The Ukrainian government stays quiet about the producers of, particularly, its deep-strike drones. But fuselages from the Destinus Lord, a drone with an advertised range of 750 to 2,000 kilometers and a distinct resemblance to a Cessna with a square head, have turned up in social media posts purportedly from deep within Russia.

It’s a source of potential controversy. Kokorich is an EU-based Russian national who posted that he renounced his citizenship at the start of 2024 based on “fundamental disagreement with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the policies of the Putin government,” after the U.S. government stopped contracting with his aerospace company, Momentus, due to its foreign ties back in 2021, sending its value plummeting from a peak of over $1.5 billion. The current French corporate registration for Destinus lists his citizenship as Grenadian, which sells citizenship in exchange for $200,000 in local investment.

French business magazine Challenges wrote a profile on Kokorich, focusing heavily on death threats from Russian leadership.

Most information available about the Ruta is on Destinus’ site, which lists primary advantages of combination of “low cost, payload size and speed.” It includes specifications for a low-cost and lightweight jet turboengine.

Destinus did not respond to a request for comment.

Among the new rocket-drones, Hoffman, for one, is most impressed with the Ruta.

“For the Ruta, in terms of the engine, it's the most sophisticated one because it has a bottom-mounted air inlet, according to the pictures that we've seen,” said Hoffman. “That’s similar to the (American) Tomahawk, for example. The engine is inside the fuselage and it only has an air inlet that sucks in the air, which is then compressed and mixed with the fuel inside the engine and then ignited to create the exhaust stream.”

He added that Ruta has advantages when it comes to stealth.

“If there's some radar close, it will definitely pick (the Peklo) up because the radar waves get scattered by the turbine engine blades at turning,” Hoffman said. “That creates a massive return to the radar. So these things are not very stealthy. And if you compare it to the Ruta, where the engine is inside and you only have a small air inlet, that thing is a lot stealthier.”

Smaller payload, smaller price

The concept of “rocket-drones” is novel. These new weapons split the difference between drones and traditional cruise missiles.

As with much of Ukraine’s drone developments, these are economical solutions. But that would be true on either side — if Kinzhals were free, Russia would never launch another Shahed.

Among major distinctions is that these rocket-drones hold much less explosive charge than traditional cruise missiles. Tomahawks and Storm Shadows, for example, carry around 450 kilograms of charge each. The new Ukrainian rocket-drones mostly feature payloads of around 100 kilograms.

But possibly a bigger weakness of these newer rocket-drones is that they are less stealthy and more vulnerable to electronic and navigational interference than more classical cruise missiles. But at the same time, they are significantly less expensive than traditional cruise missiles. The price per piece on these projects is somewhere under $300,000, which makes them significantly more disposable than, for example, the $1-million-a-piece Storm Shadows.

It’s a market that Hinz sees catching on.

“These type of longer-range suicide drones are a completely new thing, which we forget a lot,” says Hinz. “If you would have asked three years ago, what was the American equivalent to the Shahed — there was none.”

“Ukraine is walking into a space where there’s not really a lot of other states producing these types of systems,” says Hoffman. “This is actually something that the U.S. wants to do, but they haven't done until now.”

Note from the author:

Hi, I’m Kollen Post, the author of this story. If you found it valuable, please consider supporting the Kyiv Independent by becoming a member. Your support enables us to continue delivering high-quality, on-the-ground reporting that keeps the world informed about Ukraine. Join us here and make a difference today.

kyivindependent.com · by Kollen Post · December 23, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com