Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“If you were to look up the word rhetoric in the dictionary, it would tell you more or less the following: Rhetoric is the art of using language to persuade or influence others. It would tell you, too, that the etymology of the word started in Greek and traveled through Latin to get to us. If you were to look up the word polemic, you would find, perhaps to your surprise, that its root is from the Greek word for war. A polemic, originally a theological term, is defined as language used to create controversy in contesting a thesis or point of view. Polemics is making war, or rather pursuing conflict, with words instead of literal, physical weapons. So rhetoric and polemic are closely related concepts, but they are not exactly the same.”

- Adam Garfinkle, Political Writing: A Guide to the Essentials

"I ask not for any crown, but that which all may win; not try to conquer any world except the one within."

- Louisa May Alcott

“And the world is my country, all mankind are my brother-in-law, and to do good is my religion.”

– Thomas Paine

1. Irregular Warfare: Undermining the CCP’s Dangerous and Illegal Activities in the Indo-Pacific

2. 5 U.S. Special Operations Troops Killed in Helicopter Crash in Mediterranean

3. Hamas Needed a New Way to Get Money From Iran. It Turned to Crypto.

4. Israeli Ambassador Says Humanitarian Pauses Are Revealing Palestinians 'Don't Like Us But They Don't Like Hamas Either'

5. Battle Lines Are Drawn as the Israel-Hamas War Spills Onto US Campuses

6. Creation of an Independent Inspector General outside of the DoD

7. Saudis and 8 More Arab Countries Block Anti-Israel Measures at Arab Summit

8. Anti-Defamation League Maps Jewish Peace Rallies With Antisemitic Attacks

9. Ukraine’s counter-offensive has failed for now – the West needs a new plan

10. With American patriotism in steep decline, veterans discuss the importance of honoring those who've served

11. Russian military officer predicts how nuclear war with NATO could beginR

12. This New Tool Aims to Keep Terrorism Content Off the Internet

13. Military training efforts for Ukraine hit major milestones even as attention shifts to Gaza

14. How America Can Capitalize on China’s Economic Slowdown

15. Honor veterans by following their lead into public service

16. New report reveals major problem at more than 200 US military bases: ‘Hundreds more [communities] are likely at risk’

17. Hamas won Oct. 7, then IDF new integrated warfare took over - analysis

18. Is Military Space-Based Jamming Normal? Some Worry It Is

19. DOD Identifies Army Soldiers Killed in Helicopter Crash

1. Irregular Warfare: Undermining the CCP’s Dangerous and Illegal Activities in the Indo-Pacific

A modern perspective on irregular warfare. I expect this to provoke some critical discussion, particularly in INDOPACOM.

Sun, 11/12/2023 - 4:00pm

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/irregular-warfare-undermining-ccps-dangerous-and-illegal-activities-indo-pacific

Photo credit @Alamy

Irregular Warfare: Undermining the CCP’s Dangerous and Illegal Activities in the Indo-Pacific

by Dr. Lumpy Lumbaca

To address the dangerous and illegal actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Indo-Pacific, the United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) requires a comprehensive Irregular Warfare (IW) campaign strategy. The word “campaign” is used since this is an enduring effort that requires constant assessment and refinement to ensure effectiveness. The first part of this paper outlines strategic focus areas that the IW campaign should be built upon. The second part of this paper describes specific lines of effort that may be used as building blocks toward strategic success. The emphasis on the second part of the paper is to inspire new, creative thinking toward undermining CCP malign activity. This paper is activity-focused rather than an academic or theoretical study. Furthermore, the actions suggested here are bold, risky, and will unsettle some military and civilian leaders. To be clear, this is not to suggest that the US and its partners do anything illegal, unethical, or contrary to international law. Instead, the objective is to think “out of the box” and take calculated risks. If deemed impossible or too risky, the alternative to this strategy is to keep doing what we are doing now with minor variations - falsely advertised as innovation - a path that has yet to significantly deter or diminish China’s dangerous and illegal behavior throughout the region. This strategy is no way intended to destabilize China or the lives of the Chinese people. This campaign is specifically designed to undermine malign, dangerous, and illegal CCP authoritarian activities as well as the individuals and networks that enable them.

First, a note on definitions. While the argument over definitions and terminology in this space knows no bounds, and this paper will surely not rectify the matter, two definitions are necessary as the foundation for the IW strategy that follows. First is the concept of Political Warfare. As defined by George Kennan, Political Warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation's command, short of war, used to achieve national objectives. Kennan posited that it ranges from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures, and "white" propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of "friendly" foreign elements, "black" psychological warfare, and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states. For clarity, the author of this article will add that an important difference between Political Warfare and traditional statecraft is that the former is executed with some level of hostile – not necessarily violent - intent. The second definition required for this strategy paper is that of Irregular Warfare itself. Simply put, Irregular Warfare is the military’s contribution to Political Warfare. It is centered on military efforts to support an actors’ Political Warfare objectives of influencing populations (toward the actor and away from the adversary) and affecting legitimacy (in favor of the actor and against the adversary). Irregular Warfare requires deep understanding of human dynamics and creative thinking toward solving problems. With Political Warfare and Irregular Warfare defined, the remainder of this paper will focus solely on the US military’s Irregular Warfare strategy in the Indo-Pacific while acknowledging that any such strategy must complement traditional/conventional military initiatives as well as overarching, whole-of-government and whole-of-society Political Warfare objectives.

American Irregular Warfare in the Indo-Pacific involves four strategic focus areas. The first focus area is designed to “shape” the environment. Shaping in general includes many complex geopolitical undertakings like promoting good governance, enabling economic prosperity, developing security sectors, etc. Only some of these initiatives are the primary responsibility of the US Defense Department. In many cases, other agencies like the State Department, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), or others, are the lead while the military serves in a supporting role. Specifically for the military, the priority of shaping activities leans heavily on developing informational and operational environments. In the information space, shaping is accomplished by sharing U.S. values and ideals, building relationships with key influencers, and countering adversarial propaganda and disinformation. It also involves US and partner “naming and shaming” every time the CCP performs its illegal and dangerous stunts like ramming Philippine ships, placing hazardous obstacles in the open ocean, flying recklessly close to aircraft, cyber espionage hacking to undermine economies and steal trade secrets, injecting fentanyl and other opioids to undermine western society, and the like. Emerging space and cyber technologies are tools to be used to (a) help enable information shaping operations and (b) disrupt adversarial information efforts. In addition to informational shaping, the other major part of IW shaping is in the operational space. This requires developing innovative US and foreign military operational capacity, growing intelligence collection assets, and building clandestine networks to support contingency/conflict scenarios so they may be effectively exploited and employed immediately when crises occur.

The second strategic focus area of the IW strategy is to deny sanctuary. This should not be understood in the narrowly-focused way that it is in counter-terrorism. In the case of strategic IW, denying sanctuary applies more broadly to malign state and non-state adversaries that operate without fear of consequences. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and violent extremist organizations (VEO) - collectively referred to as the “four-plus-one” – all have a presence in the Indo-Pacific and must be denied sanctuary to operate freely with malign intent. Denied sanctuary among and within networks. Denied sanctuary within financial systems. Denied sanctuary in international waters where they execute illegal ship-to-ship transfers of sanctioned materials. These sanctuaries and others allow for the movement of people, finances, communications, nuclear and conventional weapons, ammunition, fuel, and other resources amongst revisionist and rogue powers. While the entire four-plus-one network of malign adversaries pose varying levels of threat, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is by far the most dangerous and illegal actor, and the primary focus of the IW campaign. This second strategic focus area of denying sanctuary requires disrupting CCP networks, interdicting its illicit activities, and denying it access to critical people and resources.

The third strategic focus area is empowering traditional partners and connecting with new, non-traditional ones. The US must build capacity and capability in partners to conduct both offensive and defensive IW activities from the tactical to strategic levels to foster enduring regional stability. This is accomplished through continued training, educating, equipping, intelligence sharing, and relationship sustainment that most are already familiar with. But the American military must break the mold and devise more creative methods of empowering partners with non-traditional support. This requires imaginative and inspired thinking and risk-taking, things that the US military is not renowned for. Furthermore, the American military must expand beyond its comfort zone of working primarily with domestic and foreign government agencies and militaries. It must seek to expand the realm of public-private partnerships as well as occasionally work with questionable partners, something that will be extremely unsettling for some leaders. New and innovative solutions to IW problems cannot be realized by partnering with the same old friends and conducting only traditional operations and activities that are well known. Every state and non-state actor’s position must be considered conditional, changing, and self-serving.

The fourth strategic focus area is to degrade or defeat the CCP’s ability to operate with malign intent. It is often stated that Irregular Warfare, Gray Zone, Hybrid Conflict, and other related terms are used to describe an environment that exists “between peace and war.” This is incorrect. IW activities persist regardless of any state of peace, competition, or conflict. Look no further than the conflicts making headlines today to see that both conventional and irregular methods are being utilized before, during, and even after major combat ceases. IW activities are constant. What does differentiate them from conventional methods is that IW activities alone are unlikely to elicit a large-scale military response. Executed well, this fourth strategic focus area supports both deterrence and/or the reduction of an adversary’s ability to conduct irregular and conventional military operations. If degradation and deterrence fail and conflict becomes unavoidable, the aperture for this IW focus area opens up to kinetic strikes, advising resistance forces, and other tailored special operations to achieve specific objectives outlined by the Combatant Commander, and possibly in multiple geographic regions around the world. In degrading and defeating the CCP, the US strategy must adopt new and greater risk. This is not to suggest that reckless risks should be accepted, but calculated ones are in order. Some military and Congressional leaders may be uncomfortable with this.

With the four strategic focus areas in mind, the remainder of this paper outlines several – not all - lines of effort that should be acted upon so Irregular Warfare in the Indo-Pacific can support larger military objectives in undermining the CCP’s dangerous and illegal behavior inside and outside of China. Most of these lines of effort overlap considerably and could be categorized differently. Several distinct lines are highlighted while acknowledging that there is considerable diplomatic, informational, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law-enforcement layering amongst them.

Undermining CCP sponsorship and funding for illicit/illegal activities. Select Americans, proxies, or foreign nationals infiltrate and disrupt illicit networks involved in illegal fishing, human trafficking, weapons trafficking, or cybercrime. This is accomplished by recruiting and deploying the right personnel within targeted networks to provide real-time information on operations, key players, and emerging and future activities. The military may provide intelligence to appropriate domestic and foreign financial agencies and international economic governing bodies to disrupt money laundering operations, freeze assets, and expose financial transactions linked to criminal enterprises. Cyber and space capabilities will be used hack into communication channels, disrupt online platforms used for illegal transfers, and expose sensitive information. When feasible, precision raids may be executed on key locations associated with illicit threats such as illegal fishing vessels, human trafficking hubs, or cybercrime networks.

Military Information Support Operations aimed at the CCP. Utilizing psychological operations elements, the US will undermine the morale and cohesion of CCP actors and proxies, target specific audiences to create internal divisions, sow distrust among key players, and discourage participation in China’s operations. The military will launch aggressive, offensive information campaigns to expose and counter disinformation spread by the CCP, provide alternative messaging, shape public perception, and influence narratives. This includes naming and shaming dangerous and illegal PLA, PLAN, and proxy operations.

Civil Affairs engagements. During Community Relations (COMREL) events, which are often conducted throughout the region in conjunction with major exercises, construction projects, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) efforts, and other stand-alone activities, the military will connect with local communities, build trust, and raise awareness about the negative impacts of malign influence and misinformation. These initiatives must be executed subtly to ensure that the legitimacy of the overt operation is not undermined. This requires a very sophisticated effort that will ultimately empower local communities and strengthen resilience against both internal and external threats.

Support to legal action launched against the CCP to defeat its “lawfare” strategies. The military will provide information and evidence gathered during overseas deployments to appropriate legal and international bodies. Americans will collaborate with such bodies to explore legal avenues for holding individuals or entities accountable for their involvement in dangerous and illegal CCP activities. This may include advocating for sanctions, indictments, or other legal measures in international or host-nation courts.

Countering CCP Maritime Gray Zone Activities. Select Americans, partners, proxies, or foreign nationals deploy stealth reconnaissance assets, including unmanned underwater vehicles and drones, to monitor and gather real-time intelligence on Chinese maritime militia activities. When possible, they conduct targeted and non-attributed interdiction operations, seizing or disabling maritime militia vessels engaged in illegal activities such as illegal fishing, harassment of regional vessels, plundering of natural resources, or encroachment into disputed territories. Cyber and space assets are employed to degrade CCP ships’ abilities to communicate and operate. Through a combination of operations, persistent presence, and strategic messaging, this line of effort helps deter future aggressive actions by the CCP’s maritime militia and showcases the capability and resolve to respond swiftly to provocations.

Logistics Interdiction. Inside and outside of contested space, friendly elements identify and disrupt the logistical support networks that sustain maritime militias and other CCP criminal activities. This is accomplished primarily by targeting supply chains and their human facilitators through direct, indirect, and virtual operations. In addition, the PLA’s entire logistic network must be mapped well before contingencies arise, and selected targeting can create dilemmas for the PLA that will reduce support to malign activities.

Countering CCP elite capture. Select Americans, partners, proxies, or foreign nationals employ a combination of intelligence operations, diplomatic engagement, and discreet protection to shield key individuals from undue influence. This involves a clandestine effort to fortify the integrity of local leadership, ensuring they remain true to their nation's interests. Establish an overt counterintelligence program that provides incentive for those who the CCP targets for recruitment to report those targeting efforts so they can be countered and exploited.

Conducting offensive elite capture against China. Select Americans, proxies, or foreign nationals deploy to identify, cultivate, and build relationships with key individuals in foreign countries. This does not necessarily have to be in China itself. Through a combination of intelligence gathering, targeted persuasion, and strategic alliances, IW assets will subtly influence Chinese decision-makers overseas to align with American and Indo-Pacific partner interests. The intent is to subtly shape the perceptions and loyalties of those Chinese officials, businessmen, and others in positions of power.

Countering narcotics and precursor production. Select Americans, proxies, or foreign nationals conduct high-stakes raids on clandestine labs. This can be accomplished by working closely with local law enforcement to gather intelligence, and by using advanced technology to track illicit supply chains. By targeting production hubs and distribution networks, the aim is to cripple operations at their core. This represents a coordinated effort to stem the flow of illegal narcotics, safeguarding not just national security but also the well-being of communities affected by the drug trade. This effort will directly counter the CCP’s active subversion campaign against western countries as it tries to erode societies from within through the drug trade.

Countering CCP-sponsored Transnational Organized Crime (TOC) emanating from the Mekong. Select Americans, proxies, or foreign nationals deploy to disrupt human trafficking, weapons smuggling, wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, and drug trade networks connected to Chinese-affiliated establishments and micro-communities along the Mekong River. They will work closely with law enforcement, intelligence agencies, non-traditional partners, and the international community to gather actionable intelligence and conduct precision virtual or physical disruptive operations. By targeting the various facets of the CCP’s criminal enterprise that destabilizes the Mekong River Basin, this line of effort aims to create a ripple effect, disrupting the interconnected networks that fuel these illicit activities. This requires a multifaceted approach to safeguarding the region from the detrimental impacts of transnational crime. Separate but related, CCP damning operations that have destabilized economies and the environment along the lower Mekong – while supplying water to China itself - can be targeted for virtual and physical destruction.

Publicly naming and shaming CCP dangerous and illegal activities. Select Americans, partners, proxies, or foreign nationals will leverage open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques to gather publicly available information on Chinese actors involved in illegal and dangerous activities. This includes monitoring social media, news articles, and public records. Friendly public-private partners will launch targeted attribution campaigns, publicly exposing specific individuals or entities responsible for malign activities. This will involve releasing evidence, reports, documentation, documentaries, infographics, YouTube videos, and testimonials linking individuals and the CCP to nefarious actions. Online platforms and databases will be developed and maintained support the effort and serve as centralized resources for governments, media, and the public to access information on CCP-sponsored violations.

Support for diplomatic efforts. American military elements will support diplomatic programs by providing intelligence briefings and information to relevant US and partner-nation diplomatic agencies, assisting them in taking a public stance in international forums against Chinese malign activities and influence.

Support to resistance. In the case of Taiwan, Uighurs, Tibet, Hong Kong, and other cultures and areas experiencing oppression, genocide, or threat of invasion at the hands of the CCP, select American military, partners, proxies, and foreign nationals will build resistance capabilities amongst populations inside and outside of China. This effort will not build capacity in military and paramilitary units alone, but among civilian populations as well. This is done to create a deterrent factor and, if deterrence fails, to enable resistance against China’s authoritarian regime.

The first part of this paper outlined key strategic focus areas for an INDOPACOM Irregular Warfare campaign strategy. Part two described specific lines of effort needed to put the strategy in action. This IW campaign should be a critical component of the overarching US national security strategy in the Indo-Pacific. It serves as a roadmap for employing IW to achieve not only Combatant Commander military objectives, but to support State Department, intelligence community, partner nation, and other American interagency objectives aimed at CCP malign behavior. This is a living strategy that requires sound understanding of the physical environment, population/human dynamics, and economic drivers to counter China’s willingness to engage in dangerous and illegal stunts that could easily lead to war in the Pacific. Some of the activities in this strategy require a change in current authorities and permissions granted to the US military. This is a new era of threat and competition that requires a new strategy for our military that is grounded in US and international law. In short it requires an Irregular Warfare Campaign.

The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the United States Government.

About the Author(s)

J. “Lumpy” Lumbaca

Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca, PhD, is a retired US Army Green Beret officer and current Department of Defense professor of irregular warfare, counterterrorism, and special operations at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (DKI APCSS). He can be found on X/Twitter @LumpyAsia.

2. 5 U.S. Special Operations Troops Killed in Helicopter Crash in Mediterranean

Training can be as dangerous as combat. RIP, Soldiers.

5 U.S. Special Operations Troops Killed in Helicopter Crash in Mediterranean

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/12/us/politics/us-service-members-killed-crash.html?utm

The troops were on a refueling training mission when the aircraft crashed off the coast of Cyprus. The episode, which Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said was an accident, is under investigation.

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“We mourn the tragic loss of five U.S. service members during a training accident in the Mediterranean Sea,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said on Sunday.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

By Eric Schmitt

Reporting from Washington

Nov. 12, 2023

Updated 7:43 p.m. ET

Five members of the U.S. Army Special Operations forces have died in a helicopter crash in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, American officials said on Sunday.

The troops were crew members of an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that was on a refueling training mission late Friday when the aircraft crashed off the coast of Cyprus, three U.S. officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. The crash is under investigation, they said.

The Pentagon has quietly dispatched to Cyprus commando teams from the Joint Special Operations Command, including the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, to stand by in case they are needed to help evacuate American citizens from the region.

The commandos are also trained in hostage rescue operations. About a dozen or so American hostages were seized when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, but Biden administration officials have indicated they have no plans to put American boots on the ground in the densely populated Gaza Strip, where the Israel military is now conducting major ground operations.

The helicopter crew members who died were members of the Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers, and are among the aviators assigned to ferry the commandos on clandestine missions.

An American aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, is also operating in the eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Israel, in what the Biden administration has said is a deterrent to Iran and its proxies in the region to widen the Gaza war.

In a statement on Sunday, the military’s European Command acknowledged the deaths of the five service members in what it said was “a routine air refueling mission,” but released no other information about the crash, the crew or its unit in a reflection of the secrecy surrounding the unit’s mission.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement on Sunday, “We mourn the tragic loss of five U.S. service members during a training accident in the Mediterranean Sea.”

President Biden, noting that it was Veterans Day weekend, said: “Our service members put their lives on the line for our country every day. They willingly take risks to keep the American people safe and secure.”

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 13, 2023, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Five Troops Are Killed In Air Crash Off Cyprus. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

3. Hamas Needed a New Way to Get Money From Iran. It Turned to Crypto.

Hamas Needed a New Way to Get Money From Iran. It Turned to Crypto.

The pivot to digital currencies helped Hamas receive large sums from Iran in the two years preceding the attacks on Israel

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-needed-a-new-way-to-get-money-from-iran-it-turned-to-crypto-739619aa?mod=hp_lead_pos8

By Angus Berwick

Follow and Ian Talley

Updated Nov. 12, 2023 12:04 am ET

In mid-2019, Israel’s military used a precision strike on a narrow street to kill a Hamas commander whom it called Iran’s money man in Gaza.

The commander ran an off-the-books system of remittances in which trusted agents shuttled physical cash and goods across borders to settle customers’ balances. This so-called hawala network, as it is known in the Middle East, funneled tens of millions of dollars in financing from Iran to Hamas’s military wing.

His replacement, a Palestinian businessman called Zuhair Shamlakh, changed strategy to evade the Israelis: He turned to digital currencies.

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Using the hawala networks

Initially, Hamas used crypto only to receive small-scale donations from supporters as part of a broader crowdfunding effort, which Israeli officials said has likely raised several million dollars.

Around 2020, crypto became a method of large-scale transfers between Iran and the group within the hawala networks, according to the current and former Israeli officials and ex-U.S. officials.

Since then, crypto has been “an essential part for their operational activity,” one senior NBCTF official said.

Iran has long been Hamas’s primary benefactor, with the U.S. putting regular funding from Tehran at roughly $100 million a year. Hamas also has earned income from a global investment portfolio, raised money through charitable organizations, and skimmed off funds from official foreign aid and tax revenues in Gaza.

A photo released by the Israeli army this month shows a projectile belonging to the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in northern Gaza. PHOTO: ISRAELI ARMY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The U.S. designated Hamas a terrorist organization in 1997, limiting the group’s access to the international banking system. Israel’s blockade of Gaza has made it hard for Hamas to obtain physical cash. Researchers say the group has often resorted to a network of tunnels to smuggle in bills. Israeli officials said in recent years most of Iran’s financing of Hamas moved through the chain of hawala dealers and money-service providers that are spread across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey.

Western intelligence and security officials say that Iran and its proxies often own or control exchange houses as critical nodes for financing their operations.

“This is the silent way for them to get money into Gaza,” said Tom Alexandrovich, director of the cyber defense division at Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, which has supported the NBCTF’s crypto investigations.

Hamas’s use of digital currencies has intensified scrutiny on the crypto industry.

While crypto transactions are visible on public blockchain ledgers, many foreign platforms that customers use to trade digital currencies have weak compliance controls or are designed to conceal their identities.

The Treasury Department last month designated foreign “mixer” crypto platforms, which enable users to exchange cryptocurrency with relative anonymity, as primary money-laundering hubs to combat their use by Hamas and other terrorist groups.

More than 100 U.S. lawmakers signed a letter last month expressing concern about the “serious national security threats” posed by crypto’s use to finance terrorism.

In a response to the lawmakers, the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a business lobby group, disputed crypto’s utility for terrorist financing. “Blockchain technology facilitates the tracking, tracing, and dismantling of blockchain-based terrorist funding and has proven enormously effective for law enforcement,” it said.

Crypto in Gaza

The Israeli military targeted the commander, Hamid Ahmed Khudari, while he was in a car driving down a Gaza street.

“Iran will need to find a new money man in Gaza,” the military said after the May 2019 strike, adding that Khudari was close to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, in a statement at the time called Khudari “a generous and loyal mujahideen.” A Palestinian media outlet reported that Khudari was one of the territory’s largest currency traders, distributing salaries to poor residents and militants alike.

Shamlakh took his place, according to Israel’s defense ministry.

His Al Mutahadun exchange advertised on its Facebook page conversions for dollars, shekels and other local currencies at its streetfront office in Gaza.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar appeared at a rally in Gaza City in April. PHOTO: MOHAMMED ABED/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Israeli military intelligence officers began tracing tens of millions of dollars in payments from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Al Mutahadun, and other exchanges owned by Shamlakh, that were earmarked for the Al-Qassam Brigades to buy arms and pay fighters, according to the defense ministry.

The NBCTF took action against Shamlakh’s shift to crypto in 2021.

The bureau issued its first order to seize Al Mutahadun’s crypto funds, targeting 47 accounts at Binance, the world’s largest exchange. It said the funds either belonged to the Gazan firm or were “used for the perpetration of a severe terror crime.”

A Binance spokesperson said it follows internationally recognized sanctions rules, blocking a small number of accounts linked to illicit funds.

That and later orders sought to seize the Hamas-controlled exchange houses’ own crypto trading accounts, as well as their customers’ accounts and digital wallets, people familiar with the actions said. It is possible that not all of the clients were involved with Hamas.

The wallets identified in the seizure orders likely only represented a fraction of the wallets used by Hamas, according to a former Israeli official, who worked on the NBCTF’s investigations until this year.

“It’s a drop in the ocean,” the ex-official said.

The use of crypto by the Gaza money exchanges was more sophisticated than Hamas’s earlier fundraising efforts in bitcoin. Digital wallets connected to the companies moved funds overwhelmingly in the form of the stablecoin tether on a blockchain system called Tron, which has heightened user privacy.

To obscure the money trail, the exchanges often changed the wallet addresses they used each day, and sent funds through mixers, Israeli officials said. They also received funds from Garantex, a large Russian crypto exchange under U.S. sanctions, and several Iranian exchanges, according to the ex-official and blockchain analytics research.

A Garantex spokeswoman said it adhered to international compliance standards on financial crime.

The Gazan exchange network remains active. In late September, another exchange service company called AlKahira, which shares an address and phone numbers with Dubai Money, posted a Facebook ad for cash withdrawals and deposits via tether at its two branches in Gaza.

The NBCTF officials said AlKahira and Dubai Money were affiliated and were also linked to another money-changing house in Istanbul that the bureau targeted in a July order to seize $1 million in assets.

AlKahira didn’t respond to requests for comment.

AlKahira periodically has alerted customers on its Facebook page that it was “paying out funds for the martyrs and wounded inside its branches.” Its most recent such post was on Oct. 3, four days before the attack on Israel.

Rory Jones and Omar Abdel-Baqui contributed to this article.

Write to Angus Berwick at angus.berwick@wsj.com and Ian Talley at Ian.Talley@wsj.com

4. Israeli Ambassador Says Humanitarian Pauses Are Revealing Palestinians 'Don't Like Us But They Don't Like Hamas Either'

Is the dislike sufficient to separate the Palestinians from Hamas?

Israeli Ambassador Says Humanitarian Pauses Are Revealing Palestinians 'Don't Like Us But They Don't Like Hamas Either'

There is a 'dialogue' with the United States about Gaza's governing future, says Michael Herzog

Published 11/12/23 01:57 PM ET|Updated 5 hr ago

Zachary Leeman

themessenger.com · November 12, 2023

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog claimed that recently approved humanitarian pauses in Gaza are showing that Palestinians don't support Hamas.

The humanitarian pauses comprise four hour breaks in Israeli strikes on Gaza during which civilians can travel out of the north where the heaviest fighting is, as well as obtain food, water and other supplies.

Herzog told Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream that two roads have been secured so that civilians can travel from northern Gaza, where the heaviest fighting is, to the south.

He claimed 200,000 people have utilized the roads, which he sees as a lack of support for Hamas — though he didn't specifically address the violence they would have to deal with if they opted to stay where they are

"They don't like us but they don't like Hamas either," he said.

View post on Twitter

Michael Herzog speaks during Israel's Independence Day Reception, hosted by the Embassy of Israel to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C.Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Herzog insisted that Israel does not want to govern Gaza after the conflict with Hamas is done, but noted that if Palestinian Authority is to take control again, they need a major "reform."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, reiterated on Saturday that Israel would "continue to control security" in Gaza after the war. Israel does not plan to govern or supply basic services, he said.

Herzog said there is a current "dialogue" with the United States about what Gaza's government will look like after the war.

"We understand it is our position that Palestinians will have to govern themselves. What the exact role of the Palestinian Authority is remains to be seen because everybody understands that the PA in its current composition, they can hardly govern Ramallah, so certainly not Gaza," the ambassador said.

themessenger.com · November 12, 2023

5. Battle Lines Are Drawn as the Israel-Hamas War Spills Onto US Campuses

Excerpts:

At the Washington rally at Freedom Plaza, participants toted signs demanding a ceasefire and issued loud chants referring to “Genocide Joe” – president Joe Biden, who has stood firmly with Israel.

An image of Malcolm X adorned a sign promoting “Free Palestine.” It bore this Malcolm X quote: “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has freedom.”

Another protester sported a “Good Trouble” T–shirt, a famous line from the Selma marcher and late civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis.

And a protester held up a cardboard placard demanding “Cease Fire Now” while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned “Protect Trans Kids.”

“Would you like a Communist analysis?” asked a young man named Raja, who would not give his name but said he had Mexican roots and came on a crowded bus from New Jersey. His flier for the Progressive Labor Party was remarkably balanced. It found fault with the “imperialist ties” of both Israel and Hamas.

How long will it all last? Palestinian-Israeli conflicts are freighted with the heavy burdens of history. They rarely find common ground except in one other way.

Both sides will bury their dead.

Battle Lines Are Drawn as the Israel-Hamas War Spills Onto US Campuses

The pro-Palestinian side embodies a 'woke' movement while Israel backers fend off ugly attacks

Published 11/12/23 05:00 AM ET|Updated 11 hr ago

Richard Leiby

themessenger.com · November 12, 2023

They have been denounced by politicians, banned from campus, linked to terrorism, called baby killers, and otherwise marginalized.

It’s not easy being pro-Palestine on campus.

They have been insulted, assaulted, endured death threats, called baby killers, and otherwise marginalized.

It’s not easy being pro-Israel on campus.

The ugly similarities reflect the war between Hamas and Israel, which has now raged for over a month. In some ways the battle has been transplanted from the Middle East to colleges nationwide.

But when it comes to protests, the pro-Palestine mobilization has far outpaced the more muted Jewish activism, drawing on a fairly recent – and vehement – student network that has cooked a complex issue into a stew of liberal causes.

In that wider movement, students rail against colonialism, imperialism and racism and sexism, and support indigenous people’s rights and LGBTQ tolerance. The massive protests that have roiled campuses resemble none since perhaps the Iraq War and, before that, Vietnam.

It is a lopsided protest movement in terms of participants: The Jewish side is outnumbered. They also have seen an enormous rise in anti-Semitic incidents, the ADL reported. For Jews, the pro-Palestine movement has created not just unease but also fear, they say – and a reluctance to show and practice their religion in public.

The Palestinian side argues it has been repressed on some campuses. It draws support from some 200 chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine – an organization whose causes are not just anti-Israel but also anti- U.S. (Israel’s patron). But it has opened itself to severe criticism that it went too far by praising the terrorist group Hamas, which is dedicated to wiping out the Jewish state, for its Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel.

On Friday, Columbia University suspended SJP and another pro-Palestinian group, Jewish Voice for Peace, saying they violated campus policy by holding an unauthorized event that included "threatening rhetoric and intimidation."

Demonstrators participate in a candlelight vigil organized by NYU students in support of Palestinians in Washington Square Park in New York City on October 17, 2023.Alex Kent/AFP via Getty Images

A colonialist narrative

"The left feels it is championing the dispossessed. Palestinian oppression fits a colonialist narrative,” Baruch Weiss, an attorney who has handled campus anti-semitism cases, told The Messenger. "But now the movement has gone from supporting a Palestinian homeland to supporting murder."

Everywhere in higher and lower education, and in between, Jews are targets; Muslims too.

The Department of Education went so far as to issue a statement last week aimed at colleges and universities urging condemnation of “hatred and violence,” and reminding officials to protect the civil rights of all students, including those “who are or are perceived to be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, or Palestinian.”

“SJP is just one organizing factor,” explains Michael Lustig, president emeritus of the board of Columbia Barnard Hillel. ”It is a driving force behind campus unrest. But the Palestinian cause is naively linked to a lot of progressive causes.”

The Columbia Daily Spectator student newspaper reported on a controversy involving the head of a club it described as “for queer women and non-binary people run by students of color.” The student posted her contention that “white Jewish people are today and always have been the oppressors of all brown people.”

“Woke has gone crazy, spun out of control,” says a mother whose college-age Jewish child joined an SJP chapter. “The woke movement is all about the underdog, the powerless.”

But now, she said, it is “brainwashing” students into blindly supporting an anti-israel narrative. Her child’s support for SJP is no longer discussed at home, to keep peace. (The mother declined to be identified, citing privacy.)

A protester appeared to wave an image of a swastika during a pro-Palestine rally in New York on Oct. 8, 2023.Stuart Meissner/X

As in the Sixties there are battle lines being drawn, as the classic song went, with our screens filled with wrenching scenes of bombings and devastation in Gaza and the deaths of children. Worldwide, this has generated sympathy for civilians caught in the crossfire and calls for a cease fire. But Israelis and their many supporters will never forgive Hamas’ heinous slaughter – which also included the deaths of children – that sparked the war.

Both sides claim the moral high ground. Both sides talk of war crimes and genocide.

Testifying to a rise in anti-Semitic hatred

A House Judiciary Committee hearing last week on campus free-speech included pro-Israel witnesses such as Amanda Silberstein, who attends Cornell. “My campus has been defaced with graffiti with phrases such as ‘F*** Israel’ and ‘Zionism = genocide,’” she testified.

She also described repugnant insults on campus social media: “Imagine that you frequently attend Jewish community events and Shabbat dinners on campus. Then imagine scrolling on your phone to discover that a fellow student wants to ‘shoot up’ the kosher dining hall, and instructs others to ‘gang rape all Jew pig women’ on campus,” Silberstein said,

The student pro-Palestine movement is firm in its conviction that it is seeing a U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, where 10,000 people have died – tough the organization Genocide Watch has labeled the Hamas attack, which killed 1,400, both a war crime and act of genocide..

Inviting controversy, SJP has used the image of a hang-glider in some of its manifestos. (A hang glider was used in the attack on southern Israel.) The national SJP group also issued a “Day of Resistance Toolkit” to foment campus protests, celebrating the Hamas attack against “the Zionist settler society,” and saying “glory to our resistance, to our martyrs, and to our steadfast resistance.”

The slaughter of civilians is not mentioned.

Photos exhibited on empty seats in the Smolarz Auditorium at Tel Aviv University on Oct. 22, 2023, show the more than 1,000 people abducted, missing or killed in the Hamas attack on Israel. Leon Neal/Getty Images)Leon Neal/Getty Images

Many SJP campus chapters have weighed in – for example, George Washington University’s SJP posted on X (Twitter): “A settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.”

Rejecting “From the River to the Sea”

Such statements have infuriated some college officials and politicians across the spectrum. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called on Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to deport “any foreign national – especially any alien on a student visa – that has expressed support for Hamas and its murderous attacks on Israel. These fifth-columnists have no place in the United States.”

Pro-Palestinian groups protest at Harvard University on Oct. 14, 2023. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged Florida universities to shutter chapters of SJP. Big law firms say they won’t hire students who signed on to manifestos that support Hamas. Wealthy donors to some schools have promised to suspend giving in response to student support for what they consider terrorism. Brandeis kicked SJP off campus.

Dozens of Democrats in Congress signed a statement this week opposing a widespread campus chant of pro-Palestinian protestors. "We reject the use of the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ -- a phrase used by many, including Hamas, as a rallying cry for the destruction of the State of Israel and genocide of the Jewish people.”

SJP says it has been smeared and misunderstood, and its statements taken out of context and twisted by politicians and pro-Israel groups. SJP is under attack from “this empire” because of “the historic and ongoing legacy of the student movement,” to quote a national SJP leader who addressed a Nov. 4 rally that brought tens of thousands of pro-Palestine and anti-war protesters together in D.C.

While SJP rallies have made Jews fear for their safety, the pro-Palestine movement has its own grievances about being discouraged from practicing free speech on campus. The University of Arizona chapter postponed a planned rally, citing fears for their members’ safety after a letter was issued by the university president.

The letter points out the obvious: ‘’The national [SJP] organization has made statements endorsing the actions of Hamas in Israel, which are, of course, antithetical to our university's values.”

The advisor to the University of Arizona SJP chapter, Maha Nassar, told The Messenger: “The Palestinians and Arabs are having a lot of fear -- fear of being sanctioned or doxxed for their protest. You can't speak up for Palestinian rights.”

She acknowledged that some of the early language supporting the incursion was “Intemperate, spur of the moment. They are students.”

“This is a very generational shift and is rooted in the understanding of the culture of oppression. They have a social justice outlook.”

Calls for a ceasefire and support for Malcolm X

At the Washington rally at Freedom Plaza, participants toted signs demanding a ceasefire and issued loud chants referring to “Genocide Joe” – president Joe Biden, who has stood firmly with Israel.

An image of Malcolm X adorned a sign promoting “Free Palestine.” It bore this Malcolm X quote: “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has freedom.”

Another protester sported a “Good Trouble” T–shirt, a famous line from the Selma marcher and late civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis.

And a protester held up a cardboard placard demanding “Cease Fire Now” while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned “Protect Trans Kids.”

“Would you like a Communist analysis?” asked a young man named Raja, who would not give his name but said he had Mexican roots and came on a crowded bus from New Jersey. His flier for the Progressive Labor Party was remarkably balanced. It found fault with the “imperialist ties” of both Israel and Hamas.

How long will it all last? Palestinian-Israeli conflicts are freighted with the heavy burdens of history. They rarely find common ground except in one other way.

Both sides will bury their dead.

themessenger.com · November 12, 2023

6. Creation of an Independent Inspector General outside of the DoD

Creation of an Independent Inspector General outside of the DoD

https://www.change.org/p/creation-of-an-independent-inspector-general-outside-of-the-dod?

Why this petition matters

Started by

Ryan Sweazey

change.org

The DoD IG system consistently fails in its role to protect military members from reprisal and fails to impartially investigate complaint allegations brought forward at high risk by members of the DoD. Join us in demanding that the United States Congress disband the DoD IG and create a new Inspector General wholly independent from the Department of Defense.

As advocates for service members who have served anywhere from 3 to 30+ years in the military, we’ve helped hundreds of people who have suffered from a corrupt, often apathetic, and sometimes even abusive Department of Defense Inspector General system.

After over two years of advocacy for over 300 members of the DoD who are victims of numerous violations of federal law, DoD policy, and service regulations, we conclude the following:

1. Personnel assigned to positions in IG billets are inadequately trained/equipped to carry out their duties,

2. IGs within the DoD cannot exercise true independence since they are nearly always subordinate to the commander of the organization they oversee, and,

3. Due to the low likelihood of success married with the high personal/professional risk a complainant assumes, there is veritably zero incentive to file an IG complaint.

Not only are there no incentives to file IG complaints, in fact, the risks of seeking justice through the IG as currently organized as a subordinate element within the DoD far outweigh any potential benefits. These risks include reprisal and retaliation, ostracism, a total violation of one’s personal and professional privacy, isolation, embarrassment, and deteriorating physical and mental health.

Because the body charged to inspect the DoD is a subordinate element in the DoD, perpetrators are not held accountable and, more importantly, no substantive recompense is afforded to victims. Even in the rare circumstances in which an allegation is substantiated, the amount of time required for that substantiation (in many cases, years after the offense) means that no meaningful recompense can be offered.

United States Congress: We know you care about your uniformed Service Members; it is now time to demonstrate that care! No one who serves in the United States Military should fear to file a complaint if they have been a victim of a crime, harassment, bullying, abuse, etc.

Sign now to demand that the United States Congress protect United States Service Members.

change.org

7. Saudis and 8 More Arab Countries Block Anti-Israel Measures at Arab Summit

https://unitedwithisrael-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/unitedwithisrael.org/saudis-help-block-anti-israel-measures-at-arab-summit/amp/?utm

Saudis and 8 More Arab Countries Block Anti-Israel Measures at Arab Summit

Elisheva Aarons

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (Saudi Press Agency via AP)

Riyadh joins other moderate Arab states in rejecting a call to isolate the Jewish state over its war against Hamas.

By JNS

Saudi Arabia on Saturday helped to block a bid by Arab and Muslim countries to militarily and economically isolate Israel, according to Israeli media reports.

Most of the states present at an Arab League and Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) emergency summit in Riyadh focusing on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza sought to impose five measures against the Jewish state, Channel 12 reported.

The demands were to prevent the transfer of U.S. military equipment to Israel from American bases in the Middle East region; suspend all diplomatic and economic contacts with Israel; cut back oil sales to the United States over Washington’s support for Israel; stop Israeli air traffic over the skies of the Gulf and send a joint delegation to the United States, Europe and Russia to push for a ceasefire.

The resolution to adopt these measures was blocked by Israel’s Abraham accords partner states the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. They were joined by Egypt and Jordan, two countries with long-standing peace agreements with Israel. Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Djibouti also opposed the measures.

Israeli-Saudi ties were thawing before Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Gaza-area communities, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 200 people to Gaza as hostages. The war has apparently slowed, but not derailed, efforts to normalize relations between Jerusalem and Riyadh.

Israel and the northwest African country of Mauritania had diplomatic relations from 1999-2009 but they were frozen during the Gaza war of 2009. Djibouti, located on the African Horn, never had diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

An Iranian demand that the Israel Defense Forces be designated as a terror organization was also rejected.

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8. Anti-Defamation League Maps Jewish Peace Rallies With Antisemitic Attacks

Please go to the link to view the graphics and maps.

https://theintercept.com/2023/11/11/palestine-israel-protests-ceasefire-antisemitic/?utm

Anti-Defamation League Maps Jewish Peace Rallies With Antisemitic Attacks

American Jews have mobilized several thousand Jews across the U.S. to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. ADL calls these Jewish organizations “hate groups.”

Micah Lee

November 11 2023, 6:00 a.m.

The Intercept · by Micah Lee · November 11, 2023

On October 27, several thousand Jews and their allies shut down the main terminal of Grand Central Station during rush hour in New York City, demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, the activists at the peaceful sit-in wore black T-shirts that read “Not In Our Name.” “It’s the largest sit-in protest the city has seen in over two decades,” Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman said. About 400 people were arrested, including rabbis.

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A post shared by Jewish Voice for Peace (@jewishvoiceforpeace)

The Anti-Defamation League has classified the event — and dozens of other protests led by Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow — as “anti-Israel,” according to an analysis by The Intercept, and added them to their database documenting rising antisemitism across the U.S.

“We’re seeing a genuine rise in antisemitic attacks and white nationalist, white supremacist, antisemitic hate and violence,” Eva Borgwardt, the national spokesperson for IfNotNow, told me. “When white nationalism is on the rise, to cheapen the accusation of antisemitism by applying it to Palestinian rights advocates, including Jews, is incredibly irresponsible and dangerous.”

Since Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack on southern Israel where Palestinian militants killed over 1,400 Israelis — most of them civilians — and took over 200 hostages, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group that tracks antisemitism and extremism, has been keeping track of the alarming rise of antisemitic incidents.

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In 2020, over 100 progressive organizations — including the Movement for Black Lives, Democratic Socialists of America, and Center for Constitutional Rights — signed an open letter asking the progressive community to not partner with ADL because the group “has a history and ongoing pattern of attacking social justice movements led by communities of color, queer people, immigrants, Muslims, Arabs, and other marginalized groups, while aligning itself with police, right-wing leaders, and perpetrators of state violence.” Now, ADL is targeting a new group of people: progressive Jews.

Israel’s indiscriminate massacre of civilians in Gaza — killing over 10,000 Palestinians so far in the densely populated Gaza Strip, including over 4,000 children — has led to the largest anti-war protests in the U.S. since the Iraq War, including a surge of renewed activism from progressive Jewish groups. Israel has bombed Gaza nonstop since the October 7 attack, ordered the relocation of over 1 million civilians, launched a ground invasion, and is blocking food, water, medical supplies, and fuel from making it into Gaza, triggering a humanitarian crisis and leading to what legal scholars call a genocide against Palestinians.

While the ADL told The Intercept that it does not consider the ceasefire protests “antisemitic,” just “anti-Israel,” its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, has said otherwise. After several thousand Jews and their allies marched on the U.S. Capitol on October 18 calling for a ceasefire, ADL DC released a statement equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Greenblatt piled on, calling the groups that organized the protest, including Jewish Voice for Peace, “hate groups.”

We long have said that these are hate groups, the photo inverse of white supremacists. More here: https://t.co/cByHGczEnO

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) October 18, 2023

Roughly 500 Jews, including 25 rabbis, were arrested at the Capitol protest.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jewish Voice for Peace NYC (@jvpny)

“It is important to note that these are radical fringe Jewish organizations and being Jewish does not exempt an organization or a person from being antisemitic,” an ADL spokesperson told The Intercept.

A 2021 poll of Jewish voters, conducted by the nonpartisan Jewish Electorate Institute, shows that pro-Palestinian views in the American Jewish community are far from fringe. At the time, 25 percent of the Jews surveyed believed Israel was an apartheid state, 34 percent believed that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians was similar to racism in the U.S., and 22 percent thought that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians. These numbers are even starker for younger American Jews. This poll doesn’t reflect changes in how American Jews feel after Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack against Israel, or Israel’s subsequent massacre of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Another poll, conducted by Data for Progress after the Israel–Gaza war broke out, shows that two-thirds of American voters as a whole support a ceasefire in Gaza, including 80 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of Republicans, and 57 percent of independents — despite President Joe Biden and most members of Congress, in both parties, opposing it.

Like much of the American Jewish community, progressive Jews who are protesting the genocide in Gaza are also grieving loved ones who were murdered by Hamas on October 7. “In the days after the [Hamas] attack, people on [IfNotNow’s] staff were finding out that they had relatives and friends, and those people’s kids, who were murdered on October 7,” Borgwardt said. “This was extremely close to home and painful.”

ADL’s “Stand With Israel” Map

On October 24, ADL published a press release noting a “nearly 400 percent increase in preliminary antisemitic incidents” across the U.S. since October 7, compared to the same period last year. The source for that statistic was ADL’s own dataset, published as an interactive map, of “Antisemitic Incidents and Anti-Israel Rallies in the U.S. Since Hamas’s Attack on Israel.”

While ADL doesn’t distribute its raw data in a usable format, when you load the map in a web browser, behind the scenes your browser downloads a copy of it. By monitoring what my browser downloaded while loading the map, I was able to extract a copy of the data and save it as a spreadsheet. The raw data is full of duplicates. After deduplicating it, I ended up with a spreadsheet with 1,163 “antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel rallies.” ADL continuously updates the map, and the data I’m working with was last updated on November 9.

The data plotted in the map is split into the categories of “Assault,” “Harassment,” “Vandalism,” “Anti-Israel Rallies,” and “Anti-Israel Rallies w. Support for Terror.”

The assault, harassment, and vandalism categories, which made up 46 percent of the points on the map, are full of alarming evidence of the dramatic rise in antisemitism and white supremacy that the U.S. has been seeing, particularly since Donald Trump’s 2016 election. For example, according to ADL’s data:

On October 8 in Salt Lake City, Utah, someone called in a bomb threat to a synagogue.
On October 13 in Beverly Hills, California, someone yelled “kike” at a visibly Jewish family taking on walk on Shabbat.
On October 18 in Manhattan, New York, someone found the words “Kill the Jews” written on the wall of a subway station.
On October 23 in Washington, D.C., someone drew a swastika at an elementary school.
On October 25 in White Plains, New York, a “car featuring a swastika and a Palestinian flag drove near a vigil for abducted Israelis.”
On October 28 in Knoxville, Tennessee, members of the antisemitic hate group Goyim Defense League distributed flyers saying “Every single aspect of the LGBTQ+ movement is Jewish.”
On November 3 in Seattle, Washington, a synagogue “received a suspicious letter containing white powder.”

The remaining 54 percent of the points on the map are Palestine solidarity protests which ADL dubs “anti-Israel rallies” (39 percent) and “anti-Israel rallies with support for terror” (15 percent). At these rallies, protesters have been calling for a ceasefire, the end of unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel, and the end of the genocide in Gaza.

“If an event is marked only as an ‘anti-Israel rally,’ then we do not consider it antisemitic,” the ADL spokesperson said.

Police detain demonstrators at a ceasefire rally organized by Jewish Voice for Peace in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 18, 2023.

Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

By scouring the social media accounts of national and regional Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow groups, I was able to match rallies led by Jewish groups with the dates and locations of dozens of the rallies listed on ADL’s map — making up around 10 percent of all the rallies listed. ADL declined to provide a full dataset, so it’s possible that for some of the “anti-Israel rallies” organized by Jews I found, the corresponding ADL datapoints are actually referring to different events that happened in the same cities on the same days.

ADL confirmed to The Intercept that several massive Jewish protests, including the march on the U.S. Capitol on October 18 and the sit-in at Grand Central Station on October 27, are included in its map.

Here are a few of the ceasefire and anti-genocide protests that American Jews have organized since Israel started its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, also confirmed by ADL:

On October 13, a group of 15 Jews occupied the office of Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., in Seattle demanding that she support a ceasefire, and that the U.S. stop arming Israel while the country has “openly declared their intention to commit war crimes.” Six were arrested.

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A post shared by Jewish Voice for Peace Seattle (@jvpseattle)

On October 16, over 1,000 Jews and their allies blockaded entrances to the White House, demanding that Biden support a ceasefire. In a tweet, IfNotNow stated, “We are also here raising our voices for our Israeli siblings — while burying their loved ones and awaiting news of those kidnapped — are screaming at their government for the bombs to stop.” At least 30 were arrested.

BREAKING: American Jews and allies have now blocked 4+ doors to the White House. We’re prepared to put our bodies in the way of more slaughter — we’re ready to stay here until Biden forces a ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/SlcIPuijRs

— IfNotNow? (@IfNotNowOrg) October 16, 2023

On October 23, hundreds of Jews protested outside the office of Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., in New Orleans demanding that he support a ceasefire, and a group of Jews occupied his office.

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ADL’s dataset does not include dozens of similar Jewish-organized ceasefire protests I found on social media. For example, on October 13, thousands of Jews shut down the street outside the Brooklyn home of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., demanding that he support a ceasefire in Gaza. Dozens of Jews were arrested, including rabbis and the descendants of Holocaust survivors. And on October 19, Jews protested outside the Los Angeles home of Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, who is also Jewish, demanding that she support a ceasefire. Neither of these protests, along with dozens of others like them, appear on ADL’s map.

“Support for Terror”

The Intercept also found some rallies organized by American Jews that ADL appeared to classify as “supporting terror.”

“Regarding our criteria for ‘w. support for terror:’ we include in this category when rally-goers use language or imagery that justifies or celebrates the Hamas massacre on October 7; there is rhetoric supportive of armed confrontation with Israel; or the flag of a U.S.-designated terror organization is identified,” an ADL spokesperson told The Intercept.

When asked specifically if ADL considers the phrase “from the river to the sea” in support of terrorism, the spokesperson said that it did. “In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre of Israelis at the hands of Hamas, we interpreted calls for further Palestinian resistance and efforts to liberate the land, including the phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’ as implicit calls for violence against Israelis and support for Hamas’ actions,” the spokesperson said, “and therefore included rallies where those phrases were used in the category of ‘support for terror.’”

The phrase “from the river to the sea” has long been used in the pro-Palestinian movement to mean that Palestinians should be allowed to live in their homeland as free and equal citizens alongside Israelis. At the same time, Hamas, whose leaders aim to destroy Israel and make Palestine an Islamic nation, has adopted the phrase as slogan, and many Israelis and Jews know it only with the connotation of forced removal of Jews from Israel.

It is also worth noting that, since the October 7 attack, neo-Nazis have been attempting to insert themselves into Palestine solidarity protests — not because they care about Palestinians but because they hate Jews — as reported by Vice. For example, on October 28, roughly 40 members of the neo-Nazi group National Justice Party attempted to hijack a protest in front of the White House where they made antisemitic statements over a PA system; the hundreds of other protesters calling for a ceasefire had nothing to do with them. Likewise, neo-Nazi groups including NSC-131, National Socialist Florida, and White Lives Matter have all used pro-Palestinian language in their recent propaganda attacking Jews.

A Surge in Jewish Activism for Ceasefire and Against Genocide

In a recent episode of “On the Nose,” a podcast hosted by the magazine Jewish Currents, Elena Stein, director of organizing strategy for Jewish Voice for Peace, said that after the Hamas attack it was “immediately clear” that “the lives of Palestinians and Israelis are completely intertwined.” She said that Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism “enact daily horrifying violence against Palestinians” and “doesn’t make Israelis safer either.”

Stein argued that American Jews have an important role in stopping the violence and genocide in Israel and Palestine, and that this is important to protect the lives of both Palestinians and Israelis. “It’s on us — especially those of us here in the U.S. whose government is funding this, is fueling this, is protecting the Israeli apartheid government from accountability at all levels — to stop the complicity that puts Palestinians’ lives in danger every day and also puts Israelis’ lives in direct danger,” she said.

Jewish anti-war activism calling for a ceasefire and against the genocide in Gaza shows no sign of slowing down. On Monday, hundreds of Jews and their allies took over the Statue of Liberty calling for a ceasefire, with a banner saying “Never Again for Anyone.”

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The Intercept · by Micah Lee · November 11, 2023

9. Ukraine’s counter-offensive has failed for now – the West needs a new plan

Ukraine’s counter-offensive has failed for now – the West needs a new plan

Zelensky's forces have reached deadlock – now is the time to ramp up support

Lewis Page

12 November 2023 • 6:00am

By Matthew Lynn, Liam Halligan, Kate Andrews, Szu Ping Chan, Matt Oliver, Lewis Page, Luke Barr The Telegraph13 min

November 12, 2023

View Original

It’s mud season again in Ukraine, a phenomenon with such significance there that it has a special name: “bezdorizhzhia”, the season of bad roads. The Russians say “rasputitsa”. It’s most severe in the spring, when melting winter ice makes the earth muddy, but it generally happens with the autumn rains too.

Bezdorizhzhia has a paralysing effect on armies, especially armies on the attack. Even tanks, which are specifically designed for off-road mobility and exert much less pressure on the ground than cars or trucks do (the enormous weight of the tank is spread over a much greater area by the tank’s tracks), frequently can’t move off paved roads during mud season.

They often can’t move at all, as paved roads laid across mud country may break up if you drive heavy vehicles on them during bezdorizhzhia.

Most soldiers and most of an army’s supplies move in wheeled vehicles, rather than tracked vehicles such as tanks. Almost all wheeled vehicles are strictly road-bound in mud season and often the rest of the time too. A marching soldier also can’t cross the mud with any ease.

Attacking during mud season, then, is a terrible idea.

The Russian army, reinforcing the impression of incompetence it has given ever since the invasion, is of course mounting a huge attack in the Avdiivka area right now.

Reportedly a third assault wave of 40,000 men is about to be thrown in. Ten days of rain are forecast, with temperatures remaining well above freezing. British military intelligence has already suggested that Russian losses in Avdiivka will be the worst in any operation this year, and that’s saying something.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, under intense international pressure, has sought to give the impression that his army’s counter-offensive has not come to a halt as was strongly suggested by his commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, last week. But despite Zelensky’s upbeat tone, Zaluzhny will certainly not be attacking for the next few weeks unless the weather is unusual: it would be simply throwing his men away.

Bezdorizhzhia doesn’t last into the winter: as it gets cold the rain gives way to snow and the ground becomes firm again. But winter brings its own problems. Again, it favours the defender over the attacker, especially in eastern Europe. “General Winter” was famously always the deadliest Russian commander that French and German invaders had to face.

Zaluzhny can’t attack seriously through the winter, it’s that simple. The counter-offensive has halted.

Far from a Blitzkrieg

All across the Western world this is being treated as some kind of failure by the Ukrainians. It’s unfortunate that many Western commentators, often former military officers, have previously given it as their opinion that Western tanks, used correctly, would enable a brilliant Blitzkrieg-style breakthrough and end the war in a matter of weeks.

A Blitzkrieg-style breakthrough hasn't quite materialised in Ukraine Credit: Efrem Lukatsky/The Associated Press

They argued that Russia’s huge, well-equipped tank forces failed in the initial invasion because the Russians were doing it all wrong: they didn’t know how to coordinate their tanks, infantry and artillery in “combined arms” warfare the way Western soldiers can.

Western tanks have been promised to Ukraine: the German Leopard, the US Abrams and British Challengers. But the actual delivery took a long time. Just 87 Leopards and 14 Challengers had reached Ukraine as of August and precisely zero Abrams. Denmark and the Netherlands’ contributions won’t arrive until next year.

Even so, a hundred tanks is a lot of tanks: it’s enough for an armoured brigade. The Ukrainians also had lots of decent Soviet-pattern ones. They had managed to pull a lot of troops out of the line to be rested, re-equipped and trained – often by Western instructors from the same armies that produced the confident ex-military commentators. They had the division-sized armoured force that Western officers had said could win the war.

Yet the mighty Ukrainian armoured spearhead has advanced just 10 miles. Far from a Blitzkrieg, this has been more like erosion than lightning.

This is uncomfortable for the Western military commentators. One of two things must be the case: either they were wrong and tanks, even with Western training and tactics, are no longer a decisive weapon; or the Ukrainians, despite being trained by Western armies, must be doing something wrong.

Nobody likes admitting that they might be wrong, so Western military and ex-military opinion (not usually expressed in public, but nonetheless fairly universal and stated in writing) is that the Ukrainians have been doing it wrong and this is the real reason they haven’t defeated the Russians.

The suggestion is that if Western officers had been given an armoured division they would have done much better with it.

Even if one is an armoured warfare true believer, it’s still hard to picture a Western general really doing much better than Zaluzhny and his colleagues. In order to carry out a classic Blitzkrieg operation, after all, one must first get past the enemy’s front lines. This is extremely difficult to do if they are heavily manned, heavily fortified and protected by deep minefields and lots of heavy weapons.

Heinz Guderian, the German general generally credited with carrying out the first Blitzkrieg in the assault on France in 1940, was up against the heavily fortified Maginot Line. He solved his problem by simply going around it through Luxembourg and Belgium. It’s not usually possible for a defender to have strong fortifications everywhere.

Russia today certainly doesn’t have strong fortifications everywhere. The Russia-Ukraine border all the way from the battle front to Belarus is only lightly protected.

However, Ukraine can mount only minor, semi-deniable operations on Russian soil and cannot use any Western equipment in them, because that has been a condition of Western support.

Even the battle front itself from the border to Donetsk does not have to be very strongly held by the Russians, as Ukrainians breaking through that part of the lines would have the Russian border in front of them, where they would have to stop and the Russians wouldn’t. Any Ukrainian attack there would probably be a feint.

Then, from Zaporizhzhia to Crimea, the front line is along the Dnipro river, a formidable obstacle.

That just leaves a hundred miles of front, from Zaporizhzhia to Donetsk, where the Ukrainians are not blocked by the river and can drive for the Azov Sea. If they could get there they would have cut the Russian army in two, leaving the Crimean half totally dependent on the Kerch bridges for supply – bridges that would then be within range of some Ukrainian weapons. The war would be all but won.

But knowing where the Ukrainian attack has to come means that the Russians can build their Maginot Line – actually called the Surovikin Line – and the Ukrainians have to attack straight into it. Even Heinz Guderian might not have made much progress in this kind of situation.

Ukraine is hampered by the West's refusal to let its weapons breach Russian territory Credit: Libkos/The Associated Press

But they can’t do any of these things because we won’t let them.They could mount a major attack across the almost undefended eastern border, or go around the eastern end of the battle front Guderian-style and roll the Russians up.

Both these options would force the Russians to pull troops and guns and construction effort out of the Surovikin Line. The Ukrainians could mount their real assault somewhere between Donetsk and Russia, ending their drive to the Azov on Russia’s coast. But they can’t do any of these things because we won’t let them.

First we forbid the Ukrainians from operating on Russian territory (or anyway, using our weapons to do so), which forces them to attack along a very limited front. Second, just to make sure they really have no chance of success, we dithered for months before agreeing to supply tanks and then took more months to actually send them, just to make sure that the Russians had lots of time to build the Surovikin Line.

Bluntly, there has been no Ukrainian military failure here. We in the West have forced them to fight with their hands tied behind their backs. The fact that they have made any progress at all is impressive.

Still, it remains a fact that the offensive is stopped for the winter. And it’s also pretty clear that if nothing changes, next year will be a lot like this year: grinding, attritional warfare.

“There will be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,” General Zaluzhny admitted last week. “We have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.”

Putin’s diminishing power

The prospect of stalemate, bizarrely, is seen by some in the West as a reason to reduce or cut off military support.

The thinking seems to be: well, we’ve spent a lot of money and given you lots of equipment with which our military men say they could have defeated the Russians and you’ve totally failed to defeat them, so we’re not going to give you any more. We’ll just let you run out of ammunition and die, and allow the same criminals who raped and murdered and tortured at Bucha and elsewhere, the same regime that steals children en masse and rounds people up for disappearance into the gulags, to take your country from you.

And we’ll just hope that we’re not next: that Russia won’t rest and rearm and then move in on somewhere else.

However, cutting support doesn’t make sense even if you don’t care at all about Ukraine. Even if we care only about ourselves and our own safety and want that safety at the lowest possible cost, we should keep sending aid.

As a few of the more perceptive commentators have pointed out, spending money on military aid for Ukraine is the most cost-effective defence spending anyone in Nato has ever done.

As long as he faces opposition in Ukraine, Putin’s threat to anyone else is shrinking Credit: GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/AFP

The Ukrainians have destroyed the Russian army as it existed in 2022: its tough, volunteer “kontraktniki” contract soldiers are gone, as are all the better classes of conscripts and all of Russia’s best tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces.

Putin is reduced to sending the dregs of his jails to war in ancient vehicles rescued from the scrapheap. Russian air and sea power, too, have been badly mauled – or else exposed as missing or ineffectual, in not a few cases. Russia’s entire ability to make war is tied up: even basic defence capabilities in places other than Ukraine have been degraded.

As long as the Ukrainians are fighting, Vladimir Putin’s threat to anyone else is hugely diminished. Westerners are spending small percentages of our normal defence budgets on Ukraine assistance in order to be more or less entirely safe from Russia. It would be madness to stop doing so, no matter how long the stalemate might last. As long as the Ukrainians are willing to fight, we should back them.

Sliding into a stalemate

Even still, a stalemate is undesirable. Ukraine will run out of men before Russia does and the more people of working age it loses, the harder it will be to rebuild its society and economy after the war.

The risk is there that large numbers of refugees taken in across Europe may not want to return home and this problem worsens with every Ukrainian killed or maimed and every Russian bomb, missile or shell fired. We need Ukraine back as a strong ally and the breadbasket of Europe as it was, not as a shattered, depopulated wasteland.

Given that the stalemate is our fault, we Westerners should end it. This is the more so as it would involve no difficult or dangerous action by us.

The clue is in General Zaluzhny’s remark: Ukraine has reached a level of technology that puts it in a stalemate. We have sent tanks, artillery, and armoured vehicles. We have sent missiles of certain types, but only Britain and France have dared to send long-range precision strike missiles – and we only had the Storm Shadow / SCALP to send.

The Storm Shadow / SCALP (“Système de Croisière Autonome à Longue Portée”) is a somewhat modified version of a French 1980s-vintage runway-buster weapon called APACHE. We in Britain like to claim it was jointly developed with France, but it is really just an APACHE with a British bunker-busting warhead that doesn’t work terribly well (as colleagues of mine in the bomb-disposal world discovered during the Iraq invasion).

As one would expect with such an old weapon, it’s not all that effective. In particular, being a subsonic cruise weapon – in other words, a small robotic jet aeroplane – it is relatively easy to detect and shoot down. Its makers nowadays like to claim that it has some kind of “stealth” attributes but this appears to be no more than marketing fluff.

The Ukrainians have managed to make Storm Shadow strikes on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, but they had to carry out various special-forces raids and other attacks beforehand in order to take down Russian air defences so that the missiles could fly in.

They have not managed to put the Crimean airbase at Saky out of commission and the Storm Shadow is simply not delivering the effect it theoretically should: that of putting all Russian-occupied Ukraine under Zelensky’s guns.

Despite the fact that the Kerch bridges ought to be well within the Storm Shadow’s reach, they are still standing – allowing supplies and munitions to flow into Crimea and the “land bridge” of Russian-held territory south of the Surovikin Line. It’s generally thought that the Storm Shadow’s British bunker-buster warhead, backronymed to be dubbed BROACH (“Bomb, Royal Ordnance, Augmented Charge”), can’t do bridges.

In any event, by this point we can say that Storm Shadow isn’t going to break the stalemate for Ukraine. Nor is the obsolete, short-ranged M39 version of the US Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which Joe Biden has grudgingly and belatedly sent.

This is a supersonic ballistic missile, which is much harder to shoot down. But the M39 cannot reach Saky, Sevastopol or Kerch and its cluster warhead cannot do bridges or hardened targets.

Breaking the deadlock

What the Ukrainians need is one of the proper, full fat versions of ATACMS that followed the original M39: one with a unitary warhead rather than cluster submunitions, meaning that it can take out concrete structures.

Joe Biden is afraid to send real ATACMS because he thinks the Ukrainians would use it to take out the Kerch bridges, once and for all. He’s afraid that this might lead Putin to nuclear escalation. Olaf Scholz is refusing to send Germany’s Taurus missile – much like Storm Shadow, but with a better warhead that can do bridges – for the same reason.

Appeasement is in the air. Biden, Scholz and their school of thought do not want to give the appearance of supplying a war-changing weapon because they are afraid it would make Vladimir Putin angry.

The arrival of American missiles helped the Ukrainians drive back Russian forces during the 2022 counter-offensive Credit: Anadolu Agency

But this timid attitude isn’t terribly logical. War-changing weapons have been sent before.

The counter-offensive of 2022, in which the Russians were driven back across the southern Dnipro river, was a huge success because of the arrival of another American missile, the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS), mostly fired from the Himars vehicle. This can make precision strikes to ranges of more than 70km, much further than anything the Ukrainians had before. The Russians had not realised that the Ukrainians (or friends of theirs) had a way to locate all their field headquarters.

Multiple headquarters and other important targets like ammo dumps were duly taken out by volleys of GMLRS. The Russian army west of the Dnipro fell into disarray and the Ukrainians pushed it back across the river. A US-supplied weapon had changed the war.

Similarly, it was argued that sending Western tanks would provoke Putin. It took Britain’s offer of Challengers to show Biden and Scholz that sending tanks was safe.

Again, it was widely thought that supplying Storm Shadow missiles would lead to the Kerch bridges falling and Russian headquarters across the theatre being pummelled as the weapon’s limitations were not widely known. Yet the sending of Storm Shadow did not provoke Putin to anything more than bluster.

We should stop listening to the argument that the Ukrainians are fighting wrongly. Yes, Western tank armies have beaten Soviet-equipped ones easily in Iraq and Kuwait but this was not because they had Western tanks and Western officers: they won because they had total dominance of the air and thus could use precision strike weapons anywhere in theatre.

We should give the same capability to Ukraine, firstly in the form of proper full-fat ATACMS and then by making sure that the coming F-16 fighter jets are equipped with everything up to and including the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Munition (JASSM), which is everything that Storm Shadow is supposed to be and more.

It’s time to cease taking counsel of our fears and end the stalemate in Ukraine, by taking steps no more aggressive than those we have already taken.

The West needs to get this war wrapped up, so that we can look elsewhere.

10. With American patriotism in steep decline, veterans discuss the importance of honoring those who've served

I saw a comment on social media on one of the listservs to which I belong that said we are trying to create a military that is attractive to the demographic with the last propensity to serve and by doing so we are alienating the demographics most likely to serve.

With American patriotism in steep decline, veterans discuss the importance of honoring those who've served | Fox News

foxnews.com · by Kendall Tietz Fox News

At a time when American patriotism is in steep decline, military recruitment is falling and veteran suicide is 1.5x times higher than that of the U.S. population, a few highly decorated veterans discussed the state of the American military and what Americans can do to support veterans on Veterans Day.

Commander Kirk Lippold a retired USN Commanding Officer of the USS Cole, Lieutenant Colonel John Stark who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a diplomat at the Department of State and Colonel Pete Metzger who served twenty-five years as a US Marine Officer, in the CIA and as the Marine Military Aide to President Ronald Reagan, spoke with Fox News Digital about the importance of patriotism and showing support for U.S. veterans.

"Veterans Day, that's the one true holiday that recognizes the service of everyone who chose to serve their nation," Lippold told Fox News Digital.

He explained that one of the most important aspects about the military is that the people who choose to serve recognize their duty to a cause that is bigger than themselves. But, he said that attitude is not valued by society in the same way it used to be.

HOMELESS VETERAN WALKS 30 MILES TO FIND A JOB: ‘I’M A. MAN ON A MISSION'

"These days, in a society that, in many people's view, has become more self-absorbed and more concerned with the 'What's in it for me' … the military is the exact opposite," Lippold said. "It's more about 'What can I become part of to contribute to the better good of my nation?'"

Lippold said the key to fostering patriotism in the country comes from educating the American public about how when young men and women raise their right hand and choose a life of consequence in service to the nation, they understand what that entails.

Lt. Robert Bedford, age 103, is honored with other area veterans at the 2022 West Tennessee State Veterans Cemetery Day Event Friday, Nov. 11, 2022, in Memphis, Tenn. Navy Lt. Bedford, is one of the few remaining World War II D-Day Veterans who is still alive. (Karen Pulfer Focht for Fox News Digital)

"Whether they stay in for four years or 34 years, what they give back in service to our nation," he said. "If the American people understood the sacrifices they make and how they do it, and what a worthwhile and fulfilling career that can be for people to have, more of them would actually serve [and] more of them would be willing to support veterans while they are actively serving within their communities to make sure that their families are being taken care of during those difficult times of deployments."

"It's making Americans aware, especially when the number of people serving is a smaller and smaller percentage of our society," he added. "The importance of that military becomes outsized in their role in defending our democracy and who we are as a country."

Stark pondered the decline in recruitment numbers across different sectors of the military, which he said is indication of his belief that there's a decline in society's ability to raise and bring to the table people who are willing to sacrifice something of themselves for a greater purpose.

"The general trend in society has been to focus on your individual rights and not the group as a whole and that is a shame and veterans feel that," he added. "Some of them take it harder than others, some of them have entire families that have served and their family continues to serve and that is good, but it cannot be that 1% of the population is doing most of the sacrificing."

"It's an absolutely amazing fact that less than on percent of the American public serves in the armed forces" Metzer added. "Everybody wants to outsource it, everybody wants to stand up at a picnic and say thank you, but fewer and fewer people are raising their right hand to serve and we need more of that."

Less than 40% of U.S. adults say they are "extremely proud" to be American, which is down from 55% in January 2001, according to Gallup polling from June, but Lippold argued patriotism was at its true low after the Vietnam War.

HOW TO CELEBRATE VETERANS DAY 2023

"When you look at where it has come since and where we are today, even after those decades that we had, where we were engaged in Afghanistan, Iraq, the American people still love their veterans," he said. "But I think it's a matter of they don't really know: 'How can I contribute besides saying thank you for your service' or showing the flag?"

"I think inherently Americans know the importance of the military, but in some ways they don't know how to give back," he added.

Stark said the message that it is just and right to serve your country and make a sacrifice for something greater than yourself is an idea most people agree with, but they don't agree on what form that service will take.

United States Veteran standing with American flag display in a town park. (iStock)

"There are a lot of people with a lot of ideas on how to get people to sacrifice, to do something for their country, instead of asking their country to do something for them," he said. "But, most of them are doing the reverse at this time."

Stark pointed to the domination of social media among the American youth as a reason why the country is so polarized.

"We don't talk about it too much, but the military and the people that go in it generally support one party over another," he said. "This is not the best way for our society to be balanced. We used to see a more balanced outlook on the military from both sides, and unfortunately, that's changed."

"We need to fix that fast because our enemies will exploit that," he said. "I believe there's already trollers that are working one way or the other to influence people to think one way or another and to polarize us even more. A divided America will not be able to stand against the new challenges that we face in the United States."

All three veterans are involved in CharitiesforVets, which is advised by a board of highly decorated vets. They describe the non-profit as a "consumer reports for veterans charities" that uses a rigorous pass/fail ranking system to rank the efficient of veterans charities.

Lippold explained that oftentimes money allocated to veterans isn't used in the most efficient or effective manner, which CharitiesforVets seeks to do. Each organization on the site falls into the not recommended, recommended or highly recommended category.

LEE GREENWOOD ON THE STATE OF ISRAEL AND HOW TO SUPPORT US MILITARY AND VETERANS AT A TIME OF WAR

The non-profit recently studied the tax returns of over 100 popular veterans charities and found that near one half of the charities, collecting 1.4 billion from donors, are not using the money as promised or as advertised.

In some cases, charities have years worth of donations sitting in reserves rather than going to veterans or advertised programs and in others, more than 75% of incoming donations go to overhead, rather than to veterans or veterans programs.

American war Veterans standing proudly amongst flag memorial in a field. (iStock)

Lippold explained that CharitiesforVets serves as a clearinghouse for veterans' charities to review their tax statements and other documents that the government doesn't have the time or the resources to analyze.

"It really gives the normal civilian out there who wants to somehow thank these veterans for their service to our nation, for the sacrifices they may have made, to be given an opportunity, when they give their hard-earned dollars to veterans-related charities, that it is going to be put to good use," he added.

He explained that there is an opportunity for any organization to demonstrate that they have improved their performance, so they can get into the recommended to highly recommended categories.

"There's always going to be a vehicle for them to be able to kind of protest and say, 'I can do better, I have done better, this is what I've done,'" he said.

"We do want to demonstrate to the American people that when they do give their money, that it is going to go toward very worthwhile purposes to help veterans," he added.

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foxnews.com · by Kendall Tietz Fox New

11. Russian military officer predicts how nuclear war with NATO could begin

Russian military officer predicts how nuclear war with NATO could begin

Newsweek · by Thomas Kika · November 11, 2023

A retired Russian military official recently outlined a possible way by which his country could end up engaging in a nuclear conflict with members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Russian threats of a potential nuclear conflict with the West have escalated over the course of the country's invasion of Ukraine, which began in late February 2022. Numerous Kremlin officials, military leaders, and media propagandists have strongly suggested that nuclear weapons could be deployed against Western nations, like the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, that continue to provide aid to Ukraine, though experts differ on how serious these threats actually are.

Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin temporarily suspended his country's participation in the joint New START Treaty with the U.S. and in March announced that Moscow would build tactical nuclear weapon storage facilities in Belarus, a country run by close Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko.

On Saturday, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian minister of internal affairs and a prolific social media commentator, shared a clip of retired Russian colonel Mikhail Khodaryonok appearing on a state-run news program, discussing tensions with nations on the Baltic Sea. He warned Sweden, which has not yet joined NATO but is in the process of trying to do so, against antagonistic behavior towards Russia. He also suggested that tensions in the region could lead to an inevitable nuclear conflict with other NATO members in the region.

Russian nuclear weapons on display in Moscow. A retired Russian colonel recently discussed the possibility of a nuclear conflict between Russia and NATO member nations on the Baltic Sea. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

"Nonetheless, this would, in fact, lead to a conflict between the Russian Federation and NATO," Khodaryonok said, as translated by Gerashchenko. "And this conflict can only be nuclear. This is why the inhabitants of Stockholm and Tallinn [Estonia's capital] can be asked, 'Do you need it?' Do you need it? Do you even imagine an underwater nuclear explosion on the roadstead of Tallinn or Stockholm, which will sweep away your city with a wave? Do you even imagine that the entire Baltic Sea could be loaded with our mines?... We might dump so many mines that it would take you 10 years to demine it, if you still had the capacity and means to do so."

Sweden is among the handful of European nations, alongside the likes of Ukraine and Georgia, that NATO recognizes as aspiring members. It has been attempting to join the alliance since earlier this year after being stalled by reservations from Turkey. In July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dropped his opposition to Sweden's NATO accession. Finland was officially admitted in April, while other Baltic nations like Poland, Estonia, and Latvia, were admitted between 1999 and 2004. Some experts have said that Sweden joining the alliance would turn the Baltic Sea into a "NATO Lake," severely hampering Russia's ability to operate on it.

Article 5 of the NATO agreement states that member nations will view an attack on one of them as an attack on all and provide the necessary military aid in response. An attack by Russia against one of these members, therefore, could lead to a much broader international conflict.

Newsweek reached out to the NATO press office via email for comment.

Newsweek · by Thomas Kika · November 11, 2023

12. This New Tool Aims to Keep Terrorism Content Off the Internet

Excerpts;

For many of these smaller platforms, dealing with takedown requests from governments, civil society organizations, law enforcement, and the platform's own users can be overwhelming and result in companies going to one extreme or the other.

“Platforms can become easily overwhelmed by the takedown requests, and they either ignore them all or they take everything down,” Hadley says. “What we're looking for is to try to create an environment where platforms have the tools to be able to properly assess whether they should remove material or not, because it's imperative to take down terror content, but it's also really important that they're not just removing any content because of concerns about freedom of expression.”

The Israel-Hamas war has shown what an important role Telegram continues to play in allowing terrorist groups to spread their messages. While efforts to hold Telegram to account have had limited success in recent weeks, terror content remains accessible, and it is from here that the content is quickly shared on a multitude of other platforms. And this is where the Altitude tool can make a difference, according to Hadley.

“Ideally, the content wouldn’t be put up on Telegram in the first place,” Hadley says. “But given that it is, the next best thing we can do is make sure that other platforms that are being co-opted into this by terrorists are aware of this activity and have the right information to take down the material in an appropriate fashion.”

This New Tool Aims to Keep Terrorism Content Off the Internet

Small platforms without resources to handle takedown requests have been weaponized by terrorist groups that share their content online. A free new tool is coming to help clean house.

Wired · by Condé Nast · November 10, 2023

Terrorist groups have found a home on smaller, less well-known online platforms in recent years where they store, share, and link to content such as violent beheading videos and recruitment propaganda.

Those platforms have struggled to deal with the problem due to a lack of resources and expertise, but a new tool being built by a Google subsidiary in collaboration with a terror-tracking NGO is seeking to solve that problem.

Launched in Paris on Friday, Altitude is a free tool built by Jigsaw—a unit within Google that tracks violent extremism, misinformation, and repressive censorship—and Tech Against Terrorism, a group that seeks to disrupt terrorists’ online activity. The tool aims to give smaller platforms the ability to easily and efficiently detect terrorist content on their networks and remove it.

The project is also working with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which is an industry-led group founded in 2017 by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube that hosts a shared database of image hashes—a kind of digital fingerprint—of terrorist content.

After years of missteps and failing to deal with the problem of removing terrorist content from their networks, big tech platforms like Facebook, Google, and X (formerly Twitter) have—with the help of dedicated NGOs and law enforcement—largely removed this content from their networks, with the notable exception of Telegram. As a result, terrorists have moved to less regulated and under-resourced platforms where their presence either goes unnoticed or cannot be dealt with because the companies involved simply don’t have the resources to cope with a flood of takedown requests.

“Islamic State and other terrorist groups didn't give up on the internet just because they no longer had the megaphone of their social media platforms. They went elsewhere,” Yasmin Green, the CEO of Jigsaw, tells WIRED. “They found this opportunity to host content on file-hosting sites or other websites, small and medium platforms. Those platforms were not welcoming terrorist content, but they still were hosting it—and actually, quite a lot of it.”

While there are some tools on the market that work in a similar way to Altitude, they are prohibitively expensive for a lot of smaller companies. Experts like Green believe that tools like this need to be open source and free of charge.

The new tool can be integrated straight into the backend of whatever platform it is working with. It then connects to Tech Against Terrorism’s own Terrorist Content Analytics Platform, which centralizes the collection of content that has been created by officially designated terrorist organizations. The database allows all the platforms using Altitude to easily check whether a piece of content has been verified as terrorist content.

Altitude will also provide context about the terrorist groups the content is associated with, other examples of this type of material, information on what other platforms have done with the material, and, eventually, even information pertaining to the relevant laws in a particular country or region.

“We are not here to tell platforms what to do but rather to furnish them with all the information that they need to make the moderation decision," Adam Hadley, executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, tells WIRED. “We want to improve the quality of response. This isn’t about the volume of material removed but ensuring that the very worst material is removed in a way that is supporting the rule of law.”

Tech Against Terrorism works with more than 100 platforms, almost all of which don’t want to be named because of the negative impact on their business of being linked to terrorist content. The type of companies that Tech Against Terrorism works with include pastebins, messaging apps, video-sharing platforms, social media networks, and forums.

For many of these smaller platforms, dealing with takedown requests from governments, civil society organizations, law enforcement, and the platform's own users can be overwhelming and result in companies going to one extreme or the other.

“Platforms can become easily overwhelmed by the takedown requests, and they either ignore them all or they take everything down,” Hadley says. “What we're looking for is to try to create an environment where platforms have the tools to be able to properly assess whether they should remove material or not, because it's imperative to take down terror content, but it's also really important that they're not just removing any content because of concerns about freedom of expression.”

The Israel-Hamas war has shown what an important role Telegram continues to play in allowing terrorist groups to spread their messages. While efforts to hold Telegram to account have had limited success in recent weeks, terror content remains accessible, and it is from here that the content is quickly shared on a multitude of other platforms. And this is where the Altitude tool can make a difference, according to Hadley.

“Ideally, the content wouldn’t be put up on Telegram in the first place,” Hadley says. “But given that it is, the next best thing we can do is make sure that other platforms that are being co-opted into this by terrorists are aware of this activity and have the right information to take down the material in an appropriate fashion.”

Wired · by Condé Nast · November 10, 2023

13. Military training efforts for Ukraine hit major milestones even as attention shifts to Gaza

Military training efforts for Ukraine hit major milestones even as attention shifts to Gaza

AP · November 13, 2023

A FRENCH ARMY BASE, France (AP) — Battle cries pierce the smoke and rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire as Ukrainian soldiers fight through and take enemy trenches and dugouts that hide gruesome, bloody remains.

“Grenade!” one screams in Ukrainian. Another yells: “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

This time, no lives or limbs were lost. Because this time, the rounds fired were blanks and the “enemy” troops were, in fact, French soldiers whose intention was not to kill the Ukrainians but instead to help shape them into better, more lethal warriors.

But soon, the war games these troops played in the mud in France will become all too real, when the Ukrainians return home and are sent to the front lines against Russia’s forces.

As the Russian invasion grinds into a second winter and casualties — already estimated in the hundreds of thousands — continue to mount on both sides, combat training programs provided by Ukraine’s allies are helping it hold out and its odds of eventual victory. By continuing to prepare Ukrainian troops for battle even as the Israel-Hamas war diverts global attention, Ukraine’s backers also are making concrete their promises to stick with it for the long haul.

France is on course to have trained 7,000 Ukrainians this year — some in Poland, others at French bases — as part of a European Union military assistance mission for Ukraine that launched a year ago this week. The French army granted The Associated Press access to a training base in rural France last week to observe the latest class of Ukrainian infantrymen being put through its paces at the tail end of a four-week course.

The EU mission’s initial goal was to train 15,000 soldiers, but it has far exceeded that target and now expects to hit 35,000 by the end of this year. All but three of the EU’s 27 member countries, plus non-member Norway, have provided training courses or instructors, the EU Commission says.

The United States has trained about 18,000, mostly in Germany, with an additional 1,000 in the pipeline, the Pentagon says.

In Britain, 30,000 have learned soldiering in the past 17 months, a training program the U.K. government says is unprecedented since World War II.

As well as basic training with weapons, battlefield first aid and other skills, instructors are also imparting specialized military know-how, ranging from clearing mines and launching waterborne attacks aboard small boats to equipment repair, officer training and even help for Ukrainian military chaplains.

With their return to Ukraine just days away, the grimness of the future that awaits the trainees at the French base was perceptible in the men’s determined, unsmiling looks. Civilians not long ago, they now carried themselves like soldiers. They addressed each other with nicknames. There was liberal swearing as the men caught their breaths after storming trenches with fake grenades and blank rounds.

French instructors left animal remains in the complex of dugouts and ditches to harden the troops to battlefield bloodshed. Only the officers had previous front-line experience, the chief French training officer said.

He said Ukraine is looking to France for tactics and know-how that could help its forces bust through Russian defenses. Because of French military concerns for the base’s security, the officer, Lt. Col. Even, could only be identified by his rank and first name.

“One can clearly see in Ukraine that the front line is relatively frozen, with two belligerents who employ very similar doctrines,” he said. “So today, one of the keys being sought in an attempt to break this inertia is to try to develop maneuvering schemes that can bother and even shake up the adversary.”

As well as seeing their assault on freshly dug trenches, the AP also observed Ukrainians vigorously defending a mock-up village against a French “enemy” attack and concealing themselves in rain-drenched woodlands. Translators bridged the language gap between the soldiers and their French hosts.

French trainers said they’ve learned through experience that it’s unwise to get too friendly with the trainees — because some of them are sure to be killed back home. Despite sharing the bonding discomforts of long days and nights in the French wilds, they sever ties when the training is done, with soldiers under orders not to swap phone numbers or other contacts.

“You have to burn bridges because otherwise you ask yourselves too many questions. When you find out that this or that person is dead, you’re bound to ask yourself what you did wrong: ‘Did we work enough on this or that tactic? Should I have insisted more on this point?’” said one of the instructors, Capt. Xavier.

“We’re doing our utmost,” he said. “Asking yourself afterward what you did wrong or could have done better is torturing yourself for nothing.”

___

Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

AP · November 13, 2023

14. How America Can Capitalize on China’s Economic Slowdown

Excerpts:

Washington has extensive experience dealing with the sort of structural economic problems that China now confronts. It did so at home in coming to terms with stagflation in the 1970s, the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, the property bubble feeding into the global financial crisis in the mid 2000s, and myriad other painful but necessary adjustments. Washington has also worked constructively with other major economies to manage the risks of global contagion, successfully doing so, for example, in the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and Latin American debt crises in the 1980s. Washington should make clear to China that it takes no pleasure in its economic slowdown and stands ready to provide its technical expertise. Although Beijing may well decline such an offer, that should not be presumed, and in any case, it will be symbolically important for other countries to see that it is made.

Finally, faltering growth has already diminished China’s once-generous international development spending. It now seems likely that Beijing is receiving more money in repayments than it is sending abroad. China’s slowdown will also mean reduced export opportunities for many developing nations. This presents an opportunity for Washington—after years of talking about better development assistance programs to match Beijing—to pull ahead with higher quality offerings. It may be that the combination of U.S. trade, investment and experience of avoiding debt pitfalls will even be sufficient to enable Washington to take over half-built Belt and Road Initiative projects facing default risks due to China’s slowdown and reluctance to extend debt relief.

Regardless of Washington’s messaging, Beijing will continue to argue that the United States fears China’s rise and is focused solely on limiting China’s economic achievements in service of containment. But if Washington can avoid taking the blame for Beijing’s economic malaise and promote a deeper understanding of its causes, China’s argument will be less compelling in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and its strategic and diplomatic options far more limited. Moreover, the U.S. argument will only become more convincing if the Chinese authorities’ missteps on economic policy continue. Controlling the global narrative about China’s economic slowdown may not change Beijing’s behavior, but China’s international influence—which rests primarily upon a record of economic expansion—will wane.

How America Can Capitalize on China’s Economic Slowdown

Blame Beijing and Help Clean Up Its Mess—but Don’t Gloat

By Daniel Rosen and Logan Wright

November 13, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Daniel Rosen and Logan Wright · November 13, 2023

The need to take a more hawkish approach towards China is one of the only issues that commands bipartisan agreement in Washington. Lately, the growing evidence of a sharp slowdown in China’s economy has opened up new lines of debate. Although there have long been signs that China is entering an age of slower growth, Washington did not expect the extent of this slowdown, and both parties and the policy community are scrambling to decide what to make of it, why it happened, and what to do about it.

The changes in China’s economic performance, which for decades seemed immune from the business cycles and growth constraints that apply to the rest of the world, have certainly been profound. From 1980 to 2019, China reported economic growth at a rate that was on average three times faster than the United States’. But since 2021, that outperformance has slowed. According to China’s official numbers, its growth rate barely surpassed that of the United States in 2022, at 3 percent to 2.1 percent. These numbers are suspect, however: the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on both consumption and investment, and the deep contraction of the property sector, mean that real economic growth in China was almost certainly negative in 2022. This year, growth in household consumption in China has been limited, investment has been flat, government spending has been limited by debt servicing costs, and net exports have contracted. Real economic growth in China in 2023 is likely below 2 percent, which is far short of the officially reported 5.2 percent in the first three quarters. Medium-term accounting forecasts now have China in the 3 percent range from the medium term onward, with the United States expected to achieve average growth of around 2 percent, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. China’s exchange rate is likely to depreciate due to persistent capital outflows, further reducing China’s share of the global economy in U.S. dollar terms. Since the U.S. economy is about $10 trillion larger than China’s at present, the United States will likely contribute more to global growth than China over the next two decades.

Over the past decade, hostility has built between Washington and Beijing on several issues including unfair trade, intellectual property theft, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Chinese support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is unsurprising, then, that leaders in Washington are beginning to ask how China’s current economic straits can be exploited to U.S. advantage. For instance, in August, responding to congressional testimony advocating a measured U.S. response to China’s current economic travails, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Randall Schriver joined the chorus of voices in Washington that are speculating how to “kick them [the Chinese leadership] while they’re down, if you will, to put pressure on them based on the experiences they are now having.”

The Biden administration insists that although it has introduced restrictions on some aspects of U.S.-Chinese trade, it is seeking only to build a high fence around a small yard—that any economic decoupling will be limited to areas that concern national security. But faith in that commitment to limited restrictions is fragile, not only in China but among U.S. allies and partners as well. If Washington goes beyond these limited controls on high-technology trade and investment with China to prohibit broader categories of financial, trade and technology flows indiscriminately—it will present Beijing with the ideal scapegoat for its homegrown economic problems. It will also increase the likelihood of conflict by reinforcing Beijing’s narrative that Washington is hell-bent on limiting China’s rise, or “rejuvenation,” as Chinese President Xi Jinping puts it. Rather than volunteer to take the blame for China’s malaise by announcing unnecessary decoupling policies, Washington should downplay its own role and demonstrate that it is not responsible for China’s present stagnation. Instead of kicking China while it is down, U.S. leaders should hold Beijing accountable for the predictable consequences of its policies and make good-faith efforts to give the Chinese leadership economic advice and opportunities for cooperation.

THE BLAME GAME

The prevailing understanding of the direction of the Chinese economy and the reasons for its slowdown is of great importance to the United States and its allies and partners. The merits of market liberalism—which were almost universally appreciated at the end of the Cold War—have been challenged by the perceived success of China’s autocratic state capitalism, particularly since the global financial crisis of 2008–10. As the Chinese economy experienced rapid growth over the past decade, the ultimate success of Beijing’s model seemed almost inevitable. Now that it has faltered, it is strategically crucial that Washington does not receive the blame.

The political attempt to drive China’s “rejuvenation” produced an overzealous pursuit of economic growth based on unsustainable foundations. China’s slowdown is the result of a decade of overinvestment in property and infrastructure, financed by loading debt onto households and local government entities. To maintain the appearance of official fiscal prudence, Beijing limits localities’ ability to issue debt. But to achieve world-beating GDP growth at the same time, authorities let nominally private local government financing vehicles do the borrowing instead, keeping liabilities off the state’s books. After years of unsustainable property booms and rising local debt, these entities are unable to handle their obligations. Engines of growth have become engines of distress.

Historians will debate how imprudent this growth model was, but they should not be distracted by the erroneous idea that things were going well in China until the United States blocked investment flows. In fact, corporate direct investment in China and portfolio investment flows have been slowing since 2021 because of concerns about market conditions, not U.S. targeted investment restrictions. Data from China’s own State Administration of Foreign Exchange show that in the third quarter of 2023, foreign direct investment was negative for the first time since the 1980s. The primary driver of China’s economic slowdown has been the end of the property and infrastructure bubble, and that is a purely domestic phenomenon. Private Chinese business investment is declining because market opportunities are drying up for want of needed reforms; consequently, returns on investment in the rest of the world (including the United States) are now higher than they are in China.

Washington must strive to convince the world that China’s current economic challenges are of its own making—the product of excess state intervention and insufficient marketization—rather than inadvertently promote the notion that the United States is responsible. China’s leaders need to understand this, too: the prosperity of 1.4 billion people depends on it. Moreover, nations of the global South contemplating the introduction of some elements of the Chinese development model urgently need to realize why China’s economy is slowing and what the consequences of following its example would be.

NOTHING TO FEAR

The United States no longer faces a growth challenge from China, which now has an economy around 62 percent of the size of America’s. Marginal adjustments in global economic share between the United States and China will not be significant in any of the security, trade, or innovation-related areas in which the two countries compete. The Chinese leadership is going to need to make its own hard choices about which strategic priorities to support in the future as the country’s resources decline. Beijing is likely to end up ceding ground to Washington as a result.

There is little for the United States to gain from blocking economic and financial transactions with Beijing in most consumer-facing businesses and areas of portfolio investment. By gratuitously restricting trade with China in low-stakes areas, Washington will only create tensions with its allies and partners. The European Union, Japan, and other aligned countries do not view the balance of economic and security threats from China in the same way the United States does, and a needlessly restrictive U.S. stance will strain relations with them. Political capital is finite, and Washington should invest it in ways that strengthen these partnerships. Without an alignment on restrictions, other countries will simply provide China with the products and technologies that it needs and previously acquired from the United States.

The countries that Beijing is working to influence—particularly those in the global South, many of which have received loans and project financing from China in recent years—will be carefully watching what Washington does. These countries are still ambivalent about Beijing’s economic model and are already struggling to manage the debts they have incurred to Chinese creditors. Pointing out the potential costs of alignment with Beijing, and the limited assistance its economic model can provide, will be ineffective as long as Beijing can blame the United States for its economic pain and that of its friends. If the United States made clear that the responsibility lay elsewhere, while offering financial assistance to indebted economies, it would provide a powerful contrast with Beijing’s ongoing intransigence in debt negotiations.

SPREADING THE WORD

Washington’s challenge is twofold. First, it must determine how it should talk about the Chinese slowdown and make clear that the fault is Beijing’s. Second, Washington must prepare to mitigate the negative consequences that the Chinese slump will have for the U.S. economy as well as for vulnerable countries, especially in the developing world. Only after these important steps have been taken should U.S. leaders consider whether there is a responsible way to profit from China’s economic stress.

Washington must set the agenda for responding to China’s slowdown. A central message should be the importance of transparency. Failure to emphasize accurate and transparent economic data and the free flow of commercial information is a major cause of China’s economic troubles. U.S. officials must make the case for transparency in private consultations with Chinese counterparts—including at this week’s meeting of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders in San Francisco, where both Xi and U.S. President Joe Biden will be in attendance—as well as in public. In meetings of the G-7 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Washington should also offer analysis of the causes, extent and spillover implications of a slowing Chinese economy. This could facilitate efforts by these organizations to offer assistance to China and other affected countries. Likewise, U.S. officials should present their analysis to leaders of multilateral organizations—especially the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization—who are strong voices in economic debates but have to date publicly taken Chinese assurances of steady growth at face value.

Washington has extensive experience dealing with the sort of structural economic problems that China now confronts. It did so at home in coming to terms with stagflation in the 1970s, the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, the property bubble feeding into the global financial crisis in the mid 2000s, and myriad other painful but necessary adjustments. Washington has also worked constructively with other major economies to manage the risks of global contagion, successfully doing so, for example, in the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and Latin American debt crises in the 1980s. Washington should make clear to China that it takes no pleasure in its economic slowdown and stands ready to provide its technical expertise. Although Beijing may well decline such an offer, that should not be presumed, and in any case, it will be symbolically important for other countries to see that it is made.

Finally, faltering growth has already diminished China’s once-generous international development spending. It now seems likely that Beijing is receiving more money in repayments than it is sending abroad. China’s slowdown will also mean reduced export opportunities for many developing nations. This presents an opportunity for Washington—after years of talking about better development assistance programs to match Beijing—to pull ahead with higher quality offerings. It may be that the combination of U.S. trade, investment and experience of avoiding debt pitfalls will even be sufficient to enable Washington to take over half-built Belt and Road Initiative projects facing default risks due to China’s slowdown and reluctance to extend debt relief.

Regardless of Washington’s messaging, Beijing will continue to argue that the United States fears China’s rise and is focused solely on limiting China’s economic achievements in service of containment. But if Washington can avoid taking the blame for Beijing’s economic malaise and promote a deeper understanding of its causes, China’s argument will be less compelling in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and its strategic and diplomatic options far more limited. Moreover, the U.S. argument will only become more convincing if the Chinese authorities’ missteps on economic policy continue. Controlling the global narrative about China’s economic slowdown may not change Beijing’s behavior, but China’s international influence—which rests primarily upon a record of economic expansion—will wane.

DANIEL ROSEN is a founding partner of Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s work on Asia.
LOGAN WRIGHT is a partner at Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s research on China’s markets.
MORE BY DANIEL H. ROSEN MORE BY LOGAN WRIGHT

Foreign Affairs · by Daniel Rosen and Logan Wright · November 13, 2023

15. Honor veterans by following their lead into public service

Honor veterans by following their lead into public service

federaltimes.com · by Richard Powers · November 9, 2023

Veterans Day is an annual opportunity to reflect on the service of our brothers and sisters in uniform. But for civilians, what does that really mean?

Having served as an Army officer and then as a federal prosecutor, I have a humble suggestion. I encourage you to honor veterans’ extraordinary sacrifices by reflecting on what it means to serve our country — not in an abstract way, but today, tangibly, in your own life.

Public service takes many forms, from prosecuting white-collar crime, to serving as a firefighter or a teacher, to volunteering at a soup kitchen on the weekend. Everyone has their own path. But what I know, from over a quarter century in public service, is that our institutions aren’t just the stark marble facades in Washington—they’re the people who breathe life into them. And I know that working together to serve a higher purpose is the only thing that might heal our divides and bind our nation together in a common purpose. I hope that by sharing my own experiences, I might inspire others to service.

My West Point classmates and I graduated and were commissioned as lieutenants in the Spring of 2001, just months before 9/11. Our experience quickly and unexpectedly became like those of the classes from the late 1960s, dominated from the outset by combat deployments. For me, that meant serving in Baghdad as an Army infantry officer from 2004 to 2005 at a time when the conflict shifted into a full-blown insurgency.

I saw soldiers take on any task, however dangerous, and accomplish it in a way consistent with our nation’s values. Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars all have similar stories. I am forever grateful for the privilege to have served alongside so many dedicated men and women, whose courage and humanity enabled us to pull together and overcome whatever came our way.

After leaving the military, I found a different way to serve our country. I went to law school and joined the Justice Department in 2009. Where the post-9/11 world defined my military career, the post-financial crisis world dominated the first part of my DOJ career. We prosecuted cases involving systemic fraud in the financial markets, working to restore integrity and trust in the heart of the economy.

Public servants like me went up against a wall of resources and the world’s best lawyers. Without civil servants willing to make personal sacrifices on behalf of the public, important cases protecting the integrity of the financial markets would not have been brought. As in the Army, it was an honor to serve alongside resilient professionals doing necessary work on behalf of the American people.

In 2018, I became the top career prosecutor for antitrust crime at DOJ. Again, I served alongside hundreds of dedicated public servants. What I witnessed was inspiring: career staff working nights and weekends without complaint to ensure competition remains the lifeblood of our economy, and relocating for trials that lasted weeks and months, many with families back at home. When cases did not go their way, they persevered and adapted.

They had a job to do for the United States, and they did it with integrity, and often at great personal cost.

When President Biden took office, I was the senior career antitrust official, so as typically happens during a transition, a career prosecutor became the Antitrust Division’s acting head. Running an agency of 600+ people with a broad and critically important enforcement mission, without adequate resources and staff, during the pandemic, and on the heels of January 6, was a daunting task. Based on prior transitions, I expected political appointees would arrive soon and I would pass the reins.

As it turned out, it would be nearly a year before the first appointee arrived. Fortunately, from West Point and over a quarter-century of public service, I knew when unexpected challenges come, you have to lean on your colleagues and remember your core values. Following that approach, we achieved successes during the transition that few predicted. We sued to block harmful mergers, prosecuted price fixing, and helped to develop and implement the executive order on competition. Once again, I had the privilege to witness what dedicated public servants do for our country, even in an uncertain environment.

Looking back, I am reminded of what an honor it was to work alongside so many incredible citizens, both in the military and at DOJ. From the streets of Baghdad, to the courtroom, to the post-January 6 transition, I saw firsthand what dedicated public servants do for our country. Beyond the essential nature of the work, service in any form bridges the ever-widening gulfs in our society. When you serve, you do so with people from different backgrounds with different views but with whom you must find common ground to achieve a greater purpose.

Those experiences run for a lifetime and form the backbone of our republic.

Richard Powers served as the Acting Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division in 2021 and as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General from 2018-2022. He’s a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, served in the U.S. Army as an Infantry Officer, which included a tour of duty in Baghdad, Iraq, from 2004-2005. Powers is now a partner at the law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.

16. New report reveals major problem at more than 200 US military bases: ‘Hundreds more [communities] are likely at risk’

Some friends are tracking cancer rates among those with whom we have served (military and civilians/dependents). Are bases the cause?

New report reveals major problem at more than 200 US military bases: ‘Hundreds more [communities] are likely at risk’

news.yahoo.com · by Jeremiah BudinNovember 12, 2023 at 11:30 AM·2 min read308Link Copied

A new report from the Department of Defense has revealed that at least 245 military bases in the United States have been leaching toxic chemicals into the drinking water of nearby communities, putting an unknown number of people at risk.

What is happening?

The DOD report confirmed that at least 455 military bases are contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS) and that 275 out of 295 bases checked had released those chemicals “in the proximity” of drinking water supplies.

PFAS, commonly known as “forever chemicals” because of their inability to naturally degrade, “have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems,” per the Guardian.

The military is one of the largest polluters of PFAS in the world, in part due to its use of a firefighting foam that is filled with the chemicals and is released during emergencies and training exercises.

Why is this concerning?

“A good neighbor would let you know that their use of PFAS was the reason your water was contaminated, and a bad neighbor would only tell you: ‘Hey, a plume is heading in your direction,’” Scott Faber, the vice president of government affairs at nonprofit the Environmental Working Group, told the Guardian.

Faber also called the lack of clarity around the issue “shocking.” As the report looked into only around one-third of the more than 700 military facilities suspected of contaminating groundwater, there are likely many more cases.

“Hundreds more [communities] are likely at risk across America,” the Guardian wrote.

What is being done about it?

The U.S. military is subjected to a low level of public oversight, so the next steps are very opaque, leading to concern from the communities impacted and advocates such as Faber.

The DOD report writes that “DOD is committed to cleaning up our PFAS releases as quickly as possible,” although it does not offer any specifics or timeframe. It also writes that it “is committed to mitigating PFAS in the drinking water it supplies, as well as addressing releases to the environment resulting from DOD activities” and that it “has responded quickly with short-and long-term actions to ensure that no one is drinking water with PFOS or PFOA above 70 ppt.”

This is likely small comfort to any community near a U.S. military base, but Faber told the Guardian that he is hopeful more answers will come. “Inevitably we will get answers for these questions as we move through the process,” he said.

Join our free newsletter for cool news and cool tips that make it easy to help yourself while helping the planet.

news.yahoo.com · by Jeremiah BudinNovember 12, 2023 at 11:30 AM·2 min read308Link Copied

17. Hamas won Oct. 7, then IDF new integrated warfare took over - analysis

Hamas won Oct. 7, then IDF new integrated warfare took over - analysis

For years, the IDF has talked about the new levels of integration between different intelligence units, and the sea, air, and land forces.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB

NOVEMBER 12, 2023 19:36

Updated: NOVEMBER 12, 2023 22:38

Jerusalem Post

Since October 7, The Jerusalem Post has visited four different IDF locations on the southern front, two air force bases, and embedded with a navy fast boat off the coast of Gaza; several of these visits took place in recent days.

What emerged from all this begins to explain some of the IDF’s failures on October 7. More importantly, though, it establishes an understanding of how the IDF’s revolutionized and integrated approach to warfare kicked it into high gear in its offensive, and effectively changed the narrative in the war with Hamas.

Field command centers are handling real-time targeting decisions, and intelligence command centers are providing human spying, signals intelligence, satellite intelligence, cyber intelligence, and other items to the targeting centers.

During one of the targeting command center visits, an interview was interrupted for 30 seconds. During that time, the targeting commander integrated new field intelligence and seamlessly passed it on to another field or air unit – within minutes, Hamas targets were destroyed.

And on the fast boat, intelligence came through that IDF Unit 401 was about to be ambushed by Hamas. This information came from an intelligence center, through a targeting center, and then to the navy, which fired around a dozen shells from a missile boat, killing the targets.

A senior air defense official presented a picture of how IDF air defense monitors look during a “normal” volume of rocket attacks – as opposed to the 3,000 rockets that were fired in a four-hour timespan on October 7.

The difference lay in a series of quantifiable and not-too-hard-to-follow arrows or streaks across a screen, versus the entire screen being filled with streams until it seemed unintelligible to human eyes, and only the IDF automatic air defense aspects could fully follow it.

Still, that automatic system responded and, with some delay, the human interpreters responded as well and were also able to analyze and rapidly share the data with other critical units.

Between signals and cyber intelligence Unit 8200, air force surveillance Unit 9900, and human spying Unit 504, the IDF has always passed around intelligence to assist with targeting and defense, both in the field and on the home front.

The rapid pace and incredible integration have reached new levels in this war

In some ways, none of this should come as a surprise. For years, the IDF talked up a new level of integration between different intelligence units and sea, air, and land forces.

In one pre-war visit, the Post met with a commander of the IDF’s secret artificial intelligence target bank, where sharing intelligence and operational targeting has moved to almost light-speed.

Yet given that much of the latest revolution was post-2019, this was only really used by the air force, and statements about using the new systems, capabilities, and speed for the land forces were speculative.

It was worse than speculative, because given Hamas’s capability to fight from a massive network of underground tunnels, operate out of civilian sites like hospitals and mosques, and booby-trap any spot where IDF troops might try to find shelter or take a rest, there was every reason to believe that Hamas could neutralize the IDF’s technological advantages.

If all you need to do is booby-trap a house, then light-speed satellites, drones, ultra-networked land vehicles, artillery, and tanks do not help.

That is the first premise of asymmetric guerrilla warfare, and is the reason why the Vietnamese and Afghans, for example, were able to defeat far stronger forces such as the US and Soviet militaries.

Some might say that the US had threaded the needle of urban guerrilla warfare in its fighting against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. But in those cases, there were also significant local forces on the ground to fight ISIS, and the entire globe supported overwhelming uses of firepower, even in the face of enormous civilian casualties there.

There are no agreed-upon estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq, but the lowest number tends to break 100,000 and the higher number could reach several hundred thousand.

This means that the US and its allies had far more “rope” with which to inflict “collateral damage” in fighting ISIS than Israel has against Hamas. In Gaza, an unquestioned Hamas-run health ministry estimate of 11,000 Gazans, including untold numbers of Hamas terrorists, is sufficient to bring global pressure on Israel for a ceasefire.

The IDF is still under 50 soldiers killed in the invasion

So far, under 40 IDF soldiers have been killed in the invasion, compared with a 2014 estimate that IDF losses would hit 500-1,000 soldiers if a deeper ground invasion was implemented.

Instead, the IDF has managed to achieve a mix of new tactics, intelligence collection, speed, and distribution of intelligence, which allows air, sea, artillery, and tank forces to eliminate 150 Hamas forces in one extended battle, without a single loss, as was the case recently.

This new integrated warfare, reducing IDF casualties by several orders of magnitude, has also allowed the IDF to continue the ground invasion, much as the Iron Dome has allowed the IDF to continue airstrikes even in the face of rocket attacks on the home front.

Speaking to a wide range of IDF officials at all levels, it is clear that they know they have created a new kind of integrated warfare, which has transformed the battlefield with Hamas.

But whether the impressive gains of this new kind of warfare are sufficient to deter Hezbollah, Iran, and other Shi’ite proxies from crossing certain Israeli red lines, is still unclear.

Jerusalem Post

18. Is Military Space-Based Jamming Normal? Some Worry It Is

Space Jam. Wasn't that a movie? (apologies for the attempt at humor about a serious subject).

Conclusion:

The United States and its allies and partners have already raised space-based jamming at international forums, so there is a clear opportunity for the United States to lead deeper discussions. In the U.S. submission to the United Nations, it said that “radiofrequency interference” and “interference with security-related space systems” are among the topics that “warrant additional discussion.” The Department of Defense has also already committed to avoiding “harmful interference” in its Tenets of Responsible Behavior in Space, which the department released in mid-2021. Attributing intentional space-based jamming could also be slowly, but increasingly within reach with the help of new technologies to monitor a spacecraft’s local space weather environment. Increased discussion of the topic could also improve helpful distinctions in the reporting of harmful interference. The Strategic Support Force’s perception that the United States and Russia already have spacecraft capable of space-based jamming could cause miscalculation and escalation, especially without any military-to-military engagement. Working through the United Nations to deepen discussion on space-based intentional jamming would help inform a wider group of states on the threat, and further demonstrate American leadership in space.

Is Military Space-Based Jamming Normal? Some Worry It Is

warontherocks.com · by Kristin Burke

Is Military Space-Based Jamming Normal? Some Worry It Is - War on the Rocks

National security.

For insiders. By insiders.

Kristin Burke

November 13, 2023

Commentary

Most open source researchers following the Chinese military space program are well aware of China’s perceptions of the U.S. Space Force and its public technology and operation plans. However, I was surprised to find the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force discussing their perspectives of U.S. and Russian space-based jamming. This isn’t the typical thing that the People’s Liberation Army includes in their discussion of the former Strategic Defense Initiative. I asked myself, “Is global military space-based jamming normal?” As it turns out, intentional jamming may be more prevalent than the very limited media coverage of it implies. My research shows that the Chinese military thinks space-based jamming is a common practice among space powers. As a result, they claim to have developed an experimental spacecraft to practice signal interference between satellites from geosynchronous Earth orbit.

The People’s Liberation Army researchers described their experimental jammer as targeting communications satellites. Depending on the location and power capacity of the jammer, it could interfere most easily with other nearby communications satellites, or those at lower orbits. This could be detrimental for any country using communications satellites near China, including U.S. partners and allies.

The U.S. military is heavily reliant on satellite communications for power projection, and as such has developed a suite of anti-jamming capabilities. However, an electromagnetic spectrum-enabled cyber intrusion, sometimes called radio frequency-enabled cyber, is still a concern, even in space.

Become a Member

Current space regulations and treaties do not explicitly prohibit space-based jamming, only that which is harmful. The United States and a handful of other countries have raised concerns with it, signaling that some may have experienced instances of intentional, harmful jamming from space. The People’s Liberation Army has only recently written about its perception that the United States and Russia already have space-based jammers. If the United States hopes to influence future behaviors, improved messaging and continued international engagement is needed.

In the meantime, incremental improvements in transparency and technology could ease the perennial challenge of attributing intentional jamming. The space industry’s improved awareness of spectrum interference and willingness to report anomalies and cyber intrusions is one of the best ways to support policymakers to further safeguard U.S. military communications and lead international discussions.

An International Issue

Based on states’ submissions to the U.N. General Assembly Resolution 75/36 in 2021 and the recently concluded Open Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats through Norms, Rules and Principles of Responsible Behaviors, military space-based jamming in peacetime deserves more discussion. The U.S. submission included space-to-space and space-to-ground threats as distinct categories separate from ground-to-space threats, and called out radiofrequency interference as a specific threat in each category. Depending on the spectrum band, a space-to-ground signal could interfere with a space-to-space signal.

U.S. allies and partners have also recently raised space-based jamming as a space security concern. The British submission to the working group raised space-to-space jamming, even if only for experiments, as potentially leading to misunderstanding, miscalculation, and unintended escalation. Their submission to Resolution 75/36 discussed communications interference caused by uncoordinated proximity operations in space. The French government’s submissions to Resolution 75/36 and to the working group also both raised space-based jamming, though their written submissions did not distinguish between the space-to-ground or space-to-space categories.

However, France did include both space-based and ground-based jamming among their top three space threats. The Brazilian submission to the working group explicitly called out space-based sensors for jamming, as well. Brazil mentioned an “electronic attack” in space among their top four threatening behaviors, and also did not distinguish between the space-to-space or space-to-ground categories. The Chinese delegation only raised ground-to-space jamming in their submission to Resolution 75/36. Russia did not mention any jamming in either submission.

If national representatives to the United Nations discuss space-based jamming as threatening, it may be a common occurrence, beyond unintentional interference or a space weather event. This led me to review U.S. military doctrine and budget requests specific to space and radio frequency spectrum operations. Based on my review, none of them explicitly mention space-based jamming. However, these documents do include general plans for countermeasures and a “shift to offense.” Some U.S. media reports of U.S. Space Force orbital warfare training, U.S. policymakers referring to jamming as being “normal,” and Department of Defense space budget requests including “offensive capabilities” could give the impression that the United States considers military space-to-space jamming appropriate and necessary. The implications of a tacit approval for jamming in space deserves more domestic and international discussion, and would be consistent with the U.S. submission to the U.N. General Assembly, which made a similar call for deeper discussion.

Chinese Perceptions

At least some in the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force perceive that the United States and Russia already have on-orbit spacecraft capable of jamming satellite downlink and crosslinks. In 2019, a People’s Liberation Army unit under the Strategic Support Force published an academic assessment of Russia’s LUCH-Olymp satellite, noting that they could not rule out that the satellite was carrying an attack payload, probably referring to an electronic jamming payload given the frequency with which it approaches non-Russian communications satellites. Another Strategic Support Force unit in 2020 published a paper on American electronic satellite jamming systems, and included what they perceived to be U.S. systems in geosynchronous Earth orbit capable of jamming other satellites. The authors judged that the U.S. Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites and other national security satellites were capable of space-based jamming.

China’s Strategic Support Force’s perception that other leading countries already have on-orbit jammers, and their commitment to weakening the U.S.’s ability to use satellites in any potential conflict with China, may have driven them to develop their own experimental on-orbit jammer. At least according to Strategic Support Force technical reports, by 2020 they had tested an experimental on-orbit jamming system, after which they concluded they needed to develop Ka-band capability. In late 2022, the Strategic Support Force received an invention patent for a method to evaluate if a satellite’s on-orbit jamming capability and electronic reconnaissance capabilities were working. None of these documents discuss the Strategic Support Force’s objectives or intentions, nor specific satellites, but they do at least indicate that it has tasked its satellite developers and operators to explore options for on-orbit jamming.

Legal Interpretations

Many legal interpretations indicate that military space-based jamming is not prohibited. Article 48 of the International Telecommunication Union’s constitution provides freedom for military radio installations but requires them, so far as possible, to observe provisions to prevent “harmful interference.” The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (also known as the Outer Space Treaty) provides a mechanism for consultations regarding perceived “harmful interference,” and only explicitly prohibits nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. The International Telecommunication Union constitution defines harmful interference as “interference which endangers the functioning of a radionavigation service or of other safety services or seriously degrades, obstructs, or repeatedly interrupts a radiocommunication service operating in accordance with Radio Regulations.”

The above examples of the United States and its allies and partners raising space-based jamming as a security threat suggest that there needs to be further discussion on the topic and substantiation of the threat. Since 2014, the International Telecommunication Union has collected international satellite operators’ reports of harmful interference, which could emanate from space and ground sources. According to the union, these cases have significantly grown. This indicator should be considered cautiously, as the International Telecommunication Union does not disaggregate the volume of reports and satellite operators’ increasing familiarity with the reporting mechanism, nor the growing numbers of satellites. However, it provides one of several starting points to deepen discussions.

Additional organizations are also working to get better data on intentional harmful interference. For example, the Space Data Association — a nonprofit organization of satellite operators — continues to strengthen efforts to “create a database of interference events and to share data that supports geo-location. Data shared with the Space Data Association by definition in the member agreement can be used to validate complaints taken to the International Telecommunication Union. A newer organization focused on cyber security threats to space systems, called the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also provides participants a way to share information on multiple types of electromagnetic interference, including space-to-space signal spoofing and malware injection.

To date, ground-to-space jamming has been the easiest to attribute. Toward better identifying space-based sources of interference, the U.S. Department of Defense is already taking a leadership role in developing space-based technologies to assess a spacecraft’s local space weather environment. This will further support efforts to carefully attribute intentional jamming. While many organizations provide notifications of space weather events like solar flares that will impact many satellites, individual satellites may experience unique environmental impacts. As more of these systems are integrated into Department of Defense high-value satellites, the military process for reporting and assessing on-orbit interference will be more empowered to attribute intentional on-orbit jamming.

The United States and its allies and partners have already raised space-based jamming at international forums, so there is a clear opportunity for the United States to lead deeper discussions. In the U.S. submission to the United Nations, it said that “radiofrequency interference” and “interference with security-related space systems” are among the topics that “warrant additional discussion.” The Department of Defense has also already committed to avoiding “harmful interference” in its Tenets of Responsible Behavior in Space, which the department released in mid-2021. Attributing intentional space-based jamming could also be slowly, but increasingly within reach with the help of new technologies to monitor a spacecraft’s local space weather environment. Increased discussion of the topic could also improve helpful distinctions in the reporting of harmful interference. The Strategic Support Force’s perception that the United States and Russia already have spacecraft capable of space-based jamming could cause miscalculation and escalation, especially without any military-to-military engagement. Working through the United Nations to deepen discussion on space-based intentional jamming would help inform a wider group of states on the threat, and further demonstrate American leadership in space.

Become a Member

Kristin Burke is the senior space and counterspace researcher at the China Aerospace Studies Institute under the Air Force’s Air University. Prior to joining the institute, she was a deputy national intelligence officer for space at the Office for the Director of National Intelligence and a China science and technology analyst at the Department of State. She is proficient in Mandarin and studying aerospace engineering.

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air University, the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government agency.

Image: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Ochoa

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19. DOD Identifies Army Soldiers Killed in Helicopter Crash

Rest in peace, brothers.

DOD Identifies Army Soldiers Killed in Helicopter Crash

Nov. 13, 2023 |

The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of five U.S. Army Special Operations aviation Soldiers killed during routine flight training as a result of a helicopter crash, Nov. 10, 2023 in the Mediterranean Sea. There are no indications the crash was caused by enemy / hostile actions.

The MH-60 Blackhawk was conducting aerial refueling training when the aircraft experienced an in-flight emergency resulting in the crash.

The deceased are:

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Stephen R. Dwyer, 38 of Clarksville, Tennessee

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Shane M. Barnes, 34, of Sacramento, California

Staff Sgt. Tanner W. Grone, 26, of Gorham, New Hampshire

Sgt. Andrew P. Southard, 27, of Apache Junction, Arizona

Sgt. Cade M. Wolfe, 24, of Mankato, Minnesota.

Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families of the fallen. The U.S. Army's Combat Readiness Center is conducting an investigation into the incident.

For more information regarding the incident, members of the media may contact the U.S. Army Special Operations Command Public Affairs office at 910-432-6005, or by email at PAO-USASOC@socom.mil.

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

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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