Quotes of the Day:

"All ideas need to be heard, because each idea contains one aspect of the truth. By examining that aspect, we add to our own idea of the truth. Even ideas that have no truth in them whatsoever are useful because by disproving them, we add support to our own ideas."

- John Stuart Mill

"And where is the Prince who can afford to so cover his country with troops for its defense, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds, might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief, before a force could be brought together to repel them?"

-Benjamin Franklin

"After the demise of the best Airborne plan, a most terrifying effect occurs on the battlefield. This effect is known as the rule of the Little Group of Paratroopers (LGOP). This is, in its purest form, small groups of pissed-off 19 year old American paratroopers. They are well trained. They are armed to the teeth and lack serious adult supervision. They collectively remember the Commander’s intent as “March to the sound of the guns and kill anyone who is not dressed like you” – or something like that." 

- Rule of the LGOPs

1. NATIONAL AIRBORNE DAY - August 16

2. The Rule of LGOPs (Little Groups of Paratroopers) A Metaphor for Resilience

3. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 15, 2023

4. Opinion | How Much Is an American Hostage Worth?

5. Capitol Hill commission urges overhaul of Pentagon budget planning

6. McCarthy floats stopgap funding to prevent a government shutdown at the end of next month

7. Army looks to de-tangle its networks to combat China’s ‘digitally native’ military

8. Six strategic mistakes the U.S. made in Afghanistan

9. The Military Recruiting Crisis and Gen Z

10. Return of Special Warfare Magazine | SOF News

11. China and Russia are waging another Cold War — is the West up to the challenge?

12. Opinion | Throw a penalty flag on Coach Tuberville by Admiral (RET) Michelle J. Howard

13. ‘It’s like a bad monster movie’: U.S. officials who helped train Nigerien troops reel from coup

14. China’s defense minister warns against ‘playing with fire’ on Taiwan during Russia meeting

15. U.S. to Provide Iran Access to $16 Billion in Frozen Funds

16. Opinion Blinken and Biden are building a foreign policy framework to last

17. Do Oppenheimer’s Warnings About Nuclear Weapons Apply to AI?

18. PLA raising fears throughout Asia

19. I Watched the Dramatic Rise of Qin Gang — and Never Expected His Sudden Fall

20. Is the dollar being dethroned?

21. You Go to War With the Industrial Base You Have, Not the Industrial Base You Want

22. The AI Power Paradox - Can States Learn to Govern Artificial Intelligence—Before It’s Too Late?

23. Humanitarian Blackmail – How Belligerents Use Negotiations Over Aid to Extort the West

1. NATIONAL AIRBORNE DAY - August 16

Happy Airborne Day to all fellow paratroopers today.

NATIONAL AIRBORNE DAY - August 16

nationaldaycalendar.com · by National Day Calendar · August 16, 2023

(Last Updated On: August 10, 2023)

NATIONAL AIRBORNE DAY | AUGUST 16

National Airborne Day on August 16th honors the military’s airborne divisions of the Armed Forces.

#NationalAirborneDay

August 16, 1940, marks the date of the first official Army parachute jump at Ft. Benning, Georgia. The successful jump validated the innovative concept of inserting U.S. ground combat forces behind a battle line by parachute. These sky soldiers represent some of the most prestigious and expertly trained forces in the United States Army.

In the U.S. Army currently, two airborne divisions operate. The 82nd Airborne Division out of Ft. Bragg, North Carolina began as an infantry division. During World War I, the 82nd Division activated on 25 August 1917 at Camp Gordon. In 1918, they earned the nickname All American for the composition of their division. Since the soldiers came not only from all across the country, but several were immigrants, too. The 82nd Division represented all of America as few other divisions did at the time.

The second and still active airborne division had a short-lived beginning. During World War I, the 101st Airborne Division organized for a short while on November 2, 1918. However, the war ended shortly after. During World War II, the Screaming Eagles re-activated on August 16, 1942, at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. They currently make their home at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky.

Both units have served around the world in combat, peacekeeping, and humanitarian missions.

HOW TO OBSERVE NATIONAL AIRBORNE DAY

Discover more about the Airborne troops of The United States military.

• Watch documentaries about airborne troops in the United States military.
• Explore the history of airborne units. Read Airborne: A Combat History of American Forces by E.M. Flanagan or Out of the Blue: U.S. Army Airborne Operations in World War II by James Huston.
• Discover even more by visiting military museums and memorials honoring the airborne forces.

Thank a paratrooper and use #NationalAirborneDay to post on social media.

NATIONAL AIRBORNE DAY HISTORY

President George W. Bush proclaimed National Airborne Day on August 14, 2002. On August 3, 2009, the US Senate of the 111th Congress recognized National Airborne Day with Senate Resolution 235.

Airborne FAQ

Q. Does the U.S. Army Airborne have a creed?

A. Yes. You can find it at the Association of the United States Army.

Q. What does the AA patch worn by the 82 Airborne mean?

A. It stands for “All American” a nickname supplied by Vivienne Goodwyn soon after the 82nd Airborne formed during World War I.

Q. What does the 101st insignia look like?

A. A bald eagle on a black shield represents the 101st Airborne. As a result, their nickname is the Screaming Eagles.

Q. How long is Airborne training?

A. The U.S. Army Airborne School in Ft. Benning, Georgia conducts three-week Basic Paratrooper Training.

nationaldaycalendar.com · by National Day Calendar · August 16, 2023

2. The Rule of LGOPs (Little Groups of Paratroopers) A Metaphor for Resilience

The Rule of LGOPs (Little Groups of Paratroopers) A Metaphor for Resilience

https://jmarke.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/the-rule-of-lgops-little-groups-of-paratroopers-a-metaphor-for-resilience/

John Marke / June 6, 2011

On this the 71st anniversary of the World War II D-Day invasion it is only fitting to remind ourselves that rarely do things go as planned in battle.

The 18th century military strategist Carl Von Clausewitz called it the “fog of war.” It must have been pretty foggy on the night of June 5th and morning of June 6th 1944 off the coast of Normandy. In the pre-dawn hours Airborne troopers were dropped all over the field of battle, few hitting the “drop zone” as planned…

Rule of LGOPs

After the demise of the best Airborne plan, a most terrifying effect occurs on the battlefield.

This effect is known as the Rule of LGOPs. This is, in its purest form, small groups of 19- year old American Paratroopers. They are well-trained, armed-to-the-teeth and lack serious adult supervision. They collectively remember the Commander’s intent as “March to the sound of the guns and kill anyone who is not dressed like you…” …or something like that. Happily they go about the day’s work…

The Rule of LGOPs is instructive:

– They shared a common vision

– The vision was simple, easy to understand, and unambiguous

– They were trained to improvise and take the initiative

– They need to be told what to do; not how to do it

The Rule of LGOPs is, of course, a metaphor for resilience. All Armies, by the way, believe their soldiers are the best, the bravest, the most noble. But not all are the most resilient or adaptable. To be sure, I am not denigrating planning. Whether that structured thought effort is military, homeland security, or risk assessment, which I include as a type of planning. But anticipation must go hand in glove with adaptability.  Life is full of surprises.

The full paper is available here. Had some trouble with folks accessing the “box” http.

https://jmarke.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/the-rule-of-lgops-little-groups-of-paratrooper-john-marke-2015-rev-of-2011

https://app.box.com/s/h1aampwcd2cad5f025a7f5m9zsuwq7gw

Click the following for “Blood Upon The Risers” and a tribute to the American Paratrooper.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KonxiEQ8oM

3. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 15, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-15-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on August 15 and reportedly advanced in Luhansk Oblast and western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Russian forces conducted a large-scale missile strike against targets mainly in Ukrainian rear areas on the night of August 14-15.
• The Kremlin is using the Army-2023 forum in Moscow (August 14-20) to foster bilateral military and political relations with other states and posture itself as a reliable and technologically advanced partner.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Shoigu made largely boilerplate comments framing the Russian government as effectively meeting Russian force generation efforts, portraying Western and Ukrainian resources as limited, and promoting international cooperation against the West.
• Wagner Group affiliated sources are undermining private military companies (PMCs) affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).
• Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin continues to comment on Wagner issues on the African continent to remain active in the information space but is notably refraining from commenting on the war in Ukraine.
• Russian news outlet Kommersant reported that Russian authorities are developing a mechanism to fully control and shut off civilian mobile telecommunications networks in the event of a declared emergency, possibly related to pro-Ukrainian cross border raids.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and reportedly advanced near Svatove and Bakhmut.
• Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on August 15 and reportedly advanced in Luhansk Oblast and western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• The Russian “Vostok” Battalion, which is notably fighting near Urozhaine claimed on August 15 that Russian forces have entirely lost Urozhaine and blamed a lack of infantry and equipment for the loss of the settlement, but ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation that Russian forces have completely withdrawn from the town.
• The Russian federal subject “Bashkortostan Regiment” volunteer formation has reportedly deployed to Ukraine.
• Russian authorities continue to integrate occupied Ukrainian territories into the Russian cultural and educational sphere.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 15, 2023

Aug 15, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 15, 2023

Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, Karolina Hird, Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, and Mason Clark

August 15, 2023, 5:45pm ET

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

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cutoff for this product was 12pm ET on August 15. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the August 15 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on August 15 and reportedly advanced in Luhansk Oblast and western Zaporizhia Oblast. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut, Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast), and Berdyansk (western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast) directions.[1] Coordinates published by a Russian milblogger on August 15 indicate that Ukrainian forces have advanced south of Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna).[2] Geolocated footage posted on August 14 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced into Robotyne, and further Russian and Ukrainian reporting published on August 15 suggests that Ukrainian forces have committed additional counteroffensive brigades to the western Zaporizhia oblast area.[3] Ukrainian Colonel Petro Chernyk stated that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is advancing slowly in southern Ukraine because Ukrainian forces must overcome a three-echeloned Russian defensive line.[4] Chernyk stated that the Russian line of defense includes a first line of minefields stretching several kilometers wide; a second line with artillery, equipment, and personnel concentrations; and a third line of rear positions meant to preserve resources.[5] Chernyk noted that Ukrainian counterbattery measures are especially important in order to prevent Russian artillery from targeting Ukrainian mine-clearing equipment.[6] Chernyk’s statements are in line with ISW’s previous assessments that Russia’s doctrinally sound elastic defense is slowing Ukrainian forces’ advances in southern Ukraine.[7]

Russian forces conducted a large-scale missile strike against targets mainly in Ukrainian rear areas on the night of August 14-15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched 28 missiles, including four Kh-22 anti-ship missiles, 20 Kh-101/555 air-based cruise missiles, and four Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles, at targets throughout Ukraine on the night of August 14-15 and that Ukrainian air defenses shot down 16 Kh-101/555 and Kalibr missiles.[8] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces launched eight S-300/400 missiles in ground attack mode at targets in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia Oblasts.[9] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that the missile strikes targeted key enterprises in Ukraine’s defense-industrial base.[10] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that Russian missiles targeted various rear areas of Ukraine, including industrial areas in Dnipropetrovsk, Volyn, Lviv, Cherkassy and Donetsk oblasts.[11] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces struck the Starokostyantyniv airfield in Khmelnytskyi Oblast, although Ukrainian sources did not confirm this strike.[12] Russian sources may be inflating claims of the strike on Khmelnytskyi Oblast in order to frame Russia as effectively targeting Ukrainian assets associated with Ukraine’s counteroffensive capabilities.[13]

The Kremlin is using the Army-2023 forum in Moscow (August 14-20) to foster bilateral military and political relations with other states and posture itself as a reliable and technologically advanced partner. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that over 77,000 representatives from over 1,500 Russian defense industrial base (DIB) enterprises are presenting over 28,500 defensive and technical developments at the forum, and that representatives from over 82 countries are in attendance.[14] The MoD claimed that Russia conducted 14 bilateral meetings on the first day of the forum.[15] Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin met with officials from Myanmar, Pakistan, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, and Djibouti to discuss bilateral defense relations.[16] The Russian MoD also posted photographs of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu viewing Iranian, Chinese, and Indian exhibitions.[17] Chinese Defense Minister Colonel General Li Shangfu spoke at the forum to celebrate Russian-Chinese strategic cooperation and to signal Chinese readiness for further cooperation.[18] The Russian MoD featured multiple Iranian drones at the forum.[19] The Russian MoD also postured itself as a viable long-term defense partner and weapons producer by hosting conversations on long term Russian military training, the intended integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into Russian weapons and control systems, the utilization of three-dimensional printing for Russian naval repairs, and the modernization of domestic rescue and underwater equipment.[20]

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Shoigu made largely boilerplate comments framing the Russian government as effectively meeting Russian force generation efforts, portraying Western and Ukrainian resources as limited, and promoting international cooperation against the West. Shoigu claimed on August 15 at the Moscow International Security Conference that the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) has produced various weapons, tanks, armored vehicles, and drones in an amount of time and alleged that Russian and Soviet equipment capabilities surpass Western equipment capabilities.[21] Shoigu claimed that Western sanctions on Russia have helped to increase domestic military equipment production through import substitution at DIB enterprises, part of a longstanding (and inaccurate) Kremlin narrative since 2014 claiming that international sanctions strengthen Russia.[22] Shoigu claimed that in contrast, Ukrainian resources and Western military arsenals are almost completely depleted.[23] ISW continues to assess that Russia has failed to mobilize its DIB to adequately support the war effort, however.[24]

Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated unsubstantiated claims on August 15 at the Moscow International Security Conference that the West is responsible for "igniting the conflict” in Ukraine.[25] Shoigu and Putin reiterated rhetoric accusing the West of creating instability in Africa, Latin America, and Asia and advocated for deepening Russian defense relations with those countries and the creation of a “multipolar world order.”[26] Shoigu also alleged that the West escalated international conflicts including "the situation around Taiwan.”[27] Shoigu’s reference to Taiwan likely indicates Russia’s continued efforts to create a “no limits” partnership between Beijing and Moscow despite China’s reservations. 

Wagner Group-affiliated sources are undermining private military companies (PMCs) affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). Several Russian and Belarusian insider sources claimed on August 15 that rumors currently circulating about the alleged transfer of Wagner commanders to the Russian MoD’s “Redut” PMC are false.”[28] The insider sources called the rumors a ”dream” of the Russian MoD and denied that any Wagner commanders are transferring to ”Redut” and are instead continuing to fulfill tasks as part of Wagner leadership.[29] Wagner affiliated sources and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin previously harshly criticized ”Redut” and its constituent units over the backdrop of Wagner’s tensions with the Russian MoD during the Battle of Bakhmut.[30] The acerbic responses of many Wagner-affiliated channels to the allegation that some Wagner commanders may be transferring to ”Redut” suggests that Wagner sources have a continued interest in undermining various MoD-associated organs. As ISW reported on August 14, the Russian MoD appears to be struggling to consolidate control of other PMCs associated with Russian businessmen and enterprises, and likely hopes to maintain a grasp on “Redut” despite rhetorical attacks by Wagner affiliated channels.[31]

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin continues to comment on Wagner issues on the African continent to remain active in the information space, but is notably refraining from commenting on the war in Ukraine. A Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel posted an audio recording of Prigozhin on August 15 wherein Prigozhin commented on the alleged arrests of protesters wearing Wagner shirts in Ghana and claimed that the incident proves that Wagner has continued support around the world and in Africa.[32] Wagner channels previously posted an audio clip of Prigozhin discussing the coup in Niger and Wagner's presence in Africa on August 8.[33] Prigozhin appears to be using his limited public addresses to focus on platforming Wagner’s interests in Africa as opposed to commenting on the situation in Ukraine or reports of Wagner activity in Russia and Belarus, possibly indicating he is following imposed limitations on his involvement - even rhetorically - with the war in Ukraine.

Russian news outlet Kommersant reported that Russian authorities are developing a mechanism to fully control and shut off civilian mobile telecommunications networks in the event of a declared emergency, possibly related to pro-Ukrainian cross border raids. Kommersant reported on August 15 that Russian authorities are considering amendments to the Russian development strategy for the communications industry that would create a mechanism for law enforcement agencies and civilian communication operators to share frequencies and allow law enforcement agencies to take complete control over jointly used frequencies in the event of a declared emergency.[34] Kommersant reported that experts say it is possible that sharing frequencies could also improve the quality of mobile communications ”in peacetime” because operators will have access to previously restricted frequencies currently only used by Russian authorities.[35] Russian authorities may hope to institute such mechanisms to exert greater control of communications networks and the wider information space in the wake of recent events such as limited pro-Ukrainian cross-border incursions, wherein civilian communications greatly contributed to panic spreading and undermining the official Russian line of the incidents.[36]

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on August 15 and reportedly advanced in Luhansk Oblast and western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Russian forces conducted a large-scale missile strike against targets mainly in Ukrainian rear areas on the night of August 14-15.
• The Kremlin is using the Army-2023 forum in Moscow (August 14-20) to foster bilateral military and political relations with other states and posture itself as a reliable and technologically advanced partner.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Shoigu made largely boilerplate comments framing the Russian government as effectively meeting Russian force generation efforts, portraying Western and Ukrainian resources as limited, and promoting international cooperation against the West.
• Wagner Group affiliated sources are undermining private military companies (PMCs) affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).
• Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin continues to comment on Wagner issues on the African continent to remain active in the information space but is notably refraining from commenting on the war in Ukraine.
• Russian news outlet Kommersant reported that Russian authorities are developing a mechanism to fully control and shut off civilian mobile telecommunications networks in the event of a declared emergency, possibly related to pro-Ukrainian cross border raids.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and reportedly advanced near Svatove and Bakhmut.
• Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on August 15 and reportedly advanced in Luhansk Oblast and western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• The Russian “Vostok” Battalion, which is notably fighting near Urozhaine claimed on August 15 that Russian forces have entirely lost Urozhaine and blamed a lack of infantry and equipment for the loss of the settlement, but ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation that Russian forces have completely withdrawn from the town.
• The Russian federal subject “Bashkortostan Regiment” volunteer formation has reportedly deployed to Ukraine.
• Russian authorities continue to integrate occupied Ukrainian territories into the Russian cultural and educational sphere.

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

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast) 

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line and reportedly advanced on August 15. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Vilshana (15km northeast of Kupyansk), Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk), Novoselivske (14km northwest of Svatove), Novoyehorivka (15km southwest of Svatove), Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna), Rozdolivka (31km southwest of Kreminna), Kuzmyne (3km southwest of Kreminna), and Vesele (31km south of Kreminna).[37] Russian Western Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Sergey Zybinsky claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Synkivka, the Mankivka tract (roughly 15km east of Kupyansk), the “Usa forest” (likely between Synkivka and Lyman Pershyi), and Novoselivske.[38] Russian Central Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Alexander Savchuk claimed on August 14 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked in the Svatove direction.[39] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Svatove and unsuccessfully launched small-scale attacks near Karmazynivka (13km southwest of Svatove) on August 15.[40] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Torske (15km west of Kreminna) and the Serebryanske forest area (10km southwest of Kreminna).[41] Coordinates published by a Russian milblogger indicate that Ukrainian forces have advanced south of Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna).[42]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line and reportedly advanced on August 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations southeast of Vilshana and east of Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk).[43] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are advancing near Synkivka.[44] Other Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Synkivka, Andriivka (15km west of Svatove), Bilohorivka, and Vesele.[45] A Russian milblogger claimed on August 14 that positional battles are ongoing near Bilohorivka and that Russian forces are intensely attacking Ukrainian forces in the Serebryanske forest area.[46] A Russian source claimed that units from the Russian 123rd Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps) are operating in the direction of Siversk (18km southwest of Kreminna).[47]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian Objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and did not make any claimed or confirmed advances on August 15. Russian milbloggers reported ongoing fighting on the Klishchiivka-Kurdyumivka-Andriivka line (all 5-11km south of Bakhmut).[48] One milblogger claimed that the Russian situation in this area is unstable because Ukrainian forces control dominant heights and forest areas surrounding important settlements.[49]

Russian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and reportedly advanced on August 15. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[50] Some milbloggers claimed that Russian forces recaptured unspecified positions in southern Klischiivka, but one milblogger claimed the Russian attacks were unsuccessful.[51]

Russian and Ukrainian forces continued to skirmish on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line and did not advance on August 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks south of Avdiivka and near Marinka (immediately southwest of Donetsk City) and Krasnohorivka (22km southwest of Avdiivka).[52] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian ground attacks near Krasnohorivka (8km north of Avdiivka) and Nevelske (14km southwest of Avdiivka).[53]

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

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on August 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops are continuing offensive operations in the Berdyansk direction (Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area).[54] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces are attacking in and around Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka), and most Russian sources emphasized that Ukrainian troops only hold positions in northern Urozhaine, while the rest of the settlement remains a contested “gray zone,” though as ISW has previously noted, Russian sources often describe Ukrainian-held territory as “gray zone“ to minimize the reported scale of Russian losses.[55]

The “Vostok” Battalion, which is notably fighting in the area, claimed on August 15 that Russian forces have entirely lost Urozhaine and blamed a lack of infantry and equipment for the loss of the settlement, but ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation that Russian forces have completely withdrawn from the town.[56] The discrepancy between Russian claims regarding Urozhaine likely indicates that Russian forces have largely withdrawn from the core of the settlement to positions on its outskirts. However, Ukrainian forces have likely not yet established full control of central or southern Urozhaine, where limited skirmishes for control are likely ongoing. Russian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Oleg Chekhov additionally claimed that Ukrainian troops unsuccessfully tried to advance southeast of Novodarivka and north of Pryyutne (both about 15km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[57]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on August 15 and did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Urozhaine.[58] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian troops additionally counterattacked near Staromayorske but did not specify an outcome of the attack.[59] A Russian milblogger posted footage reportedly showing fighters of the 503rd Battalion of the 1st Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Army Corps near Novodonetske (15km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and claimed that they have been defending the area for nearly two months.[60]

Ukrainian forces continued advancing in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 15. Geolocated footage posted on August 14 reportedly shows Russian forces striking a group of five to seven Ukrainian personnel sheltering in a building in central Robotyne (15km south of Orikhiv), indicating that Ukrainian forces have advanced into the settlement.[61] Russian sources, however, claimed that the footage is of a failed Ukrainian attack on Robotyne two weeks ago, and emphasized that Russian forces repelled the Ukrainian attack.[62] Even if the footage is two weeks old, the presence of Ukrainian troops within the center of occupied Robotyne suggests that Russian control of the settlement is likely tenuous and contested. Geolocated footage posted on August 15 shows Ukrainian forces operating Western-provided equipment north of Robotyne, confirming Ukrainian and Russian reports that Ukraine may have recently deployed new counteroffensive brigades to the western Zaporizhia Oblast area.[63] Russian sources additionally claimed that Ukrainian forces launched an unsuccessful attack on Robotyne overnight on August 14 to 15, but that Russian forces repelled the attack.[64] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky claimed that Ukrainian forces are launching continued attacks against Robotyne with groups of between 40 to 100 personnel daily.[65]

Russian forces continued defensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and did not conduct any claimed or confirmed ground attacks in the area on August 15. The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that the Chechen “Vostok-Akhmat” Battalion is committed to defensive operations in the Orikhiv area under the command of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District).[66]

A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces continued targeting Ukrainian positions on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on August 15.[67] The milblogger reported that Russian drones and artillery struck Ukrainian positions near the Antonivsky Bridge and west of Kozachi Laheri.[68]

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

The Russian federal subject “Bashkortostan Regiment” volunteer formation has reportedly deployed to Ukraine. Bashkortostan Republic Head Radiy Khabirov announced on August 15 that the “Bashkortostan Regiment,” consisting of about 2,500 personnel, completed combat training in Samara Oblast and deployed to fight in Ukraine.[69] Vice Speaker of Kurultai State Assembly of Bashkortostan Rustem Akhmadinurov reported on August 3 that there are 12 volunteer units subordinated to the ”Bashkortostan Regiment.”[70] ISW has previously observed that four volunteer battalions subordinated to the ”Bashkortostan Regiment” including the ”Sergei Zorin,” ”Vatan,” Shaimuratov,” and ”Dostavalov” formations have deployed to Ukraine.[71]

Russian authorities are reportedly threatening civilians who fail to appear at military registration and enlistment offices with administrative charges via text message. Several Russian opposition outlets reported on August 14 that the military registration and enlistment office in Moskovsky Raion, St. Petersburg sent text messages to draft-age civilians ordering them to appear at the office and warning that Russian authorities may charge those who fail to appear with “administrative offenses.”[72] The Russian opposition outlets also reported that a source in the Moskovsky Raion administration stated that the text message is not equivalent to an electronic summons, so Russian authorities therefore should not hold citizens liable for failing to appear at military registration and enlistment offices based on the text message and claimed that the text message is intended to verify personal data before the fall conscription cycle.[73]

Russian occupation authorities continue to force Ukrainian civilians in occupied Ukraine into Russian military service. Ukrainian officials reported on August 15 that Russian occupation authorities ordered all men employed at state-owned enterprises in occupied Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast to pass medical examinations and register for Russian military service.[74]

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

Russian authorities continue to integrate occupied Ukrainian territories into the Russian cultural and educational sphere. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that the occupation administration opened a school in Bekhteri, Kherson Oblast that will teach a Russian curriculum.[75] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian authorities are forcing children from Obloi, Tendrivske, Zburivka, and Novochornomorya, Kherson Oblast to study at this school by threatening parents with administrative publishments if their children do not attend.[76]

Russian occupation authorities are continuing efforts to consolidate control of the legal system of occupied areas and integrate it into the Russian legal sphere. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Ukrainian hackers broke into the email of Russian Judge Natalya Sumachakova, a member of the Russian High Qualification Board of Judges (VVKS), and discovered a list of 55 judicial nominees being considered for commission in Russian sham courts in occupied Ukraine.[77] These judges will likely be used to fill out Russian-controlled court systems in occupied areas, thus allowing Russia greater legal leverage over local court systems ahead of the approaching regional elections.

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus).

Chinese Defense Minister Colonel General Li Shangfu will reportedly visit Belarus on August 16 to 18. The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Li will visit Belarus on August 16 to 18 and meet with Belarusian defense officials to discuss bilateral military cooperation.[78]

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko dismissed a senior Belarusian military official from his post on August 14. Lukashenko dismissed Belarusian Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Chief of the Main Organization and Mobilization Directorate Major General Vladislav Budnik from his post due to his age and transferred Budnik to the Belarusian military reserve.[79]

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

4. Opinion | How Much Is an American Hostage Worth?

Excerpts:

The long record of negotiating with the Islamic republic shows it never pays to pay Tehran. “The regime’s hostility toward the U.S. isn’t reactive but proactive,” Wang Xiyue, a former hostage of Tehran, has noted. “It survives and thrives on its self-perpetuated hostility against the West.” Far from smoothing the way toward another nuclear deal with Iran, as the administration hopes, the hostage agreement means Iran will raise its price, probably past what President Biden can politically afford to pay. In the meantime, other hostages are sure to be taken.

There’s a better way. Every time Iran takes another hostage, the administration imposes another sanction. Every time Iran or its proxies attack a single U.S. military installation, the United States retaliates against multiple Iranian targets. Every time Iran supplies offensive weapons to Russia or other outlaw states, the United States supplies long-range fire and other advanced munitions to Ukraine.

“He pulls a knife, you pull a gun” is supposed to be the Chicago way, as the line from “The Untouchables” has it. If the administration wants better behavior from Iran, whether over nukes or hostages, it could profit from employing the same approach.

Opinion | How Much Is an American Hostage Worth?

The New York Times · by Bret Stephens · August 15, 2023

Bret Stephens

How Much Is an American Hostage Worth?

Aug. 15, 2023

Credit...Wana News Agency/via Reuters

By

Opinion Columnist

The Biden administration agreed last week to a deal with Iran that, if all goes according to plan, paves the way for five American citizens to come home after long imprisonments on spurious charges. For them and their families, the deal is a godsend.

The prize for Tehran? Six billion dollars in frozen Iranian oil revenues held in South Korea, to be disbursed via a special Qatari fund for humanitarian purchases, along with the release of several Iranians held in U.S. prisons for violating sanctions on Tehran. It’s likely that the agreement is also tied to efforts to resume nuclear talks with Iran, though the administration insists the nuclear and hostage files remain separate.

Before we get to everything that’s wrong with the deal, let’s acknowledge what’s right.

The prisoners and their families have been put through hell: One of them, Morad Tahbaz, lost 88 pounds in prison, according to his sister; another, Siamak Namazi, has been locked up for over 2,800 days. (The U.S. Embassy hostage ordeal lasted 444.) The redemption of captives is more than just a moral imperative: Americans deserve to know their government will never forsake them in foreign dungeons. And it is not a sign of weakness when democratic governments pay what seem like exorbitant amounts to free hostages. In Israel, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu each released hundreds of Arab prisoners to obtain the release of a single living Israeli hostage.

But there are also bad deals and unintended consequences. This is one that contains many.

Start with the prisoners. The five who may soon be coming home aren’t the only ones with a claim on the administration’s conscience. There is also Shahab Dalili, a U.S. permanent resident whose wife and sons are Americans and who has been imprisoned in Tehran since 2016. The fact that he is not a U.S. citizen may be an excuse for treating his case separately, but the administration recently obtained the release from a Rwandan prison of another U.S. permanent resident, Paul Rusesabagina of “Hotel Rwanda” fame.

Dalili is not famous. But leaving him behind smacks of the same thinking that has left Paul Whelan to suffer in a remote Russian penal colony for more than four years even as the basketball star Brittney Griner was brought home after 10 months.

Then there is the price tag of $1.2 billion per hostage. The administration argues that this costs U.S. taxpayers nothing because the money was Iran’s to begin with and that the Qataris will ensure that it will be spent only on food, medicine and other basics.

But money is fungible: Every dollar the Iranian regime doesn’t spend on basics can be used for other regime priorities, like buying surveillance technology from China, torturing women, funding terrorist proxies and attacking American service members. How much will Americans have to spend to help defend Ukrainian airspace against the Iranian-made kamikaze drones that Russia is using to attack civilians in Kharkiv or Kyiv?

There is also precedent. Iran’s leaders have learned that an excellent way to erode American sanctions is to take more hostages. They’ve also learned to treat $1.2 billion as the baseline price for their eventual release.

This is a lesson not only for Iran but for other hostage-taking regimes, too, particularly Russia. It is no accident that Moscow took The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich hostage in March, barely three months after it released Griner in exchange for the infamous arms dealer Viktor Bout. What will it now cost the U.S. to win Gershkovich’s return? And how soon after he’s home till a new hostage is taken and a fresh drama begins?

There is no need to doubt the administration’s good intentions in arranging this deal: All administrations struggle with hostage dilemmas. But there is a reason to doubt its judgment.

The long record of negotiating with the Islamic republic shows it never pays to pay Tehran. “The regime’s hostility toward the U.S. isn’t reactive but proactive,” Wang Xiyue, a former hostage of Tehran, has noted. “It survives and thrives on its self-perpetuated hostility against the West.” Far from smoothing the way toward another nuclear deal with Iran, as the administration hopes, the hostage agreement means Iran will raise its price, probably past what President Biden can politically afford to pay. In the meantime, other hostages are sure to be taken.

There’s a better way. Every time Iran takes another hostage, the administration imposes another sanction. Every time Iran or its proxies attack a single U.S. military installation, the United States retaliates against multiple Iranian targets. Every time Iran supplies offensive weapons to Russia or other outlaw states, the United States supplies long-range fire and other advanced munitions to Ukraine.

“He pulls a knife, you pull a gun” is supposed to be the Chicago way, as the line from “The Untouchables” has it. If the administration wants better behavior from Iran, whether over nukes or hostages, it could profit from employing the same approach.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Bret Stephens has been an Opinion columnist with The Times since April 2017. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: How Much Is an American Hostage Worth?

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The New York Times · by Bret Stephens · August 15, 2023

5. Capitol Hill commission urges overhaul of Pentagon budget planning

​Is PPBS a sacred cow? If so, it certainly needs goring. PPBS classes at PME are among the worst (no disrespect meant toward those who had the misfortune to have to teach them).  

Capitol Hill commission urges overhaul of Pentagon budget planning

federaltimes.com · by Bryant Harris · August 15, 2023

WASHINGTON ― A congressionally mandated commission on Tuesday took its first shot at convincing the Pentagon and Congress to reform its budget planning process.

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Reform released an interim report detailing 13 improvements that could be implemented now and another 10 suggestions that require additional stakeholder feedback before the final report is due in March.

The Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution, or PPBE, process is the Pentagon’s multiyear system for aligning strategy with funding, which culminates in the president’s annual defense budget request to Congress. In the fiscal 2022 defense policy bill, Congress created a bipartisan commission to review the PPBE process.

“We’re looking at a number of improvements,” Commission Chairman Bob Hale, a former Pentagon comptroller, told reporters at a Defense Writers Group roundtable on Tuesday. “Can we make PPBE better able to foster innovation — because we know how important that is to national security — and to adapt more quickly to changing requirements?”

The recommendations for immediate implementation include:

• Improved Pentagon information sharing with Congress
• Consolidating budget line items
• Bolstering the Pentagon’s budget management workforce
• Modernizing information systems
• Streamlining disparate budget data sets within Pentagon budget offices

The commission is still seeking feedback from the Defense Department and Capitol Hill on its pending recommendations, which include:

• Making congressional appropriations available for two years, instead of one
• More flexibility for the Pentagon to reprogram certain funds
• Allowing new initiatives to begin even when Congress only passes short-term funding bills instead of a full budget

As part of its research, the commission has conducted 560 interviews so far with Pentagon and congressional staffers and compared the Pentagon’s PPBE system with the budget process in other federal agencies. It has also compared the U.S. defense budget process with equivalent systems in China and Russia as well as other allied countries with parliamentary systems.

“We want to make sure that we have stakeholder engagement so that when that final report comes out, it’s not a surprise to anyone and it is actionable,” said commission vice chairwoman Ellen Lord, who previously served as the Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. “There are some things in our interim report that can be acted on now. And we think there are many potential recommendations that will begin a dialogue.”

Immediate recommendations

To improve information sharing with Congress, the interim report recommends the Pentagon comptroller provide an annual midyear briefing to lawmakers to coincide with the yearly reprogramming request the Defense Department typically submits on June 30.

It also recommends moving from paper to electronic documents via classified and unclassified “enclaves” that would “include the electronic transmission of budget justification books that makes them searchable, sortable and able to be updated electronically.”

Hale noted Congress receives “an avalanche of information” when the president submits the defense budget request, but that the Pentagon is slower to provide updates later in the year “and sometimes it’s not consistent with information [lawmakers have] gotten before.”

Another recommendation calls on the Pentagon and Congress to collaborate to consolidate budget line items and accounts “where appropriate,” noting the current structure sometimes makes it “difficult for [the Defense Department] to manage defense programs and for Congress to clearly track and understand them.”

Additionally, it recommends standardizing the department’s detailed budget justification books in a common format while creating training courses for the staff who produce them.

The report also recommends improving recruiting and retention in the comptroller’s office while familiarizing them with private sector practices and improving analytic capabilities to reduce personnel workload. This pairs with another possible recommendation, pending feedback, that would call for increased staff levels in the comptroller’s office and the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Office, or CAPE.

Another immediate recommendation would modernize and streamline Defense Department information, allowing for better budget analysis. That includes accelerating consolidation of the data sets used by the comptroller’s office and CAPE, which “have historically used separate databases and separate tracking systems,” resulting in duplicative entries in different formats.

Notably, the fiscal 2024 defense policy bill the House narrowly passed 219-210 in July includes a provision that would abolish CAPE and direct the defense secretary to move its functions elsewhere — without specifying exactly where.

“If they just abolished CAPE and didn’t provide those functions, it would be a disaster,” Hale told Defense News. “The commission report says both CAPE and the program budget organization within the comptroller provided strong support to the PPBE. I think the commission agrees with that.”

Possible recommendations

The commission is also considering some more significant changes to the PBBE process. These possible recommendations are contingent on stakeholder feedback.

Notably, the interim report says the commission “feels strongly that changes should be made” to provide congressional funds beyond a one-year basis.

One potential recommendation suggests a “two-year minimum availability for all appropriations accounts, which would reduce use-it-or-lose it pressure and allow for reprogramming of expiring funds, particularly [operation and maintenance], reducing lost buying power due to expiration and cancellation.”

The report notes other agencies like NASA and the Department of Homeland Security run on two-year appropriations for some accounts and activities.

Other possible recommendations would have the Pentagon streamline its procedures to reprogram funds while allowing reprogramming under certain dollar thresholds for some accounts without advance congressional approval.

Finally, the commission is looking at how to help the Pentagon cope with Congress constantly forcing it to operate on short-term funding bills past the end of the fiscal year, which inhibit the Defense Department’s ability to launch new initiatives.

Hale said one potential recommendation “would be to allow new starts under a [continuing resolution] but with the provisio that all four defense committees had acted on the budget, passed a bill and none of them had prohibited that new start.”

About Bryant Harris

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

6. McCarthy floats stopgap funding to prevent a government shutdown at the end of next month

One reason why PPBS is a challenge is because of Congress.

McCarthy floats stopgap funding to prevent a government shutdown at the end of next month

AP · by STEPHEN GROVES · August 15, 2023

By and LISA MASCARO

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Washington (AP) — Congressional leaders are pitching a stopgap government funding package to avoid a federal shutdown after next month, acknowledging the House and Senate are nowhere near agreement on spending levels to keep federal operations running.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy raised the idea of a months-long funding package, known as a continuing resolution, to House Republicans on a members-only call Monday evening, according to those familiar with the private session and granted anonymity to discuss it.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the two leaders had spoken about such a temporary measure. It would extend federal funding operations into December to allow more time to work on the annual spending bills.

“I thought it was a good thing that he recognized that we need a CR,” Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters on a call.

“We hope that our House Republicans will realize that any funding resolution has to be bipartisan or they will risk shutting down the government,” he said.

A stopgap measure that would keep government offices running past the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year is a typical strategy while the Republican-held House and Democrat-held Senate try to iron out a long-term budget agreement. The government’s new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1, when funding approval is needed to avert closures of federal offices.

But this year, the task may prove more politically difficult. McCarthy will need to win over a large portion of his Republican colleagues to pass the stopgap bill or risk political blowback from staunch conservatives if he leaves them behind and cuts a bipartisan deal with Democrats.

Conservatives, including many from the House Freedom Caucus, are usually loathe to get behind short-term funding measures as they push for steeper spending cuts, using the threat of a shutdown as leverage.

Foretelling the political dynamics ahead, many in Congress are bracing for a shutdown.

“It’s clear President Biden and Speaker McCarthy want a government shutdown, so that’s what Congress will do after we return in September. Everyone should plan accordingly,” Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, shortly after the Monday Republican call.

Democrats alongside President Joe Biden don’t necessarily want a shutdown, but they would be quick to blame Republicans for instigating it — arguing that Republicans are the ones driving for spending reductions.

All sides had agreed to budget levels during the recent debt ceiling negotiations when Biden and McCarthy struck a deal that established topline spending levels. But McCarthy’s GOP majority rejects those amounts.

White House deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton was asked Tuesday on Air Force One if Biden is worried about a government shutdown.

“We worked in good faith to negotiate a bipartisan budget agreement a couple of months ago,” Dalton said.

“We’ve upheld our end of the bargain. They’ve upheld theirs, so far. We can expect that to continue.”

The White House had no immediate comment on whether Biden would sign a short-term resolution.

“We don’t believe that there’s any reason we should have to have a government shutdown, that congressional Republicans should bring us to that point,” Dalton said. “We think that we can work together to meet the needs of our country and the urgent needs that we’ve put forward.”

Along with deeper spending reductions, House Freedom Caucus members have also pushed to tie the government’s budget to conservative policy priorities on immigration and security at the U.S. border with Mexico, as well as at the Department of Justice.

Some Freedom Caucus members have embraced the idea of a government work stoppage to force lower spending, though many Republicans disagree with that approach.

Republican Rep. David Joyce, who sits on the Appropriations Committee and oversees its subcommittee on Homeland Security, said in a statement, “Republicans must come together to advance these bills because we cannot risk a government shutdown. When we shut down our government, we communicate to our adversaries that America is vulnerable and threaten the security of our nation.”

__

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

STEPHEN GROVES

Stephen is a correspondent based in South Dakota.

twittermailto

AP · by STEPHEN GROVES · August 15, 2023

7. Army looks to de-tangle its networks to combat China’s ‘digitally native’ military

An interesting description of the PLA as "digitally native."

​Excerpts:

“We are now really coalescing those requirements down from, I think we were up above 70ish, different requirements documents down into something that we can hand over to the material developers that make sense and doesn’t box us in and allows us to get after this notion of continuous modernization,” he said.

The Army is also looking to enable its forces to access a network from any location or device.

“Right now in the Pacific, you can travel anywhere around that [region] and plug into the network. By the end of this calendar year, you'll be able to do it globally, and you'll be able to do it securely,” Morrison said. “So think about from an operational perspective, a unit…getting to the distant end and immediately being able to plug in. We have been talking about that for years.”

He said troops should be able to access the military’s unclassified network by the end of 2023, and the classified net by the end of next summer.

Army looks to de-tangle its networks to combat China’s ‘digitally native’ military

By year’s end, troops should be able to jump on a network from just about any location, an Army cyber leader said.

BY PATRICK TUCKER

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR, DEFENSE ONE

AUGUST 15, 2023 08:10 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

It would be a huge mistake to assume China’s military is as poorly networked as Russia’s, a top Army leader said Tuesday.

They “leapfrog some of the technologies because they didn't have to go from analog to digital, right? As they were building their tanks and their ships and their aircraft, they were essentially native from the get-go,” Young J. Bangs, the Army’s principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics, and technology, told an audience at the TechNetCyber conference in Augusta, Georgia.

It’s one big reason the Army must accelerate various efforts, including detangling its network, making data more traceable, and buying software faster than the hardware, he said.

Another is shrinking its electromagnetic signatures. Unless the U.S. military can modernize its data structures to reduce power and emissions, its impressive arsenal of “exquisite” equipment might become more of a liability than an asset, Bangs said.

“Capabilities have now exponentially gotten bigger, require more power, have different signatures, and we are…a Christmas tree when we light up. And so we have to really be focusing on more of the low signature, right? Because our threat, our peer threat in China, they can see us as well as us, arguably, sometimes better [than we can see ourselves.] And when we go and turn on our equipment, we'll just be blaring targets for them, just like Russia is right now in Ukraine.”

The Army needs to better understand how much energy, radio signal, or data it is emitting on the battlefield and prioritize traceability, observability, and automated consumption of data and replaceability of software and hardware, he said.

Bangs said this effort will be helped by current efforts to allow the Army to acquire software according to rules that better reflect the fast pace of development of information technology, not the set that governs the acquisition of hardware.

“There's a memo already that's been signed…that separates the software material release process and the hardware material release process. So again, hardware can go refresh at their own cycles, and software can refresh at a faster cycle,” he said.

Reducing the sheer number of different network setups will also help, said the Army’s deputy chief for cyber.

“Today, we have 14 different organizations that are providing their own unique network services,” Lt. Gen. John Morrison Jr. said at the conference. The goal is to “reduce to one, possibly two, all being delivered through Army Cyber.”

That’s no small feat for the U.S. Army, which, people used to joke, has more variety of radios than France does cheese. Morrison said that he recently undertook an expansive review of all the different IT and network requirements across the service.

“We are now really coalescing those requirements down from, I think we were up above 70ish, different requirements documents down into something that we can hand over to the material developers that make sense and doesn’t box us in and allows us to get after this notion of continuous modernization,” he said.

The Army is also looking to enable its forces to access a network from any location or device.

“Right now in the Pacific, you can travel anywhere around that [region] and plug into the network. By the end of this calendar year, you'll be able to do it globally, and you'll be able to do it securely,” Morrison said. “So think about from an operational perspective, a unit…getting to the distant end and immediately being able to plug in. We have been talking about that for years.”

He said troops should be able to access the military’s unclassified network by the end of 2023, and the classified net by the end of next summer.

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

8. Six strategic mistakes the U.S. made in Afghanistan

Wow. A long history:

Excerpts:

The first strategic mistake was President Bill Clinton’s failure to kill bin Laden. 

...

Islamic jihad is the only true forever war. Now, exactly two years after the fall of Kabul, with the world’s attention focused on Ukraine, Taliban-run Afghanistan is again fertile ground for those who would launch 9/11-type terrorist attacks on us and our allies.

Six strategic mistakes the U.S. made in Afghanistan

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4152144-six-strategic-mistakes-the-u-s-made-in-afghanistan/?utm

BY JEFF GOODSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/15/23 9:00 AM ET

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has wrought institutional amnesia at the White House, State and Pentagon about the war in Afghanistan. Two years ago this month, Joe Biden ignored his military advisers and abruptly abandoned the country. It was the worst strategic blunder in modern American military history.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for the war — starting, of course, with the Pashtun Taliban, who let Al Qaeda train 10,000 fighters and protected Osama bin Laden while he planned 9/11. The U.S. made six strategic mistakes, however, and that buck stops with the commander-in-chief.

The first strategic mistake was President Bill Clinton’s failure to kill bin Laden. He had the actionable intelligence and opportunity to do so, as many as nine times, from 1998 to 2000. Bin Laden’s terror attacks killed almost 3,000 Americans, and marked the start of the war.

A counterterror operation led by the CIA and the Northern Alliance started immediately thereafter. It quickly overthrew the Taliban government, pushing bin Laden and the Taliban leadership into Pakistan. It was a fast, historic, decisive victory, executed on the orders of President George W. Bush. He deserves credit for that strategic decision. The second strategic mistake, however, was his. He failed to order a sustained kinetic campaign against Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders as they found safe harbor in Pakistan. Later presidents kept the policy. Limiting the Af-Pak war to just the Afghan theater doomed the conflict to permanent stalemate.

Overthrowing the Taliban left a governance vacuum, and in November 2001 the U.N. convened a meeting of Afghan opposition leaders in Bonn. They installed Hamid Karzai as Chairman of the Afghan Interim Authority. President Bush strongly opposed nation-building at the time, favoring quick counterterror strikes and regime change. Major combat operations were declared over in May 2003. The Taliban had regrouped by 2005, however, and by 2006 they controlled parts of southern Afghanistan.

American troop levels ramped up in response, along with comprehensive nation-building in an effort to stabilize the country. In spite of $137 billion, and enormous progress on everything from health to hydroelectric power, stability through nation-building proved wildly aspirational in this hyperkinetic ethno-religious war. Afghanistan’s institutionalized kleptocracy didn’t help. This third strategic mistake, allowing the campaign to morph into nation-building, is on President Bush.

In December 2009, President Barack Obama announced a troop surge of 30,000 and, in the same speech, a demobilization date eighteen months later. Announcing our intention to leave was an astonishing military blunder and the fourth strategic mistake. Our allies in the field stood slack-jawed, while the Taliban planned for an end game that was now clearly visible.

Obama ended counterinsurgency in 2014, and pivoted to Security Force Assistance. The coalition supported the Afghan military while the latter did the fighting. From 2015 to 2021, Afghan military casualties were both brutal and unsustainable. But as coalition troop levels dropped to under 20,000, casualties fell 96% and U.S. costs fell 37%.

In August 2017, eight months after taking office, President Donald Trump gave a thumping speech that promoted a visionary new Afghanistan strategy. Unfortunately, within a year he abandoned it and started negotiating an exit with the Taliban. Obama had negotiated with the Taliban as early as 2010, but this was the fifth strategic mistake. Trump’s February 2020 Doha Agreement foreclosed both the option of long-term security force assistance like America has provided in Korea and elsewhere, and the option of establishing a long-term regional counterterrorism platform out of Bagram Air Field.

The sixth strategic mistake was Joe Biden’s unilateral decision in 2021 to abandon conditions-based withdrawal, and suddenly bug out of Afghanistan. It’s been called “one of the most egregiously incompetent self-inflicted debacles in modern military history.” That blunder was Biden’s alone. He sold out our allies in arms, ceded the Khorasan heartland to the Islamist fanatics, left hundreds of U.S. citizens hostage, and delivered the Afghan people into the hands of the Taliban. Biden’s State Department tried to put lipstick on it, but Biden ordered the fiasco and it’s his name that will live in infamy for it.

The less obvious reason House Republicans want to impeach Biden

There won’t be time for four Trump trials before the 2024 election

Our strategic objective, to ensure that Afghanistan would never again be used to launch a terror attack against us or our allies, didn’t change in 20 years. And for 20 years the objective was met. The cost was $2.3 trillion, 3,590 military coalition deaths, 4,000 coalition contractor deaths, 35,000 coalition casualties, and 200,000 or more Afghan casualties. Plus, of course, profound long-term damage to America’s credibility and moral authority.

Islamic jihad is the only true forever war. Now, exactly two years after the fall of Kabul, with the world’s attention focused on Ukraine, Taliban-run Afghanistan is again fertile ground for those who would launch 9/11-type terrorist attacks on us and our allies.

Jeff Goodson is a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer. In 29 years with the U.S. Agency for International Development, he worked on the ground in 49 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He served 31 months during three tours in Afghanistan. From 2006-2007 he was Chief of Staff and Head of Civil-Military Planning and Operations at USAID/Kabul, and from 2010-2012 he served as the DCOS/Stability Director of Development under General Petraeus and General Allen.

9. The Military Recruiting Crisis and Gen Z

Interesting comments that seem somewhat skewed. They all seem to have similar political views (expressed in different ways) and are critiquing their peers who seem to have different political views.

The Military Recruiting Crisis and Gen Z

Students discuss enlisting and serving in the armed forces.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-military-recruiting-crisis-and-gen-z-obesity-patriotism-college-students-national-security-fitness-mental-health-ffb7482?utm

Editor’s note: In this Future View, students discuss military recruitment. Next we’ll ask: “After the affirmative-action decision, some colleges and universities have started to stop giving special consideration to the children of alumni. Should colleges consider legacy admissions in applications? Would a ban weaken a sense of community and alumni engagement? Or is the practice unfair to other applicants?” Students should click here to submit opinions of fewer than 250 words before Aug. 29. The best responses will be published that night.

A New Kind of Soldier

The decline in physical and mental fitness among young adults that has made many ineligible for military service is worrisome, but it may not be a grave national-security concern. This is because our methods of killing terrorists and thwarting attacks now rely more on technology than manpower.

The 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden required two helicopters containing two dozen Navy SEALs. In 2020 the U.S. killed Qasem Soleimani—Iran’s second most powerful leader—with a drone and a remote control. The role of technology in the military is evolving, and it’s hard to imagine that these types of operations will require putting U.S. troops on the ground in another eight years.

More concerning is the lack of technical talent that America is producing compared with China and Russia. We should be most concerned with the percentages of students who are proficient in math, science and cybersecurity.

One of the best ways to address this is to spend more on ROTC programs, which produce technical talent and military-level discipline. I wish I had known about it when I began college, and more effort should be put into advertising it. America spends more on its military than the next 10 highest-spending countries combined, and there is no reason we can’t make a serious effort to expand programs like these that work.

—Peter Iossa, Pennsylvania State University, physics

Lost Financial Incentives

The military serves an important role in economic mobility for the working class. This often drives recruitment. I have peers who have been able to attend college only because of the GI Bill and other associated benefits, which have exempted them from the continuously spiraling college-debt crisis. Public support for college-debt relief and other similar measures have damaged this enlistment incentive. As the social safety net expands, the military will have to find other means of enticing potential recruits.

The decision to enlist is also influenced by public sentiment, especially among Gen Z—the target demographic for recruiters. I have heard countless times that enlisting in the military is a trap: Those who serve can fall behind the earnings curve compared with peers with certain college degrees. With the loss of old-fashioned American patriotism and meager financial incentives, it’s no wonder Gen Z isn’t interested in the military.

—Trey Livian, University of California, Berkeley, economics

Gen Z Blindness Problem

The convergence of anti-American sentiment and falling of physical-health standards has culminated in 80% of 18- to 24-year-olds being deemed unfit to serve, which has deepened the recruitment-retirement ratio.

To Gen Z, the idea of serving our country means working as an activist, spearheading campaigns, and firing verbal warning shots at anyone who dares to disagree. This generation is blinded by rose-colored glasses, refusing to accept reality until it is too late. We must pull our heads out of our smartphones and examine such necessary changes as depolarizing politics and instilling national pride.

If needed, I would volunteer to protect my country. Americans take freedom for granted and assume that it will always be protected. But if we don’t teach this generation that their freedom can be taken away, the country is in jeopardy.

—Evelyne Holland, Southeastern University, communications and mass media

The Politicization of Everything

According to the Reagan National Defense Survey, 62% of Americans believe military leadership has become overly politicized and decreased their confidence in the armed forces, and almost 60% say it is due to a lack of presidential competence. To combat this, the military must rescind its political posturing and affirm its core values: protecting American freedoms, not designing them.

Lost confidence in American institutions through this politicization should be deeply concerning. Four out of five young adults in the U.S. aren’t fit to serve due to being overweight, using drugs, or not meeting other of the military’s physical and mental standards. But it’s even more concerning that healthy people don’t want to join.

If the U.S. instills discipline, excellence and provides an abundance of opportunities free of social politics, young people will begin to join again. The military shouldn’t be brought under political scrutiny. Americans would do well to remember the Marine Corps motto: “Semper Fidelis” (Always Faithful) to each other, our country and the battles ahead.

—Kelley Foley, Florida Atlantic University, finance

Click here to submit a response to next week’s Future View.

10. Return of Special Warfare Magazine | SOF News

Some good news.  As an aside there is a short piece by Dr. Tracy on the difference between lineage and legacy which explains why the OSS is not in the Army SOF lineage - i.e., because it was not an Army unit. I think we need to petition the Army to change the regulation so that common sense can be applied and the actual history can be properly recognized.

Return of Special Warfare Magazine | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · August 16, 2023

For many decades members of the special operations community awaited the periodic publication throughout the year of the Special Warfare magazine produced in print and online by the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJKFSWCS). The finely produced publication provided excellent commentary on doctrine, SOF history, current events, and more for the special operations community.

Over the past few years the frequency of the publication has diminished and there was quite a break between the last issue and this August 2023 issue. The current issue is only 13 pages long. Past issues were anywhere from 44 pages to over 100 pages long. So I suppose we should manage our expections! Time will tell.

Topics in the August 2023 issue of Special Warfare.

• TRADOC’s Training Revolution: TRADOC 50th Anniversary
• ARSOF Heritage Week
• Distinguished & Honorary Members of the Regiments
• Vietnam-era Medal of Honor Recipient Receives Special Forces Honor
• JFK Special Warfare Museum
• ARSOF Lineage or Legacy: Which is the right word?

Let’s hope the Special Warfare magazine comes back frequently and as robust as past issues have been over the years. It provided a valuable service to ARSOF members in the past and hopefully the magazine will do the same in the future.

********

Past issues of Special Warfare can be accessed online at the links below. You will find that neither link has all of the past issues – just some of them.

https://www.swcs.mil/Resources/Special-Warfare/

Special Warfare – DVIDS

sof.news · by SOF News · August 16, 2023

11. China and Russia are waging another Cold War — is the West up to the challenge?

Excerpts:

Xi and Putin, and their allies in Pyongyang and Teheran, believe they have devised a successful “Gulliver strategy” of tying the U.S. down not only in two-front wars in Ukraine and Taiwan but in lesser regional conflicts with potentially major consequences, such as the Russian-supported coup in Sudan or Iran’s aggressive posture in the Middle East.

Cold War II has many dimensions that, if not addressed effectively and comprehensively by clear-eyed Western governments, could metastasize the early stages of World War III into a more kinetic phase. The West will then have tragically blundered into another conflict through misguided accommodationist policies.

China and Russia are waging another Cold War — is the West up to the challenge? 

BY JOSEPH BOSCO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/15/23 10:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4152050-china-and-russia-are-waging-another-cold-war-when-will-we-act/?utm

After Imperial Japan started World War II in the Pacific by attacking the United States at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto reportedly wrote in his diary, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant.”

Less dramatically but just as momentously, communist China’s own aggressive actions against the international system have awakened three long-slumbering giants: the United States, Japan and Europe.

Washington, through President Nixon’s historic opening to China in 1972, led the West in welcoming China into “the family of nations.” Six succeeding administrations, counseled directly or indirectly by Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s junior partner in the original China rapprochement, uncritically followed Kissinger’s advice in his self-selected role as Beijing’s chief Western advocate. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, recently said after meeting with him, “U.S. policies towards China require Kissinger-style diplomatic wisdom and Nixon-style political courage.”

American, Asian and European business interests welcomed the economic benefits of low labor costs and the huge Chinese market. As the China coupling expanded and deepened under the “win-win” banner, it blinded Western governments to what was happening to populations under Beijing’s control, to neighboring countries, and to the rules-based international order. Virtually all in the West were content to look the other way as the good times rolled.

The transformative China policies of President Trump’s national security team, followed and expanded by the Biden administration, interrupted the slide toward total Chinese domination of the economic and political order. Washington’s example encouraged other governments to reexamine their own security posture.

While Japan was always wary of Beijing’s designs on the Senkakus Islands, for years it shied away from embroilment in the U.S.-China contentions over Taiwan’s future, relying on the constraints set by Article 9 of Japan’s U.S.-imposed pacifist constitution.

That began to change in 2005, under the impetus of Shinzo Abe, then-head of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and prime minister heir apparent. Tokyo joined Washington in stating that security in the Taiwan Strait is a “common strategic objective” under the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, without specifying the implications for Japan.

As prime minister, Abe continued to read greater flexibility into Article 9 in favor of Japan’s Treaty obligations with the U.S. He said of a cross-Strait conflict, “It would be wrong for us to send a signal to China that the United States and Japan will watch and tolerate China’s military invasion of Taiwan. If the situation surrounding Japan threatens our security, Japan can provide U.S. forces with support.”

Taiwan’s special representative to Japan welcomed the change. “We’re relieved that Japan has become more assertive.”

In 2022, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Nikkei Asia, “The peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait is critical not just for our country, but for the whole international community. […] The Group of Seven is united on this.”

Europe, given its distance from the region, understandably has been slower to evolve from accommodating partner with China to concerned skeptic. But Beijing’s growing economic aggressiveness under Xi Jinping, and international exposure of its human rights depredations against the Uyghurs, began to open eyes in European capitals. Attitudes changed with China’s sweeping claim to sovereignty over the entire South China Sea and its aggressive actions pursuing that claim despite an adverse ruling by the United Nations’ Arbitral Tribunal.

Despite Beijing’s claim of the Taiwan Strait as “internal Chinese waters” and its closure of the Strait in 1995 and 1996, for years Europe failed to recognize the growing peril. Neither geography nor geo-economics had changed over the decades of engagement. But geopolitics had, as European governments began to see their own vulnerability to disruptions in the flow of commerce through the Strait and the larger South China Sea.

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine brought the reality of untrammeled 1940s-style aggression home to the Europeans, even though its earlier seizure of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014, and its 2008 invasion of Georgia apparently had not. Beijing’s formal declaration of a “no-limits strategic partnership” with Moscow in February 2022 and its diplomatic, material and dual-use technological support for Russia’s war on Ukraine further deepened awareness of the existential Sino-Russian challenge to the rules-based international order.

Not all European leaders are entirely on board yet. French President Emmanuel Macron met with Xi in Beijing last year and said the Taiwan issue was one of the “crises that are not ours.” Western governments still have not fully accepted the reality that for some time we have been engaged in a new Cold War — and that China and Russia have been waging it for years, unopposed.

While President Biden frequently expresses his fear about World War III, China and Russia are already waging it on a preliminary level. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin conducts a violent war that kills Ukrainians but not Americans. Beijing, on the other hand, has devised a way to kill untold young American men of military age each year without a war and losses of Chinese soldiers, by flooding the United States with addictive drugs like fentanyl.

Despite Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s assurances that counternarcotics is one of the areas of cooperation in the competitive-cooperation dichotomy in fraught U.S.-China relations, Beijing refuses to meet with U.S. interlocutors. It demands first that Washington remove U.S. sanctions for China’s serious human rights violations.

Several Congress members said in a letter to Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo last week, “China is using American lives as a bargaining chip to achieve sanctions relief for its human rights abuses.”

Xi and Putin, and their allies in Pyongyang and Teheran, believe they have devised a successful “Gulliver strategy” of tying the U.S. down not only in two-front wars in Ukraine and Taiwan but in lesser regional conflicts with potentially major consequences, such as the Russian-supported coup in Sudan or Iran’s aggressive posture in the Middle East.

Cold War II has many dimensions that, if not addressed effectively and comprehensively by clear-eyed Western governments, could metastasize the early stages of World War III into a more kinetic phase. The West will then have tragically blundered into another conflict through misguided accommodationist policies.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA

12. Opinion | Throw a penalty flag on Coach Tuberville by Admiral (RET) Michelle J. Howard

Opinion | Throw a penalty flag on Coach Tuberville

The Washington Post · by Michelle J. Howard · August 14, 2023

Michelle J. Howard is a retired four-star admiral. She was the 38th vice chief of naval operations from 2014 to 2016.

The main entrance to the Pentagon (reserved for the highest level of visitors) is appropriately paneled in dark wood. Among the first items one sees upon arrival are the photos of the Defense Department civilian and military leaders.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, heads of the services, are hung in a group. When Marine Corps Commandant David H. Berger relinquished his office in July, his photo was taken down but not replaced. Now, there is a blank black spot. The spot is empty because the position of commandant is vacant. Berger’s nominated relief, Gen. Eric M. Smith, has not been confirmed by Congress and is plugging the hole as “acting” commandant. No portrait will be displayed until he is confirmed.

Another photo was blacked out on Aug. 4, when the chief of staff of the Army, Gen. James C. McConville, departed. Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the chief of naval operations, relinquishes his office on Aug. 14. There are more empty spots threatened — visual reminders that absence matters. The Joint Chiefs is a team, and holes in the organization have impact.

One man, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), is clearing the wall with his blanket refusal to allow military promotions to be voted on as a way of forcing change in Defense Department policies. The department funds travel for military members who seek out-of-state abortions.

Tuberville’s power arises from the traditional courtesy of senatorial “holds,” a primary tool senators use to engage the Defense Department and other agencies on issues of importance to them. But holds have not been turned against the Joint Chiefs in this manner since the services were reorganized after World War II. Tuberville has also stated that his holds on promotions do not impact military readiness. Here he is wrong. And he, of all people, should know that.

Tuberville is an award-winning college football coach who led Auburn to an SEC championship and a Sugar Bowl win. He understands teams and the human dynamics that make a winner. It is amazing that a head coach would minimize the impact of missing positions on a team. Team leaders can make the difference between a winning and losing organization. Why would you gap your quarterback?

What sort of coach would force the concept that other players can fill the quarterback’s position by dividing up the responsibilities?

It’s not clear that Tuberville understands all the rules of the game he’s now playing. Just as football allows only certain players to catch a pass or move before the snap, the military, by law, limits the authority of officers whose promotions have not been voted on.

The Defense Department is attempting to cover holes the senator is creating by having two-star officers and below “act” as leaders of organizations. As members of the Joint Chiefs leave their offices, their deputies become the “acting” chiefs. However, when the acting chiefs are also awaiting Senate confirmation, restraints in the law prevent them from employing the full authorities of their offices. As nominees, they cannot presume confirmation with their activities.

The situation Tuberville has created is not as simple as sending in a backup quarterback. It’s more like telling the substitute, “You’re going on to the field. Whatever you do, DON’T PASS! And by the way — there is no backup for you.”

The coach who plays a team and deliberately leaves spots empty must take ownership of the results. At the postgame news conference, no coach would embarrass himself by stating, “I know I didn’t field a full squad, but that didn’t impact the readiness of the team.”

And this is no game. The gaps in our chain of command take a larger toll on America’s military readiness with each passing week.

Coach Tuberville would never have permitted the political views of one coach or player to interfere with the performance of the Auburn Tigers. When Congress returns from recess in September, it’s time for the Senate to insist on the same respect for the U.S. military. We need a full team on the field.

The Washington Post · by Michelle J. Howard · August 14, 2023

13. ‘It’s like a bad monster movie’: U.S. officials who helped train Nigerien troops reel from coup

Worse than giving up on Niger is the argument that we should not be conducting training, advising, and assistance with similar countries around the world.

Unfortunately no one can prove how coups were prevented due to US influence. We only see "failure." (The house that is not burning does not make the news)

Excerpts:

“It’s not like we’re teaching them how to do coups,” one former DOD official said.

Still, the American military style of training is not always the right fit, the person said.

“We don’t understand their culture, and we’re trying to give them an American way of fighting terrorism,” the former official said. “We’re not really in the best position to be advising them, to be honest with you.”

And the democratic values U.S. officials try to espouse can get lost in the realities of local politics. In 2020 in Mali, for example, protesters in Bamako began calling for the resignation of then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita due to alleged government corruption as well as his management of the Covid-19 pandemic, islamic insurgency and the economy. By August, soldiers rolled into the capital.

Still, some who’ve worked in the region argue that the American military training has a lasting positive impact. Oftentimes the individuals and units sent by the U.S. military and CIA to train African militaries are the ones that help prevent coups from happening, by supporting the constitution and elected officials, said Mick Mulroy, a former Marine, CIA paramilitary officer and senior Pentagon official in the Trump administration.

‘It’s like a bad monster movie’: U.S. officials who helped train Nigerien troops reel from coup

By LARA SELIGMAN and NAHAL TOOSI

08/15/2023 09:00 AM EDT

Politico

U.S. officials who trained and advised Niger’s military say they are frustrated by the takeover, but argue the U.S. shouldn’t give up on the country.

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga meets with Maj. Gen. Moussa Barmou at Air Base 101, Niger on June 12, 2023. | Staff Sgt. Amy Younger/U.S. Air Force

08/15/2023 09:00 AM EDT

Brig. Gen Moussa Barmou, the American-trained commander of the Nigerien special operations forces, beamed as he embraced a senior U.S. general visiting the country’s $100 million, Washington-funded drone base in June.

Six weeks later, Barmou helped oust Niger’s democratically elected president.

For U.S. military officers and diplomats, it’s become an all-too-familiar — and deeply frustrating — story.

Niger is one of several West African countries where U.S. military-trained officers have seized control since 2021, including Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali. Some coup leaders have had close relationships with their American trainers, whose mentorship included lessons on safeguarding democracy and human rights along with military tactics.

“It is hard to not be disappointed,” said retired Gen. Joseph Votel, who led U.S. Special Operations Command from 2014 to 2016, overseeing the U.S. commandos who make up the bulk of military trainers in the region. “Backsliding on democratic values is never a good thing.”

The Biden administration now faces a tricky choice. It has to decide whether to cut off a military partnership considered critical for fighting terrorists in a growing hotbed, or find some way to work with the military junta.

The White House is holding out hope that President Mohamed Bazoum — currently under house arrest — will be returned to power. But threats from other West African states and the U.S. haven’t budged Niger’s coup leaders.

Those with experience in the region argue that Niger is simply too important for America to abandon no matter its leadership. The U.S. has spent $500 million building up and training the Nigerien military since 2012, including $100 million for the base at Agadez, which hosts U.S. drones for counterterrorism operations. That base could become increasingly important as violent extremist groups expand their reach and China and Russia seek footholds in Africa.

Former advisers also argue that the recent coups do not reflect American military training, and shouldn’t be taken as a sign that U.S. efforts in the Sahel have failed.

“We can’t simply see the Niger coup as a loss and quit,” said one Defense Department official who has worked in the region. “We have to be willing to take chances and find other ways and other partners that can help stabilize the region and allow for the return of elected governance.”

The official, like many in this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive topic.

Trusted partners?

Retired Maj. Gen. J. Marcus Hicks, who served as the commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces Africa from 2017 to 2019, says he was instantly impressed by Barmou. The Nigerien general speaks perfect English, and attended multiple English language and military training courses at bases in the United States over nearly two decades, including at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the National Defense University.

Hicks and Barmou developed a friendship. They had many long conversations over dinner about the influx of extremists into Niger, and how difficult it was for Barmou to see his country deteriorate in recent years, said Hicks.

“He’s the kind of guy that gives you hope for the future of the country, so that makes this doubly disappointing,” said Hicks. It was “disheartening and disturbing” to learn that Barmou was involved in the coup.

As its neighbors fell like dominos to military coups over the last two years, Niger — and Barmou himself — remained the last bastion of hope for the U.S. military partnership in the region.

He “was a good partner, a trusted partner,” said a U.S. official familiar with the U.S.-Niger military relationship. “But local dynamics, local politics, just trump whatever the international community may or may not want.”

It’s not clear whether Barmou was initially involved in plotting the coup, which is believed to have been spearheaded by Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani, the head of Bazoum’s presidential guard. Tchiani and his men reportedly took the president captive because Tchiani believed he was going to be pushed out of his job.

But soon after, Nigerien military leaders including Barmou endorsed the putsch.

Other African coup figures trained by the U.S. military include Malian Col. Assimi Goita and Guinean Col. Mamady Doumbouya. Both attended a 2019 training exercise in Burkina Faso organized by the U.S. Army, confirmed U.S. Africa Command spokesperson Kelly Cahalan.

Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo, a Burkinabe officer who seized power in a 2022 mutiny, also received American military training and participated in multiple U.S. engagements and exercises, Cahalan said.

Last week, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder acknowledged that “several” Nigerien military personnel involved in deposing the president have received U.S. training.

But he denied any link between the training the soldiers received and the coup attempt. “Any training we provide … always adheres to the principles of democratic governance, civilian rule of the military, rule of law of military-civilian relations,” Ryder said.

Still, as one senior DOD official put it: “It looks bad.”

‘It’s like any bad monster movie’

West African soldiers typically participate in two types of U.S. military instruction.

Some, like Barmou, travel to the U.S. to take part in theoretical courses on topics such as the law of armed conflict, or English language programs. Others, like Goita and Doumbouya, participate in joint exercises in the region, where they learn small arms tactics like how to conduct a patrol or secure a building.

“It’s not like we’re teaching them how to do coups,” one former DOD official said.

Still, the American military style of training is not always the right fit, the person said.

“We don’t understand their culture, and we’re trying to give them an American way of fighting terrorism,” the former official said. “We’re not really in the best position to be advising them, to be honest with you.”

And the democratic values U.S. officials try to espouse can get lost in the realities of local politics. In 2020 in Mali, for example, protesters in Bamako began calling for the resignation of then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita due to alleged government corruption as well as his management of the Covid-19 pandemic, islamic insurgency and the economy. By August, soldiers rolled into the capital.

Still, some who’ve worked in the region argue that the American military training has a lasting positive impact. Oftentimes the individuals and units sent by the U.S. military and CIA to train African militaries are the ones that help prevent coups from happening, by supporting the constitution and elected officials, said Mick Mulroy, a former Marine, CIA paramilitary officer and senior Pentagon official in the Trump administration.

And many former and current officials believe the American military mission in West Africa is a critical buffer to prevent terrorist groups there from posing a threat to Europe, or one day the United States.

It’s not clear how that relationship can continue, however. U.S. law generally requires an end to military assistance to a country in case of a coup, although there are exceptions that can be made for national security reasons. Another option the Biden administration has is simply never making the legal determination that a coup has happened.

So far, it has avoided using the term to describe events in Niger, saying the situation is “fluid.”

The Sahel today looks a lot like Afghanistan in the 1990s, said Hicks, the retired commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces Africa. He warned that the vast ungoverned space is a natural breeding ground for jihadist activity. Leaving Niger and its neighbors, much like leaving Afghanistan, could have dangerous consequences.

“It’s like any bad monster movie,” Hicks said. “He shot the monster, it’s all over, you turn your back and walk away. Everybody in the audience knows that’s a bad idea, but that’s what we’re doing right now.”

The allure of other friends

Another concern is that if America cuts off assistance to Niger and its neighbors, U.S. rivals such as Russia and China will move into the vacuum.

Not only does this lessen American influence in the region, it also provides an opportunity for bad actors to exploit unstable African nations. Even security assistance can be replaced, in theory, by groups like Russia’s Wagner Group.

“If Wagner gets brought in, they use heavy-handed security methods that have been proven counterproductive in many cases, and Russia is keen to play the spoiler here so they will,” said Hicks.

American responses to other coup-ridden countries have varied depending on what the U.S. deemed its national security interest.

In 2013, the Obama administration chose not to take a position on whether Egypt’s coup was a coup so that it could continue sending military aid to that longstanding Middle Eastern partner.

But in 2020, the United States halted military cooperation with Mali after the military takeover there, and similarly cut off military assistance to Guinea in 2021 after it suffered its own coup. Last year the U.S. froze nearly $160 million in aid to Burkina Faso after the January ouster of President Roch Kabore.

Tibor Nagy, a former assistant secretary of State for African affairs, said the Niger coup leaders’ unwillingness to back down in the face of U.S. pleas and warnings was a sign of America’s fading influence globally as other powers rise.

“It’s not a unipolar world anymore,” he said. “It’s duo-polar, if anything, and there are a whole lot of middle powers who have quite a bit of leverage.”

POLITICO

Politico

14. China’s defense minister warns against ‘playing with fire’ on Taiwan during Russia meeting

"in a veiled jab at the United States as he addressed a security conference in Russia."

China’s defense minister warns against ‘playing with fire’ on Taiwan during Russia meeting

By Simone McCarthy, CNN

Updated 2:06 AM EDT, Wed August 16, 2023

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/16/china/china-defense-minister-li-shangfu-russia-taiwan-intl-hnk/index.html?utm

CNN — 

China’s defense minister Li Shangfu on Tuesday warned against “playing with fire” when it comes to Taiwan in a veiled jab at the United States as he addressed a security conference in Russia.

Speaking at the Moscow Conference on International Security, Li said attempts to “use Taiwan to contain China,” would “surely end in failure,” according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

Li’s comments echoed previous statements by Chinese officials but the location of his speech was significant and symbolic given Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary. It has repeatedly castigated American interactions with the island, with which Washington does not have official diplomatic ties, including for the sale of US arms to Taipei.

Li, who was sanctioned by the US in 2018 for purchases of Russian weapons, joined the Moscow security conference as he began a six-day trip to Russia and its close ally Belarus.

Senior defense officials from more than 20 “friendly states,” including Belarus, Iran and Myanmar will also attend the forum, Russian state media previously reported, citing Moscow’s defense ministry, which organizes the annual event. No Western countries were invited, state media said.

The visit is Li’s second to Russia since assuming his role as defense chief earlier this year. It comes as Beijing has continued to bolster its security ties with Moscow, despite its unrelenting assault on Ukraine, which has triggered a humanitarian disaster with global ramifications.

In a pre-recorded message to the same Moscow conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US of adding “fuel to the fire” of global conflicts, including through its support of Ukraine.

Taiwan will 'never back down' to China threats, island's presidential hopeful says during US transit

China has used similar rhetoric in its own official comments about the conflict, despite maintaining that it remains a neutral party and a proponent of peace.

Li on Tuesday also told attendees that China’s military was “a firm force in maintaining world peace,” and that Chinese leader Xi Jinping aimed to stabilize global security in “a world of chaos.”

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“We are willing to work with other militaries to strengthen mutual trust in military security strategies and practical cooperation in various specialized fields,” Li added, according to Xinhua.

Russian state-run media Sputnik also cited Li as saying that military relations between China and Russia do not target any third party – a point Chinese officials have made in the past. The Xinhua report did not include the statement.

Li met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu to discuss cooperation between the two countries’ militaries, Xinhua said. China and Russia regularly carry out joint exercises – including a joint naval patrol off the coast of Alaska in recent weeks.

The Chinese defense chief also held bilateral meetings with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and other countries’ defense departments and military leaders on the sidelines of the conference.

Li’s comments on Taiwan come on the heels of a backlash from Beijing as Taiwan’s Vice President William Lai, a front-runner in the island’s upcoming presidential race, makes planned stopovers in the United States during travel for an official visit to Paraguay.

China’s foreign ministry condemned the stopover on Sunday, calling Lai a “trouble maker through and through.”

The US maintains an unofficial relationship with Taipei after formally establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, but is bound by law to provide the democratic island with the means to defend itself.

During a speech in New York, Lai declared Taiwan will “never back down” to threats from China.

“No matter how great the threat of authoritarianism is to Taiwan, we absolutely will not be scared nor cower, we will uphold the values of democracy and freedom,” he said.

China has in recent years ramped up its military intimidation of the island, including following meetings between Taiwanese leaders and US lawmakers.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has also drawn increased attention to Taiwan as a potential security flashpoint in Asia.

Despite broad differences with the geopolitical circumstances of Russia and Ukraine, the optics of a seemingly more powerful aggressor launching an attack driven by a vision of unification have heightened focus on China’s intentions toward Taiwan.

Some analysts have suggested that China was watching Western reaction to Russian aggression in Ukraine with an eye to understanding possible responses to any potential, future moves against Taiwan.

CNN’s Mengchen Zhang, Katharina Krebs and Duarte Mendonça to contributed to this report.

15. U.S. to Provide Iran Access to $16 Billion in Frozen Funds

U.S. to Provide Iran Access to $16 Billion in Frozen Funds

fdd.org ·  · August 15, 2023

Latest Developments

The United States moved toward giving Iran access to at least $16 billion in the last few weeks, including $6 billion held in South Korea as part of a prisoner exchange deal and $10 billion held in Iraq to pay off Baghdad’s debts for its purchases of Iranian natural gas. Moreover, the Biden administration has remained silent regarding reports that the administration’s understanding with Iran would include up to an additional $7 billion in special drawing rights (SDR) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and potentially other cash as well. Washington has also failed to comment on Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s visit last week to Japan, where he reportedly requested access to $3 billion in frozen funds.

Expert Analysis

“Congress should be worried about the money we don’t see as much as or more than the money we already see. The Treasury Department needs to come clean on the status of funds for Iran from the IMF, and the State Department needs to comment on whether it is negotiating the release of additional funds currently frozen in Japan.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor

“Iran is making a play for its frozen funds to be released through an escalatory test of wills in the region and with hostage diplomacy against the country that created the lock-up provisions and sanctions architecture in the first place. Congress should see the moves to unlock these monies as an attempt to avoid oversight and deliver Tehran unearned sanctions relief.” — Behnam Ben Taleblu, FDD Senior Fellow

How Did the Funds End Up in Escrow?

The funds released from South Korean banks as part of the prisoner exchange agreement were payments owed by South Korea to Iran for purchases of oil. South Korea and a handful of other nations, including China, India, Italy, Greece, Japan, Taiwan, and Turkey, were granted waivers in 2018 to continue buying Iranian oil after the Trump administration left the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The Trump administration canceled these exemptions in 2019 and diverted payments for already delivered oil into escrow accounts.

Japan is the only country with a publicly reported amount — approximately $3 billion — of unreleased Iranian funds. Still, it is likely that other states that had been granted exemptions also hold undisclosed amounts.

What Are IMF SDRs?

Unlike Iran’s escrowed funds, which are debts owed to Iran, SDRs from the IMF are units of account that a holder can trade for an infusion of liquid cash into its economy equal to the value of the SDRs. Allowing Iran to trade in its SDRs at the IMF could mean an infusion of $7 billion into Iran’s economy. The United States blocked a $5 billion IMF emergency loan to Iran in 2020, and U.S. law mandates that the IMF’s American executive director oppose allocating any funds to a state sponsor of terror.

Related Analysis

“U.S. to Release $6 Billion to Iran in Exchange for Hostages,” FDD Flash Brief

“How Congress Should Respond to an Interim Iran Deal,” by Richard Goldberg and Behnam Ben Taleblu

fdd.org · by Jack Sullivan · August 15, 2023

16. Opinion Blinken and Biden are building a foreign policy framework to last

Conclusion:

Even at a moment when American politics seems to be in free fall, this administration has kept its feet on the ground in foreign policy. That should reassure people who care about American interests — at home and abroad.

Opinion  Blinken and Biden are building a foreign policy framework to last

Columnist

August 15, 2023 at 2:21 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · August 15, 2023

On the day when the leading Republican presidential candidate was indicted for the fourth time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was trying to explain some of the pillars of U.S. foreign policy that are meant to endure, no matter what.

Blinken’s description of U.S. diplomacy during an interview on Monday might strike some people as whistling in the dark. But to me, it’s more like an anchor to windward. Who knows what political tempests lie ahead? But at least this administration is trying to foster partnerships and norms of behavior — in dealing with China, Russia and Ukraine, as well as new challenges such as artificial intelligence — that are broadly based and, hopefully, sustainable.

Blinken began by describing the trilateral summit that President Biden will host with the leaders of Japan and South Korea this weekend at Camp David. Given past enmity between Tokyo and Seoul, this three-way alliance is a small miracle. It’s not an Asian NATO, Blinken said. But it provides a baseline of U.S. nuclear deterrence against threats from North Korea and China — so that Tokyo and Seoul don’t have to build their own bombs.

“This is the pillar in Asia for us,” Blinken said. Though he wouldn’t discuss what the three leaders will announce this weekend, another senior administration official said it would include “steps on data sharing for ballistic missile warning systems and other efforts to counter North Korea’s unlawful [weapons of mass destruction] and missile programs,” as well as new economic, technological and freedom-of-navigation cooperation.

Blinken then turned to China, the elephant in the room of U.S. foreign policy. His visit to Beijing in June was meant to reset a floor under what was becoming a dangerously acrimonious relationship. Blinken said “engagement itself is important … to make clear our intent, what we’re doing and not doing,” and thereby avoid a mutually disastrous conflict. But he said there is also “a clear demand signal on both of us” from a region that doesn’t want an economically devastating war.

Whether the re-engagement with China will produce any real cooperation “remains to be seen,” Blinken said. He noted, for example, that China hasn’t offered any specific help on North Korea. “They’ve been open to having a conversation,” he said, but haven’t taken action “that has produced any results.”

One intriguing area of U.S.-Chinese cooperation was a dialogue about AI. Blinken said he discussed the subject when he was in Beijing, and “there’s a clear interest in China in talking about this at some point.” The Biden administration is already discussing AI norms with private companies and international regulators. “At some point, in some way, China will need to be part of that conversation,” he said.

This exploration of AI rules is important because it’s an essential building block for the future, regardless of who is president of the United States. The more the Biden administration can get done now in terms of creating a durable framework, the better.

Ukraine is the most obvious place where the Biden administration needs to build bipartisan, multilateral policies that can transcend the vagaries of our election system. Foreign-policy experts in the United States and Europe fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin might be trying to wait out the West in the hope that former president Donald Trump will be reelected next year and make a deal that hurts Ukraine and helps Russia.

Blinken offered a guarded assessment of the current Ukrainian counteroffensive. “I think the jury is still out,” he said. “I don’t think we will know for … at least a month and maybe longer whether the counteroffensive is going to make significant strategic gains for Ukraine in terms of recovering territory.”

The secretary was also skeptical about peace prospects. “In this moment, I don’t see any kind of real opening … principally because Putin has shown no interest to date in engaging meaningfully in negotiations or diplomacy.”

But beyond the daily order of battle, “we’re also working to set up Ukraine for the medium to long term,” he said, in a way that isn’t dependent simply on a continued stream of U.S. military aid. He cited the July commitment in Vilnius, Lithuania, by the Group of Seven countries, the world’s strongest democracies, to provide a continuing flow of weapons and military training so that Ukraine can deter Russia.

“We need to have something … that is both effective and sustainable, to move to a longer term and more sustainable posture in helping them build a world-class military,” Blinken explained. One benefit of such “long-term security assurances,” he said, is that they will “disabuse” Putin of his “conviction that he can outlast Ukraine and outlast us.”

Blinken has been with Biden for so long — going back to Biden’s days in the Senate — that the president is said to speak of his secretary of state as almost a son. He knows Biden’s strengths and weaknesses as well as anyone, and he knows the policy initiatives, such as this weekend’s Japan-South Korea summit, that are legacy items for the president.

Even at a moment when American politics seems to be in free fall, this administration has kept its feet on the ground in foreign policy. That should reassure people who care about American interests — at home and abroad.

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · August 15, 2023

17. Do Oppenheimer’s Warnings About Nuclear Weapons Apply to AI?

Excerpts:

Between now and then, though, the US surely does not want to find itself in a position of weakness because the People’s Liberation Army has mastered the next revolution in military affairs, or because China and Russia are making the most of AI — to better control their populations and more effectively diffuse their influence globally, perhaps — and the democracies aren’t.

“AI technologies will be a source of enormous power for the companies and countries that harness them,” reads a report issued in 2021 by a panel led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work. As during the nuclear age, the democracies must first address the danger that their rivals will asymmetrically exploit new technologies before they address the common dangers those technologies pose.

So understood the president who decided to build the hydrogen bomb seven decades ago. “No one wants to use it,” Harry Truman remarked. “But … we have got to have it if only for bargaining purposes with the Russians.” In the current era of technological dynamism and intense global rivalry, America needs new Oppenheimers — but it probably needs new Trumans more.

Do Oppenheimer’s Warnings About Nuclear Weapons Apply to AI?

The father of the atomic bomb saw the power of transformative technology but erred in saying it shouldn’t be built.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-08-15/do-oppenheimer-s-warnings-about-nuclear-weapons-apply-to-ai?utm=true&sref=hhjZtX76

By Hal Brands

August 15, 2023 at 7:00 AM EDT

J. Robert Oppenheimer was once a household name in America, thanks to his work on the atomic weapons that helped save humanity in World War II and have terrified it ever since. His reputation as a brilliant scientist who was tormented by the dilemmas of the nuclear age is now enjoying a Hollywood-inspired renaissance — and his story has lessons for how democratic societies should deal with another transformative technology: artificial intelligence.

Unfortunately, we’re at risk of getting those lessons wrong.

Oppenheimer and his colleagues built the atomic bomb because almost nothing could have been worse than the Nazis winning World War II. By 1950, however, Oppenheimer opposed building the hydrogen bomb — which was orders of magnitude more powerful than the earliest atomic bombs — because he believed the tools of the Cold War had become more dangerous than those of America’s enemy. “If one is honest,” he predicted, “the most probable view of the future is that of war, exploding atomic bombs, death, and the end of most freedom.”

Oppenheimer lost the H-bomb debate, which eventually led to his loyalty being questioned and his security clearance being revoked. That coda aside, the parallels are obvious today.

Rapid-fire innovation in AI is ushering in another technological revolution. Once again, leading scientists, engineers and innovators argue it is simply too dangerous to unleash this technology on a rivalrous world. In March, prominent researchers and technologists called for a moratorium on AI development. In May, hundreds of experts wrote that AI poses a “risk of extinction” comparable to that of nuclear war. Geoffrey Hinton, a man as prominent in AI as Oppenheimer was in theoretical physics, resigned his post at Google to warn of the “existential risk” ahead.

The sentiment is understandable. Leaving aside the prospect of killer robots, AI — like most technologies — will change the world for good (better health care) and for ill (more disinformation, helping terrorists build chemical weapons). Yet the solutions that Oppenheimer offered in his day, and that some of his successors offer today, aren’t really solutions at all.

Oppenheimer was right that thermonuclear arms were awful, civilization-shattering weapons. He was wrong that the answer was simply not to build them. We now know that Stalin’s Soviet Union had already decided to create its own hydrogen bomb at the time Washington was debating the issue in 1950. Had the US offered to forego development of that weapon, Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov later acknowledged, Stalin would have moved to “exploit the adversary’s folly at the earliest opportunity.”

A world in which the Soviets had the most advanced thermonuclear weapons would not have been better or safer. Moscow would have possessed powerful leverage for geopolitical blackmail — which is just what Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, did in the late 1950s when it seemed that the Soviets had surged ahead in long-range missiles.

The US government did eventually take Oppenheimer’s advice, in a limited way: It negotiated arms control agreements that restricted the number and types of nuclear weapons the superpowers possessed, and the ways in which countries could test them. Yet the US was most successful in securing mutual restraint once it had shown it would deny the Soviet Union unilateral advantage.

Now the US is at the beginning of another long debate in which issues of national advantage are mingled with concern for the common good. It is entirely possible the world will ultimately need some multilateral regime to control AI’s underlying technology or most dangerous applications. US officials are even quietly hopeful that Moscow and Beijing will be willing to regulate technologies that could disrupt their societies as profoundly as it tests the democracies.

Between now and then, though, the US surely does not want to find itself in a position of weakness because the People’s Liberation Army has mastered the next revolution in military affairs, or because China and Russia are making the most of AI — to better control their populations and more effectively diffuse their influence globally, perhaps — and the democracies aren’t.

“AI technologies will be a source of enormous power for the companies and countries that harness them,” reads a report issued in 2021 by a panel led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work. As during the nuclear age, the democracies must first address the danger that their rivals will asymmetrically exploit new technologies before they address the common dangers those technologies pose.

So understood the president who decided to build the hydrogen bomb seven decades ago. “No one wants to use it,” Harry Truman remarked. “But … we have got to have it if only for bargaining purposes with the Russians.” In the current era of technological dynamism and intense global rivalry, America needs new Oppenheimers — but it probably needs new Trumans more.

Elsewhere in Bloomberg Opinion:

• The Oppenheimer Debate Is Different in Japan: Gearoid Reidy
• ‘Oppenheimer’ and the New Age of Nuclear Terror: Max Hastings
• What the AI ‘Extinction’ Warning Gets Wrong: Tyler Cowen

For more Bloomberg Opinion, subscribe to our newsletter.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Hal Brands at Hal.Brands@jhu.edu

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.net

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. The Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, he is co-author of "Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China" and a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He is a senior adviser to Macro Advisory Partners.

18. PLA raising fears throughout Asia

• Home Editorials

Wed, Aug 16, 2023 page8

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/08/16/2003804795

PLA raising fears throughout Asia

• By Ray Song 宋磊
• 
  
•  
•  
• Former Japanese prime minister Taro Aso last week visited Taiwan and spoke at the Ketagalan Forum: Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue in Taipei. He was the highest-ranking former Japanese official to visit Taiwan since the countries severed diplomatic relations in 1972.
• Meanwhile, amid the rapid growth of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), security in the Indo-Pacific region is full of uncertainties.
• In the past few years, the PLA has constantly harassed Taiwan. The increased frequency of Chinese warplanes and warships crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entering Taiwan’s air defense identification zone has given the world the impression that Beijing might take unexpected military actions in the Strait.
• From this perspective, even though Taiwan and Japan do not have formal diplomatic relations, they are both in the first island chain. Should a military conflict occur in the Strait, the PLA would blockade Taiwan, which would in turn affect Japan’s air and sea security, so Tokyo has great urgency to pay attention to developments in the Strait.
• Although New Zealand, in the southern hemisphere, is far from Taiwan, it addressed China in its National Security Strategy released on Aug. 4. The white paper says that “China has become more assertive and more willing to challenge existing international rules and norms.”
• The report says that New Zealand should invest more resources in national defense and security. Although the details of any military buildup plan by Wellington have not been disclosed, the policy paper shows that it attaches the same level of importance to security in the Indo-Pacific region as other nations.
• Taiwan, Japan and New Zealand are all “island states” in the Indo-Pacific region. Competition between the US and China in the region is gradually growing in intensity. In response to the possibility of a cross-strait war, the US has been carrying out bilateral and multilateral military exercises with allies such as Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia, while also bolstering the air and sea power of Indo-Pacific nations through arms sales.
• Japan and New Zealand have now expressed their willingness to enhance their national defense forces, and this might be due to the “spillover effect” of cross-strait tensions to neighboring countries. When countries build up their national defense capabilities, they are bolstering the “security resilience” and military deterrence in the region at the same time.
• Although these countries do not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, security in the Strait has become one of the most pressing issues in the region. Taiwan does not always face the powerful PLA alone under such circumstances.
• Ray Song is a doctoral student in Tamkang University’s Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies.
• Translated by Eddy Chang

19. I Watched the Dramatic Rise of Qin Gang — and Never Expected His Sudden Fall

Conclusion:

Qin’s rise was breathtakingly meteoric, even being appointed to the State Council as recently as March, a body ranking higher than China’s Cabinet — surely a sign that he was handpicked by President Xi Jinping for a significant career. His untimely departure from leadership underscores how tenuous the very fates of senior Chinese officials and leaders are. Even the most strident loyalists, it seems, have to watch their backs.

I Watched the Dramatic Rise of Qin Gang — and Never Expected His Sudden Fall

Politico

An original Chinese “Wolf Warrior” diplomat has vanished.

Qin Gang served as Chinese ambassador to the U.S. for 18 months before being promoted to one of China’s top foreign policy jobs just a year ago, at the age of 56. | Thomas Trutschel/Getty Images

By Terril Yue Jones

08/15/2023 04:30 AM EDT

Terril Yue Jones has been a journalist since 1981 including 18 years based in China, Japan and France. He teaches international journalism at Claremont McKenna College.

Until recently, Qin Gang was one of China’s most prominent American experts and influential policymakers. But after a mysterious, month-long disappearance from public view, he was unceremoniously ousted from the position of foreign minister in late July.

Few Chinese officials had as rapid a rise as Qin, whom I first met three decades ago when he was a low-level functionary. Qin served as Chinese ambassador to the U.S. for 18 months before being promoted to one of China’s top foreign policy jobs just a year ago, at the age of 56.

One might have thought he was in good stead with the regime. Qin was a so-called “Wolf Warrior diplomat,” one of a group of outspoken Chinese diplomats not shy of criticizing the U.S. sharply and publicly, and unfailingly defending their homeland. The term appeared in 2017 after the hugely popular Chinese movie Wolf Warrior 2, about a special ops hero.

But Qin was a Wolf Warrior diplomat long before the term was coined. As Foreign Ministry spokesperson, as vice minister of foreign affairs and before he was China’s ambassador in Washington, he was a vigorous hawk toward the United States.

Ties between Beijing and Washington have been steadily deteriorating over persistent trade, human rights, military policy, espionage and cyber-hacking issues, and particularly over Taiwan, the self-governing island that China views as a renegade province to which the U.S. sells huge amounts of sophisticated weaponry. This has been the backdrop to Qin’s career, as he became one of the leaders in formulating China’s aggressive foreign policy. With his sudden fall — certainly a shock within China’s leadership hierarchy — things do not bode well for Qin, and China’s intentions toward the U.S. have become murkier.

I first met Qin 30 years ago in Monte Carlo. At the time I was a journalist based in Paris, covering the International Olympic Committee congress that was to select the host city for the 2000 Summer Olympics. Beijing was a strong contender, even though the IOC vote was in September 1993, a mere four years after the Chinese army’s violent crackdown on student-led protesters based at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which resulted in much bloodshed as Chinese tanks and armored personnel carriers retook the square from the unarmed protesters.

The memory was still fresh in the world’s mind, and Beijing’s delegation had its work cut out to try and sway IOC delegates’ votes. In a somewhat politically tone-deaf move, Beijing had named Chen Xitong as the head of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee and leader of the Chinese delegation to Monaco. Chen was Beijing’s mayor, a post he had held since 1983, and he was a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s elite Central Committee. As mayor he had presided over the implementation of martial law in response to the massively popular 1989 uprising, which sought democratic reforms including freedom of the press and speech; an end to corruption; transparency in leadership including divulging leaders’ personal assets; freedom to choose jobs and universities; and higher wages.

Having covered the protests and aftermath in Beijing, I was keenly interested in how China would present its Olympic bid to the world, and I secured an interview with Chen in his suite at the Loews Monte Carlo Hotel, where the IOC meeting was taking place. The interpreter assigned to Chen was Qin Gang.

At the time, Qin was a third secretary in the Foreign Ministry’s Department of West European Affairs. He had joined the ministry five years earlier after majoring in international politics at Beijing’s University of International Relations, and had an early assignment as a news assistant for United Press International in Beijing. I asked half my questions in Chinese, the rest in English; Qin interpreted all the answers to English, in which he was extremely fluent. I noticed that Qin was a careful and articulate translator. For such a young functionary, I was impressed by his eloquence and confidence.

I didn’t get much of substance from the interview about the 1989 turmoil in the Chinese capital. “About that period, history has already furnished a reply,” was all Chen would say. He seemed serene about Beijing’s chances with the IOC, sounding like a Tang Dynasty poet. “Even if we don’t get the Olympic Games, the trees will still be green, the roads will be built, women will still be having children, China will still advance,” he said, with Qin translating. “China’s moon will still be bright.” (In the end the IOC awarded the Games to Sydney.)

Later, however, I ran into Qin in the lobby of the Loews, and we had quite an animated conversation. At one point Qin bristled and did not disguise his anger at how he saw Washington trying to isolate China and block its rise. A U.S. congressional resolution and letters from U.S. senators had urged IOC members not to vote for Beijing because of China’s human rights record. Qin told me emphatically in English, his face flushed, that he wanted to make the U.S. into “our gopher.” For a 27-year-old junior functionary, he was both linguistically formidable and ideologically unambiguous.

Years later when I was a Beijing-based journalist in the 2010s, Qin was director general of the Foreign Ministry’s Information Department and its outspoken top spokesperson. He was both charming and combative, alternately playfully criticizing foreign media, then vigorously extolling China’s positions.

He was appointed in July 2021 as envoy to Washington, weathering some tough times in U.S.-China relations — a U.S. “diplomatic boycott” of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics; differences over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; skyrocketing tensions over Taiwan; persistent human rights issues; a semiconductor war; lingering suspicions over Covid-19.

Outwardly he became more… diplomatic. In a farewell essay in the Washington Post in January, Qin noted high points of his term as ambassador. “At the ports of Boston and Long Beach, I saw huge stacks of containers shipped from and to China, a testament to the high degree of economic interdependence between our two countries — and a reminder that decoupling serves no one’s interest,” he wrote. “I am also more convinced that Americans, just like the Chinese people, are broad-minded, friendly and hard-working. The future of both our peoples — indeed, the future of the entire planet — depends on a healthy and stable China-U.S. relationship.”

Holding the foreign minister portfolio for a mere seven months, Qin was last seen publicly on June 25, subsequently missing important diplomatic meetings in Asia and high-ranking visitors to Beijing. He was abruptly replaced on July 25 as foreign minister by his predecessor Wang Yi, who remains head of the Chinese Communist Party’s Foreign Affairs Commission, China’s top diplomatic official. Neither the government nor the party gave an explanation for Qin’s ouster, though social media in Hong Kong and Taiwan (and even in China, before the comments were erased by censors) buzzed about a possible power struggle, health issue or marital infidelity. He was vigorously loyal to China, but was he too “wolf” a warrior?

Qin’s rise was breathtakingly meteoric, even being appointed to the State Council as recently as March, a body ranking higher than China’s Cabinet — surely a sign that he was handpicked by President Xi Jinping for a significant career. His untimely departure from leadership underscores how tenuous the very fates of senior Chinese officials and leaders are. Even the most strident loyalists, it seems, have to watch their backs.

POLITICO

Politico

20. Is the dollar being dethroned?

Is the dollar being dethroned? India just bought 1M barrels of oil from the UAE using rupees instead of USD for the first time ever — why this could spell doom for the greenback

The two powerhouse countries have reached a bilateral trade agreement.

https://moneywise.com/news/top-stories/india-buys-oil-from-uae-using-rupees-not-us-dollars

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

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By Bethan Moorcraft

Aug. 15, 2023

India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have officially started trading with each other in their local currencies.

The Indian government announced on Monday that the country’s leading petroleum refiner, Indian Oil Corp., used the local rupee to buy one million barrels of oil from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company — not the U.S. dollar.

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This monumental transaction follows the sale of 25kg of gold from a UAE gold exporter to a buyer in India for around 128.4 million rupees ($1.54 million), according to Reuters.

What could this mean for the U.S. dollar on the world stage?

Trade talks

Last year, India’s central bank revealed a new framework for settling global trade in rupees — an idea that came into fruition last month, when India is the world’s third biggest oil importer and consumer signed two agreements with the UAE.

First, the two giants agreed to settle trade in their local currencies — in an effort to cut transaction costs and eliminate dollar conversions. They also agreed to set up a real-time payment link to simplify cross-border money transfers.

The agreements will enable “seamless cross-border transactions and payments, and foster greater economic cooperation,” the Reserve Bank of India explained in a weekend statement.

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De-dollarization trend

India and the UAE are by no means alone in trying to reduce their reliance on the dollar. Powerful nations across the world — particularly China and Russia — are keen to dethrone the dollar in response to aggressive U.S. sanctions and foreign policy plays.

This trend — deemed “de-dollarization” — has gained such sway that some are questioning whether the dollar’s days of dominance are over. But Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said no currency currently exists that could displace the greenback.

Yellen’s reassurance follows a 8% decline in the dollar’s share of global reserves in 2022. In an effort to diversify, central banks worldwide have been starting to ditch their dollar reserves in favor of gold.

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About the Author

Bethan Moorcraft

Reporter

Bethan Moorcraft is a reporter for Moneywise with experience in news editing and business reporting across international markets.

21. You Go to War With the Industrial Base You Have, Not the Industrial Base You Want

​I have one question for our defense industrial base: Can we build an iron mountain (s) when and wherever necessary?

You Go to War With the Industrial Base You Have, Not the Industrial Base You Want - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by John Barrett · August 16, 2023

In 1924, the Army Industrial College opened its doors for the first time. In the wake of the difficulties in mobilizing the American economy and supporting the expeditionary force in World War I, Congress established the college to lay the intellectual foundation for mobilizing the American industrial base in the next war. Seventeen years later, that war came with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The Army Industrial College proved its value by providing the National Defense Advisory Commission with the baseline for World War II’s economic mobilization. A century after the college’s founding, the lessons that the United States painfully learned on industrial mobilization for great-power conflict have largely been forgotten and a new generation of national security professionals now find themselves in urgent need of its teachings.

Defense planners’ focus on short war scenarios and the commensurate development of a military built around exquisite high-tech platforms has opened the United States to potential strategic failure in conflict, with an inability to sustain the force it has. After a generation of globalization and de-industrialization, the U.S. national security architecture needs a better understanding of the effect of prolonged conflict on the military — and its increasingly advanced platforms — to facilitate the development of an industrial base and supply chain that can be resilient and endure through a long war. This should be accomplished through close cooperation with private industry to establish what the resource requirements of prolonged conflict could be and their ability to satisfy them when global supply chains collapse. Understanding where those chokepoints are provides a guidepost for more precise investments in the industrial base, to both strengthen the backbone of the military in a time of increased budgetary constraints and to better prepare the industrial base for large-scale conflict.

“You Will Be Home Before the Leaves Fall…”

As the Imperial German army marched into Belgium in August 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II promised his men that the war with France would be a short one. But, as Robert Gilpin has highlighted, wars between great powers are unique because they possess the will and capability to continue fighting for a prolonged period. And, as Cathal Nolan describes in Allure of Battle, great-power conflicts almost always expand, protract, and become contests of attrition between materiel and personnel. Even today in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, a great-power proxy war, the war has extended well into its second year. With very few exceptions in history, wars between great powers inevitably expand and protract.

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While the historical record thus indicates that a war between the United States and China would likely be protracted, current planning on both sides of the Pacific seems to be in preparation for a short conflict. China has been investing in the technologies and developing the force structure to support a rapid strike on Taiwan since the early 1990s. And as early as 2001, Chinese leadership discussed the strategy of surprise, striking hard and fast against a “distant enemy” — the term that Chinese leaders use to describe the United States. Meanwhile, U.S. defense planners have been focused on developing concepts and capabilities that seem most focused on blunting an attack and less focused on surging and mobilization — this in spite of warnings from Hal Brands and Andrew Krepinevich.

This begs the question: Do leaders in the United States believe China would stop fighting if the U.S. military sank 300 ships? Do U.S. leaders also believe that the U.S. military would stop fighting if China reached Taipei in a few weeks? The answer is not likely, as both sides have significant political incentives to continue a conflict. First, there is the overarching balance of power between regional hegemons that would incentivize continued conflict. And, in the case of China, it’s difficult for authoritarian regimes to survive a significant loss, while for the United States any significant attack on American forces would likely increase domestic political pressure to fight on, even though there would be concerns about nuclear escalation. If both sides have the will and capacity to continue fighting, shouldn’t leaders be asking the question: Why wouldn’t war with China protract, in spite of nuclear risks?

Protracted conflict would have significant economic, societal, and political fallout, likely upsetting political order. But over-emphasis on planning and organizing around a short, sharp conflict has also opened the Department of Defense to a separate set of weaknesses.

The More Advanced the Technology, the Harder It Is to Sustain

The challenge the United States faces is being able to last long enough in protracted conflict to succeed. For the last generation, U.S. military-technological superiority proved its utility on the battlefields of Kuwait, Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Libya. But while none of these conflicts lasted long enough, or proceeded at high enough intensity, to stress the industrial base and supply chains, signs of trouble did appear.

This superiority was the culmination of 30 years of effort from defense intellectuals, engineers, reformers, and national security professionals who sought to change the Department of Defense after Vietnam. These pioneers utilized the American technological advantage to develop faster, more precise, and longer-range targeting, which was dubbed the second offset. The integration of concepts like Extended Battle and the development of long-range kill chains became a leading effort for the Advanced Research Projects Agency and ultimately evolved into Assault Breaker and the development of the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, the F-117, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions, among others. But even during Desert Storm, the presumed high watermark of American military power, there would have been significant challenges had the war gone on any longer.

The F-35 program, the apotheosis of peace dividend program development, has a just-in-time supply chain that likely risks operational success in a potential conflict. Additionally, the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has laid bare the atrophy in Western and Russian defense companies, as they struggle to replace lost materiel at the pace of attrition. And, in a case of history repeating itself, the phrase “shell famine,” popularized during World War I, has resurfaced as both sides struggle to produce sufficient numbers of artillery shells.

Today, the Department of Defense is doubling down on the second offset with offset X, using advanced technology like autonomy and hypersonic missiles to provide a decided operational advantage. All the services are investing in underwater drones, collaborative combat aircraft, new hypersonic air-to-air missiles, and autonomy. These technologies look to overcome adversaries’ geographic and quantitative advantages with faster systems and greater numbers of autonomous platforms — and the evidence for their utility is compelling, with repeated success across wargames.

However, these complex systems are also reliant on more diverse global supply chains. For example, tantalum, a key metal for hypersonic platforms, isn’t even mined in the United States. Meanwhile, China produces over three-quarters of the world’s bismuth, magnesium, and tungsten, all three of which are key elements for semi-conductors. The basic issue is that investments in autonomous platforms to deter the Chinese military rely on Chinese-produced materials. If the U.S. defense industrial base is challenged to sustain artillery rounds for Ukraine in peacetime, how would it sustain even more advanced platforms in a protracted conflict with China?

There Is No More Arsenal of Democracy

The popular answer is that the United States would mobilize the national economy just as it did during World War II. While the United States remains the third largest manufacturer in the world, the effects of de-industrialization and globalization challenge the ability of the industrial base to scale for prolonged conflict. There is no more Rosie the Riveter to fill the role of servicemembers going overseas, or American Locomotive Company to build Sherman tanks, or Ford Motor Company to build B-24s. Then the United States had the advantage of being the world’s largest manufacturer, having an underemployed workforce due to the Great Depression, and getting a head start on mobilization after the war began in 1939.

The long process of de-industrialization in the country and the development of global supply chains has allowed for the movement of more labor-intensive manufacturing jobs overseas while keeping, to a degree, finished goods manufacturing. The clearest example is the decline of manufacturing employment from 34 percent of all U.S. jobs in 1950 to roughly 9 percent today. This is reflected across the board in other key areas like forging (lost half of all businesses since 2002), foundries (lost half of businesses since 1984), or machine tools (28 percent of global market share in 1968 to 5 percent in 2019). These businesses didn’t go away, they just went abroad. The rise of globalization, specifically containerization and logistics information technology to streamline global value chains, allowed multinational corporations to move these labor- and capital-intensive industries overseas in order to provide a cheaper product to the consumer. As David Autor discovered, the entry of China into the World Trade Organization alone was responsible for the loss of nearly one million manufacturing jobs in the United States.

When examining the rare earths market, the materials so critical for manufacture of high-tech, Offset X platforms, the challenges for sustaining protracted conflict are worse. While China only controls half of the global rare earths market, it controls between 80 and 90 percent of the separation and refining processes. Furthermore, the Mountain Pass mine, which is the largest rare-earth mine in the United States, ships all of its material to China for refining. Even with projected investments outside of China, only 15 percent of rare-earth refining capacity will exist outside of the country, making it harder for the Department of Defense to fulfill shortages in 53 critical materials. These industries would be critical in any long-term conflict but don’t exist within the United States in any appreciable form to scale in a relevant timespan to endure a protracted conflict.

Compounding the effects of de-industrialization and globalization are the consequences of the peace dividend — in particular, consolidation and a drive towards efficiency in the defense industrial base. Before the infamous Last Supper in 1993 there were 75 defense companies, today there are five. In 1985 three million people worked in defense. Today, the total is around 1 million. As fewer companies work with Department of Defense it has created a paradigm where fewer companies understand how to work within the government enterprise and fewer industry workers even have the necessary clearances to do defense work. There is no slack in the labor market that would allow industry to easily scale to meet wartime demand signals. When layered with de-industrialization and globalization, these effects have caused significant atrophy across the defense industrial base that means it is only able to support peacetime or low-intensity conflicts.

Re-Building the Base

It would be nearly impossible for the United States to overcome two generations of de-industrialization. Containerization, logistics IT systems, and more efficient transportation means will continue to incentivize the free market to find cheaper manufacturing sources. At the macro level, current efforts by Congress to facilitate the re-shoring of semi-conductor manufacturing cost $52 billion — considering current budgetary pressures the United States is unlikely to see significant financial incentivization to re-shore large portions of the industrial base. While on-going efforts by the Department of Defense to secure supply chains or critical minerals are helpful, they not at a significant enough volume to appreciably strengthen the industrial base for protracted conflict.

First, the United Sates needs to understand the relationship and requirements between the totality of force structure in a prolonged conflict, the industrial base, and global supply chains. Lengthening the duration of existing modeling tools like synthetic theater operations research model to similar durations as to match Air Force Materiel Command’s long-duration logistics wargame, to understand the consumption of resources and attrition of forces over not just weeks but months, would at the least give a more informed understanding of what the demand signal would be in a protracted conflict on the organic and commercial defense industrial base.

This requires the Department of Defense to map out the totality of global supply chains to understand existing throughput capacity from manufacturing back to raw material. Co-opting existing efforts to map the supply chain to reduce risk and malign influence can be utilized to understand capacity. Expanding this out to include the supply chain for the individual tools that create the parts needed would give the department the understanding to scale manufacturing in the event of a protracted conflict.

The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act Section 1415 started this effort by focusing on the impact of prolonged conflict on rare earth materials — but, while helpful, it is also putting the cart before the horse. Until we understand the impact of resource consumption and the attrition of forces, and what the existing industrial base can support, then it’s just the back half of the equation. The department should define the requirements for prolonged conflict, understand the ability to rapidly replicate what’s lost, understand the ability of industry to scale manufacturing, and then prioritize investment in the industrial base based on resilience and endurance.

An interagency approach through the Department of Commerce, Department of State, and Department of Defense should first understand what the resource requirements are for protracted conflict. Second, the Defense Department should develop a risk-mitigation framework based off material criticality in conflict, ability to rapidly scale, and supply chain security. Finally, it is important to understand the inherent ability for private industry to sustain production outside of conflict. This would be a targeted approach to industries that need long-term support because they are too critical, too time consuming to scale, or too at risk from adversary disruption.

The U.S. military should also invest in resilience. The Department of Defense is reliant on the organic industrial base and improving the existing force structure to survive the initial phase of the campaign. The depots and shipyards are supposed to provide the bridge until the rest of the economy can catch up, but years of divestment have weakened them. As Chris Dougherty highlighted earlier this year, investing in the revitalization of the jawbone of American defense, in particular logistics systems, will ensure the sustainment of U.S. forces in a campaign. Additionally, working with the industry to break down the walls to get data on parts to increase utilization of additive manufacturing and bring battle damage repair capability back will help keep more platforms operational for longer periods. Lastly, the Office of the Secretary of Defense Comptroller should start budgeting for the attrition of certain platforms. While it isn’t likely to budget for the attrition of aircraft carriers, increasing the requirements for things like collaborative combat aircraft, which should also be considered by authorizers and appropriators when looking at future system development.

Third, the Department of Defense should increase cooperation with private industry and begin to make substantial investments in the defense industrial base to be able to respond in a time-relevant manner so that the United States can endure protracted conflict. Following the example set by the Roosevelt administration’s Office of Production Management would offer an instructive path to level-set between industrial capability and military requirements. This means including venture capital, private equity, and commercial partners in major wargames and exercises. A lesson from World War II mobilization is that neither side knew how challenging the reality was until they side started working together.

Fourth, long-term success in a protracted conflict will ultimately rely on securing access to the critical materials, especially rare earths, that are required to support the manufacture of advanced platforms. Driving the Development Finance Corporation to increase its focus on national security-related issues, especially sustainable rare earth mining, under the auspices of climate change would be a reasonable pivot. Furthermore, equity investments in companies would ensure the United States is doing due diligence and preventing malign influence by adversaries that could be problematic during conflict. This would allow the scaling of existing near-shoring and friend-shoring efforts and provide immediate tangible benefits to the industrial base. As the department pursues increased investments in advanced platforms that rely on rare earth materials, securing these critical mineral supply chains is imperative.

Lastly, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment should expand existing Defense Production Act Title III authorities to include private equity and debt financing. This could be accomplished in-house by using profits from the Defense Logistics Agency’s Defense Working Capital Fund to make investments in the defense industrial base rather than using additional appropriations from Congress. Historically, the Defense Working Capital Fund has been raided to support projects like the World War II Memorial. Focusing investments in capital-intensive, priority industries that have left the United States would provide a necessary capability for a future fight as well as provide well-paying jobs for Americans. Additionally, it would allow the department to make significantly more profit to re-invest in the industrial base. During World War II the Defense Plant Corporation served in a similar capacity, providing subsidies for the expansion of the defense industrial base through significant investments in facilities with a pure government utility or facilitated tax credits for industrial capacity with more dual-use possibilities. With increasing budgetary pressures being levied on the Department of Defense, finding opportunities to use existing income streams without going back to Congress offers significant opportunity to help re-build the American industrial base after decades of atrophy.

Conclusion

A protracted war between China and the United States would be a globally cataclysmic event that would shape our world for generations. But can the United States prepare its industrial base to potentially deter an adversary? Increased industrial capacity, capability, resilience, and a demonstrated commitment to fight the long war would go a long way to signaling resolve. These recommendations aren’t meant to be all-encompassing — workforce issues, existing regulatory law, and budgetary constraints are very real — but the challenge of preparing for prolonged conflict began yesterday. A few generations ago, Gen. Douglas MacArthur commented on the relevance of “too late” — nations always find themselves too late in preparing for conflict. The challenges in the defense industrial base will take years to fix, so better the United States start now than be too late.

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John Barrett is a career logistician in the U.S. Air Force. He wishes to thank Maj. Gen. Dave Sanford, Dr. Kelly Grieco, Krista Auchenbach, Jake Chapman, and Dominique Yantko for their guidance and feedback. Any errors are the author’s own.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official guidance or position of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force, or the U.S. Space Force.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by John Barrett · August 16, 2023

22. The AI Power Paradox - Can States Learn to Govern Artificial Intelligence—Before It’s Too Late?

Excerpts:

None of these solutions will be easy to implement. Despite all the buzz and chatter coming from world leaders about the need to regulate AI, there is still a lack of political will to do so. Right now, few powerful constituencies favor containing AI—and all incentives point toward continued inaction. But designed well, an AI governance regime of the kind described here could suit all interested parties, enshrining principles and structures that promote the best in AI while preventing the worst. The alternative—uncontained AI—would not just pose unacceptable risks to global stability; it would also be bad for business and run counter to every country’s national interest.

A strong AI governance regime would both mitigate the societal risks posed by AI and ease tensions between China and the United States by reducing the extent to which AI is an arena—and a tool—of geopolitical competition. And such a regime would achieve something even more profound and long-lasting: it would establish a model for how to address other disruptive, emerging technologies. AI may be a unique catalyst for change, but it is by no means the last disruptive technology humanity will face. Quantum computing, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics also have the potential to fundamentally reshape the world. Successfully governing AI will help the world successfully govern those technologies as well.

The twenty-first century will throw up few challenges as daunting or opportunities as promising as those presented by AI. In the last century, policymakers began to build a global governance architecture that, they hoped, would be equal to the tasks of the age. Now, they must build a new governance architecture to contain and harness the most formidable, and potentially defining, force of this era. The year 2035 is just around the corner. There is no time to waste.

The AI Power Paradox

Can States Learn to Govern Artificial Intelligence—Before It’s Too Late?

By Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman

September/October 2023

Published on August 16, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats—and Our Response—Will Change the World · August 16, 2023

It’s 2035, and artificial intelligence is everywhere. AI systems run hospitals, operate airlines, and battle each other in the courtroom. Productivity has spiked to unprecedented levels, and countless previously unimaginable businesses have scaled at blistering speed, generating immense advances in well-being. New products, cures, and innovations hit the market daily, as science and technology kick into overdrive. And yet the world is growing both more unpredictable and more fragile, as terrorists find new ways to menace societies with intelligent, evolving cyberweapons and white-collar workers lose their jobs en masse.

Just a year ago, that scenario would have seemed purely fictional; today, it seems nearly inevitable. Generative AI systems can already write more clearly and persuasively than most humans and can produce original images, art, and even computer code based on simple language prompts. And generative AI is only the tip of the iceberg. Its arrival marks a Big Bang moment, the beginning of a world-changing technological revolution that will remake politics, economies, and societies.

Like past technological waves, AI will pair extraordinary growth and opportunity with immense disruption and risk. But unlike previous waves, it will also initiate a seismic shift in the structure and balance of global power as it threatens the status of nation-states as the world’s primary geopolitical actors. Whether they admit it or not, AI’s creators are themselves geopolitical actors, and their sovereignty over AI further entrenches the emerging “technopolar” order—one in which technology companies wield the kind of power in their domains once reserved for nation-states. For the past decade, big technology firms have effectively become independent, sovereign actors in the digital realms they have created. AI accelerates this trend and extends it far beyond the digital world. The technology’s complexity and the speed of its advancement will make it almost impossible for governments to make relevant rules at a reasonable pace. If governments do not catch up soon, it is possible they never will.

Thankfully, policymakers around the world have begun to wake up to the challenges posed by AI and wrestle with how to govern it. In May 2023, the G-7 launched the “Hiroshima AI process,” a forum devoted to harmonizing AI governance. In June, the European Parliament passed a draft of the EU’s AI Act, the first comprehensive attempt by the European Union to erect safeguards around the AI industry. And in July, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the establishment of a global AI regulatory watchdog. Meanwhile, in the United States, politicians on both sides of the aisle are calling for regulatory action. But many agree with Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, who concluded in June that Congress “doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.”

Unfortunately, too much of the debate about AI governance remains trapped in a dangerous false dilemma: leverage artificial intelligence to expand national power or stifle it to avoid its risks. Even those who accurately diagnose the problem are trying to solve it by shoehorning AI into existing or historical governance frameworks. Yet AI cannot be governed like any previous technology, and it is already shifting traditional notions of geopolitical power.

The challenge is clear: to design a new governance framework fit for this unique technology. If global governance of AI is to become possible, the international system must move past traditional conceptions of sovereignty and welcome technology companies to the table. These actors may not derive legitimacy from a social contract, democracy, or the provision of public goods, but without them, effective AI governance will not stand a chance. This is one example of how the international community will need to rethink basic assumptions about the geopolitical order. But it is not the only one.

A challenge as unusual and pressing as AI demands an original solution. Before policymakers can begin to hash out an appropriate regulatory structure, they will need to agree on basic principles for how to govern AI. For starters, any governance framework will need to be precautionary, agile, inclusive, impermeable, and targeted. Building on these principles, policymakers should create at least three overlapping governance regimes: one for establishing facts and advising governments on the risks posed by AI, one for preventing an all-out arms race between them, and one for managing the disruptive forces of a technology unlike anything the world has seen.

Like it or not, 2035 is coming. Whether it is defined by the positive advances enabled by AI or the negative disruptions caused by it depends on what policymakers do now.

FASTER, HIGHER, STRONGER

AI is different—different from other technologies and different in its effect on power. It does not just pose policy challenges; its hyper-evolutionary nature also makes solving those challenges progressively harder. That is the AI power paradox.

The pace of progress is staggering. Take Moore’s Law, which has successfully predicted the doubling of computing power every two years. The new wave of AI makes that rate of progress seem quaint. When OpenAI launched its first large language model, known as GPT-1, in 2018, it had 117 million parameters—a measure of the system’s scale and complexity. Five years later, the company’s fourth-generation model, GPT-4, is thought to have over a trillion. The amount of computation used to train the most powerful AI models has increased by a factor of ten every year for the last ten years. Put another way, today’s most advanced AI models—also known as “frontier” models—use five billion times the computing power of cutting-edge models from a decade ago. Processing that once took weeks now happens in seconds. Models that can handle tens of trillions of parameters are coming in the next couple of years. “Brain scale” models with more than 100 trillion parameters—roughly the number of synapses in the human brain—will be viable within five years.

With each new order of magnitude, unexpected capabilities emerge. Few predicted that training on raw text would enable large language models to produce coherent, novel, and even creative sentences. Fewer still expected language models to be able to compose music or solve scientific problems, as some now can. Soon, AI developers will likely succeed in creating systems with self-improving capabilities—a critical juncture in the trajectory of this technology that should give everyone pause.

AI models are also doing more with less. Yesterday’s cutting-edge capabilities are running on smaller, cheaper, and more accessible systems today. Just three years after OpenAI released GPT-3, open-source teams have created models capable of the same level of performance that are less than one-sixtieth of its size—that is, 60 times cheaper to run in production, entirely free, and available to everyone on the Internet. Future large language models will probably follow this efficiency trajectory, becoming available in open-source form just two or three years after leading AI labs spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing them.

As with any software or code, AI algorithms are much easier and cheaper to copy and share (or steal) than physical assets. Proliferation risks are obvious. Meta’s powerful Llama-1 large language model, for instance, leaked to the Internet within days of debuting in March. Although the most powerful models still require sophisticated hardware to work, midrange versions can run on computers that can be rented for a few dollars an hour. Soon, such models will run on smartphones. No technology this powerful has become so accessible, so widely, so quickly.

Robots preparing food at a hotpot restaurant in Beijing, November 2018

Jason Lee / Reuters

AI also differs from older technologies in that almost all of it can be characterized as “dual use”—having both military and civilian applications. Many systems are inherently general, and indeed, generality is the primary goal of many AI companies. They want their applications to help as many people in as many ways as possible. But the same systems that drive cars can drive tanks. An AI application built to diagnose diseases might be able to create—and weaponize—a new one. The boundaries between the safely civilian and the militarily destructive are inherently blurred, which partly explains why the United States has restricted the export of the most advanced semiconductors to China.

All this plays out on a global field: once released, AI models can and will be everywhere. And it will take just one malign or “breakout” model to wreak havoc. For that reason, regulating AI cannot be done in a patchwork manner. There is little use in regulating AI in some countries if it remains unregulated in others. Because AI can proliferate so easily, its governance can have no gaps.

What is more, the damage AI might do has no obvious cap, even as the incentives to build it (and the benefits of doing so) continue to grow. AI could be used to generate and spread toxic misinformation, eroding social trust and democracy; to surveil, manipulate, and subdue citizens, undermining individual and collective freedom; or to create powerful digital or physical weapons that threaten human lives. AI could also destroy millions of jobs, worsening existing inequalities and creating new ones; entrench discriminatory patterns and distort decision-making by amplifying bad information feedback loops; or spark unintended and uncontrollable military escalations that lead to war.

Nor is the time frame clear for the biggest risks. Online misinformation is an obvious short-term threat, just as autonomous warfare seems plausible in the medium term. Farther out on the horizon lurks the promise of artificial general intelligence, the still uncertain point where AI exceeds human performance at any given task, and the (admittedly speculative) peril that AGI could become self-directed, self-replicating, and self-improving beyond human control. All these dangers need to be factored into governance architecture from the outset.

AI is not the first technology with some of these potent characteristics, but it is the first to combine them all. AI systems are not like cars or airplanes, which are built on hardware amenable to incremental improvements and whose most costly failures come in the form of individual accidents. They are not like chemical or nuclear weapons, which are difficult and expensive to develop and store, let alone secretly share or deploy. As their enormous benefits become self-evident, AI systems will only grow bigger, better, cheaper, and more ubiquitous. They will even become capable of quasi autonomy—able to achieve concrete goals with minimal human oversight—and, potentially, of self-improvement. Any one of these features would challenge traditional governance models; all of them together render these models hopelessly inadequate.

TOO POWERFUL TO PAUSE

As if that were not enough, by shifting the structure and balance of global power, AI complicates the very political context in which it is governed. AI is not just software development as usual; it is an entirely new means of projecting power. In some cases, it will upend existing authorities; in others, it will entrench them. Moreover, its advancement is being propelled by irresistible incentives: every nation, corporation, and individual will want some version of it.

Within countries, AI will empower those who wield it to surveil, deceive, and even control populations—supercharging the collection and commercial use of personal data in democracies and sharpening the tools of repression authoritarian governments use to subdue their societies. Across countries, AI will be the focus of intense geopolitical competition. Whether for its repressive capabilities, economic potential, or military advantage, AI supremacy will be a strategic objective of every government with the resources to compete. The least imaginative strategies will pump money into homegrown AI champions or attempt to build and control supercomputers and algorithms. More nuanced strategies will foster specific competitive advantages, as France seeks to do by directly supporting AI startups; the United Kingdom, by capitalizing on its world-class universities and venture capital ecosystem; and the EU, by shaping the global conversation on regulation and norms.

The vast majority of countries have neither the money nor the technological know-how to compete for AI leadership. Their access to frontier AI will instead be determined by their relationships with a handful of already rich and powerful corporations and states. This dependence threatens to aggravate current geopolitical power imbalances. The most powerful governments will vie to control the world’s most valuable resource while, once again, countries in the global South will be left behind. This is not to say that only the richest will benefit from the AI revolution. Like the Internet and smartphones, AI will proliferate without respect for borders, as will the productivity gains it unleashes. And like energy and green technology, AI will benefit many countries that do not control it, including those that contribute to producing AI inputs such as semiconductors.

At the other end of the geopolitical spectrum, however, the competition for AI supremacy will be fierce. At the end of the Cold War, powerful countries might have cooperated to allay one another’s fears and arrest a potentially destabilizing technological arms race. But today’s tense geopolitical environment makes such cooperation much harder. AI is not just another tool or weapon that can bring prestige, power, or wealth. It has the potential to enable a significant military and economic advantage over adversaries. Rightly or wrongly, the two players that matter most—China and the United States—both see AI development as a zero-sum game that will give the winner a decisive strategic edge in the decades to come.

China and the United States both see AI development as a zero-sum game.

From the vantage point of Washington and Beijing, the risk that the other side will gain an edge in AI is greater than any theoretical risk the technology might pose to society or to their own domestic political authority. For that reason, both the U.S. and Chinese governments are pouring immense resources into developing AI capabilities while working to deprive each other of the inputs needed for next-generation breakthroughs. (So far, the United States has been far more successful than China in doing the latter, especially with its export controls on advanced semiconductors.) This zero-sum dynamic—and the lack of trust on both sides—means that Beijing and Washington are focused on accelerating AI development, rather than slowing it down. In their view, a “pause” in development to assess risks, as some AI industry leaders have called for, would amount to foolish unilateral disarmament.

But this perspective assumes that states can assert and maintain at least some control over AI. This may be the case in China, which has integrated its tech companies into the fabric of the state. Yet in the West and elsewhere, AI is more likely to undermine state power than to bolster it. Outside China, a handful of large, specialist AI companies currently control every aspect of this new technological wave: what AI models can do, who can access them, how they can be used, and where they can be deployed. And because these companies jealously guard their computing power and algorithms, they alone understand (most of) what they are creating and (most of) what those creations can do. These few firms may retain their advantage for the foreseeable future—or they may be eclipsed by a raft of smaller players as low barriers to entry, open-source development, and near-zero marginal costs lead to uncontrolled proliferation of AI. Either way, the AI revolution will take place outside government.

To a limited degree, some of these challenges resemble those of earlier digital technologies. Internet platforms, social media, and even devices such as smartphones all operate, to some extent, within sandboxes controlled by their creators. When governments have summoned the political will, they have been able to implement regulatory regimes for these technologies, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, Digital Markets Act, and Digital Services Act. But such regulation took a decade or more to materialize in the EU, and it still has not fully materialized in the United States. AI moves far too quickly for policymakers to respond at their usual pace. Moreover, social media and other older digital technologies do not help create themselves, and the commercial and strategic interests driving them never dovetailed in quite the same way: Twitter and TikTok are powerful, but few think they could transform the global economy.

This all means that at least for the next few years, AI’s trajectory will be largely determined by the decisions of a handful of private businesses, regardless of what policymakers in Brussels or Washington do. In other words, technologists, not policymakers or bureaucrats, will exercise authority over a force that could profoundly alter both the power of nation-states and how they relate to each other. That makes the challenge of governing AI unlike anything governments have faced before, a regulatory balancing act more delicate—and more high stakes—than any policymakers have attempted.

MOVING TARGET, EVOLVING WEAPON

Governments are already behind the curve. Most proposals for governing AI treat it as a conventional problem amenable to the state-centric solutions of the twentieth century: compromises over rules hashed out by political leaders sitting around a table. But that will not work for AI.

Regulatory efforts to date are in their infancy and still inadequate. The EU’s AI Act is the most ambitious attempt to govern AI in any jurisdiction, but it will apply in full only beginning in 2026, by which time AI models will have advanced beyond recognition. The United Kingdom has proposed an even looser, voluntary approach to regulating AI, but it lacks the teeth to be effective. Neither initiative attempts to govern AI development and deployment at the global level—something that will be necessary for AI governance to succeed. And while voluntary pledges to respect AI safety guidelines, such as those made in July by seven leading AI developers, including Inflection AI, led by one of us (Suleyman), are welcome, they are no substitute for legally binding national and international regulation.

Advocates for international-level agreements to tame AI tend to reach for the model of nuclear arms control. But AI systems are not only infinitely easier to develop, steal, and copy than nuclear weapons; they are controlled by private companies, not governments. As the new generation of AI models diffuses faster than ever, the nuclear comparison looks ever more out of date. Even if governments can successfully control access to the materials needed to build the most advanced models—as the Biden administration is attempting to do by preventing China from acquiring advanced chips—they can do little to stop the proliferation of those models once they are trained and therefore require far fewer chips to operate.

For global AI governance to work, it must be tailored to the specific nature of the technology, the challenges it poses, and the structure and balance of power in which it operates. But because the evolution, uses, risks, and rewards of AI are unpredictable, AI governance cannot be fully specified at the outset—or at any point in time, for that matter. It must be as innovative and evolutionary as the technology it seeks to govern, sharing some of the characteristics that make AI such a powerful force in the first place. That means starting from scratch, rethinking and rebuilding a new regulatory framework from the ground up.

The overarching goal of any global AI regulatory architecture should be to identify and mitigate risks to global stability without choking off AI innovation and the opportunities that flow from it. Call this approach “technoprudentialism,” a mandate rather like the macroprudential role played by global financial institutions such as the Financial Stability Board, the Bank of International Settlements, and the International Monetary Fund. Their objective is to identify and mitigate risks to global financial stability without jeopardizing economic growth.

Guards at a Huawei conference in Shanghai, September 2019

Aly Song / Reuters

A technoprudential mandate would work similarly, necessitating the creation of institutional mechanisms to address the various aspects of AI that could threaten geopolitical stability. These mechanisms, in turn, would be guided by common principles that are both tailored to AI’s unique features and reflect the new technological balance of power that has put tech companies in the driver’s seat. These principles would help policymakers draw up more granular regulatory frameworks to govern AI as it evolves and becomes a more pervasive force.

The first and perhaps most vital principle for AI governance is precaution. As the term implies, technoprudentialism is at its core guided by the precautionary credo: first, do no harm. Maximally constraining AI would mean forgoing its life-altering upsides, but maximally liberating it would mean risking all its potentially catastrophic downsides. In other words, the risk-reward profile for AI is asymmetric. Given the radical uncertainty about the scale and irreversibility of some of AI’s potential harms, AI governance must aim to prevent these risks before they materialize rather than mitigate them after the fact. This is especially important because AI could weaken democracy in some countries and make it harder for them to enact regulations. Moreover, the burden of proving an AI system is safe above some reasonable threshold should rest on the developer and owner; it should not be solely up to governments to deal with problems once they arise.

AI governance must also be agile so that it can adapt and correct course as AI evolves and improves itself. Public institutions often calcify to the point of being unable to adapt to change. And in the case of AI, the sheer velocity of technological progress will quickly overwhelm the ability of existing governance structures to catch up and keep up. This does not mean that AI governance should adopt the “move fast and break things” ethos of Silicon Valley, but it should more closely mirror the nature of the technology it seeks to contain.

In addition to being precautionary and agile, AI governance must be inclusive, inviting the participation of all actors needed to regulate AI in practice. That means AI governance cannot be exclusively state centered, since governments neither understand nor control AI. Private technology companies may lack sovereignty in the traditional sense, but they wield real—even sovereign—power and agency in the digital spaces they have created and effectively govern. These nonstate actors should not be granted the same rights and privileges as states, which are internationally recognized as acting on behalf of their citizens. But they should be parties to international summits and signatories to any agreements on AI.

Such a broadening of governance is necessary because any regulatory structure that excludes the real agents of AI power is doomed to fail. In previous waves of tech regulation, companies were often afforded so much leeway that they overstepped, leading policymakers and regulators to react harshly to their excesses. But this dynamic benefited neither tech companies nor the public. Inviting AI developers to participate in the rule-making process from the outset would help establish a more collaborative culture of AI governance, reducing the need to rein in these companies after the fact with costly and adversarial regulation.

AI is a problem of the global commons, not just the preserve of two superpowers.

Tech companies should not always have a say; some aspects of AI governance are best left to governments, and it goes without saying that states should always retain final veto power over policy decisions. Governments must also guard against regulatory capture to ensure that tech companies do not use their influence within political systems to advance their interests at the expense of the public good. But an inclusive, multistakeholder governance model would ensure that the actors who will determine the fate of AI are involved in—and bound by—the rule-making processes. In addition to governments (especially but not limited to China and the United States) and tech companies (especially but not limited to the Big Tech players), scientists, ethicists, trade unions, civil society organizations, and other voices with knowledge of, power over, or a stake in AI outcomes should have a seat at the table. The Partnership on AI—a nonprofit group that convenes a range of large tech companies, research institutions, charities, and civil society organizations to promote responsible AI use—is a good example of the kind of mixed, inclusive forum that is needed.

AI governance must also be as impermeable as possible. Unlike climate change mitigation, where success will be determined by the sum of all individual efforts, AI safety is determined by the lowest common denominator: a single breakout algorithm could cause untold damage. Because global AI governance is only as good as the worst-governed country, company, or technology, it must be watertight everywhere—with entry easy enough to compel participation and exit costly enough to deter noncompliance. A single loophole, weak link, or rogue defector will open the door to widespread leakage, bad actors, or a regulatory race to the bottom.

In addition to covering the entire globe, AI governance must cover the entire supply chain—from manufacturing to hardware, software to services, and providers to users. This means technoprudential regulation and oversight along every node of the AI value chain, from AI chip production to data collection, model training to end use, and across the entire stack of technologies used in a given application. Such impermeability will ensure there are no regulatory gray areas to exploit.

Finally, AI governance will need to be targeted, rather than one-size-fits-all. Because AI is a general-purpose technology, it poses multidimensional threats. A single governance tool is not sufficient to address the various sources of AI risk. In practice, determining which tools are appropriate to target which risks will require developing a living and breathing taxonomy of all the possible effects AI could have—and how each can best be governed. For example, AI will be evolutionary in some applications, exacerbating current problems such as privacy violations, and revolutionary in others, creating entirely new harms. Sometimes, the best place to intervene will be where data is being collected. Other times, it will be the point at which advanced chips are sold—ensuring they do not fall into the wrong hands. Dealing with disinformation and misinformation will require different tools than dealing with the risks of AGI and other uncertain technologies with potentially existential ramifications. A light regulatory touch and voluntary guidance will work in some cases; in others, governments will need to strictly enforce compliance.

All of this requires deep understanding and up-to-date knowledge of the technologies in question. Regulators and other authorities will need oversight of and access to key AI models. In effect, they will need an audit system that can not only track capabilities at a distance but also directly access core technologies, which in turn will require the right talent. Only such measures can ensure that new AI applications are proactively assessed, both for obvious risks and for potentially disruptive second- and third-order consequences. Targeted governance, in other words, must be well-informed governance.

THE TECHNOPRUDENTIAL IMPERATIVE

Built atop these principles should be a minimum of three AI governance regimes, each with different mandates, levers, and participants. All will have to be novel in design, but each could look for inspiration to existing arrangements for addressing other global challenges—namely, climate change, arms proliferation, and financial stability.

The first regime would focus on fact-finding and would take the form of a global scientific body to objectively advise governments and international bodies on questions as basic as what AI is and what kinds of policy challenges it poses. If no one can agree on the definition of AI or the possible scope of its harms, effective policymaking will be impossible. Here, climate change is instructive. To create a baseline of shared knowledge for climate negotiations, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and gave it a simple mandate: provide policymakers with “regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation.” AI needs a similar body to regularly evaluate the state of AI, impartially assess its risks and potential impacts, forecast scenarios, and consider technical policy solutions to protect the global public interest. Like the IPCC, this body would have a global imprimatur and scientific (and geopolitical) independence. And its reports could inform multilateral and multistakeholder negotiations on AI, just as the IPCC’s reports inform UN climate negotiations.

The world also needs a way to manage tensions between the major AI powers and prevent the proliferation of dangerous advanced AI systems. The most important international relationship in AI is the one between the United States and China. Cooperation between the two rivals is difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances. But in the context of heightened geopolitical competition, an uncontrolled AI race could doom all hope of forging an international consensus on AI governance. One area where Washington and Beijing may find it advantageous to work together is in slowing the proliferation of powerful systems that could imperil the authority of nation-states. At the extreme, the threat of uncontrolled, self-replicating AGIs—should they be invented in the years to come—would provide strong incentives to coordinate on safety and containment.

On all these fronts, Washington and Beijing should aim to create areas of commonality and even guardrails proposed and policed by a third party. Here, the monitoring and verification approaches often found in arms control regimes might be applied to the most important AI inputs, specifically those related to computing hardware, including advanced semiconductors and data centers. Regulating key chokepoints helped contain a dangerous arms race during the Cold War, and it could help contain a potentially even more dangerous AI race now.

Few powerful constituencies favor containing AI.

But since much of AI is already decentralized, it is a problem of the global commons rather than the preserve of two superpowers. The devolved nature of AI development and core characteristics of the technology, such as open-source proliferation, increase the likelihood that it will be weaponized by cybercriminals, state-sponsored actors, and lone wolves. That is why the world needs a third AI governance regime that can react when dangerous disruptions occur. For models, policymakers might look to the approach financial authorities have used to maintain global financial stability. The Financial Stability Board, composed of central bankers, ministries of finance, and supervisory and regulatory authorities from around the world, works to prevent global financial instability by assessing systemic vulnerabilities and coordinating the necessary actions to address them among national and international authorities. A similarly technocratic body for AI risk—call it the Geotechnology Stability Board—could work to maintain geopolitical stability amid rapid AI-driven change. Supported by national regulatory authorities and international standard-setting bodies, it would pool expertise and resources to preempt or respond to AI-related crises, reducing the risk of contagion. But it would also engage directly with the private sector, recognizing that key multinational technology actors play a critical role in maintaining geopolitical stability, just as systemically important banks do in maintaining financial stability.

Such a body, with authority rooted in government support, would be well positioned to prevent global tech players from engaging in regulatory arbitrage or hiding behind corporate domiciles. Recognizing that some technology companies are systemically important does not mean stifling start-ups or emerging innovators. On the contrary, creating a single, direct line from a global governance body to these tech behemoths would enhance the effectiveness of regulatory enforcement and crisis management—both of which benefit the whole ecosystem.

A regime designed to maintain geotechnological stability would also fill a dangerous void in the current regulatory landscape: responsibility for governing open-source AI. Some level of online censorship will be necessary. If someone uploads an extremely dangerous model, this body must have the clear authority—and ability—to take it down or direct national authorities to do so. This is another area for potential bilateral cooperation. China and the United States should want to work together to embed safety constraints in open-source software—for example, by limiting the extent to which models can instruct users on how to develop chemical or biological weapons or create pandemic pathogens. In addition, there may be room for Beijing and Washington to cooperate on global antiproliferation efforts, including through the use of interventionist cybertools.

Each of these regimes would have to operate universally, enjoying the buy-in of all major AI players. The regimes would need to be specialized enough to cope with real AI systems and dynamic enough to keep updating their knowledge of AI as it evolves. Working together, these institutions could take a decisive step toward technoprudential management of the emerging AI world. But they are by no means the only institutions that will be needed. Other regulatory mechanisms, such as “know your customer” transparency standards, licensing requirements, safety testing protocols, and product registration and approval processes, will need to be applied to AI in the next few years. The key across all these ideas will be to create flexible, multifaceted governance institutions that are not constrained by tradition or lack of imagination—after all, technologists will not be constrained by those things.

PROMOTE THE BEST, PREVENT THE WORST

None of these solutions will be easy to implement. Despite all the buzz and chatter coming from world leaders about the need to regulate AI, there is still a lack of political will to do so. Right now, few powerful constituencies favor containing AI—and all incentives point toward continued inaction. But designed well, an AI governance regime of the kind described here could suit all interested parties, enshrining principles and structures that promote the best in AI while preventing the worst. The alternative—uncontained AI—would not just pose unacceptable risks to global stability; it would also be bad for business and run counter to every country’s national interest.

A strong AI governance regime would both mitigate the societal risks posed by AI and ease tensions between China and the United States by reducing the extent to which AI is an arena—and a tool—of geopolitical competition. And such a regime would achieve something even more profound and long-lasting: it would establish a model for how to address other disruptive, emerging technologies. AI may be a unique catalyst for change, but it is by no means the last disruptive technology humanity will face. Quantum computing, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics also have the potential to fundamentally reshape the world. Successfully governing AI will help the world successfully govern those technologies as well.

The twenty-first century will throw up few challenges as daunting or opportunities as promising as those presented by AI. In the last century, policymakers began to build a global governance architecture that, they hoped, would be equal to the tasks of the age. Now, they must build a new governance architecture to contain and harness the most formidable, and potentially defining, force of this era. The year 2035 is just around the corner. There is no time to waste.

• IAN BREMMER is President and Founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. He is the author of The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats—and Our Response—Will Change the World.
• MUSTAFA SULEYMAN is CEO and Co-Founder of Inflection AI. A co-founder of DeepMind, he is the author of The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma.

Foreign Affairs · by The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats—and Our Response—Will Change the World · August 16, 2023

23. Humanitarian Blackmail –  How Belligerents Use Negotiations Over Aid to Extort the West

While our adversaries view our humanitarian desires and focus on human rights as a weakness, we need to make it a strength.

Excerpts:

Humanitarian diplomacy is necessary to address civilian suffering, but it is an increasingly untenable way of managing the world’s conflicts. Instead, donor states should focus on high-level diplomacy to resolve conflicts, supported by other policy tools, including economic levers such as smart sanctions policy. Simply applying blanket sanctions and using traditional conduits for humanitarian aid tend to have the inverse effect of prolonging tensions and entrenching the drivers of conflict.

...

Indeed, in places where the government consistently impedes, manipulates, or diverts aid, it may be more effective for humanitarians to work outside the UN and in ways that do not require official consent. The UN Security Council resolution on cross-border aid for Syria allowed the UN to reach millions denied assistance by their government, but it also made them beholden to Security Council approval and great-power competition. Rather than returning control of aid response to the Syrian government through a traditional UN-led model requiring government consent, continuing to provide aid across the border from Turkey through local nongovernmental organizations represents a more sustainable and principled approach.

Donor countries should also complement their foreign aid by drawing on funds designated for stabilization and political efforts. This money can go toward work that supports civil society, conflict resolution, and local governance. For example, these budget streams could build up local civil society groups and aid organizations to play a peace-building role and ensure that restive populations are not dependent on their oppressors to meet their basic needs. Such a shift would decrease international aid agencies’ need to receive the approval of the warring parties.

The purpose of the international humanitarian community is to provide food and bandages, not rehabilitate or boost the reputations of warring parties. Bringing a conflict to an end requires political leverage because warring parties typically do not give up power for free. Using negotiations over humanitarian access to achieve political ends tends to entrench power structures that drive conflict. It winds up assisting the warring parties and their great-power benefactors while the broader population suffers. Countries trying to help should deploy humanitarian aid that is true to their principles and serves to end, rather than prolong, conflict.

Humanitarian Blackmail

How Belligerents Use Negotiations Over Aid to Extort the West

By Natasha Hall and Emma Beals

August 16, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Natasha Hall and Emma Beals · August 16, 2023

For close to a decade, at least four million people living in the parts of northwest Syria controlled by rebel groups have depended on the United Nations for food, medicine, and basic services. Back in 2014, as the country’s civil war raged, the UN and other aid agencies received Security Council approval to deliver essential supplies across the Syrian-Turkish border without the permission of the Syrian regime. But all that changed on July 10 of this year, when Russia—a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—vetoed the extension of this humanitarian lifeline. As a result, millions of lives were thrown into jeopardy.

In August, the UN announced that it had reached a six-month deal with the Assad regime to reopen the crossing and resume aid delivery, but humanitarian assistance must be coordinated with the regime. Given the government’s systematic denial of aid to those in opposition-controlled areas and its history of targeting humanitarian operations, the agreement effectively invalidates the original purpose of the UN’s support for cross-border deliveries, which was intended to provide lifesaving aid to millions of people to counter the regime’s embrace of starvation and deprivation as weapons of war. But what is happening in Syria is no longer unique. A week after Moscow pulled the plug on aid delivery in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which had permitted Ukraine to export a portion of its agricultural products to the world despite the war. Global food prices have accordingly started to climb.

The two broken deals are symptomatic of a broader diplomatic failure, as Western states—the biggest donors to the UN and international relief organizations—increasingly rely on negotiations concerning humanitarian aid to manage underlying conflicts and their consequences. In the case of Syria, the regular renewal process of UN Security Council resolutions on cross-border aid effectively became the only venue where global powers seriously discussed the Syrian civil war. As a result, other regimes are beginning to follow Assad and Putin’s approach of using humanitarian negotiations to extract concessions from the rest of the world. Donors need a new approach to conflict resolution in an increasingly multipolar world, where unsavory regimes can turn to great-power protectors to shield them from accountability. Above all, they will need to recognize that humanitarian negotiations are no substitute for conflict resolution.

THE WEAPONIZATION OF AID

Since 2005, the number of conflicts worldwide has doubled, and their typical duration has tripled, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In the face of competing geopolitical priorities and intensifying great-power competition, the political investment and interest needed to end these conflicts is waning. Ethiopia, Libya, Myanmar, Sudan, and Yemen are just some of the members of an expanding club of countries embroiled in protracted disputes that are persistently vulnerable to renewed violence, and there is little international appetite for resolving them diplomatically. Instead, major donor countries—primarily the United States and its European allies—remain involved in these conflicts through the international humanitarian aid system. As crises drag on, often in places where either China or Russia has considerable sway, it is up to humanitarian actors to negotiate access with regimes that purposely try to isolate and starve their populations. In the meantime, the United States and Europe are taking a backseat in resolving these conflicts and merely fund increasingly stultified and protracted humanitarian operations.

There is an obvious problem with this shift toward humanitarian conflict management. Most international humanitarian organizations are admittedly apolitical and therefore unwilling to use what little leverage they have to lessen the crises they are addressing, even to protect civilians. International humanitarian organizations abide by a central tenet of neutrality in the hopes that it will encourage belligerents to protect humanitarian workers and deliveries of aid. Yet it is increasingly clear that neutrality does not lead to sustained access in conflicts where targeting humanitarians and denying aid is a war tactic. Nevertheless, the UN and major donor countries continue to rely on high-level humanitarian access negotiations to manage conflicts.

Discussing humanitarian assistance becomes central when peace negotiations reach an impasse or when one of the warring parties is denying aid to populations in need. But humanitarian actors do not have the power to resolve what are inherently political and military issues. As a result, a long-term emergency response entrenches war economies and warlords at the expense of the broader population, trapping countries in a perpetual cycle of violence and vulnerability. Aid budgets expand exponentially as a result, but without the mandate or additional funds to meet the demand. For example, in spite of reduced violence throughout Syria, the need for humanitarian aid is greater than ever before—just as donor fatigue is setting in. But with no effective peace negotiations, the same issues that have plagued the country for over a decade remain. Warring parties continue to control access, while refugees and the internally displaced cannot return to areas controlled by the same violent government they fled.

Humanitarian negotiations are no substitute for conflict resolution.

Warring parties understand these dynamics and know that donor states are spread thin. Unsurprisingly, warring parties take advantage of this superior negotiating position and deny their opponents aid to gain a military edge. Access to humanitarian assistance is permitted only at times that are politically advantageous rather than when the need is most acute. These regimes use humanitarian negotiations to gain legitimacy on the international stage as high-level UN and government officials must curry favor with them for access when their unsavory military tactics would otherwise cause them to be sidelined. They persuade humanitarian actors to advocate on their behalf so that Western states will lift sanctions or stop designating them as terrorists. A case in point: the Damascus-based UN country team in Syria has insisted that lifting sanctions on the Assad regime is necessary for successful aid delivery.

The conflict in Sudan that began in April between rival military factions is only four months old but already illustrates the problem of leading with humanitarian diplomacy. While Sudanese army representatives met with paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Jeddah in May, negotiating humanitarian access with the United States and Saudi Arabia, they were detaining and actively trying to kill people in the country who were working with local resistance committees—the actors best able to reach populations suffering the most. Stalled humanitarian negotiations allowed the Sudanese military to consolidate control over aid efforts by adding bureaucratic requirements for visas, import of goods, and travel permits, which can only be acquired through the government’s Humanitarian Aid Commission operating under the army’s de facto command. The military went even further, establishing a new political body, the Supreme Committee for Crisis Management, to oversee aid operations. In addition to restricting international scrutiny and controlling the flow of aid to the population, a major goal is to gain the legitimacy that comes with being the primary interlocutor for international aid.

In Myanmar, a natural disaster similarly highlighted the limits of the aid-only approach to negotiating with the parties to a complex conflict. In May, a devastating cyclone hit the country and neighboring Bangladesh, endangering 1.6 million people. Myanmar’s military junta canceled all existing access agreements to areas affected by the cyclone, just as it did after Cyclone Nargis, in 2008. As a result, the UN has been unable to reach the vast majority of people in need. Given its decades of human rights violations, the junta has long mistrusted humanitarian aid and the perceived international scrutiny it would entail. As conditions on the ground worsen, the junta has done nothing to alleviate the suffering of the people they govern, likely waiting for high-level visits from senior officials from the UN or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations hoping to secure an access agreement like the one brokered in 2008. Despite the junta’s pariah status, such negotiations legitimize their role as the primary international interlocutor and decision-maker regarding aid. In the meantime, international aid actors have shown little urgency in scaling up their efforts to reach communities outside junta control or even through remote programs that simply transfer money to local organizations. Their inaction is in no small part due to a tacit admission that they view themselves as beholden to politics regardless of their avowed neutrality.

THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM

Humanitarian diplomacy is necessary to address civilian suffering, but it is an increasingly untenable way of managing the world’s conflicts. Instead, donor states should focus on high-level diplomacy to resolve conflicts, supported by other policy tools, including economic levers such as smart sanctions policy. Simply applying blanket sanctions and using traditional conduits for humanitarian aid tend to have the inverse effect of prolonging tensions and entrenching the drivers of conflict.

In Syria, the lack of progress on a political settlement has increased the importance of humanitarian assistance in managing the protracted conflict. But negotiations over aid have also avoided addressing long-term goals such as the need for cease-fires, demarcation of territory, and discussions about the status and protection of those Syrians who cannot live safely under Assad. Major donor states have expended a great deal of political capital renewing UN Security Council resolutions for cross-border assistance rather than securing a political settlement.

In Myanmar, donors should learn from the Syrian example, where humanitarian assistance relied on one border crossing, which the Assad regime and Russia have held hostage to gain an advantage. Donors should establish alternative access points to Myanmar that do not depend solely on the junta, whether through the borders of neighboring states or remotely by using informal banking or money-transfer systems to fund locally run programs. They should also abandon their hesitation to work with armed ethnic groups. Outside junta-controlled areas, these groups play a critical role in delivering aid, but they are disqualified from receiving funding from traditional humanitarian organizations and donor states. That is a mistake, since these groups play an essential role in protecting their communities from the junta’s violence and will have to be represented in any peace negotiation.

In Myanmar, donors should learn from the Syrian example.

Indeed, in places where the government consistently impedes, manipulates, or diverts aid, it may be more effective for humanitarians to work outside the UN and in ways that do not require official consent. The UN Security Council resolution on cross-border aid for Syria allowed the UN to reach millions denied assistance by their government, but it also made them beholden to Security Council approval and great-power competition. Rather than returning control of aid response to the Syrian government through a traditional UN-led model requiring government consent, continuing to provide aid across the border from Turkey through local nongovernmental organizations represents a more sustainable and principled approach.

Donor countries should also complement their foreign aid by drawing on funds designated for stabilization and political efforts. This money can go toward work that supports civil society, conflict resolution, and local governance. For example, these budget streams could build up local civil society groups and aid organizations to play a peace-building role and ensure that restive populations are not dependent on their oppressors to meet their basic needs. Such a shift would decrease international aid agencies’ need to receive the approval of the warring parties.

The purpose of the international humanitarian community is to provide food and bandages, not rehabilitate or boost the reputations of warring parties. Bringing a conflict to an end requires political leverage because warring parties typically do not give up power for free. Using negotiations over humanitarian access to achieve political ends tends to entrench power structures that drive conflict. It winds up assisting the warring parties and their great-power benefactors while the broader population suffers. Countries trying to help should deploy humanitarian aid that is true to their principles and serves to end, rather than prolong, conflict.

• NATASHA HALL is Senior Fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
• EMMA BEALS is a Nonresident Fellow at the Middle East Institute and a Senior Adviser at the European Institute of Peace.

Foreign Affairs · by Natasha Hall and Emma Beals · August 16, 2023

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