Quotes of the Day:

“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.” 

- Isaac Asimov

"Our power is our ability to decide." 

- Buckminister Fuller

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." 

- Helen Keller from The Open Door, 1957, p.17.

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 8, 2023

2. Deterrence in Taiwan Is Failing

3. China, North Korea pursue new targets while honing cyber capabilities 

4. India studies response to potential Taiwan invasion

5. US House panel plans Taiwan war game with Wall Street executives

6. Do Policy Schools Still Have a Point?

7. PLA Social Media Warfare and the Cognitive Domain

8. Russia’s Would-Be Assassins Still Stalk Europe’s Streets

9. How American Institutions Went From Trust to Bust

10. The Terrorism Potentials of ChatGPT & Related Generative AI Models

11. China’s military seeks to exploit U.S. troops, veterans, general warns

12. US ‘Increasingly Concerned’ With Ukraine Battlefield Tactics Against Russia

13. The cold war holds lessons for America’s rivalry with China, say Condoleezza Rice and Niall Ferguson

14.  The International Criminal Court Will Now Prosecute Cyberwar Crimes

15. China Won’t Start With Taiwan

16. G20 Declaration Omits Criticism of Russia, Notes Ukrainians’ ‘Suffering’

17. FACT SHEET: Delivering an Ambitious Agenda for the G20

18. In Ukraine, a U.S. Arms Dealer Is Making a Fortune and Testing Limits

19. 5th Circuit finds Biden White House, CDC violated First Amendment

20. US repositioning forces in Niger in ‘precautionary’ move

21. What an S-400 kill and a spec ops raid reveal about Ukraine's ability to hit Russia

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 8, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations:  https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-8-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces have reportedly made notable changes to their command and control (C2) in Ukraine to protect command infrastructure and improve information sharing, although Russian force deployments are likely still exacerbating issues with horizontal integration.
• Artillery constraints in Ukraine are reportedly prompting the Russian military to accelerate longstanding efforts to implement a fires doctrine prioritizing accuracy over volume.
• Russian forces are additionally reportedly adapting their deployment of electronic warfare (EW) complexes.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly continued to advance south of Bakhmut and south of Robotyne in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed gains on September 8.
• Russian forces conducted another series of Shahed-131/136 drone strikes targeting Odesa Oblast on the night of September 7–8.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov publicly rejected an incredibly favorable offer from the UN Secretariat that met many of Russia’s stated demands to rejoin the Black Sea Grain Initiative on September 6, indicating that the Kremlin is either delaying its return to the grain deal in an attempt to extract maximum concessions from the West or has no intention whatsoever of returning to the grain deal.
• The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) directly responded to recent indications that the Armenian government may be questioning its decades-long security relationship with Russia.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line, near Bakhmut, and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line but did not make any confirmed advances on September 8.
• The New York Times (NYT) — citing Western, African, and Russian sources — reported that Russian intelligence structures are competing for control of the Wagner Group’s assets and operations in Africa.
• Russian occupation officials continue to hold illegal regional elections in occupied Ukraine. Russian occupation officials in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts announced the start of in-person voting in occupied territories on September 8.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Sep 8, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 8, 2023

Riley Bailey, Kateryna Stepanenko, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, Annika Ganzeveld, and Mason Clark

September 8, 2023, 7:05pm 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 cut-off for this product was 1:30pm ET on September 8. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 9 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian forces have reportedly made notable changes to their command and control (C2) in Ukraine to protect command infrastructure and improve information sharing, although Russian force deployments are likely still exacerbating issues with horizontal integration. Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) Deputy Director of Analysis Magarita Konaev and CSET Fellow Owen Daniels stated on September 6 that Russian forces moved headquarters out of range of most Ukrainian strike systems and have placed forward command posts further underground and behind heavily defended positions.[1] It is unclear if Russian forces have employed this more protected command infrastructure throughout Ukraine and to what degree these defensive efforts have impeded Ukraine’s ongoing interdiction campaign.[2] Konaev and Daniels stated that Russian forces have improved communications between command posts and units at the front by laying field cables and using safer radio communications.[3] The Royal United Services Insitute (RUSI) stated on September 4 that Russian forces are also trying to improve signals through the wider use of application-based C2 services that require less training.[4] Konaev and Daniels noted that signals at the battalion level downward are still often unencrypted and that Russian personnel still frequently communicate sensitive information through unsecure channels.[5]

Konaev and Daniels concluded that Russian forces still face challenges creating a horizontally integrated command structure to share information across different units in real time, a challenge the Russian military previously identified which has been exacerbated by Russia’s current force structure in Ukraine.[6] The Russian force grouping in Ukraine is comprised of both regular and irregular units, often deployed together and separate from their respective parent formations, further complicating efforts to horizontally integrate units. Russian forces in western Zaporizhia Oblast, for example, are notably comprised of elements of the 58th Combined Arms Army (Southern Military District), Russian Airborne Forces (VDV), Spetsnaz, naval infantry, irregular volunteer battalions, and brigades entirely made up of mobilized personnel.[7] Russian command is likely struggling to share information and create a common command space across these widely disparate forces defending against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.

Artillery constraints in Ukraine are reportedly prompting the Russian military to accelerate longstanding efforts to implement a fires doctrine prioritizing accuracy over volume. Konaev and Daniels stated that Russian forces have tightened the link between reconnaissance systems and artillery units to improve fire accuracy, as Russian forces face growing constraints on their ability to leverage mass indirect fire.[8] RUSI noted on September 4 that Russian commanders are doubling down on the need to prioritize the development of a reconnaissance fires complex (RFC) due to assessing that existing Russian fires doctrine, which heavily relies on a high volume of fires and pre-established calculations of the density of fires needed to achieve certain effects, without a reliable system of rapid battle damage assessment, is non-viable.[9] Russian forces have long sought to implement the concept of RFC prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which dictates that Russian forces employ high-precision, long-range weapons linked to real-time intelligence data and precise targeting provided by an intelligence and fire-direction center.[10] RUSI added that Russian forces are prioritizing strike accuracy over volume because they lack the ammunition to sustain mass indirect fires, have difficulties transporting a large volume of ammunition to the frontline, and see diminishing effectiveness with mass strikes.[11] Russia is also reportedly increasing the production of Krasnopol laser-guided shells and Lancet drones (loitering munitions) to increase fires accuracy.[12] Russian units at the front are rapidly learning and innovating, but their ability to fully implement the desired RFC will likely be constrained by their ability to issue improved communications systems — and provide necessary training — to forces in combat.

Russian forces are additionally reportedly adapting their deployment of electronic warfare (EW) complexes. Konaev and Daniels stated that Russian forces have dispersed their deployment of EW complexes since spring 2022 from a concentration of roughly 10 EW complexes for every 20 kilometers of the frontline to 1 major EW system every 10 kilometers, with additional supporting EW assets deployed as needed.[13] The dispersal of these EW assets suggests that Russian forces have improved the coverage that a single EW complex provides, although Konaev and Daniels noted that the systems still have issues with limited coverage and EW fratricide.[14] RUSI stated that Russian forces are dispersing Pole-21 systems and treating them as disposable EW systems in order to provide wide-area protection from Ukrainian drone strikes.[15] Russian sources particularly credited superior Russian EW capabilities for aiding Russian forces’ successful defense against the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine in June.[16] Konaev and Daniels added that these EW systems continue to present challenges for Ukrainian drones transmitting targeting information and securing Ukrainian signals.[17]

Ukrainian forces reportedly continued to advance south of Bakhmut and south of Robotyne in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed gains on September 8. Ukrainian military officials reported that Ukrainian forces are continuing to advance south of Bakhmut and achieved unspecified successes south of Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv).[18] One Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced north of Andriivka (9km southwest of Bakhmut) and in Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut), although another milblogger noted that the situation in Klishchiivka is unclear at this time.[19] Russian sources also claimed that Ukrainian forces seized positions on the northwestern outskirts of Novomayorske (18km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) on the Donetsk–Zaporizhia Oblast border.[20]

Russian forces conducted another series of Shahed-131/136 drone strikes targeting Odesa Oblast on the night of September 7–8. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on September 8 that Ukrainian forces downed 16 of 20 Shahed drones that Russian forces launched at grain and port infrastructure in Odesa Oblast.[21] Ukrainian Southern Command Spokesperson Captain First Rank Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces are launching drone strikes from Crimea in order to bypass Ukrainian air defenses.[22] Humenyuk also noted that the number of drones that Russian forces have launched and markings on the drones indicate that Russia has established domestic drone production.[23] ISW reported on September 6 that Russian authorities intend to expand domestic drone production beyond the Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the Tatarstan Republic into the Bashkortostan Republic.[24] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat noted that Russian forces may increase the frequency of drone strikes on Ukraine.[25] Romanian news agency Digi24 reported on September 8 that the Romanian National Committee for Emergency Situations authorized the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations to issue warning and alarm messages where there are Russian drone attacks in the area.[26]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov publicly rejected an offer from the UN Secretariat that met many of Russia’s stated demands to rejoin the Black Sea Grain Initiative on September 6, indicating that the Kremlin is either delaying its return to the grain deal in an attempt to extract maximum concessions from the West or has no intention whatsoever of returning to the grain deal. Lavrov stated on September 6 that the Russian government received a letter from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres offering several concessions in exchange for the resumption of the grain deal.[27] Lavrov stated and Reuters reported that the concessions in the letter included: reconnection to SWIFT for a Russian Agricultural Bank subsidiary in Luxembourg within 30 days, the creation of an insurance platform for Russian cargo and ships against Ukrainian strikes in the Azov and Black seas; the unblocking of Russian fertilizer assets in the EU, and approval for Russian ships carrying food and fertilizers to dock in European ports.[28] Lavrov publicly dismissed the UN Secretariat’s offer as a “workaround” that does not create a real solution to the problem.[29] Guterres stated on September 7 that the UN is “actively engaged” in attempting to improve Russia’s grain and fertilizer exports in order to convince Moscow to allow the safe export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.[30] Reuters confirmed the existence of the letter and its contents on September 8.[31] The UN‘s letter notably offers concessions to most of the previously expressed Russian demands, with the exception of the renewal of operations for the Togliatti–Odesa ammonia pipeline as Lavrov noted on September 6.[32] ISW previously assessed that the Kremlin likely views the Black Sea Grain Initiative as one of its few remaining avenues of leverage against the West and has withdrawn from the deal and engaged in escalatory rhetoric to extract extensive concessions.[33]

Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated boilerplate rhetoric justifying the current war in Ukraine while commemorating a Soviet military victory during the Second World War on September 8. Putin claimed that soldiers of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics’ (DNR and LNR) militias inherited their courage and resilience from ancestors who fought to recapture Donbas in the Second World War and reamplified the narrative falsely portraying the current Ukrainian government as “Nazis.”[34] Putin’s September 8 speech is a continuation of the rhetoric from his September 5 speech invoking the memory of significant Soviet military victories to set ideological conditions for a prolonged war effort.[35]

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) directly responded to recent indications that the Armenian government may be questioning its decades-long security relationship with Russia. The Russian MFA claimed on September 8 that it observed doubts within Armenian official circles and political elite about Armenian bilateral ties with Russia, trilateral Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani ties, and ties to the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The MFA claimed that Armenian leadership has conducted “unfriendly actions,” including indicators that ISW recently identified: the provision of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, the visit of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s wife Anna Hakobyan to deliver the humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and Armenia’s decision to host joint military exercises with the United States.[36] The MFA also criticized Armenian leadership for moving to ratify the International Criminal Court (ICC) Rome Statute and stated that it issued a formal protest to the Armenian Ambassador to Russia, Vagharshak Harutyunyan, in response to these “unfriendly actions.”[37] The MFA’s direct response to these events indicates that Russian anger over indications of Armenian dissatisfaction with Russian security guarantees are not confined to the Russian ultranationalist information space but includes the Russian government.[38]

The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced a new security assistance package on September 7, providing Ukraine with $600 million worth of military equipment.[39] The DoD reported that the package includes: equipment to sustain Ukraine’s air defense systems, additional ammunition for HIMARS systems, 105mm artillery rounds, electronic warfare and counter–electronic warfare equipment, demolition munitions for obstacle clearing, mine-clearing equipment, and support and equipment for training, maintenance, and sustainment activities.

Unknown Russian actors may be helping Russian officials to censor Russian milbloggers who have previously criticized the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine. Supporters of imprisoned former Russian officer and ultranationalist Igor Girkin amplified an appeal from a Russian milblogger and serviceman Mikhail Polynkov who claimed that unknown individuals hacked into and stole access to his Telegram channel.[40] Polynkov claimed that these hackers began to impersonate him and are writing social media posts that contradict his opinions. Polynkov added that the hackers also published a post attacking another prominent milblogger (who advocates for veteran rights), unlisted many of his popular posts, and are trying to find information to blackmail him and his affiliates. Polynkov claimed that these hackers are not ordinary thieves who are attempting to scam his audience for money but instead are individuals who disagreed with his criticism of the Kremlin. ISW has recently observed several crackdowns against Russian ultranationalist veterans who consistently criticized the Kremlin likely as part of a centralized effort to silence some critical milblogger voices.[41]

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces have reportedly made notable changes to their command and control (C2) in Ukraine to protect command infrastructure and improve information sharing, although Russian force deployments are likely still exacerbating issues with horizontal integration.
• Artillery constraints in Ukraine are reportedly prompting the Russian military to accelerate longstanding efforts to implement a fires doctrine prioritizing accuracy over volume.
• Russian forces are additionally reportedly adapting their deployment of electronic warfare (EW) complexes.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly continued to advance south of Bakhmut and south of Robotyne in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed gains on September 8.
• Russian forces conducted another series of Shahed-131/136 drone strikes targeting Odesa Oblast on the night of September 7–8.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov publicly rejected an incredibly favorable offer from the UN Secretariat that met many of Russia’s stated demands to rejoin the Black Sea Grain Initiative on September 6, indicating that the Kremlin is either delaying its return to the grain deal in an attempt to extract maximum concessions from the West or has no intention whatsoever of returning to the grain deal.
• The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) directly responded to recent indications that the Armenian government may be questioning its decades-long security relationship with Russia.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line, near Bakhmut, and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line but did not make any confirmed advances on September 8.
• The New York Times (NYT) — citing Western, African, and Russian sources — reported that Russian intelligence structures are competing for control of the Wagner Group’s assets and operations in Africa.
• Russian occupation officials continue to hold illegal regional elections in occupied Ukraine. Russian occupation officials in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts announced the start of in-person voting in occupied territories on September 8.

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)

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line on September 8 but did not make confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk) and Novoyehorivka (16km southwest of Svatove).[42] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces are continuing to concentrate efforts on the Novoyehorivka area and are using convict recruits and unspecified private military companies (PMCs) to conduct assaults in the area.[43] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated on September 7 that the operational situation in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions is intensifying.[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces off of unspecified heights near Novoyehorivka but that Russian forces have not established control over these positions.[45] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces continued to advance near Synkivka and Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) on September 7, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[46]

Yevlash stated that Russian forces aim to reach the Oskil River and capture positions near Borova (35km west of Svatove) before the start of the 2023–2024 winter, although the current localized Russian offensive along the Kupyansk-Svatove line is unlikely to achieve this objective.[47] The current localized Russian offensive effort on this sector of the front has achieved marginal gains and likely aims to draw Ukrainian forces away from more critical sectors of the front and Ukrainian counteroffensive operations instead of capturing tactically significant amounts of territory.[48] Russian forces would likely need to commit substantially more manpower to assaults along the Kupyansk-Svatove line to possibly achieve the alleged objective of reaching Borova. Yevlash stated that Russian forces continue to train and form assault units from previously defeated motorized rifle brigades and airborne (VDV) units in the area.[49] Yevlash also stated that Russian forces are using signalmen to form assault detachments, suggesting that recent heavy losses may be constraining available Russian manpower for assaults on this sector.[50] Ukrainian officials have previously noted that Russian forces are deploying elements of newly formed brigades and divisions to resume active offensive operations in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions, although ISW has not yet observed confirmation of these deployments.[51] Russian forces concentrated considerable manpower for months in this sector of the front before launching their unsuccessful winter-spring 2023 operational offensive effort, and ISW has observed no similar recent buildup in the area.[52]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line on September 8. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled five Ukrainian assaults near Novoyehorivka and Dibrova (6km southwest of Kreminna).[53] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian counterattacks near the Serebryanske forest area south of Kreminna on September 7.[54] Another Russian milblogger claimed that over the past two weeks Ukrainian forces advanced in the area of responsibility of the 27th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Guards Tank Army, Western Military District) in an unspecified area of the Lyman direction and that elements of the Russian 252nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (3rd Motorized Rifle Division, Western Military District) and the 237th VDV Regiment (76th VDV Division) later recaptured lost territory in the area.[55]

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 on September 8 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations and achieved unspecified partial success south of Bakhmut.[56] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced north of Andriivka and in Klishchiivka, half of which the milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces control.[57] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that the situation south of Klishchiivka remains unclear, however, and noted that sources are providing discrepant accounts of fighting in the area.[58] The milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces intensified offensive operations along the Klishchiivka-Ozaryanivka (7-14km southwest of Bakhmut) line, and another Russian source characterized the situation near Andriivka as tense.[59] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that elements of the Russian Southern Grouping of Forces repelled 12 Ukrainian attacks near Bakhmut, Vesele (20km northeast of Bakhmut), Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest of Bakhmut), and Andriivka (9km southwest of Bakhmut).[60]

Russian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut on September 8 but did not make any confirmed or claimed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Klishchiivka, and Andriivka.[61] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces conducted assaults near Zaliznyanske (12km northwest of Bakhmut), Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Klishchiivka, and Kurdyumivka (12km southwest of Bakhmut).[62] Prominent Russian milbloggers amplified footage claiming to show elements of the Russian 98th Guards Airborne (VDV) Division operating in the Bakhmut direction.[63] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported on September 7 that Russian forces are using various tactics in the Bakhmut direction in an attempt to distract Ukrainian forces and break up Ukrainian force concentrations.[64]

Ukrainian forces did not conduct any confirmed or claimed offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 8.

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 8 and reportedly advanced. Russian milbloggers claimed on September 7 and 8 that an assault group of the Russian 5th Brigade (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Army Corps) captured a fortified area east of Krasnohorivka and that the 150th Motorized Rifle Division (8th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) advanced in Marinka in recent weeks.[65] Another Russian milblogger claimed on September 8 that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful assaults in Marinka and on the southern approaches to Avdiivka, however.[66] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Avdiivka, Keramik (14km northwest of Avdiivka), Marinka (on the western outskirts of Donetsk City), Krasnohorivka (directly west of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City).[67] Malyar reported that Ukrainian forces continue to repel Russian assaults in Marinka, preventing Russian forces from taking control of the settlement.[68]

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

Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in limited skirmishes in western Donetsk Oblast on September 8. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks south of Prechystivka (35km southwest of Donetsk City).[69] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 36th Motorized Rifle Brigade (29th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) repelled a platoon-sized Ukrainian force northeast of Mykilske (27km southwest of Donetsk City).[70]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces intensified offensive operations and advanced along the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border on September 8. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces intensified offensive operations on the Novodonetske-Novomayorske line (12km to 18km southwest of Velyka Novosilka), and one milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces captured positions on the northwestern outskirts of Novomayorske.[71] Some Russian sources claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attempts to cross the Shaytanka River immediately northeast of the Novodonetske-Novomayorske line.[72] The Russian ”Vostok” Battalion claimed that Ukrainian and Russian forces have exchanged control over some positions in the area and that the fighting is largely concentrated on the outskirts of an unspecified settlement (likely referring to Novomayorske).[73]

Russian and Ukrainian sources made various competing claims about the degree of Ukrainian activity amid reported Ukrainian advances in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 8. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified successes south of Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv).[74] Some Russian sources, including the “Storm Ossetia” and “Alania” volunteer battalions defending in western Zaporizhia Oblast, claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a “tactical pause” in the Robotyne area over the previous day to regroup.[75] Other Russian sources claimed that small groups of Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful mechanized and armored assaults against Robotyne on the morning of September 8.[76] Some Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Verbove (20km southeast of Orikhiv) from the northwest and Novopokropivka (16km southeast of Orikhiv) from the east.[77]

A Ukrainian official indicated that Ukrainian operations in Kherson Oblast may force Russian forces to draw reserves from occupied Crimea. Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Captain First Rank Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces suffer significant personnel and equipment losses from Ukrainian counterbattery activities in Kherson Oblast, limiting their combat effectiveness and likely forcing Russian forces to bring forward reserves currently operating in Crimea.[78]

Russian sources claimed that Russian forces continue to respond to Ukrainian raids on the Dnipro River delta. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces pushed a small Ukrainian group off of Kozatskyi Island (west of Nova Kakhovka) following earlier reports of Ukrainian forces landing on the island on September 7.[79] Another milblogger claimed on September 8 that fighting continues on the Dnipro River delta islands and that Russian forces repelled another Ukrainian landing on an island opposite Nova Kakhovka.[80]

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

The New York Times (NYT) — citing Western, African, and Russian sources — reported that Russian intelligence structures are competing for control of the Wagner Group’s assets and operations in Africa. Unnamed Western officials stated that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Russian General Staff Main Directorate (GRU) are trying to take over key aspects of Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s operations in Africa and the information space.[81] Two unspecified officials noted that the SVR will likely absorb Wagner’s propaganda and disinformation outlets that Russia has used to target foreign countries, while the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the GRU will take over Wagner operations abroad. Western officials stated that GRU General Andrey Averyanov (reportedly the commander of the GRU‘s Unit 29155, which is reportedly responsible for international assassination and destabilization) is the likely candidate to oversee some of Wagner operations as part of an evolving system, which features multiple private companies (PMC).[82] NYT also reported that most Wagner forces remained in Africa despite some personnel deploying to Ukraine at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and French intelligence estimated that 4,000 Wagner personnel were already stationed in Africa.

Russian milbloggers continued to criticize the Russian military command for failing to adequately protect Russian airfields against drone strikes. Russian milbloggers amplified footage on September 7 and September 8 which shows that Russian forces placed tires on top of military aircraft, presumably to protect the aircraft from drone strikes.[83] One milblogger claimed that the Russian commanders issued the order to protect Russian aircraft without having necessary infrastructure or means to do so.[84] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger ridiculed the Kremlin’s claims that Russia built 16 hospitals in two months to address the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 but cannot build hangars.[85]

The Russian MoD continues efforts to improve the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) to support the war effort. A Russian milblogger reported that Russian “Kurganmashzavod” machine-building plant sent another batch of new and repaired Russian BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles to the Russian MoD.[86] The milblogger claimed that “Kurganmashzavod,” including its Volgograd site, have already exceeded the volume of combat vehicles produced in 2022 by 120 percent in eight months. The milblogger claimed that “Kurganmashzavod” is also producing 30 times more additional protection kits (including gratings and armored screens) in 2023 than in 2022. A Russian opposition outlet, however, reported that the Russian rubber industry cannot produce enough rubber to replace worn tires.[87]

Cuban officials reportedly arrested 17 individuals on charges related to a human trafficking ring that lured Cuban men to serve in the Russian Armed Forces.[88] Cuban Interior Ministry official Cesar Rodriguez stated that the ring’s leader relied on two people residing on the island to recruit Cubans to fight in Ukraine.

The Russian Cabinet of Ministers approved a simplified procedure on September 8 for issuing death and missing persons certificates to Russian servicemen fighting in Ukraine.[89] The new procedure will allow military commanders to issue these certificates, despite previously requiring medical professionals to provide such documents. Russian military commanders will need to report the death of servicemen to Russian registry offices, which would allow relatives to receive financial support at a faster rate — a common complaint of the families of deceased Russian servicemen throughout the war in Ukraine.

An IRGC-affiliated commercial airliner flew to Russian-occupied Crimea on September 7, possibly to transfer military materials and/or personnel to Russian forces there.[90] The airliner is operated by Pouya Air, which the United States and European Union have sanctioned for transferring military materials throughout the Middle East on behalf of the IRGC.[91] Pouya Air denied that the airliner was in Crimea and was “helping Russian forces.”[92] The Ukrainian military has accused Russia of using the Chauba training ground in Crimea to launch Iranian Shahed-131 and -136 drones against Ukrainian targets.[93] The flight to Crimea is particularly noteworthy given that Israeli and Ukrainian media have reported that Russia has experienced “logistical problems” in transporting Iranian drones from the Middle East to the frontlines in Ukraine.[94] Iran is helping construct a drone-manufacturing factory in Russia to resolve this problem, but the factory is not expected to be completed until at least early 2024.[95] The Pouya Air flight to Crimea comes after the IRGC and Lebanese Hezbollah trained Russian forces in Syria on how to operate Iranian drones on August 31, which the American Enterprise Institute‘s Critical Threats Project (CTP) previously reported.[96]

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

Russian occupation officials continue to hold illegal regional elections in occupied Ukraine. Russian occupation officials in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts announced the start of in-person voting in occupied territories on September 8.[97] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that additional Federal Security Service (FSB) units arrived in occupied Donetsk City to monitor the regional elections.[98] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian and Belarusian propagandists arrived in occupied territories to positively cover Russian elections. The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that members of the Russian “election commission,” accompanied by Russian policemen and forces, are visiting locals and coercing them to sign ballots.[99] Russian occupation officials advertised free food near polling stations in occupied Kherson Oblast, and the Ukrainian Resistance Center previously reported that Russian occupation authorities are using free food to increase voter turnout.[100]

Russian officials continue to forcibly relocate Ukrainian children from occupied territories to Russia under the guise of medical treatments. Russian Federation Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova claimed that Russian authorities transported two children from the Shakhtarske orphanage in occupied Donetsk Oblast to Moscow for medical treatment and rehabilitation.[101] Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets reported that Ukraine returned nine Ukrainian children home from Russia and noted that Russia imprisoned some of these children after accusing them of planting an explosive on a bridge.[102]

Russian occupation officials are continuing to integrate occupation education facilities into the Russian education system. Luhansk People’s Republic’s (LNR) Head Leonid Pasechnik announced on September 8 that LNR, the Moscow-based National Research University Higher School of Economics, and LNR universities signed an agreement to further integrate occupied Luhansk Oblast into the Russian educational sphere.[103]

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)

The Belarusian Hajun Project stated on September 8 that a single Russian Su-25 attack aircraft remained at the Lida Airfield in Grodno Oblast, Belarus as of August 31.[104]

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.

2. Deterrence in Taiwan Is Failing

"Deterrence works, until it doesn't." - Sir Lawrence Freedman

Excerpts:

This will require two mutually reinforcing types of deterrence. “Deterrence by denial” convinces an enemy not to attack by persuading him that the effort will fail. The ability to deter invasion, in this sense, is synonymous with the ability to defeat it. “Deterrence by punishment” convinces an enemy not to attack by persuading him that the effort—even if successful—will incur an exorbitant price. The strongest deterrents blend denial and punishment. They confront an aggressor with sky-high costs and a low likelihood of success. The U.S. task in the Western Pacific, then, is to show that Taiwan can survive a Chinese attack—and that any such war will leave China far poorer, weaker, and less politically stable than before.

In practice, this approach would rest on five pillars: first, a Taiwan that can deny China a quick or easy victory because it is bristling with arms and ready to resist to the end; second, a U.S. military that can sink a Chinese invasion fleet, decimate a blockade squadron, and otherwise turn back hostile forces trying to take Taiwan; third, a coalition of allies that can bolster this denial defense while raising the strategic price China pays by forcing it to fight a sprawling, regionwide war; fourth, a global punishment campaign that batters China’s economy—and perhaps its political system—regardless of whether Beijing wins or loses in the Taiwan Strait; and fifth, a credible ability to fight a nuclear war in the Western Pacific—if only to convince China that it cannot use its own growing arsenal to deter the United States from defending Taiwan.

...

As U.S. President Harry Truman once put it, countries that don’t pay the price of peace will eventually pay the price of war.

Many obstacles—spending constraints, bureaucratic logjams, collective action problems—make an emergency program of this type difficult. But given that failure to deter Chinese aggression would confront Washington with a choice between fighting an earth-shaking conflict and letting Beijing reorder maritime Asia, those challenges should be kept in perspective. As President Harry Truman once put it, countries that don’t pay the price of peace will eventually pay the price of war.

To some degree, all the discussion of timelines and prospective D-Days is artificial. There presumably isn’t a giant clock ticking down to zero in Beijing. But it’s not a bad idea to pretend that there is. Deterring an awful war in the Western Pacific won’t require some magic formula. It will require greater urgency, resources, and unity than those committed to defending the existing order have exhibited so far. Washington and its allies must start acting as though they believe what U.S. officials have been saying—that time may be the free world’s most finite asset of all.

Deterrence in Taiwan Is Failing

The United States has committed to keeping the peace but isn’t doing enough to stop the war.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023, 3:52 PM

By Hal Brands, a professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Foreign Policy · by Hal Brands · September 8, 2023

“My gut tells me we will fight in 2025,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan wrote in a January memo to officers in the Air Mobility Command. The memo, which promptly leaked to reporters, warned that the United States and China were barreling toward a conflict over Taiwan. The U.S. Defense Department quickly distanced itself from Minihan’s blunt assessment. Yet the general wasn’t saying anything in private that military and civilian officials weren’t already saying in public.

In August 2022, a visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had set off the worst cross-strait crisis in a quarter century. China’s aircraft barreled across the center line of the Taiwan Strait; its ships prowled the waters around the island; its ballistic missiles splashed down in vital shipping lanes. Months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had reminded everyone that major war is not an anachronism, the Taiwan crisis made visceral the prospect that a Chinese attack on that island could trigger conflict between the world’s two top powers.

Washington certainly took note. A year earlier, the outgoing chief of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip Davidson, had predicted that a war in the Taiwan Strait could come by 2027. After the August crisis, this “Davidson window” became something like conventional wisdom, with Minihan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other U.S. officials predicting that trouble might start even sooner. If the United States and China do clash over Taiwan, it will be the war everyone saw coming—which would make the failure to deter it all the more painful.

To be sure, U.S. President Joe Biden has made deterring that conflict a priority. Despite the long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity,” Biden has publicly affirmed, four times, that the United States would come to Taiwan’s aid if it were attacked. Yet deterrence is about more than declaratory policy: It requires assembling a larger structure of constraints that preserve the peace by instilling fear of the outcome and consequences of war. More than a year after the August crisis and nearly three years into the Davidson window, the United States and its friends are struggling to build that structure in the limited time they may have left.

Taiwan is important in many ways—as a critical node in technology supply chains, as a democracy menaced by an aggressive autocracy, as an unresolved legacy of China’s civil war. Yet Taiwan has become the world’s most perilous flash point mostly for strategic reasons.

Taiwan is a “lock around the neck of a great dragon,” as Chinese military analyst Zhu Tingchang has written. It anchors the first island chain, the string of U.S. allies and partners that block China from the open Pacific. If China were to take Taiwan, it would rupture this defense perimeter, opening the way to greater influence—and coercion—throughout the region and beyond.

In 1972, Chinese leader Mao Zedong told U.S. President Richard Nixon that Beijing could wait 100 years to reclaim Taiwan. China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, is not so patient. He has said the island’s awkward status cannot be passed from generation to generation; he has reportedly ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready for action by 2027. Militaries constantly prepare for missions they never execute, of course. But the risk of war is rising as China’s capabilities—and urgency—grow.

A great-power war over Taiwan would be cataclysmic. It would feature combat more vicious than anything the United States has experienced in generations.

Beijing is reaping the rewards of a multidecade buildup focused on the ships, planes, and other platforms needed to project power into the Western Pacific; the “counter-intervention” capabilities, such as anti-ship missiles and sophisticated air defenses, needed to keep U.S. forces at bay; and now the nuclear capabilities needed to enhance China’s options for deterrence and coercion alike. The scale and scope of these programs are remarkable. Adm. John Aquilino, Davidson’s successor at Indo-Pacific Command, said in April that China has embarked on “the largest, fastest, most comprehensive military buildup since World War II.” As a result, the balance is changing fast. By the late 2020s, several recent assessments indicate, Washington might find it extremely hard to save Taiwan from a determined assault.

Xi would surely prefer to take Taiwan without a fight. He currently aims to coerce unification through military, economic, and psychological pressure short of war. Yet this strategy isn’t working. Having witnessed Xi’s brutal crackdown in Hong Kong, the Taiwanese populace has little interest in unification. Since 2016, the more hawkish, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has thumped the more Beijing-friendly Kuomintang in presidential elections. If the DPP wins the next presidential race in January 2024—its candidate, Lai Ching-te, currently leads the polls—Xi might conclude that coercion has failed and consider more violent options.

Biden knows the threat is rising—he recently called China a “ticking time bomb”—which is why he has repeatedly said Washington won’t stand aside if Beijing strikes. But make no mistake: A great-power war over Taiwan would be cataclysmic. It would feature combat more vicious than anything the United States has experienced in generations. It would fragment the global economy and pose real risks of nuclear escalation. So the crucial question is whether Washington can deter a conflict it hopes never to fight.

Not everyone believes it can. “Taiwan is like 2 feet from China,” U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly remarked in 2019. “We are 8,000 miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a fucking thing we can do about it.” But protecting Taiwan isn’t as hopeless as the map makes it seem.

China’s fundamental advantages are proximity and the mass of forces it can muster in a war off its coast. The U.S. advantage is that control is harder than denial, especially when control requires crossing large contested bodies of water. An invasion of Taiwan, with its oceanic moat and rugged terrain, would be one of history’s most daunting military operations, comparable to the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. Options short of invasion, such as blockade or bombardment, offer no guarantee of forcing Taiwan to submit. Given the risk that a failed war could pose to Xi’s regime and perhaps his life, the Chinese leader will probably want a high chance of success if he attacks. So the United States and other countries should be able to inject enough doubt into this calculus that even a more risk-acceptant Xi decides rolling the iron dice is a bad idea.

This will require two mutually reinforcing types of deterrence. “Deterrence by denial” convinces an enemy not to attack by persuading him that the effort will fail. The ability to deter invasion, in this sense, is synonymous with the ability to defeat it. “Deterrence by punishment” convinces an enemy not to attack by persuading him that the effort—even if successful—will incur an exorbitant price. The strongest deterrents blend denial and punishment. They confront an aggressor with sky-high costs and a low likelihood of success. The U.S. task in the Western Pacific, then, is to show that Taiwan can survive a Chinese attack—and that any such war will leave China far poorer, weaker, and less politically stable than before.

In practice, this approach would rest on five pillars: first, a Taiwan that can deny China a quick or easy victory because it is bristling with arms and ready to resist to the end; second, a U.S. military that can sink a Chinese invasion fleet, decimate a blockade squadron, and otherwise turn back hostile forces trying to take Taiwan; third, a coalition of allies that can bolster this denial defense while raising the strategic price China pays by forcing it to fight a sprawling, regionwide war; fourth, a global punishment campaign that batters China’s economy—and perhaps its political system—regardless of whether Beijing wins or loses in the Taiwan Strait; and fifth, a credible ability to fight a nuclear war in the Western Pacific—if only to convince China that it cannot use its own growing arsenal to deter the United States from defending Taiwan.

If this sounds like a tall order, it is. Deterring determined revisionists is never easy. If these steps sound awful to contemplate, they are. Deterrence involves preparing for the unthinkable to lessen the likelihood it occurs. The United States and its friends are making real, even historic progress in all these areas. Alas, they are still struggling to get ahead of the threat.

An illustration of a hand grenade with a Taiwan flag in the pin.

Tyler Comrie illustration for Foreign Policy

Consider Taiwan itself. That country is the first line of defense in the Western Pacific. It may also be the weakest.

In fairness, Taiwan faces an epic task in hardening itself against its hulking neighbor. To do so, it has adopted a smart, asymmetric defense concept that emphasizes using “large numbers of small things,” as former U.S. defense official David Helvey termed it—sea mines, anti-ship missiles, mobile air defenses—to slow and attrite Chinese forces; it is building an army that can surge troops to invasion beaches; and it is raising a reserve force that can fight guerrilla-style in Taiwan’s complex terrain. The United States is selling—and, now, simply giving—Taiwan missiles, drones, and other weapons to hasten this transformation. It is quietly increasing its training and advisory presence on the island. Given time, Taiwan can make itself a prickly porcupine. The question is how much time that will take.

Taiwan’s promising defense reforms have been dogged by political and bureaucratic opposition, just as U.S. arms sales have lagged for years due to backlogs in the military supply pipeline. Yet the underlying problem is more fundamental. It is hard to claim that a country that spends just 2.4 percent of its GDP on defense, that is only slowly preparing the sort of all-of-society resistance that has sustained Ukraine, and whose military spends precious dollars on expensive, easy-to-kill capabilities that could be useless in the event of war is entirely serious about its own defense. According to the Rand Corp., Taiwan’s ability to hold out until help arrives is becoming more tenuous—which will make it a more tempting target for Beijing.

The United States reportedly lacks enough anti-ship missiles and other munitions to blunt the first Chinese attack, let alone keep fighting after a few days or weeks.

For the U.S. military, the story is also one of smart reforms and glaring weaknesses. The Pentagon is doing many of the right things to turn geography against Beijing by transforming the Western Pacific into a killing zone for attacking forces: buying more missiles and munitions, hardening its bases and learning to disperse its forces, investing in loitering shooters and sensors, exploring creative ways of delivering firepower from longer ranges, and even making the Marine Corps into a ship-killing force that operates from tiny islands. As new capabilities, such as a next-generation stealth bomber, and new basing opportunities come online in the late 2020s and 2030s, the United States may stand a good chance of stymying a Chinese attack. Yet these changes are still years or more from fruition, and striking deficiencies remain.

Modern combat remains a matter of mass. Recent investments aside, the United States reportedly lacks enough anti-ship missiles and other munitions to blunt the first Chinese attack, let alone keep fighting after a few days or weeks of high-intensity combat. Amphibious ships, attack submarines, and other critical platforms are all too scarce. Rapidly surging production of any of these capabilities is difficult, thanks to decades of disinvestment in the defense industrial base—and because even now, defense spending is roughly as low, relative to GDP, as at any time since World War II. As aging ships, planes, and submarines are retired in the late 2020s, in fact, U.S. firepower in the Western Pacific will decline, just as China’s current military reforms reach fruition. The Pentagon is working hard to address the China challenge, but it is still a long way from closing the window of vulnerability that is opening up.

Read More

A U.S. Navy sailor walks past an F/A-18F fighter jet on the flight deck of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier in the port of Busan, South Korea, on March 28.

U.S. Deterrence Against China Is Not Working

With U.S. military superiority in Asia no longer a given, defense planners need a different strategy.

Taiwanese soldiers stand guard as flares are fired during a live-fire drill in Pingtung, Taiwan, on Sept. 6, 2022.

‘Strategic Ambiguity’ Has the U.S. and Taiwan Trapped

Washington’s long-held policy has outlived its usefulness.

A U.S. Navy officer patrols the flight deck of the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship docked in Gdynia, Poland, on Sept. 17, 2022.

4 Ways U.S. Support for Ukraine Helps Defend Taiwan

From deterrence to military readiness, Ukraine aid is a major boost to Pacific security.

What about the multilateral aspects of deterrence? The best news, ironically, involves addressing the long-standing U.S. weakness in the Indo-Pacific: the lack of a regional alliance that makes an attack on one an attack on all. History and geography still conspire against such an arrangement. In recent years, though, Washington has made great strides in strengthening and stringing together relationships that could make up a winning coalition.

The U.S.-Japanese alliance is becoming a real warfighting partnership, as Tokyo embarks on its greatest defense buildup in generations and works with Washington to turn its Ryukyu Islands into maritime strong points. Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have formed a partnership focused on shoring up the military balance—especially undersea—in the region. Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines are giving Washington expanded basing access in the first and second island chains; the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is holding more ambitious exercises; and numerous European countries are expanding deployments to the region. South Korea and Japan are enhancing their security cooperation. Officials in Washington, Tokyo, and Canberra are even whispering about fighting together in a three-way coalition to defend Taiwan.

That coalition could be a game-changer. Japan in particular would bring vital air and sea assets to a scrap. Even short of that, additional basing options can make a big difference, by making it harder for Chinese missiles to crush U.S. power without starting a huge regional war. Then there is the psychological contribution to deterrence. A Chinese regime that obsessively monitors the “correlation of forces” can hardly be encouraged as an Indo-Pacific balancing coalition coheres.

Officials in Washington, Tokyo, and Canberra are even whispering about fighting together in a three-way coalition to defend Taiwan.

Yet, if that coalition is a tribute to Beijing’s self-defeating bellicosity, the process is hardly complete. There remain uncertainties about which foreign facilities the United States will actually be able to use in wartime. Even the most enthusiastic allies, Australia and Japan, haven’t explicitly declared that they would fight for Taiwan. In 1914, another loose coalition—the Triple Entente—failed to prevent World War I because the lack of a firm British commitment caused German leaders to hope, wrongly, that the pact might crack under stress. Coalitions that fully coalesce only after a war has started coalesce too late to prevent the war from breaking out.

The same dynamic challenges the formation of a global punishment campaign. Russia’s war in Ukraine showed that advanced democracies around the world can rally to impose costs on an aggressor. NATO and the G-7 are taking a growing interest in Taiwan and the Western Pacific; Washington has engaged allies about hitting China with technological, financial, and trade sanctions in case of war. Add in the fact that the U.S. Navy could use its control of maritime choke points to cut off Beijing’s seaborne energy imports, and Xi now has to grapple with the possibility that attacking Taiwan would lead to economic ruin.

It’s only a possibility, though. There is no agreed, let alone announced, Western position on sanctioning China. Some European countries—most notably France—are publicly cool to the idea. Others are probably reluctant to commit, and thereby earn Beijing’s wrath, until the shooting starts. Xi, for his part, has surely noticed that sanctions have harmed but not destroyed Russia’s economy. He is sprinting to reduce China’s exposure by stockpiling food and gas, cultivating technological self-sufficiency, and investing in overland pipelines and supply routes that are safer from the threat of interdiction. Deterrence is thus a moving target. As Washington tries to prepare a punishment campaign, China tries to mitigate its potential effects.

Finally, there is the nuclear pillar. It seems unlikely that the United States would use nuclear weapons first in a war over Taiwan—an important but not existential interest—given that Beijing could respond in kind. A better objective is to dissuade China from thinking it can use the threat of limited nuclear escalation, likely against U.S. forces or bases in the region, to prevent Washington from intervening in the first place.

Through the end of this decade, the U.S. nuclear arsenal will remain larger and far more lethal than China’s, which gives Washington dominance at the top of the escalation ladder. The Pentagon is also developing and fielding limited nuclear capabilities—such as lower-yield warheads delivered via submarine-launched ballistic missiles—that will make it harder for Beijing to exploit an escalatory gap on the rungs below. Even so, deterring China from using nuclear threats to win a conventional war may not be as simple as it seems.

Chinese leaders may believe they possess greater resolve in a Taiwan conflict because that island—thanks to geography and history—is less important to Washington than to Beijing. As China’s arsenal expands rapidly from the late 2020s onward, Beijing may also be more inclined to use nuclear weapons for coercive leverage, as Moscow did when Soviet intercontinental capabilities matured in the Khrushchev years.

Not least, it is possible that recent events have convinced Beijing that the United States just won’t fight a conventional war against a nuclear-armed rival. Biden’s stated reason for not intervening directly in Ukraine is that doing so would cause “World War III.” If Xi doubted that the United States was any more eager for a contest in nuclear risk-taking in Asia, he might well be wrong—but he wouldn’t be crazy. Plenty of wars have begun due to miscalculations more egregious than this.

Deterrence is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. Short of climbing inside Xi’s head, we can’t know precisely what will or won’t stay his hand. The best Washington can do is try to reduce any optimism Xi could plausibly have about where a war might lead while recognizing that this will always be an imprecise art. It’s reassuring, in this context, that the United States and its friends are doing so much to address the growing danger—and deeply worrying that they sometimes seem to be moving in slow motion as China races to get ready for a fight. On issues from coalition-building to hardening Taiwan to strengthening U.S. capabilities, the direction of travel is excellent. The speed of travel is not.

Some analysts believe the only way to increase that speed is to downshift elsewhere—that the United States can only save Taiwan by sacrificing Ukraine. Things aren’t quite that simple. Deterrence, after all, is a product of will and capabilities. Many Indo-Pacific democracies, including Taiwan, have so strongly backed Ukraine because they know that the free world’s response to aggression in one place must figure into Xi’s assessment of the likely consequences of aggression in another. Materially speaking, the war in Ukraine has also impelled many of the positive moves—defense spending hikes, closer cooperation among partners and allies, investments in the U.S. defense industrial base—occurring in the Indo-Pacific. The right approach is to find, in one shocking war, the sense of urgency needed to ramp up efforts to prevent another. In the early 1950s, for example, the Truman administration used the alarm stoked by the Korean War to mount the U.S. military buildup and diplomatic offensive that bolstered free-world positions around the globe.

As U.S. President Harry Truman once put it, countries that don’t pay the price of peace will eventually pay the price of war.

Many obstacles—spending constraints, bureaucratic logjams, collective action problems—make an emergency program of this type difficult. But given that failure to deter Chinese aggression would confront Washington with a choice between fighting an earth-shaking conflict and letting Beijing reorder maritime Asia, those challenges should be kept in perspective. As President Harry Truman once put it, countries that don’t pay the price of peace will eventually pay the price of war.

To some degree, all the discussion of timelines and prospective D-Days is artificial. There presumably isn’t a giant clock ticking down to zero in Beijing. But it’s not a bad idea to pretend that there is. Deterring an awful war in the Western Pacific won’t require some magic formula. It will require greater urgency, resources, and unity than those committed to defending the existing order have exhibited so far. Washington and its allies must start acting as though they believe what U.S. officials have been saying—that time may be the free world’s most finite asset of all.

Foreign Policy · by Hal Brands · September 8, 2023

3. China, North Korea pursue new targets while honing cyber capabilities 

Reports at these links:

https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RW1aFyW

https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RW14Gtw

​Excerpts:

The report also looks toward anticipated future actions from China and North Korea in the months ahead, as increasing geopolitical tensions fuel new threat priorities and adversarial strategies. With upcoming elections in 2024, Taiwan and the United States are likely to remain top priorities for China.

No technology platform, including Microsoft’s, is perfect. But as nation-state actors continue to target vulnerabilities and deploy malign narratives across the world, we believe it is vital to continue to share intelligence such as this report and to increase cross-industry collaboration on these important issues.

China, North Korea pursue new targets while honing cyber capabilities 

https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2023/09/07/digital-threats-cyberattacks-east-asia-china-north-korea/

Sep 7, 2023 | Clint Watts - General Manager, Microsoft Threat Analysis Center

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In the past year, China has honed a new capability to automatically generate images it can use for influence operations meant to mimic U.S. voters across the political spectrum and create controversy along racial, economic, and ideological lines. This new capability is powered by artificial intelligence that attempts to create high-quality content that could go viral across social networks in the U.S. and other democracies. These images are most likely created by something called diffusion-powered image generators that use AI to not only create compelling images but also learn to improve them over time.

Today, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) is issuing Sophistication, scope, and scale: Digital threats from East Asia increase in breadth and effectiveness, as part of an ongoing series of reports on the threat posed by influence operations and cyber activity, identifying specific sectors and regions at heightened risk.

We have observed China-affiliated actors leveraging AI-generated visual media in a broad campaign that largely focuses on politically divisive topics, such as gun violence, and denigrating U.S. political figures and symbols. This technology produces more eye-catching content than the awkward digital drawings and stock photo collages used in previous campaigns. We can expect China to continue to hone this technology over time, though it remains to be seen how and when it will deploy it at scale.

As Microsoft noted in our recent report Governing AI: A Blueprint for the Future, public- and private-sector institutions need to collectively address the weaponization of technology, including AI, by cyber and influence threat actors. We report on digital threats we detect – including the use of AI – to inform policymakers, security practitioners, and the public about any threats, current or emerging, that new technologies may pose to information integrity and democracy. We will continue to share our knowledge, and call on partners to do so as well, as part of our larger blueprint to promote transparency and guide the governance of AI.

In its cyber operations, multiple Chinese state-affiliated threat actors have focused cyberattacks in the South China Sea region, conducting intelligence collection and malware execution against regional governments and industries. Other actors have targeted the U.S. defense industry and U.S. infrastructure, looking for competitive advantages to bolster strategic military aims.

Beginning in May 2023, Storm-0558, a China-based threat actor, accessed Microsoft customer email accounts of approximately 25 organizations including U.S. and European government entities. Microsoft assesses this activity was likely conducted for espionage purposes and has successfully blocked this campaign.

The report also details how China has continued its global efforts to spread state-sponsored propaganda and soften the country’s image abroad. The Chinese government is investing resources in messaging to audiences in more languages, on more platforms, while evolving its techniques. For example, we know China employs more than 230 state media employees and affiliates who masquerade as independent social media influencers across all major Western social media platforms.

These influencers, who are recruited, trained, promoted, and funded by China Radio International (CRI) and other Chinese state media outfits, expertly spread localized CCP propaganda that achieves meaningful engagement with audiences around the world, reaching a combined following of at least 103 million people across multiple platforms speaking at least 40 languages.

While China-based threat groups continue to develop and utilize impressive cyber capabilities and IO operations, we have not observed China to combine cyber and influence together – unlike Iran and Russia, which regularly engage in hack-and-leak campaigns.

In addition to what we’ve observed from China, North Korea is a capable cyber threat, focusing on intelligence gathering and the theft of cryptocurrency needed to generate revenue for the state. Several of North Korea’s threat actors have targeted the maritime and shipbuilding sectors, suggesting this as a high-priority area for the North Korean government. Additionally, multiple North Korean threat actors have recently targeted the Russian government and defense industry – likely for intelligence collection – while simultaneously providing material support for Russia in its war on Ukraine.

The report also looks toward anticipated future actions from China and North Korea in the months ahead, as increasing geopolitical tensions fuel new threat priorities and adversarial strategies. With upcoming elections in 2024, Taiwan and the United States are likely to remain top priorities for China.

No technology platform, including Microsoft’s, is perfect. But as nation-state actors continue to target vulnerabilities and deploy malign narratives across the world, we believe it is vital to continue to share intelligence such as this report and to increase cross-industry collaboration on these important issues.

Editor’s note: As a part of an ongoing series, today Microsoft published Sophistication, scope, and scale: Digital threats from East Asia increase in breadth and effectiveness. These semi-annual updates on nation-state actors serve to warn our customers and the global community of the threat posed by influence operations and cyber activity, identifying specific sectors and regions at heightened risk. See our previous reporting on Russia and Iran.

Tags: cyberattacks, cybersecurity, cyberwar, Digital Threat Analysis Center, MTAC, Ukraine

4. India studies response to potential Taiwan invasion

Excerpts:

India and China have mobilized thousands of troops, artillery guns, tanks and missiles closer to the unmarked border running about 3,500km.

Diplomatic talks have yielded little, with China last month releasing a new map claiming India-controlled territory that Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar described as “absurd.”

India has publicly resisted efforts to make the Quad appear like a military alliance, and remains reliant on Russia — China’s most important diplomatic partner — for weapons that would be used in any regional war.

Even so, it has quietly sought better relations with Taiwan: Three former Indian military chiefs who stepped down in the past year all visited Taiwan last month.

Five years ago, India and the US signed the Logistics-Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, a foundational pact to allow refueling and replenishing of warships and aircraft, as well as access to bases when required.

Sat, Sep 09, 2023 page3

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/09/09/2003805978

India studies response to potential Taiwan invasion

US EFFECT: The options would be available for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other leaders to make a final call on any action should the need arise

• Bloomberg
• 
  
•  
•  
• India is studying possible responses to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan following discreet inquiries from the US on how the nation could contribute in the event of a war, senior Indian government officials said.
• About six weeks ago, Indian Defense Chief General Anil Chauhan — India’s top military commander — commissioned a study to examine the wider impact of any war over Taiwan that also involves the US and its allies, and what action India could take in response, two senior Indian officials said, who asked not to be named as discussions are private.
• The order came after the US raised the issue in several different forums, they said.
• 
  

Paramilitary personnel stands at a security checkpoint ahead of the G20 summit in New Delhi yesterday.

• Photo: Bloomberg
• The study would assess various war scenarios and provide options for India in case a conflict breaks out, they said.
• Some Indian military commanders believe that strong statements might suffice as a response in case the war is short, but ultimately that would not be enough if the conflict drags on like the Ukraine war, the officials said.
• India’s preparation for a potential war over Taiwan shows how its policy of “multi-alignment” would be tested in the event of a drastic deterioration of US-China ties.
• Under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country has forged its own path on international relations, effectively hedging its bets by developing close ties to the US, while refusing to join international sanctions on Russia.
• Yet tensions with China have also flared along their disputed Himalayan border, contributing to a deterioration in relations that might have prompted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to skip the G20 summit this weekend in New Delhi.
• India has strengthened defense ties with the US in recent years, joining the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) along with Japan and Australia — a band of democracies intent on countering China’s growing influence.
• One option the Indian military would study involves serving as a logistics hub to provide repair and maintenance facilities for allied warships and aircraft, as well as food, fuel and medical equipment for armies resisting China, the officials said.
• A more extreme scenario, they added, would assess the potential for India to get directly involved along their northern border, opening a new theater of war for China.
• While no deadline has been set to complete the study, the Indian military is under orders to finish it as soon as possible, one of the officials said.
• The options prepared would be available for Modi and other political leaders to make a final call on any action should the need arise, the official said.
• The Indian Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to e-mailed questions. The US Department of State also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
• India and China have mobilized thousands of troops, artillery guns, tanks and missiles closer to the unmarked border running about 3,500km.
• Diplomatic talks have yielded little, with China last month releasing a new map claiming India-controlled territory that Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar described as “absurd.”
• India has publicly resisted efforts to make the Quad appear like a military alliance, and remains reliant on Russia — China’s most important diplomatic partner — for weapons that would be used in any regional war.
• Even so, it has quietly sought better relations with Taiwan: Three former Indian military chiefs who stepped down in the past year all visited Taiwan last month.
• Five years ago, India and the US signed the Logistics-Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, a foundational pact to allow refueling and replenishing of warships and aircraft, as well as access to bases when required.

5. US House panel plans Taiwan war game with Wall Street executives

Will Elon Musk participate and control Starlink over Taiwan?

US House panel plans Taiwan war game with Wall Street executives

Committee was formed to focus on potential threats from the Chinese Communist party

Financial Times · by Demetri Sevastopulo · September 8, 2023

The US House of Representatives China committee plans to hold a Taiwan war game with financial and business executives in New York on Monday, in an effort to raise awareness about the risks attached to Americans investing in China.

Mike Gallagher, the Republican head of the panel, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, its top Democrat, will lead the delegation, according to a person close to the committee.

The war-game participants include representatives from investment banks, in addition to current and former executives from pharmaceutical companies and retired four-star US military officers. The committee declined to name the financial executives who will participate.

The bipartisan delegation will also meet other financial executives in New York, as the committee steps up its scrutiny of how American investment in China could undermine US national security. On Tuesday they have scheduled a hearing that will include testimony from former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission Jay Clayton and Jim Chanos, the hedge fund short seller.

The person familiar with the situation said the lawmakers wanted to hear from Wall Street executives about “the systemic risks that come with American capital flowing to China and how banks and other financial institutions think about their investments in China and exposure to the Chinese economy in the event of a political crisis”.

Krishnamoorthi told the Financial Times that it was “important that our committee hear from the financial industry about how CCP [Chinese Communist party] policies are affecting Americans’ savings and investments and what Congress needs to do to help protect American investors and our national security”.

The war game would consider the economic implications of a conflict between the US and China over Taiwan. In April, the lawmakers took part in a Taiwan war game on Capitol Hill that raised questions about whether the US and its allies were doing enough to prepare for sanctions on China and an economic war with Beijing in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

Following meetings with Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Disney boss Bob Iger earlier this year, Gallagher told the FT that Hollywood and Silicon Valley executives were underestimating the odds that China would attack Taiwan.

The US state department last year shared research with European countries that warned that a conflict over Taiwan would trigger an economic shock causing annual losses of as much as $2.5tn.

The House China committee, which was created in January to focus on potential threats from the Chinese Communist party, has held hearings on topics ranging from Beijing’s economic aggression to human rights abuses. But in recent months it has probed commercial links between US companies and China.

In August, for example, the panel accused BlackRock and MSCI of “unwittingly funding” groups that develop weapons for China’s People’s Liberation Army, compromising US national security.

Roger Robinson, former chair of the Congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said the China committee should build on its “visionary investigation” of BlackRock and MSCI.

“As the committee has learned, when you scrutinise and follow the billions of US investor dollars flowing to CCP-controlled Chinese enterprises, courtesy of reckless Wall Street firms, it leads to nowhere good in many instances,” he said.

The rising congressional scrutiny comes as the White House tries to cut the flow of US money to Chinese groups in technology with military applications. President Joe Biden last month signed an order limiting US investment into China’s quantum computing, advanced chips and artificial intelligence sectors.

Financial Times · by Demetri Sevastopulo · September 8, 2023

6. Do Policy Schools Still Have a Point?

I still think the second paragraph of the excerpt below remains a worthy objective for policy schools. But it is interesting that he did not name a single policy school location in DC (though a number of the ones that he listed do have DC campuses).

Excerpts:

A bit of background. Public policy schools have been a growth industry in higher education for several decades. Although a handful of these programs can be traced back to before World War II, they’ve become increasingly popular and widespread in recent years. The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse, France’s École Nationale d’Administration, and a few others have been around for many decades, but the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, the Hertie School in Berlin, the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, and many others are more recent creations.

These schools all have their own special qualities, but there are also some powerful similarities. Most of them try to impart certain basic analytical skills deemed necessary for the effective conduct of public policy, typically some combination of economics, statistics, political analysis, ethics, leadership training, and management. They also give students opportunities to acquire substantive expertise in particular policy domains (national security policy, local government, human rights, public finance, the environment, etc.), while developing their team-building, writing, and speaking skills and studying how the sausage gets made in different political systems.

Do Policy Schools Still Have a Point?

Reflections of a career-long public policy professor at a time of global upheaval.

Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20

Stephen M. Walt

By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

Foreign Policy · by Stephen M. Walt · September 8, 2023

Classes started a couple of weeks ago, and I had a weird thought as the academic year began. I’ve spent most of my career teaching at schools of public policy (first at Princeton and later here at Harvard). These schools exist to prepare students for jobs in the public sector, although many graduates end up working in other capacities at some point in their careers. Was it possible, I wondered, that my faculty colleagues and I were imparting a body of knowledge and skills whose relevance would diminish rapidly in an era of accelerating change? Were we missing opportunities to help our students develop other capacities that might be of increasing value in tomorrow’s strange new world? Should the conventional approach to public policy pedagogy be reimagined, or at least given some serious tweaks? Having lived through several “curriculum reforms” in the past, I wondered if our efforts had gone far enough.

A bit of background. Public policy schools have been a growth industry in higher education for several decades. Although a handful of these programs can be traced back to before World War II, they’ve become increasingly popular and widespread in recent years. The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse, France’s École Nationale d’Administration, and a few others have been around for many decades, but the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, the Hertie School in Berlin, the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, and many others are more recent creations.

These schools all have their own special qualities, but there are also some powerful similarities. Most of them try to impart certain basic analytical skills deemed necessary for the effective conduct of public policy, typically some combination of economics, statistics, political analysis, ethics, leadership training, and management. They also give students opportunities to acquire substantive expertise in particular policy domains (national security policy, local government, human rights, public finance, the environment, etc.), while developing their team-building, writing, and speaking skills and studying how the sausage gets made in different political systems.

Despite local variations, these programs all assume there is a body of academic knowledge that can help would-be public leaders understand the world in which they are operating and devise effective solutions to current and future public problems. And implicit in that assumption is the further belief that knowledge derived from past human experience will remain accurate and relevant for the new issues that will be coming down the pike. In short, the faculty who construct these programs typically think they have discovered enduring laws of human behavior (e.g., “supply and demand,” “the balance of power,” “collective goods theory,” etc.) that will continue to operate in the future much as they have done in the past. They also think that exposing students to past cases where leaders had to address some complex problem will provide lessons that will come in handy in the students’ future careers. Learn these tools and absorb these cases, and you’ll be ready for anything.

Or so we tend to think, but I wonder. What if we have entered a world that is being transformed in ways that make today’s knowledge less useful or relevant?

To be honest, I was surprised to find myself thinking along these lines. I’m generally skeptical of claims that the latest new development (the atom bomb, the multinational corporation, Big Tech, radical Islam, globalization, the human rights revolution, etc.) is going to transform the nature of politics and society and render past experiences obsolete. After all, political realism emphasizes the unchanging features of human nature and the continuities of historical experience; for realists, the most important features of political life (struggles for power, wars, alliances, the rise and fall of nations, misperceptions, etc.) keep recurring across time and space despite all of our efforts to minimize them. For the record, I think most of these enduring verities will remain useful, at least for a while.

But consider what is happening right before our eyes.

First, evidence for rapid and accelerating climate change is all around us, and efforts to slow and eventually reverse the burning of fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gases have been disappointing. The worst-case forecast of average global temperature rise looks increasingly likely, and this development is going to have profound effects on politics, migration, food production, water scarcity, biodiversity, and the frequency and intensity of floods, droughts, and other natural disasters. Human beings have adapted to shifts in Earth’s climate in the past, but they’ve never been forced to do so as rapidly and extensively as they will have to in the very near future.

Second, the development of increasingly powerful forms of artificial intelligence is disrupting a wide array of human activities and raising a host of uncomfortable questions for existing political institutions. I have no idea just how far-reaching these capabilities may become, but at this stage, neither does anyone else. But the potential to alter how some, if not all, human beings live—for good and ill—is enormous, and the pace of change could make the Industrial Revolution seem rather tame by comparison.

Third, as we have seen over the past several decades, the emergence of the smartphone and the pervasiveness of social media have transformed the world of politics and put new and unexpected strains on existing political institutions. Add to this toxic mix the arrival of AI and the potential for deepfakes, etc., and familiar notions of democratic accountability and public consensus begin to lose their footing. I’ve tended to think that existing political systems would eventually find ways to rein in these technologies and preserve our collective ability to separate truth from falsehood, but I wouldn’t bet my 401(k) on it.

Lastly, don’t forget the remarkable revolution in biology, health, and longevity research that is now underway, a trend likely to be accelerated by new AI tools. As we begin to grasp the mechanisms of aging and disease and devise ways to slow, reverse, or counter them, it is likely that some—maybe millions—of humans will start living much longer lives than they do at present. Gene editing and other techniques will create the possibility of customizing future generations, raising all sorts of uncomfortable moral and political questions. Humans have altered planetary biology in a number of ways in the past, but our capacity to do so deliberately is increasing rapidly.

Put all these trends (and others) together, and you have the potential for nonlinear changes whose ultimate impact is impossible to predict with confidence. And these momentous developments are all happening rapidly and at the same time: It’s beginning to look like a real-world version of Everything Everywhere All at Once. If that’s the case, today’s public policy students may be equipped with a toolkit that is ill-suited for the issues they are going to face in a few years.

Here’s what I mean. What if we are headed toward a world where AI and other technological developments create far-reaching market disruptions more or less constantly, but on a scale we haven’t seen before? Just look at what some new diet drugs (e.g., Ozempic) are doing to the whole diet industry. What if a changing climate makes jet travel prohibitively expensive, environmentally unsustainable, or just too dangerous due to increasing atmospheric turbulence? What if large areas of the planet—currently home to tens of millions of people—become uninhabitable? Are we ready for the day when the satellites on which global communications depend are taken out by a cascading collision of space junk, a malevolent hacker, or the deliberate action of a hostile power? Do you even remember how you used to do things in the pre-digital age? And what if the political effects of all these developments disrupt familiar modes of governance, long-standing alliance commitments, patterns of economic dependence, and the institutional features that have largely determined global politics for the past 75 years or more?

My point is that in a world of increasingly rapid and interconnected disruption, some of the familiar verities, principles, and practices that we’ve taken for granted (and confidently taught to our students) may not be all that helpful. In these circumstances, what will matter is a leader’s ability to adapt, to jettison old ideas, to discriminate between sound science and snake oil, and to invent new ways of meeting public needs. Teaching students how things worked in the past, and instilling timeless truths derived from earlier epochs may not be that helpful—it might even be counterproductive.

Am I proposing that we toss out the current curriculum, stop teaching microeconomics, democratic theory, public accounting, econometrics, foreign policy, applied ethics, history, or any of the other building blocks of today’s public policy curriculum? Not yet. But we ought to devote more time and effort to preparing them for a world that is going to be radically different from the one we’ve known in the past—and sooner than they think.

I have three modest proposals.

First, and somewhat paradoxically, the prospect of radical change highlights the importance of basic theories. Empirical patterns derived from past experience (e.g., “democracies don’t fight each other”) may be of little value if the political and social conditions under which those laws were discovered no longer exist. To make sense of radically new circumstances, we will have to rely on causal explanations (i.e., theories) to help us foresee what is likely to occur and to anticipate the results of different policy choices. Knowledge derived from simplistic hypothesis testing or simple historical analogies will be less useful than rigorous and refined theories that tell us what’s causing what and help us understand the effects of different actions. Even more sophisticated efforts to teach “applied history” will fail if past events are not properly interpreted. The past never speaks to us directly; all historical interpretation is in some sense dependent on the theories or frameworks that we bring to these events. We need to know not just what happened in some earlier moment; we need to understand why it happened as it did and whether similar causal forces are at work today. Providing a causal explanation requires theory.

At the same time, some of our existing theories will need to be revised (or even abandoned), and new ones may need to be invented. We cannot escape reliance on some sort of theory, but rigid and uncritical adherence to a particular worldview can be just as dangerous as trying to operate solely with one’s gut instincts. For this reason, public policy schools should expose students to a wider range of theoretical approaches than they currently do and teach students how to think critically about them and to identify their limitations along with their strengths.

To prepare students for a rapidly changing world, we should teach historical cases where the prevailing theories led to bad policy choices, and where new ones had to be devised to address a novel set of circumstances. The development of Keynesian economics in the 1930s or the refinement of deterrence theory throughout the Cold War might be instructive examples in this regard. We should also look for cases where policymakers failed because they clung to ideas and policies that were no longer working, and contrast them with cases where other leaders improvised and innovated rapidly and successfully.

Lastly, we (or do I just mean I?) should be more creative in devising exercises and assignments that require students to adapt, improvise, and operate outside the frames of reference or working conditions that they tend to take for granted. For instance, one could divide students into teams and give them all a common assignment, but with the proviso that they had to complete it without using any type of electronic device. No laptops, tablets, smartphones, Google searches, etc.; not even the online card catalog at the university library. How would students at a modern elite university do their work if they had nothing to rely on but a manual typewriter, pens and pencils, and some paper? It is entirely possible that these students would have to work that way in a future emergency; such an exercise would highlight the importance of being able to adapt and solve problems on the fly.

Or we could ask students to imagine plausible but radically different worlds and identify what their main features would be and how these new conditions should be addressed. How would or should the United States, Russia, Germany, Estonia, China, Saudi Arabia, etc., react if NATO dissolved or the United Nations collapsed? What policy choices would they recommend if the scientific community reversed itself completely and concluded today’s climate change was entirely natural and human activity had almost no effect on it? (To be clear: I’m not suggesting for a second that this is a realistic possibility.) I’d also like to find more ways to get students to argue against their own cherished beliefs, not for the purpose of changing their minds but in order to encourage a healthy skepticism about one’s beliefs and a greater capacity to evaluate arguments that seem persuasive on first listen.

As you can undoubtedly tell, I’m still feeling my way through these issues, and my suggestions are tentative. I’m going to keep thinking about them, however, and I’ll be interested to see what my colleagues (and my students) have to say about them. Schools of public policy have become more popular for several reasons, but that success doesn’t mean we can’t improve what we are offering our students. Given what will be coming at us in a very short while, we’re going to need to.

Foreign Policy · by Stephen M. Walt · September 8, 2023

7. PLA Social Media Warfare and the Cognitive Domain

Question(s): Are our PSYOP forces prepare to conduct "social media warfare" and battle with the Chinese in the the cognitive domain?

What is the GEC (Global Engagement Center) doing about this? Who has the responsibility for social media warfare in the cognitive domain with China (and Russia, north Korea, Iran, and violent exrtremist ogianzations)?

Excerpts:

This article provides an overview of PLA thinking on social media warfare, including its emergence in PLA literature, its theoretical basis, and PLA lessons derived from observations of foreign examples of social media’s role in modern warfare. This article does not seek to provide a comprehensive review of PLA thinking about social media’s role in military operations, but outlines one part of this conceptual view.

...

A survey of PLA literature suggests that China’s understanding of social media warfare comes just as much from the experiences of other countries as it does from its own. Taking a closer look at the lessons derived from these observations may therefore offer a more holistic perspective of the PLA’s view of this term. The following section explores three operational examples, the 2003 Iraq War, the 2014 Gaza War, and the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.

...

Conclusion

Social media’s increasing significance as a space for non-kinetic military operations has undoubtedly grasped the attention of PLA scholars, who have emphasized the importance of incorporating social media with traditional military capabilities and having military units dedicated to operations on social media, and the potential for it to play a decisive role in operations by complementing kinetic strikes. As the role of social media in modern warfare becomes increasingly well-defined within the PLA’s concept of operations, this new vector of warfare will likely become a more common framing construct for how the PLA thinks about social media and methods of raising awareness for its troops to better leverage social media to China’s advantage in peacetime competition and future conflicts. Ultimately, the concept of “social media warfare” is likely to remain more theoretical, as CDOs serve as the PLA’s primary operational concept for leveraging social media. However, one key indicator to watch for how the PLA thinks about social media moving forward will be its discussion in future revisions of the Science of Military Strategy.

PLA Social Media Warfare and the Cognitive Domain

https://jamestown.org/program/pla-social-media-warfare-and-the-cognitive-domain/

Publication: China Brief Volume: 23 Issue: 16

By: Jackson Smith, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga

September 8, 2023 06:31 PM Age: 13 hours

(Image: 2020 PLA Daily article, “Social Media Warfare, A New Pattern of Modern Wars.”; Source: PLA Daily)

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has come to recognize the important role of social media in modern conflict and peacetime operations. As such, PLA researchers have begun using the term “social media warfare” (社交媒体战) to describe the extension of non-kinetic military activities onto social media by two or more opposing sides. This term is part of an ongoing conceptual expansion of the scope of warfare in Chinese military thought in which social media is viewed as another space for conflict and not just another channel for distributing propaganda. While the term “social media warfare” does not represent PLA doctrine, its emergence does indicate that the Chinese military finds these activities important enough to raise awareness of them amongst its rank and file. Together with other evidence, this suggests the PLA is working to better incorporate social media into its operations.

This article provides an overview of PLA thinking on social media warfare, including its emergence in PLA literature, its theoretical basis, and PLA lessons derived from observations of foreign examples of social media’s role in modern warfare. This article does not seek to provide a comprehensive review of PLA thinking about social media’s role in military operations, but outlines one part of this conceptual view.

Overview

Emergence in PLA Literature 

The earliest mention of social media warfare can be traced back to a 2015 PLA Daily that examined social media’s role in global events such as Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution and the Arab Spring protests in 2011. [1] This timeline aligns with broader PLA awareness of social media, especially insofar as it poses a risk to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). [2] The article emphasizes that, due to the key role of online communication in inciting protests and garnering rebel support, both of these cases represent some of the earliest examples in which social media has had a direct impact on national security, which the CCP defines as encompassing both internal and external security interests. [3] 2015 was also the year that the PLA National Defense University’s Science of Military Strategy included its first reference to social media, warning that “Since the beginning of the 21st century, cyberspace has been used by some countries to launch ‘color revolutions’ against other countries… [through] behind-the-scenes operations using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook as the engine, from manufacturing network public opinion to inciting social unrest.” [4]

The origin of the PLA’s interest in social media thus appears to be primarily defensive, focusing on protecting the CCP regime, rather than offensive, as constituing part of military operations. Given that China was being confronted with similar protests in Tibet (2008) and Xinjiang (2009) around the time this thinking developed, social media’s role in catalyzing the above protests was likely of great concern to the CCP and thus the PLA. [5] However, the PLA’s awareness of and interest in the power and potential of social media has evolved to now seeing it as a component of modern military operations.

In recent years, this evolution has been marked by references in PLA literature to the use of social media in the US military. For example, in response to the release of the Pentagon’s first force-wide social media policy, a 2022 China National Defense article warns that this indicates a desire to formalize social media’s “weaponization.” [6] Another 2022 article from the same publication argues that in the past this “weaponization” has involved impersonating refugees who fled from authoritarian regimes to discredit said governments, and that these efforts will only become more effective with the use of artificial intelligence (AI). [7]

Theoretical Basis

Deconstructing the term “social media warfare” according to PLA military theory sheds more light on conceptual content. Generally speaking, warfare (战) in PLA military theory is used to describe intentionally executed military operations, whereas words like confrontation (对抗) or struggle (斗争) may just refer to existing conditions between two parties. [8] By this logic, “social media warfare” can be defined as operations taking place in, on, or through social media. However, as previously stated, this is certainly not yet a doctrinal concept, and is simply being used to describe and raise awareness of a burgeoning issue. due to its lack of doctrinal status.

Social Media and Its Relationship with Combat Operations

Social media arguably has an increasingly well-defined place within the PLA’s concept of operations. In the context of the information age, the PLA points to “command of information” (制信息权) as the key to gaining the advantage over an adversary on the battlefield. [9] As social media’s place in society has become more ingrained, social media warfare has become one of the avenues for the PLA to conduct information operations to seize this command of information. While some PLA researchers have described social media as a domain of warfare, it is more commonly viewed as a channel for PLA information operations, [10] or as a subset of either the information domain or the nascent cognitive domain (认知域). [11]

Social media’s rise in importance has come during an evolution of the PLA’s approach to information and influence operations. Since the early 2000s, the PLA’s approach has centered on the “Three Warfares” (三战), namely psychological warfare (心理战), public opinion warfare (舆论战), and legal warfare (法律战). [12] However, there is a growing interest in a new PLA operational concept, “ (认知域作战), as part of a broader PLA evolution to leveraging the cognitive domain as a domain of warfare.

Cognitive domain operations (CDO) seek to influence the decision-making of an adversary during wartime — or the public opinion of a target audience during peacetime — with the goal of attaining command of the mind (制脑权) or command of cognition (制认知权). [13] Far from being confined to PLA theory, CDO appears to be the PLA operational concept behind some real-world operations, most notably political interference against Taiwan. Social media was specifically listed as the key channel for CDO activity against Taiwan in a 2018 article by researchers at Base 311, the PLA’s Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) unit responsible for influence operations against Taiwan. [14]

PLA Lessons Learned from Foreign Operational Examples

A survey of PLA literature suggests that China’s understanding of social media warfare comes just as much from the experiences of other countries as it does from its own. Taking a closer look at the lessons derived from these observations may therefore offer a more holistic perspective of the PLA’s view of this term. The following section explores three operational examples, the 2003 Iraq War, the 2014 Gaza War, and the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.

2003 Iraq War

PLA researchers point to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States as the earliest example of social media warfare, despite social media not yet existing at the time. A 2020 PLA Daily article discusses United States messaging prior to the invasion using this framing, [15] marking a change from earlier discussions in which the Iraq War served instead as an example of public opinion warfare. [16] Some PLA researchers have framed the Iraq War as an example of both, suggesting that these PLA researchers are in some ways recycling traditional views of IO under the newer concept of social media warfare. [17] This tallies with Western research identifying Operation Iraqi Freedom as a major inspiration for PLA information warfare. [18] Given the overlap between the two, lessons drawn from public opinion warfare can still provide insight into PLA thinking on social media warfare.

In the 2020 PLA Daily article, the author, Zhang Hui, argues that the United States exerted tremendous effort to make the war a bipartisan issue by using various media outlets to popularize the rumor that Saddam Hussein had colluded with Osama bin-Laden and that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. By shifting the narrative in its favor, Zhang argues, the United States was able to operate in Iraq without many domestic political constraints. This represents an early iteration of the public opinion influence emphasized in CDO and highlights the PLA awareness of the role of public opinion in the will to fight (and specifically the United States as a potential future adversary). The article emphasizes that information dissemination and public opinion influence must be incorporated into the military’s combat capability construction (战斗力建设), so that these capabilities can be developed in tandem with traditional capabilities. [19] The creation of the PLASSF in late 2015 can in some ways be considered a reflection of this sentiment, as it is charged with the integration of cyber, electronic, psychological, and other capabilities associated with informatized conflict and joint operations. [20]

2014 Gaza War

The 2014 Gaza War was a month-long conflict launched by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip and is one of many examples of the PLA learning from the Israeli military’s embrace of social media, specifically by dedicating forces to social media operations: A 2023 Military Correspondent article points out that the IDF had a division dedicated to gathering the materials needed to conduct influence operations on social media before the conflict even began. This included biographical information on Hamas leaders, instances of Hamas causing collateral damage by using non-military infrastructure as cover, and instances of Israel trying to avoid civilian casualties. All of these aided Israel’s efforts to shift public opinion in its favor. After the fighting started, both sides engaged in psychological warfare on social media, with Israel posting the photo of a bloodied, high-ranking Hamas military leader and Hamas responding with a post dismissing “Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense system as a ‘paper tiger,’” and warning that IDF had “opened the gates of hell.” [21] In the PLA researcher’s view, Israel adopted a two-pronged approach to social media warfare that attempted to simultaneously influence public opinion and degrade the enemy’s will to fight. This aligns with other PLA writings documenting the United States leveraging ISIS postings on social media as intelligence collection to improve targeting for better kinetic strikes. [22] By focusing on the IDF’s preparedness for this conflict, the article emphasizes the need to “further establish a professional social media informatization unit” within the Chinese military. [23] The PLA has undoubtedly relied on the expertise of specialized units within the PLASSF, including Base 311, reflecting an emphasis on the role of social media as a space for CDO in both peacetime competition and future conflict.

2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War

PLA Daily published an article in 2020 following the outbreak of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, a territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The piece highlighted the reliance of both sides on social media to accomplish their operational objectives. Throughout the conflict, both sides attempted to confuse enemy decision-making by posting false claims on official accounts about having destroyed certain targets. Azerbaijan also conducted “mental attacks” (精神打击) [24] by posting photos of targets that had been destroyed and enemy supply lines being seized in an effort to embolden their own soldiers and degrade Armenia’s will to fight. The article ends by noting that the influence of social media in this conflict “surpassed even the actual war.” [25] This article suggests that at least some in the PLA believe social media’s utility can go beyond merely supporting traditional kinetic capabilities and instead play a decisive role in a conflict. As the PLA continues to emphasize the conceptual expansion of conflict from the material domain to the cognitive domain, such observations may increase the prominence of social media in future operations.

Conclusion

Social media’s increasing significance as a space for non-kinetic military operations has undoubtedly grasped the attention of PLA scholars, who have emphasized the importance of incorporating social media with traditional military capabilities and having military units dedicated to operations on social media, and the potential for it to play a decisive role in operations by complementing kinetic strikes. As the role of social media in modern warfare becomes increasingly well-defined within the PLA’s concept of operations, this new vector of warfare will likely become a more common framing construct for how the PLA thinks about social media and methods of raising awareness for its troops to better leverage social media to China’s advantage in peacetime competition and future conflicts. Ultimately, the concept of “social media warfare” is likely to remain more theoretical, as CDOs serve as the PLA’s primary operational concept for leveraging social media. However, one key indicator to watch for how the PLA thinks about social media moving forward will be its discussion in future revisions of the Science of Military Strategy.

Notes

[1] See Chen Hanghui [陈航辉] and Xia Yuren [夏育仁], “Social Media Warfare: A New Dimension of Information Age Wars” [“社交媒体战: 信息时代战争新维度”], PLA Daily [解放军报], September 25, 2015.

[2] Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga and Michael S. Chase, Borrowing a Boat Out to Sea: The Chinese Military’s Use of Social Media for Influence Operations, Washington, D.C.: John Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, Foreign Policy Institute, 2019.

[3] Yun Sun, Chinese National Security Decision-making: Processes and Challenges, Brookings Institution, May 6, 2013.

[4] Xiao Tianliang, ed. [肖天亮], Science of Military Strategy [战略学], Beijing: National Defense University Publishing House [北京国防大学出版社], 2015.

[5] Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga and Michael S. Chase, Borrowing a Boat Out to Sea: The Chinese Military’s Use of Social Media for Influence Operations, Washington, D.C.: John Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, Foreign Policy Institute, 2019.

[6] Shi Wen [石文], “UNITED STATES Military Promotes Social Media ‘Weaponization’” [“美军推动社交媒体 ‘武器化’”] China National Defense [中国国防报], September 9, 2022.

[7] Fu Bo [傅波], “UNITED STATES Military Uses Social Media to Unveil Information Warfare” [“美军利用社交媒体开展信息战”], China National Defense [中国国防报], October 10, 2022.

[8] The authors thank Jeffrey Engstrom for this insight.

[9] Xiao Tianliang, ed. [肖天亮], Science of Military Strategy [战略学], Beijing: National Defense University Publishing House [北京国防大学出版社], 2020.

[10] See Huang Dianlin [黄典林], “10 Years of Mobile Social Media, How Have We Changed” [“移动社交十年，我们如何被改变”], PLA Daily [解放军报], January 27, 2021; Zhang Liwei [张黎伟] and He Xiaoqiang [和晓强], “How to Strengthen the Image of the Military in the Era of Social Media” [“社交媒体时代如何加强军队形象传播”], Military Correspondent [军事记者].

[11] See Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Chinese Next-Generation Psychological Warfare: The Military Applications of Emerging Technologies and Implications for the United States, RAND Corporation, RR-A853-1, 2023.

[12] Wu Jieming [吴杰明] and Liu Zhifu [刘志富], An Introduction to Public Opinion Warfare, Psychological Warfare, Legal Warfare [舆论战心理 战法律战概论], Beijing: National Defense University Press [国防大学出版社], 2014.

[13] See Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Chinese Next-Generation Psychological Warfare: The Military Applications of Emerging Technologies and Implications for the United States, RAND Corporation, RR-A853-1, 2023.

[14] Liu Huiyan [刘惠燕], Xiong Wu [熊武], Wu Xianliang [吴显亮], and Mei Shunliang [梅顺量], “Several Thoughts on Promoting the Construction of Cognitive Domain Operations Equipment for the Omni-Media Environment” [“全媒体环境下推进认知域作战装备发展的几点思考”], National Defense Technology [国防科技], Vol. 39, No. 5, October 2018. For analysis, see: Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga and Jessica Drun, “Exploring Chinese Military Thinking on Social Media Manipulation Against Taiwan,” China Brief, Vol. 21, No. 7, April 12, 2021; Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Chinese Next-Generation Psychological Warfare: The Military Applications of Emerging Technologies and Implications for the United States, RAND Corporation, RR-A853-1, 2023.

[15] Zhang Hui [张翚], “Social Media Warfare: A New Pattern of Modern Wars” [“社交媒体战, 现代战争的新样式”], PLA Daily [解放军报], June 16, 2020.

[16] Liu Hui [刘辉] and Wang Peizhi [王培志], “Four Forms of Public Opinion Warfare in Wars” [“舆论战在战争中的四种形式”], Military Correspondent [军事记者], 2006.

[17] Li Bicheng [李弼程], “Model for a System of Online Public Opinion Struggle and Countermeasures’ [网络舆论斗争系统模型与应对策略], National Defense Technology [国防科技], October 2016.

[18] Dean Cheng, “Chinese Lessons from the Gulf Wars,” in Andrew Scobell, David Lai, and Roy Kamphausen, eds., Chinese Lessons from Other Peoples’ Wars, Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, 2011.

[19] Zhang Hui [张翚], “Social Media Warfare: A New Pattern of Modern Wars” [“社交媒体战, 现代战争的新样式”], PLA Daily [解放军报], June 16, 2020.

[20] Joe McReynolds and John Costello, China’s Strategic Support Force: A Force for a New Era, Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, 2018; Adam Ni and Bates Gill, “The People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force,” China Brief, May 2019.

[21] Liu Yong [刘永], “Research on and Inspiration from the Application of Social Media in Public Opinion Warfare by Foreign Military” [“外军社交媒体在舆论战中的运用研究和启示”], Military Correspondent [军事记者], January 3, 2023.

[22] Zhou Yang [周洋], “An Exploration of UNITED STATES Military Operations on Social Media to Fight ISIS” [“美国打击ISIS的社交媒体行动探索”], Military Correspondent [军事记者], July 25, 2017, http://www.81. cn/jsjz/2017-07/25/content_7689390.htm. For analysis, see: Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga and Michael S. Chase, Borrowing a Boat Out to Sea: The Chinese Military’s Use of Social Media for Influence Operations, Washington, D.C.: John Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, Foreign Policy Institute, 2019.

[23] Liu Yong [刘永], “Research on and Inspiration from the Application of Social Media in Public Opinion Warfare by Foreign Military” [“外军社交媒体在舆论战中的运用研究和启示”], Military Correspondent [军事记者], January 3, 2023.

[24] While no standard translation exists, it should be noted that this term is distinct from the PLA concept of “psychological attacks” (心理打击).

[25] Zhao Jingxuan [赵静轩], “Social Media Warfare in the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict” [“纳卡冲突中的社交媒体战”], PLA Daily [解放军报], November 26, 2020.

8. Russia’s Would-Be Assassins Still Stalk Europe’s Streets

There may be more spies in Washington, DC than anywhere in the world but there are more Russian assassins in Europe than anywhere else.

Russia’s Would-Be Assassins Still Stalk Europe’s Streets

Moscow’s regular spies have been expelled. Their kill squads are still active.

By Amy Mackinnon

Foreign Policy · by Amy Mackinnon · September 8, 2023

Natalia Arno returned to her hotel in Prague in early May to find that the door to her room had been left ajar and a sickly sweet smell filled the air. A Russian democracy activist who was forced into exile in 2012, Arno is no stranger to surveillance, so she immediately checked the room for listening devices before heading out to a meeting.

Natalia Arno returned to her hotel in Prague in early May to find that the door to her room had been left ajar and a sickly sweet smell filled the air. A Russian democracy activist who was forced into exile in 2012, Arno is no stranger to surveillance, so she immediately checked the room for listening devices before heading out to a meeting.

The next morning, shortly before dawn, she awoke with a searing pain in her mouth. Fearing she was on the brink of a dental emergency, Arno—president of the Free Russia Foundation—quickly packed and booked a flight back to the United States the same morning.

As the plane soared over the Atlantic, something strange began to happen. “The pain started to wander all around my body,” she said. It was under her armpits, then it was in her eyes, her chest, her ears, her stomach. A terrifying numbness began to spread down her spine.

“If I had even the slightest suspicion that it was a poisoning, I would have stayed in Prague and gone to the clinic there,” Arno said. The FBI is investigating the suspected poisoning, Arno said, but she has yet to receive an answer as to what caused her sudden illness. In Germany, a second Kremlin critic, Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko, also fell ill after a suspected poisoning last October. Prosecutors in Berlin are investigating the incident as an attempted murder.

Russian spies have had their wings clipped in the wake of the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Over 400 Russian intelligence agents operating under diplomatic cover at the country’s embassies were expelled from Europe as part of an unprecedented and coordinated effort intended to hamper Moscow’s malign activities on the continent. The head of Britain’s domestic counterintelligence agency (MI5), Ken McCallum, described it as “the most significant strategic blow against the Russian intelligence services in recent European history.”

What are still operational, as the suspected poisonings of Arno and Kostyuchenko suggest, are Russian kill teams, dispatched to liquidate state enemies. Or try to.

Russia’s resident spies—who are stationed at embassies under official cover—are largely drawn from the country’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR. They would principally be focused on the lengthy process of recruitment—cultivating assets in European governments and institutions—and handling existing moles. The wet work, as assassinations are referred to in the slang of the Russian intelligence services, has typically been run by military intelligence, the GRU, operating deep under cover.

“What the expulsions really degrade is the Russian ability to recruit, not the Russian ability to kill,” former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos said.

High-stakes operations such as assassination attempts, coup attempts, and sabotage have been traced by investigative journalists to the elite GRU unit 29155, trained in the dirtiest tricks from sabotage to poisonings. Operatives from the unit were exposed by the investigative group Bellingcat as being behind the Novichok poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. The officers involved flew into the U.K. for just two days to carry out the attempted assassination, though they claim to have found time to see the famed cathedral.

Unit 29155 was dealt a substantial blow in recent years as journalists discovered they had been traveling on passports with similar numbers, making them easy to identify in databases of leaked flight records. “Because the Russians don’t know how many were exposed, they have to assume that a whole generation was exposed,” said Christo Grozev, head of Russia investigations at Bellingcat.

But the ouster of hundreds of Russian spies operating under official cover has not been without impact. It has forced Moscow to rely more heavily on its sleeper agents for observation and information-gathering operations, Grozev said. “When you lose the coordination centers, the embassies, then these sleepers feel a bit naked. They have to reinvent tradecraft, and they get burned much easier,” he said. That, plus an increased effort on the part of European intelligence agencies, has seen suspected sleeper agents working for Russia exposed in the United Kingdom, Greece, Norway, Albania, the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden since the invasion of Ukraine last year.

Russian spies have long operated with a freer hand in Europe than in the United States. “We’ve been complaining about the Europeans—about a lack of action against the Russians—forever,” Polymeropoulos said.

Basing intelligence operatives out of an embassy is nothing new—most countries take advantage of their diplomatic presence in this way, to the full knowledge of the host nation.

While European leaders were well aware that Russian embassies were dens of spies, it was a political calculus to leave them be. That has changed since the invasion of Ukraine.

In Germany, long a playground for Russian intelligence, the government has belatedly placed new emphasis on tackling Moscow’s spies, said Stefan Meister, an expert on Russia with the German Council on Foreign Relations, who noted that it wouldn’t happen overnight. “Germany is so late in building up intelligence to counter Russian activities in Germany. This is not something you build up in a couple of weeks or months.”

The expulsions and increased scrutiny have also forced Moscow to change its tactics. In its annual report, Lithuania’s intelligence service noted that the intensity of Russia’s human intelligence operations had waned since the expulsions, but that Europe would remain a prime target. “[W]e are almost certain that Russian intelligence devoid of capabilities to operate under diplomatic cover will search for opportunities to exploit other intelligence gathering methods: cyber, non-traditional cover, online operations,” the agency said in a statement to Foreign Policy.

In a bid to stymie the flow of Western weapons through Poland into Ukraine, Moscow attempted to recruit cash-strapped Ukrainian refugees via the social messaging app Telegram to conduct surveillance, with plans to carry out arson attacks and an assassination, the Washington Post reported. “This is completely new,” Grozev said of the change in tactics. He also noted that Russian intelligence had begun outsourcing surveillance activities to organized crime groups in Europe.

This could lead to more Russian intelligence activity being exposed, Grozev said, but also more collateral damage. “When you outsource to nonprofessionals, to organized crime, they make their own calls,” he said.

Foreign Policy · by Amy Mackinnon · September 8, 2023

9. How American Institutions Went From Trust to Bust

I think this is perhaps the problem fundamental problem which no one in Washington can seem to grasp: "Leaders betrayed and disdained the people" and the irony is both the elite and the pseudo populists have disdain for the people - one thinks they know better and the other thinks they are dumb and can be duped.

And partisanship and social media are the enablers for the failure of trust.

We should reflect on this conclusion over the weekend.

Above all, it will require a fundamental change in the nature of the relationship between the people and their leaders. It will require political change so that Americans can take back control of the institutions that direct the country and affect their lives. Only by restoring the primacy of the values that made America the most successful nation on earth will Americans again trust their leaders.

I think the conclusion means we need to evaluate and recall our social contract. We have a government because we believe it will secure us and allow us to prosper. The distrust in government and institutions should really be a reflection of how we ourselves have not lived up to our side of the social contract - which is to hold the government accountable through the proper political processes. We have let the political processes get out of control to the point when they are no longer controlled by the people and instead they are controlled by those already in power or those with sufficient funding to take power. The question is how can we take back our political power? Despite their rhetoric I do not think there is not a candidate from either party who genuinely wants to make our government work in accordance with the Constitution and American principles and values. Ironically the two allies in the endeavor to right the course should be the Fourth Estate and the people but that is not the case for either the mainstream media nor the new "populist media." The bottom line is we need to get our social contract in order but unfortunately I do not have a good answer on how to do that other than trying damn hard to make our political processes work.

I will read Mr. Baker's book and hope to find the answer (but I do not think the answer lies with the frontrunner of either party).

How American Institutions Went From Trust to Bust

Leaders betrayed and disdained the people, and partisanship and social media didn’t help.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-institutions-went-from-trust-to-bust-media-schools-business-promises-43c8d18#cxrecs_s

By Gerard Baker

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Sept. 8, 2023 4:24 pm ET

ILLUSTRATION: DAVID KLEIN

At the heart of America’s political and cultural turmoil is a crisis of trust. In the space of a generation, the people’s confidence in their leaders and their most important institutions to do the right thing has collapsed. The federal government, big business, the media, education, science and medicine, technology, religious institutions, law enforcement and others have seen a precipitous decline.

As public faith in the performance, credibility and integrity of these institutions has collapsed, so too has mutual trust—the social glue that holds the country together. Americans have become suspicious of one another, distrusting their fellow citizens as much as they distrust foreign adversaries.

Think about the controversies that have played out in the past few years—allegations from both parties of stolen elections, false claims by mendacious presidents and other politicians, politically motivated federal law-enforcement decisions, questionable advice and mandates from public-health officials, news coverage that skews in one political direction, a succession of corporate scandals and financial crises, and the various social dysfunctions caused by social media and emerging technologies.

All reflect and exacerbate a climate of deep popular distrust. This rapid loss of confidence is startling and unprecedented. It has ominous implications for the cohesion, prosperity and even survival of the U.S. Trust is the essential feature that allows society to function—more important the more modern and complex society grows.

Since 1979 Gallup has measured trust among the public in the most important American institutions—from the presidency and the Supreme Court to big business, science and the media. Its latest survey, published in July, found that across the nine key institutions Gallup has tracked consistently, the proportion of Americans who said they had “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” averaged out at 26%. That is the lowest figure ever recorded.

“Confidence has generally trended downward since registering 48% in 1979 and holding near 45% in the 1980s,” the report finds. “It averaged closer to 40% in the 1990s and early 2000s before dropping to the low 30% range in the 2010s. Last year was the first time it fell below 30%.”

Of the 16 institutions Gallup has tracked over the past decade, 11 recorded their lowest-ever level of popular trust in 2022 or 2023. Only two institutions, the military and small business, enjoy the confidence of a majority of Americans.

The Pew Research Center has conducted similar surveys for 30 years. The General Social Survey is conducted by NORC—formerly the National Opinion Research Center—at the University of Chicago and the American National Election Studies at Michigan and Stanford. Both have found the same broad decline in trust.

Some institutions have forfeited more trust than others. In 1979 Gallup found that 51% of Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers. This year the number was 18%.

Perhaps more alarming is the decline in levels of trust Americans have toward each other. “Generally speaking,” the General Social Survey asks, “would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?” The proportion of those saying people can be trusted has dropped from about half to less than a third in the past 50 years.

The first explanation for our trust deficit is an obvious one: the performance of the institutions themselves. In an important sense, the problem isn’t distrust but untrustworthiness. In the past 20 years institutions betrayed the people’s confidence in them with false promises and terrible outcomes:

• A trusted government told Americans in 2003 that an enemy had weapons of mass destruction and was poised to deploy them against the U.S., and that a war to disarm the country would be an easy task for the U.S. military, who would be greeted as liberators. The weapons were never found, and the grinding occupation claimed thousands of American lives.

• Trusted bankers and regulators told Americans in 2008 that the financial system was sound, that their money was safe. When that turned out to be false, ordinary Americans lost their jobs and homes while those who had caused the crisis were bailed out.

• Trusted technology companies told Americans the personal data they handed over was safe and that the new apps and platforms they were using were good for them and society. Americans have found for themselves the darker side of the digital revolution in its effects on mental health, personal privacy and security.

• Trusted big businesses told Americans that their pursuit of global markets would be good for the economy, create jobs and reduce prices. Then these businesses turned themselves into propagandists for woke ideology.

• Trusted administrations and lawmakers of both parties insisted they were controlling illegal immigration, even as the numbers streaming across the southern border grew year after year.

• Trusted news organizations and commentators told Americans that the winning candidate in the 2016 presidential election worked with the Russian government to secure his election, a claim that proved false.

• The incumbent president told his trusting supporters that the 2020 election was stolen.

• Trusted public-health officials ordered Americans to stay home during a pandemic, insisting that they were “following the science.” The “science” seemed to shift depending on politics.

It should come as no surprise that these episodes, coming in a period in which Americans endured slow economic growth, widening inequality and a steep decline in global strategic dominance, have sapped confidence in the nation’s leadership.

Another factor is the bitter partisanship that has defined politics in the past 20 years. Polling shows that while the decline in trust is broad and deep across the political spectrum, in some respects it reflects sharply different political loyalties. When Donald Trump was in the White House and Republicans controlled Congress, Democratic voters expressed less trust than Republicans in the federal government; when the tables turned, so did the poll results. This tendency to distrust the government when the other side is in charge has increased dramatically.

The sharp partisan differences are reflected in differential trust in other institutions: Republicans distrust the media, education, science and medicine more than Democrats, who distrust the police and the Supreme Court more.

A third factor has been the explosive growth and ubiquity of information technology that has transformed our relationships with institutions and each other in multiple and profound ways. The advent of the internet, the digital accessibility provided by the smartphone and the vast network of connections they have opened up have played a major role in weakening confidence in most major institutions.

Too much has been made of “fake news” and “misinformation,” terms often used to stigmatize dissenting opinions. But personal technology and access to unlimited information have changed the way citizens think and behave. People are no longer dependent on mainstream news organizations. They can verify at least some of the information themselves—reading a whole government report or watching the full video of a speech or protest rather than relying on reporters to select relevant quotes.

This democratization of information has significant benefits. But the ease of access to information—whether true or false—that contradicts what a government official, business leader, teacher, journalist or doctor says leaves users with plenty of reasons to doubt what used to be seen as almost unimpeachable authorities.

The biggest factor driving mistrust, though, is surely the widening cultural gap between the people who have led and thrived in our major institutions and the rest of the population. The past 20 years have seen the rapid emergence of a new elite—expensively educated, versed in progressive nostrums, increasingly distant from and disdainful of the rest of America and its values.

This crowd comprises much of the nation’s permanent government classes, almost its entire academic establishment, most of the people who control its news and cultural output, and a good deal of its corporate elite. They subscribe to what have been termed “luxury beliefs” that assert global priorities over national ones on issues such as climate change and immigration; place outsize emphasis on the elevation of racial and sexual identity and radical ideas about gender; and insist on rewriting history to portray the U.S. as an evil nation that needs to expurgate its sins by imposing new burdens on nonelite Americans.

The rising tide of popular distrust in the values, actions and leadership of this elite calls to mind Bertolt Brecht’s poem about East Germany: “The people had squandered the confidence of the government and could only win it back by redoubled work. Would it not in that case be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?”

Anyone who has lost money to a con man, believed the lies of an unfaithful lover or wasted an afternoon waiting for the repairman who promised to come knows that once forfeited trust isn’t easily recovered. The confidence Americans place in their leaders has been in steep decline for two decades and won’t be repaired overnight.

That will require change—first from the leaders of the institutions themselves. Government and law-enforcement authorities need to be more transparent. Media companies must strive for greater ideological diversity. Schools and colleges must do the same—or be compelled to. Business leaders should return their companies to their core economic objectives and stop acting as vehicles for cultural and social change. Technology companies must protect their users’ privacy and mental health. Public-health officials and scientists need to stop acting like infallible authorities and convey the latest evidence and data with the humility that the scientific method demands.

Above all, it will require a fundamental change in the nature of the relationship between the people and their leaders. It will require political change so that Americans can take back control of the institutions that direct the country and affect their lives. Only by restoring the primacy of the values that made America the most successful nation on earth will Americans again trust their leaders.

Mr. Baker is a Journal columnist and editor at large. This is adapted from his book, “American Breakdown: Why We No Longer Trust Our Leaders and Institutions and How We Can Rebuild Confidence,” which will be published Tuesday.

10. The Terrorism Potentials of ChatGPT & Related Generative AI Models

​Download the report HERE

The Terrorism Potentials of ChatGPT & Related Generative AI Models

Robert J. Bunker and Keaton O.K. Bunker

https://www.cofutures.net/post/the-terrorism-potentials-of-chatgpt-related-generative-ai-models

C/O Futures Terrorism Research Note Series

7 September 2023

ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) represents a newer software program—an artificial intelligence (AI) based Chatbot—offered by the company OpenAI in both free (GPT 3.5) and paid (more advanced GPT 4) versions. Increasing concern exists, some founded and some unfounded, over the utility of ChatGPT for terrorist applications, especially when the software’s ethical inhibitors have been ‘jail broken’ with techniques such as DAN (‘Do Anything Now’).[1] Competitor software programs to ChatGPT exist and are actively being developed by both American and Chinese technology companies such as Meta, Google, Alibaba, and Baidu. As the capability and use of AI chat, image, audio, and video bots (e.g. generative AI) increases, the terrorism use potentials of this informational technology will become more pronounced—though likely limited in the near term.

CO Futures Note Chat GPT Generative AI

.pdf

Download PDF • 8.89MB

11. China’s military seeks to exploit U.S. troops, veterans, general warns

We must all be vigilant.

What is different about the Cold War and the possible Cold War 2.0 is that we are all engaged. We are all vulnerable. We are all participants because of globalization, connectivelty, social media, and simply the internet. We have knowledge and skills and information that can benefit our adversaries and they are working hard to obtain by any means available to include what appear to be completely "innocent" or normal business practices but often which come with offers that appear too good to be true.

This is poltiical warfaare and irregualr warfare at its finest (though few want to acknowledge that).

China’s military seeks to exploit U.S. troops, veterans, general warns

A memo obtained by The Post says Beijing is working to enhance its armed forces by targeting Americans with specialized skills and training

By Dan Lamothe

Updated September 8, 2023 at 11:18 a.m. EDT|Published September 8, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · September 8, 2023

China’s military is conducting a sophisticated exploitation campaign designed to “fill gaps” in its capabilities by targeting current and former U.S. service members and harvesting specialized knowledge they’ve gained, a top general warned in a message obtained by The Washington Post.

The document was distributed to Air Force personnel on Friday. It marks the Pentagon’s most direct attempt yet to call out and counter what U.S. officials characterized as an aggressive ploy by Beijing to leverage international firms that hire Americans to teach advanced military skills and tactics.

Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who heads the Air Force and is President Biden’s nominee to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in the message that foreign companies doing business with the Chinese government are “targeting and recruiting U.S. and NATO-trained military talent across specialties and career fields.”

“By essentially training the trainer, many of those who accept contracts with these foreign companies are eroding our national security, putting the very safety of their fellow servicemembers and the country at risk,” Brown wrote, appealing to the recipients’ sense of responsibility, even after leaving the armed forces, to protect “our national defense information.”

Officials declined to identify how many U.S. troops and veterans are thought to have been surreptitiously recruited by the Chinese, saying only that they have seen a worrisome rise in such activity.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, did not deny Brown’s assertions, saying in a statement that the Chinese government urges the United States “to respect the normal business activities carried out by relevant companies, and not to generalize and abuse the concept of national security and smear relevant companies.” U.S. officials in recent years have been “quick to accuse China,” he added, affecting “normal exchanges and cooperation” between the two countries in a way that is “not conducive to the healthy development” of bilateral relations.

A special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations — who, like some others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive national security matter — said attempts by China’s military to exploit Americans have included marketing job openings to them that initially appear innocuous and approaching them directly at defense industry events.

While China routinely targets American pilots, the special agent said, veterans who’ve held a variety of other roles also are in demand. He cited former aerospace ground equipment maintainers and landing-signals officers as examples, jobs that entail handling specialized equipment and guiding pilots and their aircraft to safety.

The offers come from a mix of privately owned companies and those backed by the Chinese government, and are contracted by the Chinese government, officials said. The solicitations often include language that sounds customary in the defense sector, with references to consulting, advising or training.

A chief concern, the special agent said, is that some will rationalize that the work is legitimate even after they discover the connection to China’s military.

“We want to make sure that people understand: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” he said, describing the effort as “insidious.”

Officials are urging current and former military personnel to report if they have been recruited to train foreign militaries.

Relations between Washington and Beijing have been strained for years, with the two powers divided on matters such as economic competition, climate change and, more recently, the war in Ukraine. U.S. security support for Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that China considers a breakaway province, and other recent steps by the Biden administration to expand military ties in the Pacific have deepened the tension.

The concerns also have prompted the creation of a House select committee on China. Its chairman, Rep. Michael Gallagher (R-Wis.), said in a statement on Friday that U.S. personnel must understand they are targets for espionage and exploitation. Information that Chinese military officials may gain, Gallagher said, could someday be used against them.

“Congress needs to work with the Department of Defense to educate our service members and ensure they do not help facilitate their own destruction,” said Gallagher, a Marine Corps veteran.

The Pentagon’s warning to U.S. personnel and veterans comes as senior leaders there have identified China as the United States’ “pacing threat,” expressing alarm over Beijing’s military advancements and efforts to expand its global footprint and influence.

It follows, too, a move by the U.S. government in June to blacklist dozens of companies across the world for alleged ties to the Chinese government, including several aviation training firms.

Among them are Frontier Services Group, a Chinese state-owned company founded by Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide, and the Test Flying Academy of South Africa, which faced scrutiny after reports that it had hired Western military pilots to train Chinese aviators.

Frontier Services denied in June that it has used U.S. military personnel to train Chinese pilots. It did not respond to questions from The Post about whether it had hired former service members to do so.

The Test Flying Academy of South Africa said in a statement in June that it was “disappointed” in the decision by the U.S. Commerce Department and alleged that larger American companies also train Chinese pilots. It did not respond to requests for comment.

An Air Force colonel with experience flying F-16 fighter jets said in an interview that he first received an email in 2019 seeking seasoned test pilots. His first thought, he said, was to ask his wife if she wanted to go to South Africa someday.

“It did not look particularly suspicious to me,” he said.

Two years later, he recalled, the message came to mind when he was briefed by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations ahead of a professional conference and warned that such recruiting was happening.

The pilot shared with The Post a second recruitment pitch that he says he received from the South African company in 2021. It sought helicopter and jet pilots for work in “Far East Asia,” requiring six years of experience as a test pilot and familiarity with teaching students whose first language is not English.

“They can appear very legitimate, to the point that I didn’t catch it until I had a little bit more background knowledge,” the officer said. “I would just say that I was kind of humbled that it basically escaped my detection for almost two years.”

Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific security chair at the Hudson Institute in Washington, described such efforts as one piece of a broader initiative, directed by President Xi Jinping, to elevate China’s standing in the world by “having the ability to stand down the Americans in any scenario.”

There are also indications, Cronin said, that Beijing is focusing more attention and training of personnel on thwarting U.S. attempts to collect intelligence on the Chinese government.

“Recruiting and compromising and understanding how our military moves through our key people and our key technologies is vital to his strategic ends,” he said.

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · September 8, 2023

12. US ‘Increasingly Concerned’ With Ukraine Battlefield Tactics Against Russia

US ‘Increasingly Concerned’ With Ukraine Battlefield Tactics Against Russia

thedefensepost.com · by Joe Saballa · September 6, 2023

US officials have expressed concerns regarding the battlefield tactics Ukraine is using to combat invading Russian forces.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials told The New York Times that Kyiv has been deploying too many troops in the wrong places.

They said the country’s best combat units are being sent equally to the east and south when they should concentrate more in the south where heavy fighting normally occurs.

By not consolidating its power in the right areas, the war-torn nation is reportedly struggling to achieve its main goal of cutting off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by damaging the bridge connecting Moscow and the Crimean Peninsula.

The officials urged Ukraine to concentrate on Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south, which are “far more strategically significant fronts” than Bakhmut in the east.

‘A Change of Tactics’

Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been under strict scrutiny due to its slow progress and “small gains.”

Despite the help of billions of dollars in Western military equipment, “not much” has changed as Moscow still occupies nearly one-fifth of Ukraine, according to an analysis by BBC.

One US official claimed that only a change of battlefield tactics can alter the tempo of the counteroffensive.

Kyiv’s forces should reportedly start to push through the vast minefields left behind by Russia, even if it leads to more casualties and damage, the source said.

Earlier this year, several international military observers said Ukraine’s counteroffensive strategy against Russia is a “suicide mission.”

A Ukrainian soldier fires artillery rounds towards Russian positions outside Bakhmut. Photo: AFP

‘In Jeopardy’

Ukraine authorities have shut down critics of the three-month counteroffensive, saying “everyone” has suddenly become an expert on how the country should fight.

The country’s defense ministry responded by saying “no one understands this war better than we do.”

However, military experts are cautioning that the slow progress in the counteroffensive could lead to Kyiv getting less support from Western countries.

“Politicians are realizing that it is not going to be a short war and it will most likely take many years to support Ukraine,” King’s College London war researcher Marina Miron explained.

thedefensepost.com · by Joe Saballa · September 6, 2023

13. The cold war holds lessons for America’s rivalry with China, say Condoleezza Rice and Niall Ferguson

Important conclusion that we should remind ourselves of daily and I wish all our political leaders would adopt. Let's embrace our political differences as the "cacophony of freedom" and know that it is a strength and not a weakness in the face of our adversaries.

Still, it is worth remembering that democracies have been counted out before by authoritarian rulers who mistook the cacophony of freedom for weakness and assumed that the suppression of dissenting voices in their own societies was a sign of strength. From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush, the best cold-war presidents understood that the authoritarians were wrong. If this generation of leaders can show similar resolve, the outcome of this new superpower rivalry—whether it is a second cold war or something new—should be another victory for the free world.

The cold war holds lessons for America’s rivalry with China, say Condoleezza Rice and Niall Ferguson

Military strength matters, as do allies, but nothing is inevitable

image: dan williams

Sep 7th 2023

The Economist

THE INTENSIFYING rivalry between America and China has led many to speak of a second cold war. Others reject the analogy. We can say this: the world’s two largest economies seem to have little space for co-operation and a great deal of room for conflict.

The greatest difference with the first cold war is, of course, the origin of this rivalry. After the second world war, the two superpowers settled quickly into confrontation. They had little in common. The Soviet Union was a military giant but an economic recluse, isolated from most of the global economy.

China, conversely, was brought into the international economy by its own choices under Deng Xiaoping and by the decisions of global capitalists. For 30 years it benefited from integration and access to foreign capital and know-how. Along the way, China acquired an aptitude for indigenous innovation, not just intellectual-property theft.

China had been chipping away at American power for years. But it took the more frontal approach of Xi Jinping, who speaks of surpassing America in frontier technologies and calls the Taiwan Strait Chinese national waters, to shock America and its allies into fully understanding the challenge ahead.

China has built an impressive global network of telecommunications infrastructure, underwater cables, port access and military bases (or rights to build them) in client states. With each project, Chinese influence has evolved from pure mercantilism to a desire for political influence. If nothing else, the scale of China’s market has a magnetic attraction.

America has been slow to react. Too often it resorts to public cajoling of other countries to resist Chinese investment, while offering too few alternatives.

The truth is, though, that China’s foreign-investment strategy is beginning to show cracks. Its “loan-to-own” approach, its reliance on Chinese rather than local workers and infrastructure construction failures—including some spectacular accidents—are arousing resentment in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere.

In the cold war and after, the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps, the American-backed “green revolution” in Indian agriculture and the PEPFAR initiative to tackle HIV/AIDS showed that America could improve the lives of people abroad. The question today is how far it can take advantage of Chinese missteps with an equally effective strategy.

From the 1940s to the 1980s the Hoover Institution, where we are both fellows, fostered the study of the cold war. Its archives remain crucial to scholars of the period. We would do well to understand it and to take its lessons to heart. Five stand out.

The first is that allies matter, for both good and ill. China has clients which are beholden to it in one way or another. The most important, Russia, has become a liability because of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. For now, China finds itself trying to support its “partner without limits” while staying on the right side of the American and European sanctions line. It is a tough balancing act.

America, meanwhile, is blessed with a European alliance revitalised by its firm response to Russia’s aggression and a measurably stronger NATO with the addition of Finland and, assuming hold-outs ratify its membership, Sweden. America also has strong allies in Asia, such as Australia, South Korea and Japan. Its relationship with India is deepening.

The second lesson is that deterrence requires military capability that matches the rhetoric surrounding it. China has been improving every aspect of its military capability while the war in Ukraine and wargaming about Taiwan have revealed weaknesses in the West’s. The West must respond immediately by procuring more advanced weaponry, developing secure supply chains for critical materials and components, and rebuilding the defence-industrial base. Peace through strength really does work.

Third, engage in efforts to avoid accidental war. To this day we benefit from contacts between the American and Russian armed forces (established during the cold war) to prevent an accident between them. Given the nature of today’s technologies, not least artificial intelligence, a war between America and China could be even more dangerous than one with the Soviet Union would have been. China has been unwilling to discuss accident prevention, despite near misses between Chinese and American planes and ships. That is a mistake.

Fourth, remember George Kennan, the American diplomat based in Moscow who wrote the “long telegram”. The greatest insight in Kennan’s essay-length message, wired to Harry Truman’s State Department in 1946, was to point clearly to the disadvantages that plagued the Soviet Union. He advised his government to deny Moscow scope for external expansion, and argued that the Soviet Union’s own internal contradictions would eventually weaken it.

China is economically stronger than the Soviet Union ever was, but there, too, contradictions are showing. A deflating property sector, high youth unemployment and disastrous demographics all plague China. Authoritarian leaders prefer the certainties of political control over the risks of economic liberalisation.

But the final lesson of the first cold war is that nothing is inevitable. The leaders of that time never underestimated the challenge before them. Success today will require democracies to come to terms with their own flaws and contradictions—not least, fractures in society caused by ethnic, social and class differences and the tendency for these to be amplified in online echo chambers. Failure to safeguard the legitimacy of political institutions that protect freedom has led to plummeting confidence in democracy itself.

Still, it is worth remembering that democracies have been counted out before by authoritarian rulers who mistook the cacophony of freedom for weakness and assumed that the suppression of dissenting voices in their own societies was a sign of strength. From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush, the best cold-war presidents understood that the authoritarians were wrong. If this generation of leaders can show similar resolve, the outcome of this new superpower rivalry—whether it is a second cold war or something new—should be another victory for the free world.

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and a Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She was United States Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009. Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

The Economist

14. The International Criminal Court Will Now Prosecute Cyberwar Crimes

Will this be a game changer? What are the implications?  

The International Criminal Court Will Now Prosecute Cyberwar Crimes

And the first case on the docket may well be Russia’s cyberattacks against civilian critical infrastructure in Ukraine.

ANDY GREENBERG​  SECURITY​  SEP 7, 2023 12:19 PM

Wired · by Condé Nast · September 7, 2023

For years, some cybersecurity defenders and advocates have called for a kind of Geneva Convention for cyberwar, new international laws that would create clear consequences for anyone hacking civilian critical infrastructure, like power grids, banks, and hospitals. Now the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague has made it clear that he intends to enforce those consequences—no new Geneva Convention required. Instead, he has explicitly stated for the first time that the Hague will investigate and prosecute any hacking crimes that violate existing international law, just as it does for war crimes committed in the physical world.

In a little-noticed article released last month in the quarterly publication Foreign Policy Analytics, the International Criminal Court’s lead prosecutor, Karim Khan, spelled out that new commitment: His office will investigate cybercrimes that potentially violate the Rome Statute, the treaty that defines the court’s authority to prosecute illegal acts, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

“Cyber warfare does not play out in the abstract. Rather, it can have a profound impact on people’s lives,” Khan writes. “Attempts to impact critical infrastructure such as medical facilities or control systems for power generation may result in immediate consequences for many, particularly the most vulnerable. Consequently, as part of its investigations, my Office will collect and review evidence of such conduct.”

When WIRED reached out to the International Criminal Court, a spokesperson for the office of the prosecutor confirmed that this is now the office’s official stance. “The Office considers that, in appropriate circumstances, conduct in cyberspace may potentially amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and/or the crime of aggression,” the spokesperson writes, “and that such conduct may potentially be prosecuted before the Court where the case is sufficiently grave.”

Neither Khan’s article nor his office’s statement to WIRED mention Russia or Ukraine. But the new statement of the ICC prosecutor’s intent to investigate and prosecute hacking crimes comes in the midst of growing international focus on Russia’s cyberattacks targeting Ukraine both before and after its full-blown invasion of its neighbor in early 2022. In March of last year, the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley’s School of Law sent a formal request to the ICC prosecutor’s office urging it to consider war crime prosecutions of Russian hackers for their cyberattacks in Ukraine—even as the prosecutors continued to gather evidence of more traditional, physical war crimes that Russia has carried out in its invasion.

In the Berkeley Human Rights Center’s request, formally known as an Article 15 document, the Human Rights Center focused on cyberattacks carried out by a Russian group known as Sandworm, a unit within Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. Since 2014, the GRU and Sandworm, in particular, have carried out a series of cyberwar attacks against civilian critical infrastructure in Ukraine beyond anything seen in the history of the internet. Their brazen hacking has ranged from targeting Ukrainian electric utilities and triggering the only two blackouts ever caused by cyberattacks to the release of the data-destroying NotPetya malware that spread from Ukraine to the rest of the world and inflicted more than $10 billion in damage, including to hospital networks in both Ukraine and the United States.

Though the Berkeley group’s submission initially focused on Sandworm’s 2015 and 2016 attacks on Ukraine’s power grid as the clearest example of cyberattacks with physical effects comparable to those of traditional warfare, it later expanded its argument to include Sandworm’s NotPetya cyberattack, as well as a third attempt by the hackers to sabotage Ukraine’s power grid and another cyberattack on the Viasat satellite modem network used by Ukraine’s military, which caused outages of the satellite modems across Europe.

The fact that Khan doesn’t explicitly mention Russia in his article doesn’t actually mean he’s shying away from investigating war crimes carried out by Sandworm or other Russians involved in the Ukraine attacks, says Lindsay Freeman, the Human Rights Center’s director of technology, law, and policy. Instead, she sees the article as a broader statement that hacking activities that violate international law will be considered as part of any investigation the prosecutors carry out. “The fact that he’s not just saying that he’s going to do this in Ukraine, that he’s going to do this in all investigations is really important,” says Freeman. “Seeing that this is the reality of cyberwar now and this is something they, as an office, have to investigate in every single case—that goes beyond what we were pushing for, and it’s a really important and powerful move.”

Ukraine’s government, meanwhile, has already opened its own investigation into Russian war crimes carried out via cyberattacks. Aside from charging any Russian hackers or their superiors in its own court system, evidence from that investigation could now also be provided to the ICC’s prosecutors to aid any case that the Hague prosecutors bring against Russia.

Six of Sandworm’s hackers are already facing an indictment in the United States for hacking crimes related to their cyberattacks targeting Ukraine, as well as the network of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Korea. But Freeman points out that charges against Russian hackers at the Hague would have a broader effect: 123 countries are parties to the Rome Statute, and so have agreed to help detain and extradite convicted war criminals. That includes some countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the United States, such as Switzerland and Ecuador. The Hague’s remit also extends not only to the hands-on-keyboards hackers themselves, Freeman notes, but to the command structure above those hackers, opening the possibility of new charges against higher-level officers within Russia’s military or even Russian president Vladimir Putin himself.

In terms of legal precedents, Khan’s statement that the Hague prosecutor’s office will now consider hacking a potential violation of international law is “novel but not surprising,” says Bobby Chesney, director of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas Law School. “I don’t think anyone who’s serious about international law would dispute that there are at least some circumstances in which intentional harm to civilians can be carried out through cyber means in a way that qualifies as an attack and therefore a violation” of the Rome Statute’s principle that combatants distinguish between civilian and military targets, Chesney says.

Chesney says he was more intrigued to see other parts of Khan’s article that mention disinformation as a separate area of concern and “gray zone” tactics that “operate in the area between war and peace.” As a precedent for sources of disinformation being charged under international law, Chesney points to rare incidents, like radio journalists who were convicted in an international criminal tribunal for helping incite genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Investigating or charging hacking that occurs outside the context of war as a violation of international law, as Khan’s article seems to suggest, would be newer territory.

But the Human Rights Center’s Freeman argues that given the ICC prosecutor’s limited resources and discretion to choose which cases to prosecute, any commitment to examine and potentially charge cyberwar crimes is a historic moment. “Just looking at how cyber is being used in war, and that [Khan] sees it in his remit and something worth investigating as a priority within his power of discretion, I think is incredibly important,” she says.

Khan clearly sees the stakes as equally high: He ends his article by quoting (or perhaps misquoting) Albert Einstein’s stated fear that “technology would exceed our humanity.”

“Undoubtedly, we shall be tested,” Khan writes. “But through our common efforts—and above all the belief that we can mobilize the law on these new front lines to deliver justice—we may collectively ensure that a more humane world is forged. The ICC will play its part, now and in years to come.”

Wired · by Condé Nast · September 7, 2023

15. China Won’t Start With Taiwan

Excerpts:

America’s containment of China in the Pacific Ocean is important to American interests. But denying China control of valuable assets and the opportunity to prove the PLA’s capabilities could in turn prevent Xi from ever developing the confidence to take more active measures in the Pacific.

Regional powers balancing China out of Central and Southeast Asia could indirectly protect American investments in the Pacific. This is why it is so vital that America not only be aware of the risk China poses to Central and Southeast Asia, but also be active in encouraging regional powers to do something about that risk. America should utilize the interests of powers with stakes in the region before China takes the first step to launching a potentially disastrous war.

China Won’t Start With Taiwan

19fortyfive.com · by Patrick Fox and Garrett Ehinger · September 8, 2023

Successful U.S. efforts to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could push China to attack other countries.

American foreign policy in Asia focuses on preventing China from expanding into Taiwan or usurping U.S. partners’ claims in the South China Sea. Yet effective U.S. deterrence in the Pacific might push China to shift its aims inland, where it could assess its capabilities against more vulnerable neighbors before engaging targets like Taiwan.

There are few opportunities for American force projection to inland Asia, meaning the region presents China with lower-risk opportunities to test the capabilities of their recently overhauled military. China has not had a major military operation since their 1979 humiliation in Vietnam, so a smaller intervention could allow them to test their capabilities, as well as global reactions to a Chinese projection of force. Accordingly, the United States should encourage regional power balancing to deter military action by China in these areas.

Chinese President Xi Jinping faces unique internal political pressures that drive him toward foreign military action. Xi faces party expectations to rejuvenate a stalling economy and to display the Chinese Communist Party’s strength domestically and internationally. He also wants to demonstrate the value of his extensive reforms to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Considering China’s rapidly inverting population pyramid, its significant domestic unemployment and growing dissatisfaction, and Xi’s own age, time is running short to meet these expectations. That is why U.S. concerns about Taiwan’s security are growing.

That very U.S. attention to Taiwan might push Chinese ambitions toward other goals. Taiwan’s physical geography, porcupine defense strategy, and American patronage make it difficult to conquer. Coupled with the PLA’s lack of combat experience, a war with Taiwan is not a wise way for Xi to relieve the pressures he faces. Xi might first pursue limited military action in lower-stakes theaters in Central or Southeast Asia.

Xi’s persecution of China’s Uyghur minority has raised border security concerns with states like Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, which have limited ability to protect their sovereignty. Xi could leverage events like the collapse of Afghanistan and terrorist attacks on Chinese nationals as reasons to intervene militarily, perhaps through limited anti-terror campaigns. This would provide the PLA with valuable real-world experience and give Xi a chance to both assess PLA readiness and prove the value of his extensive reforms to the military. Evidence that those expensive reforms were successful could relieve political stress as China’s economy begins to falter. In the past, Russia’s military dominance in this region would have been a deterring factor, but their war in Ukraine has led to increased reliance on China, diminishing Moscow’s ability to credibly challenge Beijing.

China could also choose to intervene in a conflict in Southeast Asia. China shares a long border with Myanmar, a country embroiled in a seemingly interminable civil war since May 2021. China has long maintained proxy buffer states in Myanmar, and political and security concerns could create an opportunity for military experience. The threat of a climate refugee crisis in the Bengal flood plains could exacerbate perceptions of instability, or distract India from challenging an unprecedented Chinese intervention.

Myanmar is a member of ASEAN, but its regional partners have been ineffective in their efforts to address the conflict. Moreover, China’s actions in the South China Sea imply they don’t view ASEAN as a serious deterrent. As such, China might engage in military campaigns to “stabilize” the region, providing similar benefits to hypothetical actions in Afghanistan: military experience for the PLA, and resultant political capital for Xi.

A third target is perhaps more likely: militarily weak Mongolia. Mongolia’s shared border with China holds some of the world’s richest deposits of coal, uranium, molybdenum, copper, tin, and more. These resources could help fuel China’s growing nuclear programs, coal-plant construction, and electronic innovations — particularly regarding semiconductors. These expanding projects are critical if China wishes to protect itself from American trade warfare and international sanctions. Mongolia’s significant debt and recent domestic unrest, particularly related to coal production, have hindered Ulaanbaatar’s full utilization of these deposits and threatened the status quo in trade between Mongolia and China.

In 2022, the International Monetary Fund declared that Mongolia faces global shocks, border conflicts, and economic stagflation. Mongolia’s “political instability” is capable of “significantly disrupting strategic mining projects” favoring China, the IMF stated. With no formal foreign defense commitments and a tiny military, Mongolia’s precarious situation might tempt Beijing to forcefully seize and exploit underutilized border resources, providing invaluable and relatively low-risk real-world experience to the PLA, extremely valuable resources, and much-needed political capital for Xi Jinping.

In any of the above scenarios, the military experience and economic gains, as well as the political benefits to Xi, might motivate unexpected foreign action on China’s part, especially since the United States would have limited options to counter Beijing. There is little recent precedent for serious Chinese activity in any of these theaters, but given the fact that military experience and economic strength are vital to China’s ability to challenge America in the Pacific, there is enough risk that the United States should encourage regional powers like Russia and India to balance China and prevent such test runs.

America’s containment of China in the Pacific Ocean is important to American interests. But denying China control of valuable assets and the opportunity to prove the PLA’s capabilities could in turn prevent Xi from ever developing the confidence to take more active measures in the Pacific.

Regional powers balancing China out of Central and Southeast Asia could indirectly protect American investments in the Pacific. This is why it is so vital that America not only be aware of the risk China poses to Central and Southeast Asia, but also be active in encouraging regional powers to do something about that risk. America should utilize the interests of powers with stakes in the region before China takes the first step to launching a potentially disastrous war.

Patrick Fox is a Program Assistant at the John Quincy Adams Society, the Co-Host of the Security Dilemma Podcast and the Editor-In-Chief for the Realist Review. He holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Syracuse University and was a Fall 2022 Marcellus Policy Fellow. You can follow him on Twitter at @patrckfox.

Garrett Ehinger is an Assistant Editor at Realist Review and a China analyst who holds a bachelor’s in Biomedical Science with a minor in Mandarin Chinese from Brigham Young University in Idaho. He is currently a master’s student at the University of Utah studying public health. He has studied Chinese culture and language for over a decade. You can follow him on Twitter at @GarrettEhinger.

19fortyfive.com · by Patrick Fox and Garrett Ehinger · September 8, 2023

16. G20 Declaration Omits Criticism of Russia, Notes Ukrainians’ ‘Suffering’

G20 Declaration Omits Criticism of Russia, Notes Ukrainians’ ‘Suffering’

By Katie Rogers

Reporting from New Delhi

• Sept. 9, 2023, 11:44 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Katie Rogers · September 9, 2023

American officials defended the agreement, saying it built on the statement released last year and that the United States was still pressing for peace in Ukraine.

Perhaps in deference to his host for the G20 Summit -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India -- President Biden stowed his democracy themes and agreed to a declaration that omitted criticism of Russian aggression in Ukraine.Credit...Pool photo by Evan Vucci

• Sept. 9, 2023, 11:44 a.m. ET

A painstakingly negotiated declaration Saturday evening at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi omitted any condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or its brutal conduct of the war, instead lamenting the “suffering” of the Ukrainian people.

It was an eye opening departure from a similar document agreed to less than a year ago in Bali, when leaders acknowledged different views over the invasion but still issued a strong condemnation of the Russian invasion and called on Moscow to withdraw its troops.

This year, amid low expectations that the divided group would reach any sort of consensus with Ukraine,the declaration pointed to past United Nations resolutions condemning the war and noted the “adverse impact of wars and conflicts around the world.” The statement also called on Russia to allow the export of grain and fertilizer from Ukraine and “to support a comprehensive, just and durable peace.”

American officials defended the agreement, saying it built on the statement released last year and that the United States was still pressing for peace in Ukraine.

“From our perspective, it does a very good job of standing up for the principle that states cannot use force to seek territorial acquisition or to violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of other states,” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters.

But Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, said on Facebook that the omission of Russian aggression was “nothing to be proud of.”

Mr. Biden and his advisers focused on what the new declaration had achieved: It included new language on the issue of global debt and on overhauling institutions like the World Bank to address the growing strains on poorer countries; an invitation to the African Union to join the G20; and a push for more financing to help vulnerable nations deal with the costs of dealing with climate change. The declaration also underscored the potential of digital technologies to increase inclusion in global economies.

The president joined other leaders in announcing a project to create a rail and shipping corridor linking India to the Middle East and, eventually, Europe. It was a promise of new technological and trade pathways, they said, in a part of the world where deeper economic cooperation was overdue.

The project lacked key details, including a time frame or budget. Even so, it represented much softer than usual rhetoric about Russia from Mr. Biden and other Western leaders, who have spent the better part of two years spending billions on arming Ukraine and burning untold domestic political capital building support for the war. Facing a summit rife with deep divisions, Mr. Biden did not speak publicly about the war or almost anything else, except to say “it would be nice” if President Xi Jinping of China, who skipped the summit along with the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, had attended.

Mr. Biden spent most of his time at the summit quietly nurturing his relationship with Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, who has continued his country’s traditional practice of abstaining from superpower skirmishes, but who has his own tensions with China. He is also keenly interested in presenting himself — and his country — as an ascendant global player.

“Biden, like previous presidents, is trying to bring India closer,” Richard N. Haass, a foreign policy veteran and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “He’s having limited success, but that’s the nature of the relationship. That’s baked into the cake here.”

Mr. Haass said that joint declarations often take on the characteristics of the host country. In this case, he said, it seemed that “the host determined not to antagonize either China or Russia.” He called the statement — and the economic summit — an example of “incremental diplomacy” and not a forum where the conflict could be resolved.

White House officials did not publicly say why the United States would sign onto a joint agreement that did so little to keep pressure on Russia, though the Russians had loudly complained about the focus on them. (Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, cited the “Ukrainization” of the summit to explain Mr. Putin’s absence.)

Besides Ukraine, there were other points of contention over the declaration. Mr. Sullivan was asked about reports that the Chinese had objected to language in a draft that confirmed that the United States would host the G20 meeting in 2026. “On the issue of China, all I can say is the communiqué is done,” he said.

The absence of two of the group's most influential leaders, coupled with the ongoing war in Ukraine, had raised questions about whether the summit meeting could achieve much of anything given the current geopolitical divisions. Biden administration officials spent much of their time with reporters assuring them that the summit was still effective.

Mr. Biden’s advisers pointed to to the announcement of plans to build a rail and shipping corridor from India through the Middle East to Europe as evidence that the group could build connections even in fraught territory.

At the event presenting the initiative, Mr. Biden shook hands with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, which has agreed to participate, something he had pointedly avoided doing when visiting the kingdom last year.

The announcement comes as the Biden administration has worked, so far unsuccessfully, to broker an ambitious diplomatic agreement that would help the Saudis normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. The United States and the European Union also announced on Saturday a project that would explore the creation of a rail line between Zimbabwe and Angola.

Unlike in years past, where he held high-stakes meetings with individual allies and competitors, Mr. Biden stayed in the background for most of his time in India content to let Mr. Modi take the lead. On Sunday, Mr. Biden will travel to Vietnam, where he is expected to celebrate a new upgrade in relations with Vietnam, despite concerns about the country’s recent authoritarian crackdown and repression.

Unlike his predecessor and possible 2024 competitor, former president Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden’s brand of personalized statesmanship has long been centered around the belief that the best relationships — and even some of the worst ones — are best handled through one-on-one interactions and private negotiations. At forums like the G20, Mr. Biden has often presented his version of leadership as a steadier alternative to Mr. Trump’s bombastic and unpredictable style.

Mr. Modi, for his part, was so intent on showcasing the promise and potential of India to the rest of the world that his government effectively shut down a city of 20 million people for the occasion. Leading up to the event, Mr. Modi’s likeness was plastered on thousands of posters throughout New Delhi.

On Saturday, speaking in Hindi, Mr. Modi began his inaugural address to the group of leaders by paying respects to the people of Morocco, where an earthquake killed hundreds. He ended his remarks by announcing the invitation to the African Union and hugging Azali Assoumani, the chairman of the bloc and the president of Comoros. Officials offered Mr. Assoumani a flag, a country nameplate and a seat at the table.

India’s G20 presidency comes at a moment of contradiction for the country: Its rise to a bigger role on the world stage coincides with increasing divisions at home. While Mr. Modi is tapping into India’s strengths — a rapidly growing economy, a young work force and a strong tradition of technological and scientific innovation — to transform it into a developed nation, he is making sure that nation is reshaped along Hindu-first lines.

The increasing aggression of his right-wing support base has created a combustible reality, with religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims frequently erupting in clashes.

Mr. Biden notably stayed away from the democracy-versus-autocracy themes that shape much of his messaging overseas and at home. (At one point, Mr. Biden did pose for a photo with the leaders of several other democracies, including India, Brazil and South Africa.) And, his advisers stressed that the G20 was not competing with forums like the group of nations known as BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

They pointed out that reaching a consensus on the declaration, even if it was a softer one, was a labor of effective diplomacy.

“The G20 is just a more diverse body with a wider range of views,” Jon Finer, the president’s deputy national security adviser, said. “It gives us a chance to interact with and work with and take constructive steps with a wider range of countries, including some we don’t see eye-to-eye with on every issue.”

Mujib Mashal, Peter Baker and Alex Travelli contributed reporting from New Delhi.

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent, covering life in the Biden administration, Washington culture and domestic policy. She joined The Times in 2014. More about Katie Rogers

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: G20 Declaration Omits Condemnation of Russia, a Rollback From Last Year

The New York Times · by Katie Rogers · September 9, 2023

17. FACT SHEET: Delivering an Ambitious Agenda for the G20

SEPTEMBER 09, 2023

FACT SHEET: Delivering an Ambitious Agenda for the G20

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/09/09/fact-sheet-delivering-an-ambitious-agenda-for-the-g20/

1. HOME
2. BRIEFING ROOM
3. STATEMENTS AND RELEASES

When President Biden took office, he committed to restore the United States’ leadership role in the world, rebuild our relationships abroad, and champion an economic agenda at home and abroad to deliver sustainable and inclusive growth for American families—and families everywhere. This week, at the G20 Summit in New Delhi, President Biden continued to deliver on those commitments.

Leading by example and working with partners around the world, the United States and the G20 delivered for developing countries, for our shared planet, and for an inclusive and responsible digital transformation. At a moment when the global economy is suffering from the overlapping shocks of the climate crisis, fragility, and conflict—including the immense suffering unleashed by Russia’s war in Ukraine—this year’s Summit proved that the G20 can still drive solutions to our most pressing issues.

The United States is committed to the G20 and to building on the progress made in India’s G20 Presidency, starting with Brazil’s Presidency in 2024 and South Africa’s Presidency in 2025. In a sign of the President’s steadfast commitment to the G20 as the premier forum for international economic cooperation, the United States will host the G20 in 2026. As President Biden called for last year at the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit, the United States is also pleased to have supported and now welcome the African Union as a permanent member of the G20, a reflection of both the G20’s vitality and the important role of Africa in the global economy.

Delivering for Developing Countries

At the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, compounding crises have resulted in a stalling or reversal of development gains. In New Delhi, President Biden and other G20 leaders committed to implement the G20 2023 Action Plan to Accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The United States remains committed to the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda, both at home and around the world.

At home, President Biden is rebuilding the American economy from the bottom up and middle out and making historic investments in our infrastructure, our people, and our climate. These policies have enabled the United States to have the strongest recovery of any major economy. As the world’s largest bilateral donor of official development assistance, the United States is working to help develop countries support their development priorities in areas like inclusive growth, infrastructure, education, health and health security, and resilient and sustainable food systems.

Recognizing that public funding alone is not enough, President Biden is championing an ambitious agenda to mobilize significant additional financing for development from all sources—public and private, domestic and international. At the G20, he delivered key elements of that agenda.

• Delivering a better, bigger, more effective World Bank. The United States is championing a major effort to fundamentally reshape the multilateral development banks to meet 21^st century challenges. Over the last year, the World Bank, with the backing of the G20, has made meaningful progress in unlocking new financing capacity and advancing operational reforms. Under Ajay Banga’s leadership, the World Bank is set to play a transformative role in addressing global challenges. Last month, President Biden asked Congress for funds to unlock more than $25 billion in World Bank Group concessional financing. In New Delhi, he rallied G20 partners to agree to collectively mobilize more headroom and concessional finance to boost the World Bank’s capacity to support low- and middle-income countries. This initiative will make the Bank a better and bigger institution able to provide resources at the scale and speed needed to tackle global challenges and address the urgent needs of the poorest countries.
• Supporting countries that fall into economic crisis. President Biden called on the G20 as leaders in the global economy to provide meaningful debt relief so that low- and middle-income countries can regain their footing as they seek to recover from compounding economic shocks in the last few years, and invest in critical development needs. Leaders in New Delhi committed to redouble efforts to resolve ongoing debt distress cases—like Ghana and Sri Lanka. President Biden made it clear that the United States expects meaningful progress by the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in October. 
• Make financing more sustainable. President Biden pressed leaders to think beyond our current frameworks to provide new solutions to help translate unsustainable debt into transformative investments. The U.S. Development Finance Corporation has provided such financing to facilitate more than $1 billion in debt for nature swaps in the Western Hemisphere and Africa—unlocking funds for countries to tackle the climate and biodiversity crises and to invest in other critical development needs. At the G20, President Biden also pressed all creditors—including the private sector and multilateral development banks—to offer climate resilient debt clauses in their lending. The U.S. Export Import Bank is preparing to do so in select bilateral lending, in line with its governance framework.
• Developing transformative economic corridors and scaling high-quality investments through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI). At an event co-hosted by President Biden and Prime Minister Modi, President Biden and partners announced a landmark India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor that will usher a new era of connectivity from Europe to Asia, facilitating global trade, as well as cooperation on energy and digital connectivity. President Biden also announced a new partnership with the European Union to expand investments in the Lobito Corridor. The President called on partners to deploy public capital to strategically leverage the expertise and financing of the private sector to help secure and diversify 21st century energy supply chains, expand digital connectivity, increase electricity access, bolster food security, and strengthen health systems.

Working for a Just Peace in Ukraine

President Biden is engaging with countries around the world in pressing for a just peace in Ukraine based on sovereignty and territorial integrity. One and a half years after Russia’s illegal and unjustified aggression against Ukraine, G20 leaders joined President Biden in welcoming efforts to secure “a just peace that upholds all the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter.” G20 leaders emphasized that countries must refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition against any state’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. G20 leaders also united in highlighting the human suffering and severe economic impacts of the war against Ukraine. The statement highlighted that major economies from around the world – including Brazil, India, South Africa – are united in the need for Russia to uphold international law including territorial integrity and sovereignty. 

Delivering on Food Security

Since the beginning of his Administration, President Biden has made global food security a priority and galvanized collective action to respond to the global food crisis. The United States has committed more than $15.2 billion in critical humanitarian assistance and medium- to long-term food security investments around the world. These investments have helped countries address acute needs and avert famine, as well as diversify their supply chains. At the G20, President Biden championed an agenda focused on mitigating the acute food crises the world is facing today, as well as working together with G20 countries to mitigate against future shocks. 

• Addressing the food security crisis exacerbated by Russia’s unlawful war in Ukraine. Russia has intensified its attack on global food security with its July decision to withdraw from the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI)—which was responsible for nearly 33 million tons of food exports, about two-thirds of which went directly to middle- and lower-income countries—and its attacks on Ukraine’s port infrastructure to prevent Ukrainian grain shipments from getting to those who need it most. The United States continues to lead the charge to mitigate the impact of Russia’s invasion on world food security and to provide food assistance to the most vulnerable populations in the world. In addition to the more than $15.2 billion that the United States has provided since 2021 to address famine and food insecurity, the Biden-Harris Administration and G7 leaders have rallied the world to contribute an additional over $4.5 billion for acute and medium to long term food security assistance, half of which came from the United States. At the G20, President Biden was unequivocal in calling on Russia to stop weaponizing food, which is causing immense human suffering around the world. G20 leaders united to call for the full, timely and effective implementation of the BSGI.  
• Building more resilient food systems to mitigate against future food shocks. Collective G20 action is necessary to help address global food, climate, and supply chain shocks, prevent hunger and build more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient agriculture and food systems. In New Delhi, President Biden joined G20 leaders in committing to keep food supply chains and trade open, including for agricultural inputs like fertilizer and seeds; adopt and expand climate-smart agricultural practices; invest in critical agricultural infrastructure; promote innovative agricultural research and innovation; and use digital technology to help lower production and transportation costs and diversify access to new global food markets.

Delivering on Global Health Challenges

The United States is the world’s largest bilateral donor for global health and is committed to working alongside the G20 to build a safer, more equitable future. This includes working together to invest in health equity through vaccine distribution, expanding and improving access to health systems, and facilitating the availability of quality services to historically marginalized groups. It also includes strengthening health systems and institutions; combatting infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights, and accelerating efforts towards universal health coverage.

• Improving pandemic preparedness and response. Last year, President Biden galvanized the world to help launch a new Pandemic Fund to fill critical gaps in pandemic preparedness and global health security, committing $450 million and unlocking an additional $1 billion in initial contributions from nearly two dozen countries and philanthropies. This year, the Pandemic Fund is a reality, and recently concluded its first call for proposals, approving $338 million in grants to 37 countries across 6 regions to strengthen disease surveillance and early warning systems and laboratories. In New Delhi, President Biden made it clear that the G20 cannot lose its focus on improving pandemic preparedness, prevention, and response. To this end, he has committed an additional $250 million in planned funds to the Pandemic Fund.
• Building stronger health systems. As we emerge from the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries’ health systems are struggling to restore access to basic services, like routine childhood immunization and maternal health care. To help the world get back on track, President Biden launched the Global Health Worker Initiative in 2022, recognizing that a health workforce that is supported, equipped, and protected is necessary to reclaim lost ground from the pandemic and prepare for future health threats. President Biden urged G20 leaders to commit to reverse the first global decline in life expectancy in more than seven decades. G20 leaders committed to work together to strengthen primary health care and restore essential health services to better than pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2025. 
• Tackling the overdose crisis: G20 leaders came together for the first time to elevate counternarcotics challenges, and synthetic drugs in particular, as a G20 priority. Leaders recognized the shared public health threats posed by synthetic drugs and committed to enhanced information sharing and capacity building to address these challenges, advancing the critical actions the Biden-Harris Administration is taking to address the overdose crisis at home.

Delivering for Our Planet

Building a clean energy economy here at home is one of President Biden’s top priorities. But climate change is an issue that requires global action, and the G20 is collectively responsible for about 80 percent of global emissions. In New Delhi, President Biden secured commitments to ensure the G20 continues to set its collective ambition high to address the climate crisis.

• Tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030. At home, President Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to increase investments in clean energy technologies. Outside estimates report that the IRA has already created more than 170,000 jobs and will create 1.5 million over the next decade. And the IRA will expand clean energy supply, speed global adoption, and drive down technology costs by as much as 25 percent globally. I In New Delhi, President Biden and G20 leaders committed to pursue efforts to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030, encouraging more countries to follow the IRA playbook of investing in clean energy manufacturing and deployment, creating jobs, and fighting climate change.
• Recognizing the need to peak global emissions by 2025. President Biden successfully urged the G20 to join together in acknowledging, for the first time, the need to peak global emissions by no later than 2025, and in recognizing the to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent by 2030, and 60 percent by 2035, relative to 2019 levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that these actions are critical to achieving global net zero greenhouse gas emissions/carbon neutrality by or around mid-century and limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
• Encouraging countries to incorporate economy-wide targets covering all greenhouse gases into their nationally determined contributions. G20 nations have the ability to reduce their emissions in a way that meaningfully supports the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and its temperature goals. With President Biden’s leadership, G20 countries for the first time urged all countries to include economy-wide targets covering all greenhouse gases in upcoming cycles for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
• Launching the Global Biofuels Alliance. Sustainable biofuels are critical to facilitating net zero by 2050. Advanced biofuels can be sustainably produced from abundant organic material—and supplied by reliable trading partners like the United States. In New Delhi, the G20 Presidency launched the Global Biofuels Alliance with the United States as a founding member along with India, Brazil, Italy, Canada, Argentina, and South Africa. This new Alliance will bring countries together to expand and create new markets for sustainable biofuels.

Delivering an Inclusive and Responsible Digital Transformation

The digital transformations underway offer the potential to improve the lives of our citizens if they are harnessed responsibly and in a way that drives broadly shared growth. In order to realize the benefits of these technologies, President Biden believes it is necessary to address the barriers to inclusive access and to shape regulatory and governance approaches to maximize their benefits while mitigating their risks. This is the agenda that he championed in New Delhi.

• Harnessing AI responsibly, for good and for all. President Biden championed an approach to AI that includes a commitment to responsible AI development, deployment, and use, to leverage AI to solve pressing challenges while protecting people’s rights and safety.
• Cutting the digital gender divide in half by 2030. Globally, approximately 260 million more men than women were using the internet in 2022—a divide that undermines women’s full participation in the 21^st century economy. President Biden successfully secured a commitment from G20 leaders to halve the digital gender gap by 2030. To help meet this commitment, the United States announced a Women in the Digital Economy Initiative, convening partners from government, the private sector, and civil society to accelerate efforts to close the gender digital divide.
• Improving access to digital services to boost sustainable and inclusive growth. President Biden joined other G20 leaders in taking steps towards unlocking the benefits of digital public infrastructure (DPI), stressing the importance of prioritizing secure, inclusive, and accountable approaches to DPI, built and leveraged by both the public and private sectors, that respect human rights and protect personal data, privacy, and intellectual property rights.

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18. In Ukraine, a U.S. Arms Dealer Is Making a Fortune and Testing Limits

In Ukraine, a U.S. Arms Dealer Is Making a Fortune and Testing Limits

By Justin Scheck and Thomas Gibbons-Neff

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

Sept. 9, 2023

Updated 10:29 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Thomas Gibbons-Neff · September 9, 2023

Billions are pouring into a clubby, secretive arms market. With Pentagon cash and unusually close Ukrainian military ties, Marc Morales has few peers.

The American military contractor Marc Morales, center, posing with two employees — Vladimir Koyfman, left, a chief sergeant in the Ukrainian military, and Denys Vanash, a former Defense Ministry adviser — in a photograph posted on Mr. Morales’s company’s Facebook page.

Sept. 9, 2023, 9:23 a.m. ET

A half-dozen or so men gathered last month for afternoon drinks at the penthouse bar of the 11 Mirrors, one of Kyiv’s swankiest hotels, to discuss the lucrative business of arming Ukrainian troops.

The group included Ukrainian military and government officials, who are always in the market for explosive shells to lob at invading Russian soldiers. The center of attention was their gregarious host, a Florida-based arms contractor named Marc Morales, who regaled them with stories of his new $10 million yacht, the Trigger Happy, and his search for someone to manage his company’s nine-digit portfolio.

And joining the group was a stout, bearded man who served both the buyers and sellers: Vladimir Koyfman, a chief sergeant in the Ukrainian military whom Mr. Morales pays to arrange meetings with his government contacts. That unusual arrangement, legal experts say, tests the boundaries of American and Ukrainian corruption laws prohibiting payments to government officials.

The meeting, which was recounted by two people in attendance, offered a glimpse at a quiet aspect of the Biden administration’s war strategy. The administration has sent Ukraine more than $40 billion in security aid, including advanced weapons like HIMARS rockets and Patriot missiles. But the Pentagon also relies heavily on little-known arms dealers like Mr. Morales, who have the connections needed to secure ammunition, much of it lower-quality or Soviet-caliber, from around the world.

They operate in a notoriously shadowy, clubby arms trade, an industry made even more opaque as Ukraine rolled back years of anticorruption rules. Arms dealers rushed to the country, backed by billions in foreign aid.

Mr. Morales is among Ukraine’s most important such suppliers. The Pentagon has awarded his company about $1 billion in contracts, mostly for ammunition. And records show he has built a roughly $200 million side business selling to the Ukrainians directly.

In addition to employing Sergeant Koyfman, Mr. Morales hired away a longtime adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, who was fired recently amid concerns over graft and mismanagement. And Mr. Morales’s company has been under investigation by Ukrainian anticorruption authorities over a deal that government officials said was botched.

In that way, the deals with Mr. Morales are reminiscent of Ukraine’s freewheeling past, when arms dealers forged cozy relationships with military officials, contracts were signed in secret and weapons brokers frequently found themselves under investigation. The United States has lectured Ukraine’s leaders for more than a decade about the need to clean up that system.

Mr. Morales, 51, was an unlikely choice as one of the Pentagon’s go-to arms dealers.

Ukrainian soldiers carrying ammunition for a training session in February in the Kyiv region.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

The Justice Department indicted him in 2009 on conspiracy and money laundering charges after it said he was caught on tape discussing methods for paying bribes to foreign officials. “You just got to be smarter than the government,” Mr. Morales said on one recording. (F.B.I. agents badly botched the case, and prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges.)

But the war changed the calculus for the Ukrainians and Americans alike. The Biden administration, seeking to arm Ukraine but reluctant to commit troops, needs people like Mr. Morales, who proved in Afghanistan and Syria that he could consistently acquire and deliver weapons.

And Ukrainian officials, with national survival at stake, welcomed back local arms dealers whom, before the war with Russia, they had worked hard to sideline. Early in the war, which began in February 2022, officials scrapped many public procurement and transparency rules and invited private brokers to compete with government buyers. Now, after the firing of the defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, Ukrainian officials are publicly questioning this weapons-at-any-cost strategy.

Mr. Morales declined to be interviewed. Bryan Van Brunt, the general counsel for Mr. Morales’s company, Global Ordnance, said the company followed the law. “Contrary to what we may see in the movies, long-term success depends upon knowing, fully respecting, and following the rules of all countries involved,” he wrote in an email.

Sergeant Koyfman, a Ukrainian American with years of experience as an adviser to Ukraine’s national guard, enlisted when Russia invaded, documents reviewed by The New York Times show. His exact military duties are unclear. He told The Times that he is a chief sergeant in the Ukrainian territorial defense forces, where he supervises and trains a cadre of soldiers. “We are fighters,” he said.

One government official said Mr. Koyfman is a key person to see about weapons, though it was not clear whether that was because of his military position or his role in Global Ordnance.

Vladimir Koyfman, left, and Marc Morales, second from left, after Global Ordnance and Ukroboronprom, a state-owned weapons producer, entered an agreement allowing the Ukrainian government to use Global Ordnance to obtain weapons and ammunition.

For Global Ordnance, Sergeant Koyfman manages contractors in Ukraine and “sets up meetings between our staff and the Ukraine Ministry of Defense,” Mr. Van Brunt said.

Sergeant Koyfman said his military work is unpaid. Mr. Van Brunt was adamant that one job had nothing to do with the other. “Global does not pay for access,” he said. “Not before. Not now. Not ever.” Sergeant Koyfman agreed. “We do training on it every year and sign documents about it,” he said.

Mr. Morales hired Sergeant Koyfman in early 2021, in the months before the company signed a deal with Ukraine to buy explosives. Sergeant Koyfman was photographed alongside him at the contract signing. Other photographs show him attending parties that Mr. Morales threw in Tampa, Fla., this past December and May.

Last year, Global Ordnance posted a video on LinkedIn of Sergeant Koyfman, in uniform, standing beside what he said was a mass grave. “We need artillery. We need rockets,” Sergeant Koyfman says. He does not identify himself as an employee of Global Ordnance, which sells rockets and artillery shells.

American law prohibits companies from paying foreign officials to benefit their business. The law does not exempt volunteers like Sergeant Koyfman. What matters is whether they have influence, said Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor.

Ukrainian law generally prohibits military officials from engaging in paid outside work. Whether Sergeant Koyfman is covered by that law depends on his military duties, not merely his rank. Early in the war, Sergeant Koyfman wrote a letter to Global Ordnance saying that he was “not an employee of the government” but rather a “civilian warfighter.”

Mr. Van Brunt said Ukraine’s government knew about Sergeant Koyfman’s work for Global Ordnance. He said the State Department, which regulates American arms dealing overseas, had also vetted Sergeant Koyfman.

Asked to confirm that, a State Department spokesman only added a new wrinkle. He said he would not “confirm the existence of investigations into possible violations of the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations.” The Times never asked about such an investigation.

Boxes of ammunition at a Ukrainian position last month in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

Separately, Mr. Morales hired Denis Vanash, a longtime adviser to the defense minister. Mr. Vanash left his post early in the war to communicate with the Defense Ministry on behalf of Global Ordnance. Mr. Van Brunt said the ministry confirmed the legality of the hiring.

Mr. Morales’s competitors say that he has an unfair advantage, but it is not his ties to Sergeant Koyfman or Mr. Vanash. It is his ties to the Pentagon.

Arms brokers from around the world are competing for a limited supply of Soviet-style arms, mostly from Eastern Europe, to then sell to Ukraine. With cash pouring in from Washington, Mr. Morales can afford to pay more than his competitors do, several Eastern European arms dealers complained. He then makes good on his American contracts and buys more ammunition on his own to sell to Ukraine directly.

In several cases early in the war, for instance, Mr. Morales outbid rivals to buy explosive shells from Bulgarian arms factories, two competitors said.

Some of the competitors, officials and arms industry figures spoke on the condition of anonymity, either because Ukrainian weapons contracts are classified or because they did not want to get drawn into disputes with Mr. Morales and the Ukrainian government.

There is nothing illegal about outbidding competitors. But it shows how the Pentagon is shaping the global arms market and creating wealthy, politically connected weapons dealers. Ukrainian anti-corruption groups have said the billions of dollars pouring into Eastern European arms markets could shape politics and militaries long after the war’s end.

In some ways, complaints about Mr. Morales boil down to the fact that he is doing a better job than others. He has moved missiles, shells, grenades and armored vehicles to Ukraine from Bulgaria, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan, according to government documents and interviews with weapons traders and government officials. And he is far from the only weapons dealer with relationships in the Ukrainian government.

Mr. Morales’s weapons career almost ended after his indictment was unsealed in 2010. In a sting, prosecutors said, an informant recorded him discussing a supposed arms deal involving payments to an official in the West African nation of Gabon.

He left the industry and, for about two years, sold items like chaise longues for his father-in-law’s outdoor furniture company. “He took the time to reflect on his life, his relationship with his wife and family, and with God,” Mr. Van Brunt said.

In 2012, the federal case disintegrated over issues including the F.B.I.’s handling of its informant. A judge chastised the Justice Department.

A year later, Mr. Morales started Global Ordnance as an arms business consultancy, drawing on more than a decade of experience. He bought a defense contractor and delivered arms to the Pentagon for use against terrorist groups like the Islamic State. His network, spanning the United States, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, proved reliable, and the Pentagon soon became his biggest customer. Global Ordnance won more than $78 million in defense contracts from 2016 to 2019, public records show.

Weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Pentagon awarded Global Ordnance a five-year contract worth up to $750 million to help arm American allies. That became a vehicle for arming Ukraine. Hundreds of millions of additional dollars followed.

The Pentagon declined to comment on Global Ordnance’s contracts.

Mr. Morales’s big break in Ukraine came early in the war. He had a warehouse full of ammunition in Bulgaria that the Pentagon had bought for use in Afghanistan. The Pentagon approved sending it instead to Ukraine in January 2022. It was up to Global Ordnance to get it there.

Mr. Morales made that happen. Sergeant Koyfman worked to redirect the ammunition to Ukraine in his role as a Global Ordnance contractor, Mr. Van Brunt said.

That made Mr. Morales invaluable in the war’s early days and endeared him to Ukrainian officials.

But there has also been friction.

Ukrainian soldiers with a grad multiple rocket launcher last year near Mykolaiv, Ukraine.Credit...Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

An unintended consequence of Ukraine’s frantic buying was a competition between state-owned firms and private dealers. That drove up prices, costing Ukraine money. When the government buys weapons from state-owned companies, the government profits off the deal. When it buys from private sellers, the brokers profit.

That is legal, but has at times frustrated Ukrainian officials. One example involved the purchase of armored vehicles, which the military was desperate to receive. Early in the war, a government-owned company called Ukrinmash negotiated a roughly $65 million deal with an Egyptian seller to buy nearly 200 vehicles, said a person involved in the deal.

Then the deal stalled.

Soon after, Mr. Morales emerged with a contract to provide similar vehicles at similar prices. The difference was that Global Ordnance, not the government-owned company, would earn the profits.

Problems followed. The vehicles arrived improperly outfitted, said Volodymyr Havrylov, an assistant defense minister in Ukraine. Anti-corruption officials began investigating the deal, he said. Investigators have asked questions about both Mr. Morales and the Defense Ministry officials who authorized the contract, according to one person who was interviewed.

The Defense Ministry said that the investigation had been “eliminated.” Anti-corruption officials would not confirm that.

Mr. Van Brunt said that Ukrainian authorities routinely investigated military deals. “This is an ‘investigation,’ and to conflate it with what the public may understand to be an investigation would be inaccurate,” he wrote in an email. He declined to comment on the deal itself.

By the end of last year, Mr. Morales’s success was evident at home in Tampa. Global Ordnance flew its employees in from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, to attend a Christmas party. Mr. Morales posted on Facebook a photograph of himself with his colleagues: Sergeant Koyfman wore wraparound sunglasses and a black T-shirt with an American flag-painted skull. Mr. Vanash wore a traditional Ukrainian shirt embroidered with red and yellow flowers.

Mr. Morales sees a bright future in Ukraine. At the 11 Mirrors last month, conversation turned toward “large contracts that were about to be awarded,” Mr. Van Brunt said. Officials asked whether the company could handle big new deals.

Mr. Morales assured them that it could.

Reporting was contributed by Natalia Yermak, Daria Mitiuk, John Ismay and Tomas Dapkus.

Justin Scheck is a reporter for The Times working on international investigations. More about Justin Scheck

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. More about Thomas Gibbons-Neff

The New York Times · by Thomas Gibbons-Neff · September 9, 2023

19. 5th Circuit finds Biden White House, CDC violated First Amendment

It is a brave new world with social media and the internet but we must ruthlessly guard our first amendment (and all our rights).

In what other country could our courts hold the government accountable this way? (other than like minded democracies of course - but axis of authoritarians I am calling you out)

5th Circuit finds Biden White House, CDC violated First Amendment

The three judge panel found that contacts with tech companies by officials from the White House, the surgeon general’s office, the CDC and the FBI likely amounted to coercion

By Cat Zakrzewski and Joseph Menn

Updated September 8, 2023 at 10:53 p.m. EDT|Published September 8, 2023 at 6:58 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Cat Zakrzewski · September 8, 2023

The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that the Biden White House, top government health officials and the FBI likely violated the First Amendment by improperly influencing tech companies’ decisions to remove or suppress posts on covid-19 and elections in a ruling that is largely a victory for conservatives who’ve long argued that social media platforms’ content moderation efforts restrict their free speech rights.

The judges’ decision modifies a lower court’s injunction, barring some government officials in the White House and FBI from coercing social media platforms to take down or otherwise limit posts on their website. The decision, written by three judges appointed by Republican presidents, comes after the 5th Circuit temporarily barred an order that put wide ranging restrictions on the Biden administration’s communications with social media firms and had also included the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

The judges wrote that the White House likely “coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences.” They also found the White House “significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”

The decision limited the scope of the lower court’s injunction, which had applied to a wide range of officials across the administration, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services and more than a dozen individual government officials. The new order applies only to the White House, the surgeon general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

The Washington Post · by Cat Zakrzewski · September 8, 2023

20.  US repositioning forces in Niger in ‘precautionary’ move

US repositioning forces in Niger in ‘precautionary’ move

BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 09/07/23 7:28 PM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4193258-us-repositioning-forces-in-niger-in-precautionary-move/

The U.S. military is moving some of its forces from a base near Niger’s capital Niamey to another in the Agadez area following a July coup in the city, the Pentagon announced Thursday. 

The United States “is repositioning some of our personnel and some of our assets from Air Base 101 in Niamey to Air Base 201 in Agadez,” Sabrina Singh, deputy press secretary for the Pentagon, told reporters. 

“There is no perceived threat to … U.S. troops and no threat of violence on the ground,” Singh said. “This is simply a precautionary measure.” 

She added that the U.S. force posture has not changed in the country and that a small presence remains at Air Base 101 following the move, which is ongoing. 

She also said “some nonessential personnel and contractors” have left the country. 

Niger has been a key Washington ally and hosts 1,100 U.S. troops largely deployed for counterterrorism efforts and training the country’s forces. 

But after a military coup in late July — when junta leader Abdourahamane Tchiani toppled Niger President Mohamed Bazoum — the Defense Department paused military activity and training in Niger. Washington has said it’s pushing for a “peaceful resolution” to the conflict, stressing that there is no planned withdrawal from the country. 

“The United States does not want to abandon Nigerians that we’ve partnered with,” Singh said in August. 

The U.S. has so far refused to call the events a “coup,” and has expressed hope that Western diplomats can resolve the crisis peacefully. 

France also has troops on the ground in Niger, but French media earlier this week reported that Paris is in talks with Niger’s military about a possible withdrawal of those forces.  

Asked about the development, Singh said there is “no tie” between the U.S. troop movement and “what the French military is doing right now.” 

TAGS ABDOURAHAMANE TCHIANI MOHAMED BAZOUM NIGER NIGER MILITARY TAKEOVER U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

21. What an S-400 kill and a spec ops raid reveal about Ukraine's ability to hit Russia

Actions speak louder than words, but words can reinforce the effects of actions. All warfare is psychological on mulitple levels (mulitple targets audiences). This is especially true if you are conduct a war of exhaustion (and the north Vietnamese Dau Tranh) : 

Political Struggle:

Dan Van - Action among your people - total mobilization of propaganda, motivational & organizational measures to manipulate internal masses and fighting units

Binh Van - Action among enemy military - subversion, proselytizing, propaganda to encourage desertion, defection and lowered morale among enemy troops.

Dich Van - Action among enemy's people - total propaganda effort to sow discontent, defeatism, dissent, and disloyalty among enemy's population.

Military Struggle:

Phase 1: Organizations and Preparation - building cells, recruiting members, infiltrating organizations, creating front groups, spreading propaganda, stockpiling weapons.

Phase 2: Terrorism - Guerrilla Warfare - kidnappings, terrorist attacks, sabotage, guerrilla raids, ambushes, setting of parallel governments in insurgent areas.

Phase 3: Conventional Warfare - regular formations and maneuver to capture key geographical and political objectives.

Two of the more frequently used military strategies are attrition and exhaustion. Attrition means reducing an adversary’s physical capacity to fight; exhaustion entails wearing down the opponent’s willingness to do so. Both strategies can mean long wars, imposing heavy burdens on a nation’s population and economy, meaning they are not always culturally acceptable or economically practical. The Allies’ strategy in the Second World War is a modern example of attrition. A strategy of exhaustion can take several forms: blockades, sieges, guerrilla warfare, and “scorched earth” policies that destroy the physical ground an attacker might use. Physical and political geographies in the region will affect the implementation of either strategy.

Antulio J. Echevarria, II

https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780199340132.003.0003

Excerpts:

Both attacks are notable for their level of destruction. The drones that hit Pskov are reported to have destroyed another Tu-22M3, at least two Ilyushin Il-76 military cargo lifters and also damaged two others. At Kursk, a Mikoyan MiG-29 and four Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter aircraft were put out of action.

But they are also notable for how they were launched, with a shockingly candid statement from a top Ukrainian official that forces are launching these strikes from within Russian-held territory.

“We are working from the territory of Russia,” Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the GRU, told media outlets at the end of August. According to an interview the enigmatic intelligence chief gave the Ukraine Independent Information Agency, his service intends increasingly destructive strikes on Russia. “War should be taken to the enemy’s territory, and for us, that’s Russia. The more the better,” he said.

What an S-400 kill and a spec ops raid reveal about Ukraine's ability to hit Russia - Breaking Defense

According to Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov, the Neptune preformed “flawlessly” during the Aug. 23 attack on a Russian Almaz-Antei S-400 “Triumf” air and missile defense complex.

breakingdefense.com · by Reuben Johnson · September 8, 2023

Ukrainian soldiers take infantry training in Donetsk Oblast as the Russia-Ukraine war continues in Ukraine, on August 11, 2023. (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

FORT LAUDERDALE — With its counteroffensive seemingly stalled out, Ukraine over the last month stepped up its strikes inside Russian held territory — with a combination of weaponry that is symbolic of how Kyiv has fought its conflict since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

On Aug. 23, Ukraine launched a strike deep into the territory of Crimea by a “new, completely modern” missile of Ukrainian design, destroying a Russian S-400 “Triumf” air and missile defense system — Russia’s most advanced defensive capability.

The day after the destruction of the S-400, Ukrainian special operations forces belonging to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR), supported by the Ukrainian Navy landed on the west coast of Crimea near the settlements of Olenivka and Mayak. GUR’s Telegram channel reported that “special units on watercraft landed on the shore” before engaging Russian troops stationed in the area with the Ukraine units reporting having suffered no losses.

It’s no surprise Ukraine would try to trumpet these victories, coming as they do near the Aug. 24 Ukraine Independence Day, which is now only behind Christmas and Easter as a national day of celebration. But they also speak to how Ukraine is trying to disrupt Russia away from the front lines — with a mix of long-range strikes and special operators willing to go deep in enemy territory. And in both cases, home-grown, or at least home-repurposed, weapons are playing an outsize role.

Repurposing and Modifying

At a price of over $600 million per unit, the S-400 is one of the most expensive air defense systems in Russia’s inventory. It had been deployed in Crimea since 2016 to control air space over the entire western half of the Black Sea.

In contrast, the S-360 Neptune missile designed by the Luch State Design Bureau in Kyiv cost a fraction of this sum — even with the low rate of production before the February 2022 invasion. The same missile sank the Moskva battle cruiser that had been the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship in April 2022, and reportedly was the missile that destroyed the S-400.

According to Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov, the Neptune preformed “flawlessly” during the Aug. 23 attack on a Russian Almaz-Antei S-400 “Triumf” air and missile defense complex. This Russian missile defense system was located at Cape Tarkhankut in the northwest region of the Crimean peninsula that juts into the Black Sea.

The S-400 was protected by a short range air defense (SHORAD) KBP Tula Pantsir-S1/2 (SA-22) that was supposed to have been datalinked to the S-400’s radar. However, both the S-400 and Pantsir radars appear to have failed to detect the Neptune, and the SHORAD system was not able to bring it down. This mirrors an episode from earlier this summer when a Pantsir was unable to bring down MBDA Storm Shadow missiles even at point blank range. Moscow has lost at least 18 Pantsir units since the beginning of the war, per open source tracking.

The Neptune was first designed as an anti-ship missile, but Luch added in a GPS guidance capacity to supplement its seeker, which was designed by Radionix in Kyiv, one of the most capable defense electronics firms in Ukrainian industry. This gave the missile the flexibility to be re-purposed as a land-attack weapon.

A senior Ukrainian designer, briefed on the Aug. 23 attack, told Breaking Defense that “the seeker was switched into the passive mode for this strike. There were also modifications made to incorporate digital scene matching into the guidance system.” This is a similar capability to targeting technology on-board the MBDA Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG and the Lockheed Martin JASSM missiles — once in terminal phase, the imaging mode of the seeker compares the target area with pre-loaded digital scenery and continues on to target if the two are consistent with one another.

Of course, Neptune isn’t alone. Ukraine has been repurposing missile systems and other platforms since the beginning of the war. Several strikes on targets deep behind Russian lines have utilized a modified version of the S-200 (SA-5) surface-to-air missile, designated 5V28 or V-860/880 in this configuration — a weapon, like much of Ukraine’s legacy arsenal, originally designed for the Russian military.

According to the Ukrainian design bureau that developed these modifications, the first example of this missile being used for this mission was the August 2022 attack on the Novofedorivka airbase near Saki in Crimea. In early July a similarly modified S-200 struck an industrial site in Bryansk, 110 miles inside of Russia. Three weeks later the same type of missile almost hit a Russian bomber base in Taganrog.

Russian air defense forces claim to have foiled attacks using the same S-200-based missile, to include an attempt to inflict additional damage on the Kerch bridge linking Crimea with the Russian mainland. However, missile analysts have noted that for all these intercept claims by Moscow there is curious lack of footage to this effect.

The benefit for the Ukraine military is that the S-200 is basically a free weapons: it retired several hundred S-200s from service a decade ago, leaving Kyiv with an arsenal in excess of the Russian air defense forces’ ability to intercept them.

Then there are the closer-in strikes. One of the biggest trends to come from the Ukraine conflict is how both sides have used drones. Ukraine has seen particular success in hotwiring, repurposing or developing new systems, and those now appear to be in play behind enemy lines.

One day before the attack on the S-400 battery, a Ukrainian helicopter drone destroyed a Russian Aerospace Forces’ (VKS) Tupolev Tu-22M3 Backfire bomber at the Soltsy-2 aerodrome near St. Petersburg in the north of Russia. About a week later, Ukrainian drones hit six regions deep inside of Russia, including the aerodrome at Pskov near the border with Estonia and another military airfield at Kursk, which is south of Moscow and west of the regional capital of Voronezh.

Both attacks are notable for their level of destruction. The drones that hit Pskov are reported to have destroyed another Tu-22M3, at least two Ilyushin Il-76 military cargo lifters and also damaged two others. At Kursk, a Mikoyan MiG-29 and four Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter aircraft were put out of action.

But they are also notable for how they were launched, with a shockingly candid statement from a top Ukrainian official that forces are launching these strikes from within Russian-held territory.

“We are working from the territory of Russia,” Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the GRU, told media outlets at the end of August. According to an interview the enigmatic intelligence chief gave the Ukraine Independent Information Agency, his service intends increasingly destructive strikes on Russia. “War should be taken to the enemy’s territory, and for us, that’s Russia. The more the better,” he said.

Russian Challenges

The strikes also underline a series of challenges facing Russia’s defense of its own territory, even as it is largely having success — much to the disappointment of Ukraine’s supporters abroad — holding the line against Ukraine’s much-ballyhooed summer counteroffensive.

One is that there are simply not enough current-day air defense assets in Russia to cope with the strikes launched by the Ukrainian military, as well as the increasing ranges of the drones and missiles employed. The Pskov aerodrome should have been a high-priority for the air defense forces; that it was protected only by an older-generation ZSU-23-4 Shilka battery, a weapon initially used in the Vietnam era, is a sign of how thinly stretched Russia’s modern air defense systems are.

Secondly, datalinking the latest-generation SHORAD Pantsir-S1/2 (SA-22) vehicles to the radar command post of longer-range systems like the S-400 in Crimea have proven to be ineffective. The Pantsir was supposed to take out low-flying targets, but it not only missed the Neptune missile, but also failed to even shoot down the Ukraine drone that videoed the entire incident.

Thirdly, Russia’s drone costs per unit appear to be higher than what Ukraine is able to put in the field. For instance, a so-called “carboard” (actually wax-covered foamboard) Corvo drone manufactured by SYPAQ in Australia was responsible for the strike on the aircraft destroyed at the Kursk air base. These models cost around $3,000 apiece and weigh less than seven pounds, but they are destroying aircraft that weigh tons and cost in the millions.

In contrast, Russia has been trying to establish parity in the drone wars by building its own production line for the Iranian-made Shaheed attack UAVs (which cost $20,000 or more) at Alabuga in Tartarstan. However, a report by the Washington Post has outlined a number of key challenges facing the effort.

Among them: To keep key personnel tethered to the factory, Moscow’s FSB confiscated their passports so they could not leave Russia. Finding enough qualified production workers has proven elusive. At one point the factory management realized they did not have a forklift truck to unload disassembled, crated drones sent from Iran. Once one was located it was determined none of the personnel on hand were qualified to operate it.

In the longer term, Russia faces a deeper problem in that its production lines for these strategic platforms like the Il-76 and Tu-22M3 shut down decades ago. Consequently, there are very few possibilities to manufacture replacements for the aircraft lost in this war.

Ukrainian defense officials that previously had interaction with the Russian enterprises that make vital radar systems, electronic warfare pods and avionics tell Breaking Defense many critical specialists and engineers have left Russia, and claim that the factories cannot import enough components to support wartime-tempo production.

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