Quotes of the Day:

"Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down to short the survivors."

– Ernest Hemingway

“The less talent they, the more pride, vanity and arrogance they have. All these fools, however, find other fools applaud them.”

– Erasmus, 1509

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."

– Margaret Mead

(Similarly: "When the hour of crisis comes, remember that 40 selected men can shake the world." – Yasotay, Mongol Warlord)

1. Function… then Form: Rethinking the Operational Command Structure of US SOF

2. Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97

3. WEEKEND INTERVIEW: Former U.S. Commander Sees Momentum Shift in Ukraine (Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges (Ret.))

4. Exclusive: America falters in fighting the information war

5. Cognitive Combat: China, Russia, and Iran’s Information War Against Americans

6. Dispatch from Taipei: Why Taiwan’s survival may depend on deterrence through resilience

7. NATO’s Fast Approaching “Moment of Truth” on Ukraine

8. Japan and Philippines trying to finish defense pact for signing in Manila as alarm grows over China

9. China mocks U.S. presidential debate: "very entertaining"

10. How will Trump and Biden differ on top foreign policy issues? A post-debate primer on what we learned.

11.  Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 28, 2024

12. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 28, 2024

13. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, June 27, 2024

14. Opinion | I Study Disinformation. This Election Will Be Grim.

15. Shall We Hunt and Expose a Potential Russian Network Operating in the US Presidential Election?

16. The Biden admin has no firm plan to call out domestic disinformation in the 2024 election

17. Danger of War in East Asia Ignored in Debate Despite Beijing’s Growing Aggression

18. The Postwar Vision That Sees Gaza Sliced Into Security Zones

19. Brexit Backlash: Brits Now Regret Their Populist Revolt

20. [Newspoint] Where Marcos has taken us since Duterte

21. The monument to Ukraine’s past corruption

1. Function… then Form: Rethinking the Operational Command Structure of US SOF

This essay basically asks the question, how should we organize our national security capabilities for competition? Specifically how should DOD support competition? And to point a fine point on it: how should we optimize our TSOCs to support strategic competition in the context of the interagency?

Interesting that there is no mention of irregular warfare in this essay. - Actually I do not mean that as a criticism - it is a question of should we emphasize and prioritize IW as the military contribution to political warfare which is the reality of strategic competition (even if no one wants to use that terminology and DOD only talks IW reluctantly while biting its tongue and holding its nose and refuses to recognize PW?) Or should IW be accepted as a routine characteristic of strategic competition and therefore should require no specific emphasis since it is inherent in such competition? (That is kind of the difference between the 2018 NDS with an IW annex and the 2022 NDS that only mentions IW in passing and only in terms of our adversaries.) Unfortunately that will only happen when we achieve enlightenment in strategic thinking.

Hopefully this will provoke some critical thinking. TSOCs are important organizations with significant potential. How can we effectively employ them?

Function… then Form: Rethinking the Operational Command Structure of US SOF

By Jeremiah Monk

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/function-then-form-rethinking-the-operational-command-structure-of-us-sof?postId=fb06ab6e-4179-4219-8c73-d2584f553e6f&utm

INTRODUCTION

The US Department of Defense (DoD) continues to struggle with the adaptation required to meet the era of global strategic competition. Pentagon strategists have clearly explained the imperative,[i] but the Department has yet to realize that both its functionality and form are not up to the task. The DoD’s impediment is twofold: a regionally focused operational organization and a primary focus on the operational military aspects of competition. To maintain US National Security and uphold the US-led international order that enables it, the DoD must rethink how it coordinates, integrates, and executes competition activities.

A wealth of documentation already exists on how exceptionally well-suited US Special Operations Forces (SOF) are to integrate and lead a global competition campaign.[ii] However, despite the impressive capabilities of the US SOF Enterprise, it too is largely impeded by the same geographic boundaries as the larger DoD. Furthermore, as most strategic competition occurs in non-military fields of play (diplomatic, economic, informational, legal, financial, etc.), competition is a strategic challenge that cannot be approached by a military structure alone. The proven structure of a Joint Inter-Agency Task Force (JIATF) is well suited to address the later challenge. The former issue will require an entity with the experience, presence, and perspective to effectively serve as a trans-regional integrator for strategic competition.

THE US SPECIAL OPERATIONS ENTERPRISE: A PRIMER

Note: This section provides an orientation for those readers unfamiliar with the command and control structure of the US Military and US Special Operations Command. Readers familiar with this structure may prefer to skip to the next section.

The Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986[iii] instituted a regionally aligned military command structure still in use. This organizational construct primarily reflected the concept of warfighting of the day in which combat operations would largely be confined to geographic, physical theaters of operation. The Unified Combatant Commands (now Geographic Combatant Commands, or GCCs) were organizations by which the DoD could effectively delegate command and control of military activities without going so far as to establish a centralized General Staff. Now codified into law as Title 10 USC § 164 (c)[iv], Combatant Commanders hold specified authorities within their geographically-assigned regions, to include:

(B) prescribing the chain of command to the commands and forces within the command;

(C) organizing commands and forces within that command as he considers necessary to carry out missions assigned to the command;

(D) employing forces within that command as he considers necessary to carry out missions assigned to the command;

(E) assigning command functions to subordinate commanders;

Following Goldwater-Nichols, the Nunn-Cohen amendment to the 1988 National Defense Authorization Act[v] codified authorities in Title 10 USC § 167[vi] for US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) similar to that of a military service branch. Paragraph (e) of this section also grants the Commander of USSOCOM the authorities of a Combatant Commander listed in Title 10 USC § 164, to include:

(C) organizing commands and forces within that command as he considers necessary to carry out missions assigned to the command;

(D) employing forces within that command as he considers necessary to carry out missions assigned to the command;

(E) assigning command functions to subordinate commanders

Despite the USSOCOM Commander holding these Combatant authorities, SOF operations typically fall under the authority of the GCC in which they occur. 10 USC § 167 (d) prescribes: “Unless otherwise directed by the President or the Secretary of Defense, a special operations activity or mission shall be conducted under the command of the commander of the unified combatant command in whose geographic area the activity or mission is to be conducted.”[vii] This caveat significantly limits the operational command authority of the USSOCOM Commander. It puts SOF assigned to a theater in the position of aligning their focus to support the priorities of their assigned regional GCC.

USSOCOM has established seven Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOC), with subordinate headquarters elements aligned with the regional GCCs. Each TSOC (save one) is led by a general or flag officer, and provides logistics, planning, and operational command and control for all SOF in that GCC’s area of responsibility (AOR) to include sensitive SOF activities.[viii] Through SOF employment in-theater, TSOCs ensure access, placement, and influence in support of their GCC’s regional campaign plans and enable the application of SOF in GCC warfighting plans. However, GCCs and TSOCs normally opt to delegate command and control of combat operations to subordinate Task Force structures, preferring to have dedicated subordinate commanders to focus on managing the day-to-day demands of ongoing operations.

USSOCOM provides resources and administrative support to the TSOCs, but the TSOCs take their operational marching orders from their respective GCCs. As GCCs are constrained by geographic boundaries, scope of responsibility, and a military-centric point of view, so too are the TSOCs. Each GCC has one assigned TSOC, with one notable exception: US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) has two TSOCs, Special Operations Command Pacific (SOCPAC) and Special Operations Command Korea (SOCKOR).

TSOCs APART

SOCKOR is an interesting animal. It is a TSOC focused on a specific region, the Korean peninsula. It reports to US Forces Korea (USFK), a sub-unified command underneath US INDOPACOM. It is also the only TSOC with the dual luxuries of having a singular geopolitical problem set (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK) and only one partner force to work with (the Republic of Korea, ROK).

The frozen conflict with North Korea is the sole reason for the existence of SOCKOR and USFK. The nature of the situation leaves little else for these commands to do other than help the ROK deter DPRK aggression and prepare for war. SOCKOR has limited visibility and no authority outside of the Korean Peninsula, and, as with USFK, its plans and operations are heavily influenced by the threat of combat.

Though the DPRK is essentially a regional actor, it does conduct activities that are adversarial to the US, US allies, and US partners across the globe.[ix] The DPRK is closely integrated with the People’s Republic of China and increasingly so with Russia, and therefore appropriately serves as the antagonist in one of the DoD’s five Global Campaign Plans. SOCKOR, as the only SOF entity aligned to this problem, is the only entity that is able to serve as USSOCOM’s lead agent for dealing with the global DPRK threat system. But because of SOCKOR’s regional constraint and warfighting focus, the command is poorly equipped to advise on the application of SOF to support non-warfighting competitive operations across the rest of the globe (e.g., DPRK sending maritime shipments of munitions to support Russia’s war in Ukraine).[x]

The other six TSOCs are worse off. Each has taken on the role of SOF lead agents for the most significant adversary home-based in their AOR (SOCEUR – Russia, SOCPAC - China, etc) – a situation driven as much by regional proximity as by the artificial economics of USSOCOM favoring threat-based (vs. objective-based) resource prioritization guidance. Like SOCKOR, all TSOCs are regionally constrained to the AOR of the GCC to which they are assigned. However, all the others must contend with added complexity caused by the adversarial activities of all five strategic competitors operating in their AORs.

This fragmentation ensures no one TSOC can understand, much less effectively counter, the entirety of a singular threat system -and much less so the interconnectivity of five systems spread across all competitive fields of play. Furthermore, as the existing DoD resource allocation processes force each TSOC to compete with each other for limited manpower and funding allocation, each TSOC is inherently motivated to address only the largest adversary in their own backyard, only within that adversary’s backyard, which effectively leaves the rest of the globe up for grabs.

KEEPING AN EYE ON THE (WRONG) PRIZE

As military organizations, TSOCs and the GCCs to which they are assigned tend to look at problems from the military perspective. This leads them to develop plans and operations with a distinct military focus. GCCs were established with an eye to regional warfighting, and this focus drives the TSOCs to spend a significant amount of effort planning for hypothetical combat operations – often at the detriment of actual ongoing strategic competition. Thus, not only are regional US command structures limited to looking at the actions of one regional adversary, but they do so through the lens of offense or defense warfighting.

As TSOCs are the operational arms of the US SOF enterprise, this fragmentation of focus severely inhibits the ability of USSOCOM to see and understand the larger global connectivity of the ongoing competitive context. Because USSOCOM is not an operational command by 10 USC § 167 (d), the short-term risk to force is low. However, because USSOCOM is responsible for developing strategies, plans, programs, and a force structure to provide SOF to address this rapidly changing environment, there is a real - and severe - risk to both the mission and force of the future.

But it gets worse. Military organizations, staffed by military personnel and focused on military problems, are essentially blind to the non-military dimensions of a problem set. Military planners do generally not concern themselves with such things as capital funding flows, trade agreements, transnational organized crime, or the brazen pillaging of sovereign resources, even within their AORs. The diplomatic, economic, and informational aspects of strategic problem sets are often discussed in Senior Service Schools but more often go overlooked in military campaign planning - yet these non-military realms are the active fields of strife.

Military organizations tend to do military things. Militaries tend to focus heavily on those things: war and the deterrence thereof. But combat normally happens only when lower-level competitive options have been exhausted. Most of those competitive options are not in the military’s purview and often go ignored or unseen by military planners. By maintaining such a relentless focus on the hypothetical worst-case scenario, the DoD, and by extension SOF, are therefore preparing to win a fight that may never be while actively losing the fight, that is.

LEVERAGING THE INTERAGENCY

Because competition primarily occurs outside the military domain, the obvious solution is for the DoD to look for opportunities to support other government agencies, leveraging their unique capabilities and authorities to provide a more holistic approach to strategic competition. This idea is not new - the US military often provides manpower, planning, logistics, and transportation support to bolster interagency and coalition partners with the authority, access, and capabilities required for mission success.

The standard structure formed to accomplish a specific interagency mission set is called a Joint Inter-Agency Task Force. Historically, the most successful JIATFs support law enforcement and homeland defense, the most notable example being JIATF-South. [xi] Established under US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), JIATF-S “conducts detection and monitoring operations…to facilitate the interdiction of illicit trafficking in support of national and partner nation security.” JIATF-South works because it is built to leverage the authorities of the IA partners, particularly those of law enforcement. It works because it is designed to put the military instrument of power in support of the IA partners. It also works despite being subordinate to USSOUTHCOM largely because the GCC is limited in authorities, resources, and potential for combat operations. JIATFs are also constructed to be network-centric, which encourages coordination and support from other JIATFs.

The JIATF structure presents a promising organizational structure to address the non-military aspects of strategic competition. The organization could expand to include partner nations to form a Combined-JIATF, reinforcing international trust and cooperation. At a minimum, such a JIATF would need to include representatives from the Departments of State, Commerce, Energy, Justice, Homeland Security (DHS), Transportation, Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Intelligence Community (IC), all underpinned by the capabilities of the DoD.

Of course, the nature of global strategic competition is far too large for any one JIATF. As the success of JIATF-S demonstrates, JIATFs are most effective when they have a clear scope and an achievable mission. JIATFs are probably, therefore, best formed to address more regional mission sets that support larger strategic objectives, such as:

Countering Chinese Influence in the South China Sea:

• Objective: Protect freedom of navigation and uphold international maritime law.
• Actions: Conduct joint patrols with regional allies, engage in diplomatic efforts to resolve territorial disputes, and support regional capacity-building initiatives.
• IATF Members:
• DoD: Conducts joint patrols and military presence.
• State: Engages in diplomatic efforts and negotiations.
• Commerce: Manages trade policies and economic sanctions.
• IC: Provides intelligence and surveillance.

Securing US Interests in the Arctic:

• Objective: Address strategic challenges and opportunities in the Arctic region, including homeland security, trade routes, environmental resilience, economic development, and upholding international law.
• Actions: Enhance surveillance and defense capabilities, address climate change impacts, promote responsible economic opportunities, and foster international cooperation.
• IATF Members:
• DoD: Enhances surveillance and defense capabilities.
• State: Leads diplomatic efforts and fosters international cooperation.
• DHS: Supports homeland security and maritime law enforcement.
• NOAA: Monitor climate change impacts and environmental resilience.
• EPA: Ensures environmental protection and resilience-building efforts.
• Commerce: Promotes responsible economic opportunities and sustainable development.
• IC: Provides intelligence and surveillance to support strategic objectives.

Stabilizing the Sahel Region in Africa:

• Objective: Counter violent extremism and support regional stability.
• Actions: Provide security assistance and training to local forces, support humanitarian efforts, and engage in development projects to address root causes of instability.
• IATF Members:
• DoD: Provides security assistance and training.
• State: Leads diplomatic efforts and regional partnerships.
• USAID: Supports humanitarian and development projects.
• Justice: Assists in building local law enforcement capacity.

Supporting Democratic Governance in Latin America:

• Objective: Promote democratic institutions and counter malign influence.
• Actions: To strengthen democratic governance, assist in electoral processes, provide anti-corruption training, and support civil society organizations.
• IATF Members:
• State: Promotes democratic institutions and anti-corruption initiatives.
• USAID: Provides development assistance and supports civil society.
• Justice: Offers anti-corruption training and legal support.
• Commerce: Facilitates economic development and trade.

Enhancing Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific:

• Objective: Counter illicit activities and ensure maritime security.
• Actions: Conduct joint maritime patrols, support regional maritime law enforcement agencies, and engage in capacity-building initiatives to enhance regional maritime security capabilities.
• IATF Members:
• DoD: Conducts joint maritime patrols and training.
• State: Engages in diplomatic efforts and regional cooperation.
• DHS: Supports maritime law enforcement.
• IC: Provides intelligence and surveillance.

DoD has activities and operations that are oriented to each of these objectives. However, without other government agencies' added capability and authority, the efforts are unilateral and, therefore, inherently handicapped. Forming JIATFs to address these example missions could be a remedy, though, like other successful JIATFs, they will need to be underpinned by DoD organizational support. Fortunately, the DoD has already established regionally-focused commands that are already used to working with IA partners and in the complex world of competition. Reenter the TSOCs.

JIATF-TSOC

TSOCs are well-positioned to form the core of JIATFs aimed at specific mission sets that increase the US competitive advantage. TSOCs already have established command and control capabilities, infrastructure, regional expertise, and interagency coordination mechanisms. They work closely with US envoys and country teams and maintain long-standing relationships with partner forces. The special activities sections of TSOCs routinely work closely with interagency partners, and already have a wealth of experience reaching innovative solutions through combining authorities. TSOCs also possess the infrastructure and operational experience necessary to plan, coordinate, and conduct joint operations below the threshold of combat operations.

Ultimately, just like with JIATF-South, a JITAF would most likely fall under the administrative umbrella of a GCC. This is not to say that a GCC or TSOC should always lead a JIATF. This is especially true considering TSOCs have other roles and responsibilities and limited manpower and time. However, a TSOC is well suited to host a JIATF and serve as the DoD’s contributing member of the IA team. In this capacity, the TSOC can request and manage SOF (ideally suited to accomplish these missions), provide resources and logistics support, and command and control DoD operations as necessary.

JIATFs should be led by a senior official from the government agency with the most at stake in the particular mission. Just as JIATF-S is a law enforcement mission led by the US Coast Guard (DHS), the JIATF-South America example above should be led by the Department of State. The JIATF-Africa example, however, is more suited to be led by DoD (SOCAFRICA). The unified mission is vital to the success of a JIATF, so even though the organization may be formed under a GCC and on a military foundation, it must not be dominated by a military predisposition.

JIATFs are a potential solution to integrate interagency capabilities to accomplish missions that will impact the greater context of global strategic competition. This solves one problem: unilateral DoD operations focusing only on the military aspects of competition. However, JIATF missions must be limited in scope, purpose, and geography. The second issue, that of strategic competition being global vs regional, will not be solved by the JIATF structure. A more global perspective is needed to decide where and why to invest in JIATFs, integrate strategic objectives, and assess the impacts.

TRANSREGIONAL INTEGRATION

USSOCOM is an excellent candidate to fill this role as the integrator of global strategic competition. The command has a global perspective, worldwide access and presence, a long history of working with IA and foreign partners, and the responsibility to develop, manage, and allocate SOF. This force offers many exquisite capabilities needed to operate in the “grey zone” of competition.[xiii]

True, 10 USC § 167 (d) says USSOCOM must relinquish operational control of SOF operating in-theater to the GCC Commander. However, USSOCOM still has robust responsibilities and authorities available, and in the case of competition, they are arguably more potent than operational control. USSOCOM holds the power of resource allocation.

Like Congress, USSOCOM holds the power of the purse – in this case, the power to allocate both forces and funds. Though TSOCs plan and execute operations and activities for the GCCs, they must request forces for those activities from USSOCOM. USSOCOM, therefore, has the power to decide what type of force to send, when to send it, for how long, which authorities to grant that force, or whether to send a force at all. Through allocation, USSOCOM has the power to shape what sort of operations the TSOCs plan to do in the first place, well before the period of GCC-controlled operational execution.

This responsibility puts USSOCOM in a unique position to offer strategic orientation and synchronization that can better integrate trans-regional competition activities by steering resources to those activities that best align with this strategy. That strategy should look more at the global landscape of strategic competition, evaluate where US interests are at risk, and recommend competition operations, much like the above examples. USSOCOM could then incentivize TSOCs to plan and request resources for these activities by establishing clear rules, guidance, and priorities for resourcing – setting the “rules of the game” for its annual force allocation process. If TSOCs want to succeed in receiving an allocation of SOF, they would have a much higher chance of success if their request aligns with USSOCOM’s recommended strategy.

Of course, TSOCs must nest their planned activities to support GCC regional theater campaign strategies and support GCC SOF requirements. This is not to suggest otherwise. Most competition and JIATF-appropriate activities would nest well with GCC regional campaign plans. USSOCOM must balance its strategy against regional requirements and prioritize allocation accordingly. But far too often, TSOCs are left to develop long-range plans in a vacuum of strategic guidance. The global nature of competition presents USSOCOM with an opportunity to fill this void. USSOCOM should strive to provide clear resource prioritization direction to the TSOCs on the types of operations and activities that would move the needle in strategic competition, then allow the TSOCs time to plan accordingly.

USSOCOM currently has a force allocation process that does this in part, but it is largely unguided by strategy, reactive to current events, and heavily threat-centric. This process is inherently flawed, as it establishes resourcing incentives based on regional adversaries instead of upon objectives. Instead, USSOCOM should look to develop a global strategy for competition that orients on national interests, prescribes conceptual operations and activities required to secure those interests, provides prioritization guidance, and recommends the types of forces required to achieve those objectives – to include a JIATF is appropriate. Establishing this sort of resourcing guidance would be welcomed by the TSOCs and significantly change the reactive and regionally fragmented way SOF is currently allocated. Furthermore, it would address the second problem by establishing USSOCOM as the DoD entity to integrate and synchronize competition objectives across regional boundaries.

CONCLUSION

The DoD’s approach to strategic competition is hindered in two dimensions. One is a military-centric perspective, which in competition is often ill-suited for the task. Military organizations are frequently left blind to their adversaries gaining competitive advantage in their AORs. The JIATF structure presents a historically proven solution to address the larger scope of competition. However, the DoD must carefully consider what IA authorities or equities are essential for the mission and which agency is best positioned to lead. With their existing structure, networks, relationships, and capabilities, TSOCs are well-suited to form the foundation for these competition-focused JIATFs.

The other issue that inhibits the DoD’s approach to competition is the regionally constrained nature of its command structure. GCCs are poorly situated to lead a global strategic competition campaign - they focus on the problems in their own backyard and have no authority and little visibility outside their regions. However, a global command like USSOCOM is well suited to develop and synchronize a global strategy for competition. This is especially so as USSOCOM holds the power of allocation of SOF, which would be the primary contributor of DoD to this competition campaign.

The imperative is real. Adversaries of the United States aim to defeat the United States strategically without resorting to armed conflict, necessitating a persistent and integrated approach to national security. By establishing JIATFs, the DoD can leverage the combined expertise and capabilities of various USG departments and agencies, ensuring a cohesive and comprehensive response to multifaceted threats. USSOCOM, with its trans-regional operational capabilities and experience in integrating interagency efforts, is uniquely positioned to lead these initiatives. A globally synchronized competition campaign would allow the United States to shape the competitive space proactively, tilting the balance in favor of U.S. interests and undermining adversaries' strategies. This approach not only more effectively deters aggression while preparing for potential conflicts, but also supports partners in achieving shared strategic objectives, in turn enhancing the overall resilience and effectiveness of US national security efforts.

The alternative is bleak. Our adversaries are actively working to undermine the US-led world order. Should the DoD continue its unilateral, disaggregated, and unsynchronized approach to strategic competition, the result will most likely be a loss of national influence, access, and advantage – without a fight- leaving the DoD with little left to fight for. At present this remains a choice for both USSOCOM and DoD, but time is running short as adversaries grow increasingly bolder. Simply rebranding counterterrorism-era functionality and form as a panacea for great power competition will only increase the chances of strategic defeat.

NOTES

[i] Joint Staff. Joint Concept for Competing. Washington D.C., February 10, 2023, as published by Small Wars Journal on February 26, 2023. https://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/joint-concept-competing?utm_source=pocket_saves (accessed June 17, 20214)

[ii] Aaron Bazin, et.al., “On Competition: Adapting to the Contemporary Strategic Environment.” JSOU Report 21-5, JSOU Press, August 2021. https://jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/8 (accessed June 20, 2024).

[iii] US Public Law 99-433, “Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986”, 1 Oct 1986. https://history.defense.gov/Portals/70/Documents/dod_reforms/Goldwater-NicholsDoDReordAct1986.pdf

[iv] US Code, Title 10 – Armed Forces, section 164 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title10/pdf/USCODE-2011-title10-subtitleA-partI-chap6-sec164.pdf

[v] 100th US Congress. “H.R.1748 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989.” 4 Dec 1987. https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-bill/1748#:~:text=Authorizes%20appropriations%20to%20the%20reserve,this%20or%20any%20other%20Act.

[vi] US Code, Title 10 – Armed Forces, section 167 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title10/pdf/USCODE-2011-title10-subtitleA-partI-chap6-sec167.pdf

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF): Background and Issues for Congress.” Updated 11 May 2022. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RS/RS21048/71#:~:text=U.S.%20Special%20Operations%20Command%20(USSOCOM,%2C%20train%2C%20and%20equip%20TSOCs.

[ix] Jean Mackenzie, “North Korean weapons are killing Ukrainians. The implications are far bigger.” BBC, 4 May 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68933778

[x] Joyce Sohyun Lee and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “Russia and North Korea’s military deal formalizes a bustling arms trade.” The Washington Post, June 22, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/22/russia-north-korea-military-deal-ukraine/ (accessed June 22, 2024).

[xi] Evan Munsing and Christopher J. Lamb, “Joint Interagency Task Force–South: The Best Known, Least Understood Interagency Success” National Defense University Institute for National Security Studies, Strategic Perspectives No. 5, 2011. https://ndupress.ndu.edu/portals/68/documents/stratperspective/inss/strategic-perspectives-5.pdf

[xii] Joint Staff, “Joint Concept for Competing.” Washington D.C., February 10, 2023, p.v.; as published by Small Wars Journal on February 26, 2023. https://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/joint-concept-competing?utm_source=pocket_saves (accessed June 17, 2024)

[xiii] Forward Defense experts, “Today’s wars are fought in the ‘gray zone.’ Here’s everything you need to know about it.” Atlantic Council, February 23, 2022. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/todays-wars-are-fought-in-the-gray-zone-heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-it/ (Accessed June 23, 2024).

2. Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97

The passing of another great American. When will we ever learn and listen to the people who are in the trenches doing the actual work? 

Three strikes of prejudice against her:

A woman who was Black and an enlisted soldier not an officer.

At least one of those prejudices exist to this day.

Excerpts:

The Army’s refusal to take Specialist Allen’s analysis seriously suggested to her that she was viewed with prejudice, as a Black woman who was not an officer. She was one of about 700 women in the corps, known as WACs, serving in intelligence positions during the Vietnam era, and only 10 percent were Black.

In 1991, she told Newsday, “My credibility was like nothing: woman — Black woman, at that.”

Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97

Her warning of a big buildup of enemy troops poised to attack South Vietnam in 1968 was ignored, a major U.S. Army intelligence failure during the war.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/world/asia/doris-allen-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

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Doris I. Allen in an undated photograph. She joined the U.S. Army’s Women’s Army Corps in 1950 and was the first woman to attend its prisoner of war interrogation course before she served in Vietnam in 1967.Credit...via Christina Brown Fisher

By Richard Sandomir

June 28, 2024

Updated 6:29 p.m. ET

Doris Allen, an Army intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War whose warning about the impending attacks in early 1968 by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces that became known as the Tet offensive was ignored by higher-ups, died on June 11 in Oakland, Calif. She was 97.

Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Amy Stork, chief of public affairs for the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence.

Specialist Allen, who enlisted in the U.S. Army’s Women’s Army Corps in 1950, volunteered to serve in Vietnam in 1967, hoping to use her intelligence training to save lives. She had been the first woman to attend the Army’s prisoner of war interrogation course and worked for two years as the strategic intelligence analyst for Latin American affairs at Fort Bragg, N.C., now Fort Liberty.

Working from the Army Operations Center in Long Binh, South Vietnam, Specialist Allen developed intelligence in late 1967 that detected a buildup of at least 50,000 enemy troops, perhaps reinforced by Chinese soldiers, who were preparing to attack South Vietnamese targets. And she pinpointed when the operation would start: Jan. 31, 1968.

In an interview for the book “A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 American Women Who Served in Vietnam” (1986), by Keith Walker, Specialist Allen recalled writing a report warning that “we’d better get our stuff together because this is what is facing us, this is going to happen and it’s going to happen on such and such a day, around such and such a time.”

She said she told an intelligence officer: “We need to disseminate this. It’s got to be told.”

But it wasn’t. She pushed for someone up the chain of command to take her report seriously, but no one did. On Jan. 30, 1968 — in line with what she predicted — the enemy surprised American and South Vietnamese military leaders with the size and scope of their attacks.

Image

Wounded U.S. soldiers aboard a makeshift ambulance weeks after the Tet Offensive started in Vietnam in 1968. Specialist Allen had warned the Army in late 1967 of a large-scale attack by the North on the South, even pinpointing when it would happen, but her intelligence went ignored.Credit...John Olson/Getty Images

U.S. and South Vietnamese forces sustained heavy losses early on before later repelling the attacks. It was a turning point in the war, further undermining American public support for it.

The Army’s refusal to take Specialist Allen’s analysis seriously suggested to her that she was viewed with prejudice, as a Black woman who was not an officer. She was one of about 700 women in the corps, known as WACs, serving in intelligence positions during the Vietnam era, and only 10 percent were Black.

In 1991, she told Newsday, “My credibility was like nothing: woman — Black woman, at that.”

In 2012, she told an Army publication: “I just recently came up with the reason they didn’t believe me — they weren’t prepared for me. They didn’t know how to look beyond the WAC, Black woman in military intelligence. I can’t blame them. I don’t feel bitter.”

Lori S. Stewart, a civilian military intelligence historian for the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, said in an email that Specialist Allen’s analysis was not the only one that went unheeded.

“Both national and theater-level organizations believed an enemy offensive was likely sometime around the Tet holiday,” she wrote, but “too many conflicting reports and preconceptions led leaders to misread the enemy’s intentions.”

Regarding Specialist Allen, Mrs. Stewart added, “Like many other intelligence personnel in country, she was a diligent and observant intelligence analyst doing what she was supposed to do: evaluate the enemy’s intentions and capabilities.”

Specialist Allen was inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame in 2009.

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Specialist Allen was inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame in 2009. Maj. Gen. John Custer, commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, presided over the ceremony.Credit...U.S Army

Doris Ilda Allen was born on May 9, 1927, in El Paso to Richard and Stella (Davis) Allen. Her mother was a cook, and her father was a barber.

Ms. Allen graduated from Tuskegee Institute (now University) in 1949 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. She taught at a high school in Greenwood, Miss., and enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps the next year.

After basic training, she auditioned for the WAC Band, playing trumpet. But she and two other Black woman were told afterward by a chief warrant officer that “they couldn’t have any Negroes in the band,” she recalled in “A Piece of My Heart.”

She served in a number of roles over the next dozen or so years: as an entertainment specialist, organizing soldiers shows; the editor of the military newspaper for the Army occupation forces in Japan during the Korean War; a broadcast specialist at Camp Stoneman, Calif., where her commanding officer was her sister, Jewel; a public information officer in Japan; and an information specialist at Fort Monmouth, N.J.

In the early 1960s, Specialist Allen learned French at the Defense Language Institute and completed her training in the prisoner of war interrogation course at Fort Holabird, Md. She completed interrogation and intelligence analyst courses at Fort Bragg.

After asking to go to South Vietnam, she arrived in October 1967 for the first of her three tours of duty there.

“I had so many skills, so much education and training being wasted in various posts around the country that I decided I wanted to make a difference in a high-action post like Vietnam,” she told Lavender Notes, a publication for older LGBTQ+ adults, in 2020.

She left no immediate survivors.

Image

Specialist Allen at the Women’s Army Corps barracks at Long Binh, Vietnam, in an undated photo. She left in 1970 after seeing a stolen enemy document with her name on a list of targets to kill.Credit...via Christina Brown Fisher

Specialist Allen’s Tet analysis was not the only warning of hers to go unheeded. She advised a colonel not to send a convoy to Song Be, in southern South Vietnam, because of a possible ambush, which occurred. Five flatbed trucks were blown up; three men were killed and 19 wounded.

But she was listened to when she warned in early 1969 that the North Vietnamese had placed scores of 122-millimeter rockets around the perimeter of the Long Binh operations center, northeast of Saigon, and that they were to be used in a major attack. She wrote a memo that led to an airstrike that destroyed the rockets.

Later that year, Specialist Allen learned that the North Vietnamese were planning to use 83-millimeter chemical rounds. She wrote a report that saved as many as 100 Marines, who had been instructed in her memo to avoid any contact with the mortars when they fell in their area; they later exploded. A grateful colonel sent a memo suggesting that whoever had written the report deserved the Legion of Merit.

Specialist Allen did not receive that decoration but did earn a Bronze Star with two oak clusters, among many awards. She left South Vietnam in 1970 after seeing a stolen enemy document with her name on a list of targets to kill.

After serving 10 more years in the Army she retired as a chief warrant officer.

By then she had received her master’s degree in counseling from Ball State University in Indiana in 1977. After her military service, she worked with a private investigator, Bruce Haskett, whom she had met when they were in counterintelligence. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, Calif., in 1986, and mentored young psychologists.

“She was incredibly savvy about people and had an innate ability to size people up quickly,” Mr. Haskett said in an interview. “She was the kind of person who could walk into a pit of vipers and have everybody eating out of her hands in 15 minutes.”

Christina Brown Fisher contributed reporting.

Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times for more than three decades. More about Richard Sandomir

3. WEEKEND INTERVIEW: Former U.S. Commander Sees Momentum Shift in Ukraine (Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges (Ret.))

Excerpts:

The Cipher Brief:  How would you describe what’s changed in the last few weeks in Ukraine?

Gen. Hodges: Three things. First of all, the Russians are in big trouble. They still have hundreds of thousands of people in uniform, but since the dreaded fall of Avdiivka back in February – remember how people were walking around like, Oh my God, they’ve captured Avdiivka? 

Well, it took them 10 years to get Avdiivka, and that’s a town about as far east in Ukraine as you can be without getting into Russia. And they have barely moved forward from there, or from Bakhmut. And then they started this new offensive up north of Kharkiv, and they really haven’t done anything there except lose tens of thousands of people.

And that was during a period of six months when the U.S. aid had stopped. So that really illustrated to me what I had suspected anyway, [which] was that (the Russians) don’t have the ability to knock Ukraine out of the war. They can’t do it. All they can do is keep launching multimillion dollar missiles and drones against civilian targets, civilian infrastructure, and they can keep pounding with artillery and pushing their own untrained troops against Ukrainian defenses. And so that’s it. They have nothing else they can do.

Russia’s great Black Sea Fleet is in retreat, about a third of it is underwater, and the Russian Air Force still has not been able to get air superiority. And it also is unable to interdict or cut the lines of supply that are bringing new stuff from Poland into Ukraine. 

And then of course, there’s the news that because of U.S. sanctions that are finally being implemented, Russian banks are collapsing all over the place. People are trying to get their money out because they can’t trade with dollars and Euros anymore.

And all of this is happening without the U.S. actually, formally committing to helping Ukraine win. So that’s one thing that’s happened.

The second thing, obviously, is that finally with the U.S. aid package being approved, now we’re seeing a lot of things beginning to show up again in Ukraine. You see reports from Ukrainians saying that they finally have ammo again. That’s a big deal, obviously. And then of course, finally the U.S. has allowed Ukraine to have the 300-kilometer (186-mile) range ATACMS (missiles). That’s significant because as the SACEUR, General (Christopher) Cavoli said, you can defeat mass with precision if you have enough time. And you do that by targeting headquarters, logistics and artillery. Because without those three things, it doesn’t matter how many untrained troops (the Russians) have. They’re not going to accomplish anything. So by taking out artillery, headquarters, and logistics, you negate the only advantage the Russians have. So that’s why this 300-kilometer range is so important, and that’s also why you’re seeing more trouble in Crimea for the Russians as they’re getting pounded there now.

WEEKEND INTERVIEW: Former U.S. Commander Sees Momentum Shift in Ukraine

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/weekend-interview-former-u-s-commander-sees-momentum-shift-in-ukraine?utm

KYIV, UKRAINE: United States Army Commander in Europe, Lieutenant General Frederick Ben Hodges, speaks to the media during an official visit to Ukraine on May 19, 2015. (Photo by Vladimir Shtanko/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Posted: June 28th, 2024

By The Cipher Brief

SUBSCRIBER+ EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – Like many long-running conflicts, the war in Ukraine has seen its share of shifts in momentum. The February 2022 Russian assault on the capital, Kyiv, was repulsed quickly by the Ukrainians, and for much of the war’s first year it appeared Ukraine – with a lift from NATO weaponry – might repel the Russian assault. In the summer of 2023, a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive fizzled; that setback, together with a months-long political logjam that stopped the shipment of U.S. weapons to Kyiv, sparked fears that Russia might actually win the war in 2024. 

At mid-year, the tides appear to have turned once more. The Washington logjam has broken, U.S. aid is flowing again, and now it’s a Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region that appears to have sputtered. 

For more than two years, Cipher Brief expert Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges (Ret.) has been watching the war from various vantage points in Europe, where he once served as the U.S. Army’s top commander. In February, two years after the Russian invasion, Gen. Hodges told The Cipher Brief that “neither side can knock out the other at this point,” and he warned that Ukraine would have to use the third year of the war “to stabilize the front, fix their personnel system (and) build up their own defense industry.” What Ukraine really needed, he said then, was for the U.S. military supply lines to be reopened, followed by a U.S. commitment to provide Ukraine with long-range, precision ATACMS missiles. 

Now the U.S. has done both those things, and Gen. Hodges is among those who see a clear impact on the frontlines – in the critical Crimean peninsula in particular. 

Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski spoke with Gen. Hodges about the current state of the war – and the ways in which the momentum has shifted yet again.

THE CONTEXT

• Russia launched a new offensive into Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region in early May.
• The Biden administration permitted Ukraine limited use of U.S.-provided weaponry to strike targets within Russia, mainly to counter the Kharkiv assault. This came after the U.S. approved a delayed Ukraine aid package in late April.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has complained that the Western weapons used by Ukraine have struck Russian air defenses and disrupted military supply lines, and warned of grave consequences should those attacks continue.
• Ukraine has called for Western partners to permit the use of their weapons to hit further into Russia, specifically to target Russian air bases.
• Ukraine has recently increased its attacks on Russian-occupied Crimea. Ukrainian drone and missile strikes have forced much of Russia’s Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet to relocate further east, including to the Novorossiysk base.
• Ukrainian sea drones have also hit Crimea’s Kerch Strait bridge, a key supply link for Russian military operations in the peninsula, in October 2022 and again in July 2023, and several reports suggest another strike on the bridge may come soon.

THE INTERVIEW

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges (Ret.), Former Commanding General, US Army Europe

Lt. Gen. Hodges currently serves as NATO Senior Mentor for Logistics and is a Distinguished Fellow with GLOBSEC. He consults for several companies on Europe, NATO, and the European Union, and he is co-author of the book, Future War and the Defence of Europe. He served as Commander, NATO Allied Land Command in İzmir, Turkey and as Commanding General, United States Army Europe.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

The Cipher Brief:  How would you describe what’s changed in the last few weeks in Ukraine?

Gen. Hodges: Three things. First of all, the Russians are in big trouble. They still have hundreds of thousands of people in uniform, but since the dreaded fall of Avdiivka back in February – remember how people were walking around like, Oh my God, they’ve captured Avdiivka? 

Well, it took them 10 years to get Avdiivka, and that’s a town about as far east in Ukraine as you can be without getting into Russia. And they have barely moved forward from there, or from Bakhmut. And then they started this new offensive up north of Kharkiv, and they really haven’t done anything there except lose tens of thousands of people.

And that was during a period of six months when the U.S. aid had stopped. So that really illustrated to me what I had suspected anyway, [which] was that (the Russians) don’t have the ability to knock Ukraine out of the war. They can’t do it. All they can do is keep launching multimillion dollar missiles and drones against civilian targets, civilian infrastructure, and they can keep pounding with artillery and pushing their own untrained troops against Ukrainian defenses. And so that’s it. They have nothing else they can do.

Russia’s great Black Sea Fleet is in retreat, about a third of it is underwater, and the Russian Air Force still has not been able to get air superiority. And it also is unable to interdict or cut the lines of supply that are bringing new stuff from Poland into Ukraine. 

And then of course, there’s the news that because of U.S. sanctions that are finally being implemented, Russian banks are collapsing all over the place. People are trying to get their money out because they can’t trade with dollars and Euros anymore.

And all of this is happening without the U.S. actually, formally committing to helping Ukraine win. So that’s one thing that’s happened.

The second thing, obviously, is that finally with the U.S. aid package being approved, now we’re seeing a lot of things beginning to show up again in Ukraine. You see reports from Ukrainians saying that they finally have ammo again. That’s a big deal, obviously. And then of course, finally the U.S. has allowed Ukraine to have the 300-kilometer (186-mile) range ATACMS (missiles). That’s significant because as the SACEUR, General (Christopher) Cavoli said, you can defeat mass with precision if you have enough time. And you do that by targeting headquarters, logistics and artillery. Because without those three things, it doesn’t matter how many untrained troops (the Russians) have. They’re not going to accomplish anything. So by taking out artillery, headquarters, and logistics, you negate the only advantage the Russians have. So that’s why this 300-kilometer range is so important, and that’s also why you’re seeing more trouble in Crimea for the Russians as they’re getting pounded there now.

The Cipher Brief:  How much of an uptick has there been in the volume of strikes in Crimea, or the impact they’ve had there?

Gen. Hodges: Crimea is the key to this war. In military doctrine, we would call it the decisive terrain. Whoever controls Crimea is going to win this war. 

For the Russians, of course, it’s important to them because Crimea — the reason Catherine the Great took it the first time, back in the end of the 18th century — allows them to dominate the entire Black Sea, where, by the way, we have three NATO allies. So for the Russians, being able to hang on to Crimea is important to them for that, as well as the fact that it’s a launching pad for them to attack all over Ukraine, which they have been doing. So the Russians, they can’t lose that, or they don’t want to lose that.

For the Ukrainians, not only is it their sovereign territory, but as long as Russia occupies Crimea, then Russians will always block access into the Azov Sea. So for Ukraine, they have to be able to liberate Crimea for economic purposes and to deny the Russians the use of that platform.

Crimea is exactly the same size as Massachusetts – almost to the square kilometer, it’s almost the same. So it’s not big and there’s no place to hide. I mean, every Ukrainian has been there before on holiday or had business there. The Ukrainian Navy used to be based in Sevastopol. So Ukrainians know where everything is. The difference now is they can reach it with lots of ATACMS.

They could always hit some places like they did last year with the Storm Shadow (French-British cruise missiles). They proved the concept that with precision, you could begin to make Crimea untenable. That’s why the Black Sea fleet had to start moving. Now with the ATACMS, they can do that a lot. And every square meter of Crimea is now in range of some Ukrainian weapon. 

So it’s a matter of time. They can’t stay there. The Black Sea Fleet is pulling out. The big logistics base at Dzhankoi, the airbase at Saky, on the west side (of Crimea). All of these places are being hit, and so the Russians are having to relocate aircraft to other places.

So if you think about how Ukraine wins in Crimea, you do three things. Number one, you make it untenable. And that’s what they’re doing now. They’re making it so that the Russians can’t stay there. There’s been special forces attacks that have destroyed radar and air defense, there’s been maritime drones, there’s been unmanned aerial systems, air drones, and now you’ve got precision weapons. So that’s all happening and Crimea is becoming untenable.

The second thing that has to be done is you isolate the peninsula, and the way you isolate it is, you destroy the three ways that aid or resupply or anything gets in and out of Crimea. Number one is the big Kerch Bridge. Number two is the railroad that has been built that runs from Rostov down along the Azov Sea into Crimea. And then the third is you destroy the ships and ferries that can move stuff back and forth across the Kerch Strait or the Azov Sea.

They’ve already destroyed several Russian Navy vessels called LSTs. These are landing ship tanks, which normally would carry armored vehicles, but they can be used to move a lot of ammunition and supplies. The railroad will be easily disrupted by a variety of means. 

And then of course, the Kerch Bridge. And I think the Ukrainians will drop that bridge when they’re ready. It’s obviously going to be a huge effort, because the Russians know how vulnerable that thing is, and there’s a high density of air defense and all kinds of things around it. So the Ukrainians, I am confident, will have figured out a plan that will involve all sorts of different things in order to severely damage, if not destroy or drop a span of that bridge. Now you’ve got Crimea isolated as well as unusable.

And then the third thing, of course, is when they’re ready, the Ukrainians will be able to occupy it.

The Cipher Brief: You said that whoever wins Crimea wins the war. Explain that – how is it that Russia cannot win the war if they lose Crimea?

Gen. Hodges: Crimea has significant economic importance because of the seaports there, as well as its military importance. And with Ukraine regaining control of Crimea, Russia will have much more difficulty interfering with Ukrainian grain exports, for example. They’ll also not be able to export any more stolen grain from Ukraine themselves.

There’s always been some question about Putin’s aims, and of course he had a long list of excuses (for invading Ukraine). But if they cannot capture Crimea, I don’t know how he could claim in any way that they’ve accomplished their war aim. And so I think it’s also the fact that they are running out of capability and time. I think that the Russians have really mortgaged their future in order to put in the field what they’ve got. 

You remember there was all this reporting about how 40% of Russia’s economy is now on a war footing. Well, remind your readers that their economy is the size of Spain’s. And Russia’s troops – it is one thing to have tens of thousands of untrained troops, but the leaders, people who should be training them and leading them, they’re all dead. They’re on a third generation of people for what used to be their elite units. So I think that from an industrial standpoint, a financial standpoint as well as a manpower standpoint, this is not something that they can sustain.

I’m glad to see that the (U.S.) administration is finally getting serious about sanctions. Now if we could work with our allies and partners to cut off the so-called Ghost Fleet, where the Russians are able to still export oil to China and India – that’s going out through the Black Sea, past Turkey, and it’s going out through the Baltic Sea, past Denmark and Sweden and Norway. We ought to be able to stop that, and that’s what gives the Russians some money to help fund the war. 

Also, I can’t believe that we’re not able to stop Iran from sending drones or North Korea sending ammunition. There’s not enough pressure on China yet for them to stop providing the support they’re providing. So if we turn those things off – and surely with the combined economic power of the West, we ought to be able to do that.

The Cipher Brief: How will the rest of us know, or start to get a sense that, as you put it, the situation in Crimea really has become untenable? What’s going to be a sign, other than the Kerch Bridge exploding?

Gen. Hodges: I don’t know where that tipping point is. It might involve how many ships are still left from the Black Sea Fleet there. The port that they are moving to is not ready yet, the one out in Georgia, they’re building that. The only one they have that is of any significance is Novorossiysk.

And if you look on the map, you can see that that’s east of Crimea and it’s a proper Russian base, but it’s not of the same capacity as Sevastopol. They’re just not going to be as capable. So how fast and how much they actually move from there, that will be an indicator that they realize that they can’t use Sevastopol. And then of course, Ukrainian intelligence, and I suspect U.S. intelligence knows – I won’t know: How much of the remaining airfields are still operational? What kind of air operations are they running out of there? 

And then the logistics. They’ll probably be watching how much is going in using these three methods I talked about — the railroad, the bridge, or the ferries. When that starts really decreasing, then that will look like the Russians are realizing there’s no point in continuing to put fuel and ammunition in there, because they’re going to be going the other direction.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

4. Exclusive: America falters in fighting the information war

2 hours ago -World

Exclusive: America falters in fighting the information war

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/28/us-disinformation-china-russia-iran?fbclid=

• Colin Demarest

Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios

Americans are unknowingly being bombarded with media manipulated by China, Russia and Iran, despite U.S. efforts to stem the tide, according to an analysis first shared with Axios.

Why it matters: The messaging stokes stateside divisions and undermines support for some of Washington's most pressing security pursuits — Taiwan, Ukraine and Israel.

What's inside: The new report published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, whose experts include former military members and senior government advisers, examines how authoritarian regimes have for years swayed thinking at home and abroad.

• China hopes to exhaust and subdue Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province. It also wants to deflect criticism as its neighborhood belligerence is captured on camera.
• Russia tries to bend international thinking in its favor. It is also exploiting domestic issues to pacify its people.
• Iran threatens dissidents, amplifies messaging from anti-American and anti-Israeli groups, and supports a constellation of proxies in the region.

Threat level: The net result is a digital minefield that demands a much more concerted response from Washington, according to the report's half-dozen authors.

• Among the recommendations: "Go on the offensive" and break through foreign bubbles.
• Past efforts to reach people where they live — on sites and apps they're familiar with — have been "clumsy and pedestrian," the report reads.

What they're saying: Successive administrations "have resisted offensive information warfare efforts inside China, Russia, and Iran for fear of 'provoking' them," writes Bradley Bowman, the senior director of FDD's Center on Military and Political Power and a former Black Hawk pilot.

• But "Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran suffer from no such reluctance when it comes to aggressively waging information warfare inside the United States."
• When there "is no overt conflict, Americans can be lulled into a false sense of security."

Flashback: Russian influence campaigns made headlines following the 2016 presidential election.

• Moscow at the time hoped to undermine faith in democracy and damage then-candidate Hillary Clinton, according to an intelligence community review.
• Tactics evolved for the 2020 contest, when Russia laundered narratives through prominent U.S. officials, including some close to the Trump camp.
• Russian strategies changed yet again ahead of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The intrigue: U.S. Cyber Command has exposed troll farms, and its elite hacking teams are unearthing network weaknesses and malware.

• These teams were dispatched to Ukraine before the Kremlin's war machine rolled across the border and were sent to Albania in the wake of Iranian cyberattacks that forced government services offline.

What we're watching: Malicious information will mushroom in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.

• Increasingly popular generative AI — capable of carrying a conversation or crafting fake but convincing photos, videos and audio — may fuel the fire.

5. Cognitive Combat: China, Russia, and Iran’s Information War Against Americans

Download the 40 page monograph here: www.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/fdd-monograph-cognitive-combat-china-russia-and-irans-information-war-against-americans.pdf

Introduction is below.

As a reminder I will again include this:

From the 2017 NSS (page 14): "A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Of course no one reads these documents (much less implements them).

Imagine if we had taken this seriously back in 2017 (or even long before)? We would not just be discovering this now.

Access the 2017 NSS HERE: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf

For those who might be interested in Korea's contribution here are my views:

From Provocations And Deterrence To Preparing For Unification: Why An Information Campaign Is Vital To Political Warfare In Korea

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/06/from-provocations-and-deterrence-to-preparing-for-unification-why-an-information-campaign-is-vital-to-political-warfare-in-korea/

June 28, 2024 | Monograph

Cognitive Combat

China, Russia, and Iran’s Information War Against Americans

Bradley Bowman

CMPP Senior Director

Introduction

By Bradley Bowman

China, Russia, and Iran are waging an information war against the United States, yet many Americans do not realize they are under attack. Nor do they appreciate that developments on the battlefield of ideas and beliefs can have a decisive impact on the security and way of life Americans enjoy. This lack of awareness is ideal for Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran — predators like nothing better than hunting slumbering prey.

Americans may not realize they are already in an information war because adversaries attempt to conceal their activities. To make matters worse, Americans often think of international conflict consciously or subconsciously in the context of kinetic war — soldiers, ships, and aircraft battling one another on land, at sea, or in the air. So, when there is no overt conflict, Americans can be lulled into a false sense of security.

This propensity works to the advantage of China, Russia, and Iran, which view conflict with the United States more like a dial than a two-way switch.1 These adversaries turn the dial’s intensity up or down as needed, but hostile intentions toward the United States and attacks in the information domain remain constant regardless of whether a ‘shooting war’ is underway.

So, what exactly does this information warfare look like?

Illustrations by Daniel Ackerman/FDD

In the United States, China pushes messages via a variety of means that seek to undermine Americans’ trust in their leaders, their government, and each other. Simultaneously, Beijing is attempting to manipulate U.S. public opinion regarding Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang.2 The Chinese Communist Party hopes these measures weaken and divide Americans and remove any U.S. obstacles to Beijing’s control and oppression at home and “might makes right” foreign policy abroad.

Russia proliferates messages designed to exploit hot-button domestic issues, stoke division among Americans,3 and undermine support for Ukraine.4 In its Annual Threat Assessment, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) warned that Russia would attempt to use “influence operations” to affect the upcoming U.S. elections this year “in ways that best support [Moscow’s] interests and goals.”5 In Africa, Russia partners with authoritarian regimes, providing them information warfare support.6

The Islamic Republic of Iran, for its part, uses information warfare to oppress the Iranian people, threaten dissidents, magnify anti-American voices, manipulate Western opinions, threaten Israel, and enfeeble U.S. foreign policy.

Americans vote at a polling place on November 8, 2022, in Madison, Wisconsin. (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Asia, as well as in Africa and Latin America, Beijing and Moscow propagate stories of Western colonialism, decline, and unreliability to diminish American influence and competitiveness and enable Sino-Russian neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism.7 The essential hallmarks of this strategy, which Chinese and Russian information warfare supports, are the abuse of local populations, seizure of resources, exploitation of the environment, imposition of debt traps, and procurement of ports ultimately for military purposes.8

Despite these concerning dynamics, some might be tempted to dismiss information warfare as a harmless sideshow. But this misguided view plays into the hands of U.S. adversaries. “Foreign information manipulation and interference is a national security threat to the United States as well as to its allies and partners,” asserts a 2024 Framework to Counter Foreign State Information Manipulation endorsed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.9

An enduring obstacle to understanding information warfare is the lack of consensus about what the phrase actually means.10 Some definitions are too broad to be useful, and some have the opposite problem.

Department of Defense Joint Publication 3-04, Information in Joint Operations describes the information environment as “the aggregate of social, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technical, and physical factors that affect how humans and automated systems derive meaning from, act upon, and are impacted by information, including the individuals, organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or use information.”11 While that definition underscores the complexity of the information landscape, its breadth is so great that it may not aid comprehension or planning.

Others sometimes conceptualize information warfare too narrowly, focusing only on the role of information as part of military operations,12 with an emphasis on cyber security.13 To be sure, combatants must protect their data and command-and-control systems while attacking the data and systems of the adversary.14 But that definition is too narrow for the purposes of this monograph.15

Warfare is the preserve of the Department of Defense, but much of the information war being waged against Americans occurs beyond the Pentagon’s reach.16 Accordingly, an American approach to information warfare that relies excessively on the Pentagon to respond will not be effective.

This monograph endeavors to take a grand strategic approach to the concept that transcends the military, encompassing the major tools of national power. Accordingly, for the purposes of this monograph, the term “information warfare” refers to the messages — and means to convey those messages — that nation-states use to advance political, economic, and security objectives and to strengthen the government’s foundations of power, reinforce those of allies and partners, and undermine those of adversaries.17

Consistent with that definition, each chapter in this monograph begins by assessing the adversary’s approach to information warfare. That includes the adversary’s objectives, the core messages it seeks to convey, and how it disseminates those messages. Each chapter then assesses the U.S. government’s response to the adversary’s campaign and offers specific and actionable recommendations to better defend and advance American interests.

In the chapter on China, FDD Senior Fellow and Director of its China Program Craig Singleton notes that “Washington has awoken to the threat posed by China’s growing military might and predatory, non-market practices.” He warns, however, that “far less attention, and even fewer resources, have been devoted to neutralizing nefarious Chinese narrative-shaping efforts.” Singleton assesses that “Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping is attempting to transform China into a discourse superpower to advance its hegemonic ambitions.”

While the people of China are the “principal target” of the CCP’s information warfare campaign, Singleton warns that “the United States is a major focus.” Specifically, the CCP spends billions annually to produce, broadcast, and amplify propaganda and other disinformation globally with the goal of “undermining faith in public institutions, introducing conflicting social narratives, and radicalizing groups within a population.” Many of those efforts are focused on the United States. Indeed, the IC warned this year that “the PRC aims to sow doubts about U.S. leadership, undermine democracy, and extend Beijing’s influence,” among other goals.18

To strengthen its information warfare efforts, the IC assesses that People’s Republic of China (PRC) actors have “increased their capabilities to conduct covert influence operations and disseminate disinformation.” That includes efforts “demonstrating a higher degree of sophistication in its influence activity, including experimenting with generative AI.”19

Meanwhile, Beijing is pursuing the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049.20 As part of this effort, Beijing is undertaking the world’s largest military armament and modernization campaign since World War II.21 Those efforts are focused on building the capabilities to defeat the U.S. military in East Asia, if necessary.22 But it is safe to assume that the CCP would rather accomplish its objectives in Taiwan at the lowest cost possible, including without (or with less) military conflict.

The CCP likely believes its information warfare campaign offers a potential means to accomplish its objective of subduing Taiwan without war with the United States.23 The IC assessed in February that “Beijing is intensifying efforts to mold U.S. public discourse,” including on issues such as Taiwan.24

If the CCP can encourage isolationist tendencies among Americans, persuade them the United States has no real interests worth fighting for in Asia, and motivate them to oppose the use of military force to defend core American interests, then the CCP could sideline the U.S. military without firing a single shot. If the CCP fails to accomplish its objectives in Taiwan via non-kinetic means and decides to engage in armed aggression, CCP information warfare tools could be used to erode popular and political American support for a U.S. military intervention to help Taiwan.25

As it has before, the PRC could use social media platforms such as TikTok to influence American politics. The IC noted earlier this year that “TikTok accounts run by a PRC propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022.”26

More broadly, if the CCP can sow discord and self-doubt among Americans — weakening, dividing, and distracting them — that can undermine U.S. influence and power, and further erode Washington’s ability to defend core U.S. interests. That, in turn, could facilitate Beijing’s efforts to coerce its neighbors and refashion international norms and institutions in the CCP’s authoritarian image.

Unfortunately, Singleton concludes, the United States “lacks a comprehensive strategy” to combat China’s information warfare. However, this monograph provides policy recommendations that can begin to address the unacceptable status quo.

In the chapter on Russia, FDD Research Fellow Ivana Stradner and Russia Program Deputy Director John Hardie detail Moscow’s approach to information warfare as well as the U.S. response and necessary reforms. The Kremlin’s approach resembles Beijing’s strategy in several ways. Both the Kremlin and the CCP focus first on maintaining power at home by controlling and manipulating the information available to domestic populations. And like the CCP, the Kremlin views its information warfare efforts “as central to its broader struggle with the United States.” Beijing and Moscow both believe it serves their interests to stoke discord and disunity among Americans as well as distrust in American elections and institutions.27

The Kremlin’s information warfare operations “draw on the Soviet ‘active measures’ playbook, updated for the 21st century,” according to Stradner and Hardie. They discuss Moscow’s concept of “reflexive control,” which seeks to lure “an enemy to voluntarily make a desired decision.” To explain this concept, Stradner and Hardie analyze Russia’s “bad-faith diplomatic negotiations prior to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.” They also note that the “advent of social media has enabled information-psychological operations to achieve greater and more targeted reach,” pointing to Moscow’s efforts to influence U.S. elections.

Stradner and Hardie acknowledge that the U.S. government has taken several steps since 2016 “to protect the U.S. information space and counter Russian disinformation” but believe more action is needed to “take the fight to Moscow in the information domain.” They identify two primary weaknesses in the U.S. government’s current information warfare efforts related to Russia that require urgent attention from decision-makers. First, they argue America often is “failing to reach ordinary Russians.” And even when Washington succeeds in reaching average Russians, the communications are often “clumsy and pedestrian.” Second, despite some ongoing efforts,28 the authors sound the alarm that Moscow seems to be outpacing Washington “in the battle for hearts and minds in the Global South.”

Finally, FDD Chief Executive Officer Mark Dubowitz and FDD Senior Iran Advisor Saeed Ghasseminejad argue that “Washington needs to step up its game” when it comes to information warfare with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Initial drafts of the three country chapters in this monograph were completed before October 7, 2023, when Iran-backed Hamas carried out a mass slaughter in Israel, spurring a regional war that continues to this day. After that attack, FDD spent several months focusing on how the United States and Israel could better work together to confront the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies more effectively.

Since October, there has been an escalation in Iranian and Iranian-backed military attacks across the Middle East. From October 17 to February 4, Iran-backed terrorist groups and militias attacked U.S. military forces in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan approximately 165 times.29 A January 28 attack on a base in Jordan resulted in the deaths of three U.S. servicemembers and more than 40 injured.30 Meanwhile, since November 2023, the Houthis in Yemen, who are armed, trained, and funded by Iran, have assaulted international shipping and freedom of navigation in and near the Red Sea.31 And on April 13-14, the Islamic Republic of Iran conducted its first direct military attack on Israel from Iranian soil, launching more than 300 missiles and drones at the Jewish state.32

With all this military activity, some may overlook the information domain. “The regime’s information warfare strategy seeks to secure the regime’s survival by discrediting its domestic and foreign enemies, pacifying the Iranian people, strengthening the loyalty of followers, and recruiting new supporters,” Dubowitz and Ghasseminejad write. “Tehran also seeks to use information warfare to influence and confuse foreign decision-makers and create chaos in target countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Iraq, and Lebanon.” Unfortunately, as with Beijing’s and Moscow’s information warfare campaigns, the authors conclude that “the U.S. government has thus far failed to fully grasp the scope of the Islamic Republic’s information warfare activities, much less develop a unified and executable strategy that effectively counters Iran’s global campaign.”

Given the stakes in this war of ideas and beliefs with China, Russia, and Iran, an exhaustive multidisciplinary study of information warfare is needed. But the goals for this monograph are more modest. Cognitive Combat: China, Russia, and Iran’s Information War Against Americans simply seeks to achieve four objectives: 1) sound the alarm for Americans that the three adversaries are waging information war against Americans whether they realize it or not; 2) survey the broad outlines of this war; 3) propose initial steps that can help the United States better defend itself in the information domain and begin to go on the offensive; and 4) serve as a foundation for additional research.

If Americans awaken to the information war that China, Russia, and Iran are waging, the United States can take concerted action and prevail. If Americans continue to slumber, the consequences could be dire.

6. Dispatch from Taipei: Why Taiwan’s survival may depend on deterrence through resilience

Leadership could be decisive? :-) 

Excerpt:

Far more concerning, one independent poll we were briefed on suggested that Beijing and Moscow have a sympathetic ear among a large minority of Taiwanese. Given these polls and China’s unrelenting and insidious information warfare, our delegation came away concerned by the threat of subversion to Taiwan’s democracy. But in the next few years, such information warfare is unlikely to be decisive on its own. Instead, it could undermine Taiwan’s unity and will to resist if Beijing forced the issue. In short, if it came to blockade, bombardment, or invasion—accompanied by an information campaign and cyberattacks—would the Taiwanese people fold or fight? This is one question that Taiwanese institutions, such as the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, are exploring.

In unstructured discussions among members of our delegation, several of us came to the informal conclusion that leadership could be decisive in answering that question—citing positive examples present and past, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Winston Churchill, Ulysses S. Grant, and George Washington. The personal resilience of Taiwan’s democratically elected leadership, along with its determination to ensure continued investments in resilience, could determine Taiwan’s resilience under Chinese attack. This gives me cause for optimism.

Not all of the Taiwanese public has awoken to the rising Chinese threat, and much work remains, but Taiwan grows more resilient by the day. Taiwan’s freedom may hinge on its people’s willingness to invest and make sacrifices to prepare to face unrelenting pressure, up to and including blockade, bombardment, and invasion. Deterrence by preparing military capabilities that could deny success to Chinese invaders or threaten severe punishment will continue to be important, but these capabilities may not matter if Taiwan folds or breaks as Chinese pressure and aggression ramps up. Improving deterrence through resilience—by visibly ensuring Taiwan’s ability to absorb, endure, adapt, and resist—could be the key to Taiwan’s survival.

Dispatch from Taipei: Why Taiwan’s survival may depend on deterrence through resilience

By Markus Garlauskas

atlanticcouncil.org · · June 28, 2024

China Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Politics & Diplomacy Resilience Security & Defense Taiwan

New Atlanticist June 28, 2024 • 3:42 pm ETClick on the banner above to explore the Tiger Project.

What a difference a year can make. Last summer, I was part of the annual Atlantic Council delegation and research trip to Taiwan that met with then President Tsai Ing-wen. Last week, I again visited Taipei with a delegation that included Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe, during which we met with newly inaugurated President Lai Ching-te. I came away impressed by the progress of Taiwan’s defenses since our last visit. Taipei has continued military reforms and modernization, while shifting more attention and resources to “asymmetric warfare” approaches. And it is incorporating lessons learned from the war in Ukraine into its military planning, doctrine, and force structure. For example, after seeing the effectiveness of drones in Ukraine, Taiwan accelerated and expanded its efforts to field unmanned aerial systems. During our visit, the news broke that Washington had approved Taiwan purchasing over one thousand US-made armed drones.

I also saw momentum toward fully implementing the “all-out national defense” concept, emphasized under Tsai. Most notably, since our last visit, Taiwan followed through with executing plans to extend conscription from four months to one year. This year, a new word was also at the forefront—resilience—mentioned first by some key Taiwanese officials. Resilience was also raised by delegation members, in part because several of us had read a soon-to-be-published draft study on improving Taiwan’s resilience led by Atlantic Council Board Director and Distinguished Fellow Franklin Kramer, along with Philip Yu, Joseph Webster, and Elizabeth Sizeland. For Taiwan, resilience is a term whose exact meaning can be difficult to nail down—as we observed in our discussions—but I considered it to mean Taiwan’s will and ability to withstand Chinese coercion, as well as to adapt and sustain its defenses while under attack.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te meets with a senior delegation from the Atlantic Council on June 18, 2024. (Official Photo by I Chen Lin / Office of the President)

These opportunities for on-the-ground observations and interactions with officials, experts, and private sector leaders in Taiwan have been enlightening. This was only my second trip to Taiwan despite a longtime personal and professional interest in this embattled island on China’s doorstep. In my US government service as an intelligence officer and strategist, I had been stationed in South Korea for a dozen years, and I had also visited military bases, diplomatic posts, and other sites around the region—but never in Taiwan. The unique “unofficial” relationship between Washington and Taipei—along with decades of US deference to Beijing’s sensitivities—has resulted in, as in my case, many career US military officers and government officials never visiting Taiwan while on duty. Despite the best efforts of the de facto US “country team,” the American Institute in Taiwan, to ensure that US policymakers and analysts are well-informed, this anomaly of so little on-the-ground exposure among US national security professionals may cloud US analysis of Taiwan issues.

In contrast, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s intentions should be clear to Washington: Xi wants to bring Taiwan under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control, by force if necessary. When Xi and his top officials plan to accomplish this goal—and through what combination of subversion, coercion, strangulation, quarantine, blockade, bombardment, and invasion—is less clear and likely depends on unpredictable variables. (The Atlantic Council is exploring this further in its “Tiger Project” covering war and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.)

Some commentators, like our own Brian Kerg, point to the challenges of a cross-strait amphibious attack on Taiwan and emphasize the importance of countering other threats. Other US experts consider invasion to be a plausible “worst case” or “most dangerous” near-future scenario that should be the focus among these various threats. These experts recommend that Taiwan and the United States accelerate their preparations to quickly counter an invasion across the Taiwan Strait as the top priority. Evocative wording plays a part in this focus. Metaphorically turning the Taiwan Strait into a “boiling moat,” as depicted by Matt Pottinger and his colleagues, or into an “unmanned hellscape,” as described by US Indo-Pacific Command’s Admiral Samuel Paparo, often drives conversations on deterrence and defense against China to begin and end with stopping a cross-strait attack. So, too, does more technical terminology, such as Elbridge Colby’s “forward denial defense.” This focus could help deter Beijing from invasion by convincing it that landings are likely to be defeated before they can gain a foothold, but this is a risky bet.

Many Taiwanese officials instead appear to be emphasizing the broader importance of preparing for a sustained defense and ensuring resilience beyond just preparing to stop a cross-strait invasion. The idea that such resilience would contribute to deterrence resonated in some discussions, but one senior nongovernment expert scoffed at the idea that Taiwan’s resilience matters for deterring Xi. He argued that only credible threats to impose unacceptable costs or outright defeat of an invasion would be sufficient. But I question what sort of punishment, short of nuclear strikes, could inflict enough costs in mere weeks if Xi believed that Taiwan was not resilient enough to last very long.

More importantly, a focus on stopping an invasion force does little to deter and defeat other forms of attack aimed at subjugating Taiwan, such as persistent informational pressure and subversion to undermine Taiwan’s will from within, slow “strangulation” through internationally isolating Taiwan and wearing it down with military threats and coercion, and a bombardment or blockade designed to rapidly break Taiwan’s will to resist. The endgame of such scenarios would be either the arrival of a Chinese occupation force, rather than an invasion force, or a political settlement in which Taipei cedes control to Beijing.

When considering how long Taiwan could resist determined military pressure, perhaps the most worrisome point is its energy sector’s near-total reliance on imports by sea combined with insufficient stockpiles. As a result, the disruption or blockade of Taiwan’s sea lines of communication could quickly cripple its electrical power grid, economy, military logistics, and food distribution.

With this in mind, I looked out the window during our late-night flight home and snapped a few photos of the dazzling lights of the Port of Taipei. The view reminded me of the contrasting nighttime satellite photos of a well-lit South Korea next to a mostly pitch-black North Korea, and I pictured how the scene could quickly fall dark under a Chinese blockade. How would the people of Taiwan react? Taiwan can and should improve its energy resilience to be able to keep the lights on even during a lengthy blockade. But thriving maritime commerce will remain Taiwan’s economic lifeblood, so its people will still have to be willing to endure great sacrifices to preserve their freedom in the event China uses force.

A view of the port of Taipei, June 21, 2024. (Photo by Markus Garlauskas)

To be fair, Taiwanese themselves—including scholars and business leaders we met—have wide-ranging views on the resilience and will to fight of the people of Taiwan. We were also struck by polling data that tells contrasting stories. First, poll after poll shows that a clear majority opposes accepting CCP rule of Taiwan. This is a strong foundation to work with. However, only just less than half of Taiwanese surveyed are “very willing” to fight to defend Taiwan. The good news is that this number can be increased. As one expert in public opinion shared with us, other polls show that Taiwanese are more likely to be willing to fight after receiving military training and if Taiwan can hold out after an initial attack.

Far more concerning, one independent poll we were briefed on suggested that Beijing and Moscow have a sympathetic ear among a large minority of Taiwanese. Given these polls and China’s unrelenting and insidious information warfare, our delegation came away concerned by the threat of subversion to Taiwan’s democracy. But in the next few years, such information warfare is unlikely to be decisive on its own. Instead, it could undermine Taiwan’s unity and will to resist if Beijing forced the issue. In short, if it came to blockade, bombardment, or invasion—accompanied by an information campaign and cyberattacks—would the Taiwanese people fold or fight? This is one question that Taiwanese institutions, such as the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, are exploring.

In unstructured discussions among members of our delegation, several of us came to the informal conclusion that leadership could be decisive in answering that question—citing positive examples present and past, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Winston Churchill, Ulysses S. Grant, and George Washington. The personal resilience of Taiwan’s democratically elected leadership, along with its determination to ensure continued investments in resilience, could determine Taiwan’s resilience under Chinese attack. This gives me cause for optimism.

Not all of the Taiwanese public has awoken to the rising Chinese threat, and much work remains, but Taiwan grows more resilient by the day. Taiwan’s freedom may hinge on its people’s willingness to invest and make sacrifices to prepare to face unrelenting pressure, up to and including blockade, bombardment, and invasion. Deterrence by preparing military capabilities that could deny success to Chinese invaders or threaten severe punishment will continue to be important, but these capabilities may not matter if Taiwan folds or breaks as Chinese pressure and aggression ramps up. Improving deterrence through resilience—by visibly ensuring Taiwan’s ability to absorb, endure, adapt, and resist—could be the key to Taiwan’s survival.

Markus Garlauskas is the director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, leading the Council’s Tiger Project on War and Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. He is a former senior US government official with two decades of service as an intelligence officer and strategist, including twelve years stationed overseas in the region. He posts as @Mister_G_2 on X.

Note: The Atlantic Council delegation’s visit to Taiwan was supported by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO). This analysis was informed by the research trip and by Atlantic Council activities sponsored by the US Department of Defense. It represents the author’s views and not those of the government of Taiwan or any US government entity.

The Tiger Project, an Atlantic Council effort, develops new insights and actionable recommendations for the United States, as well as its allies and partners, to deter and counter aggression in the Indo-Pacific. Explore our collection of work, including expert commentary, multimedia content, and in-depth analysis, on strategic defense and deterrence issues in the region.

7. NATO’s Fast Approaching “Moment of Truth” on Ukraine

Excerpts:

Because of Europe’s fixation with budgetary austerity, the prospect of future year increases in defense spending remains uncertain. More than two years into the war, European politicians are still frantically debating the merits of restocking quickly—which often means buying American—versus investing in their own defense industry and “buying European.” In short, Europe’s defense industrial challenges will take years to overcome. All of this suggests we are headed for a dark future during which there will be a widening gap between Ukraine’s needs and what Europe is able and willing to provide. As Kyiv’s appetite for material expands in the coming months in response to continued Russian aggression, Europe’s warehouse locks could tighten.

As it becomes increasingly challenging for Western allies to source the material Kyiv needs to sustain its fight, Allied leaders will need to grapple with difficult trade-off questions about what to give Ukraine and what to keep for themselves. Making matters tougher still, NATO Allies are trying to determine how they will fulfill the national targets allocated to them last year by NATO military authorities, as part of the multi-year NATO Defence Planning process. The first since the start of the 2022 war, the new Minimum Capability Requirements identified by SACEUR General Christopher Cavoli demand significantly more capabilities from the Allies than previous cycles. This is the context for Stoltenberg’s controversial April comments, which asked Allies to prioritize Ukraine’s current security needs over their Alliance-wide commitments to meet the ambitious transformation plans developed by NATO military officials in recent years.

Thus, despite criticism by the Zelenskyy government that Allies have been too slow to send weapons over the past two years, the reality is that Ukraine may soon have to wait longer for weapons. But unlike during the first two years of the war, where the delay was largely due to many NATO members’ fears regarding escalation, future holdups may arise as much from the sorry state of the West’s depleted arsenals and the long lag-time it will take to rebuild them.

NATO’s Fast Approaching “Moment of Truth” on Ukraine - Foreign Policy Research Institute

June 27.2024

fpri.org · by Sara Bjerg Moller

Sara Bjerg Moller

Sara Bjerg Moller is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Security Studies Program (SSP) at Georgetown University and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

In April, not long after NATO marked its 75th anniversary, during a little-noticed press conference at the Alliance’s Headquarters in Brussels, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared, “if Allies face a choice between meeting NATO capability targets and providing more aid to Ukraine, my message is clear: Send more to Ukraine.” Flanked by the prime ministers of Czechia, Denmark, and the Netherlands, the outgoing secretary general continued on this theme praising Denmark for its decision to donate all of its artillery systems to Ukraine.

In acknowledging the dilemma some Allies face between investing in their own security and providing assistance to Ukraine, the NATO leader has shattered the longstanding taboo in NATO against portraying military aid to Ukraine and the Alliance’s own security interests as a zero-sum game, where one party’s gain comes at the expense of another party’s loss.

The notion that there are tradeoffs between supporting Ukraine and NATO allies’ national readiness levels is an uncomfortable topic of conversation, to be sure. It is certainly not a debate that Allied leaders wish to have, much less one they want to see play out publicly. But as the NATO Alliance inches ever closer to assuming a more direct role in the Ukraine War, it’s increasingly a conversation that needs to be held, however uncomfortable it may be to do so.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

The timing and language of Stoltenberg’s appeal for members of the NATO alliance to prioritize assistance to Ukraine over national military capability targets was prompted by Ukraine’s recent military setbacks and the fear that it could face further territorial losses following the stronger-than-expected Russian military advance and multi-month delay of the US military assistance package this spring.

With many in the Alliance anxiously awaiting the final outcome of difficult political negotiations over the US Congressional vote for the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act in Washington, D.C. at the time, one can perhaps understand Stoltenberg’s decision to take advantage of the media opportunity to convey a sense of urgency to Allied capitals.

However, the NATO leader’s urgency appeared no less lessened after the US Congress passed the Act in mid-April. Standing next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv the following week, the Alliance’s longest-serving, senior-most political figure repeated his message that given a choice between meeting NATO’s national capability targets set by Allied military planners or providing military support to Ukraine, Allies “should support Ukraine.” To hammer home this message, he underscored that “Stocks can and will be replenished. Lives lost can never be regained.”

In acknowledging the dilemma some NATO members face between meeting their national and alliance security commitments and supplying weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, Stoltenberg is responding to recent concerns raised by Allied capitals about how much military assistance they can afford to provide Ukraine.

For Ukraine, the timing could not be worse. As Russia intensified its air and drone strikes against Ukrainian energy and civilian targets this spring, the Zelenskyy government increased its appeals to NATO allies for more air defense support. While some, like Germany, responded by pledging an additional Patriot battery to the one already sent, others like Greece and Poland refused to send their systems on the grounds that they need them for their own defenses. Earlier this spring, there were rumors that Spain, bowing to pressure from fellow Allies, would also send a Patriot system to Ukraine. However, this did not materialize. While Madrid has pledged to send a dozen Patriot missiles to Ukraine, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez used the occasion of President Erdogan’s visit to his country in June to make clear that Spain’s Patriot air defense system would remain in Turkey, where it has been based since 2015 as part of a NATO mission to protect against the ballistic missile threat from Syria.

Although further announcements about the transfer of additional air defense systems to Ukraine are expected in the lead-up to next month’s summit, given European governments’ own shortages in this regard they are reluctant to deplete their capabilities to meet Ukraine’s needs without first receiving commitments from the United States that they will backfill the systems. Indeed, air defense has emerged as one of the critical vulnerabilities in the alliance’s arsenal in recent years, leading to difficult decisions about when and which systems to surrender to Kyiv. An internal NATO assessment last year found that Allies had only 5 percent of the air defense capacities needed to protect members in central and eastern Europe, and that was before Germany’s announcement this spring that it was ending its Patriot System deployments to Poland and Slovakia this summer.

The situation further west is no better, with many countries refusing to give away what meager air defense capabilities they have left after years of downgrades. While air defense is high on Europe’s defense shopping list and new programs­­—like the European Sky Shield Initiative—are in development, it will take years before Europeans regain security of the skies.

To get around countries’ reluctance to transfer their own systems to Ukraine, the Netherlands has applied a coalition approach to the problem, trying to assemble various components and munitions from across several European countries with the aim of providing at least one fully operational system this summer. However, with only a few dozen Patriot air defense systems among them, European allies will have to overcome great obstacles to get from the three to four systems already lent to Ukraine to the seven that Zelenskyy has requested.

A Non-Zero-Sum World?

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Allied leaders and NATO officials have endeavored to stress to the public that Ukraine’s security is intertwined with their own. However, as Russian spring offensives made further gains, some officials have adopted stronger language when discussing the link. In perhaps the clearest formulation of the relationship to date, Stoltenberg declared in April that, “Ukraine is using the weapon we provided to destroy Russian combat capabilities. That makes us all safer.” Supporting Ukraine, the NATO leader continued, was thus “an investment in our own security.”

There is some truth to this, as Russian forces and capabilities committed to Ukraine cannot be used elsewhere. However, Moscow has consistently surprised Western analysts, not only with its economic resilience to Western sanctions but also in its faster-than-expected ability to reconstitute losses in Ukraine. Russia’s increased hybrid activity since 2023 also appears to have taken some allies by surprise. Unlike in Europe where discussions of wartime readiness are becoming more common, but still far from reality, the Russian defense industry and economy are already on a war-time footing. Although many Alliance leaders have woken up to the idea of Russia as a chronic threat—with multiple countries’ intelligence agencies warning that Moscow could try to test the Alliance’s resolve by attacking a NATO member in the next five years—Europe’s arsenals and armed forces remain ill-prepared for such an eventuality.

Of course, efforts are underway to rectify this, but plans for growing Europe’s defense industrial capacity are still in the nascent stages of development, and it will take years before they bear fruit, if they do so at all. In the interim, a lot could happen to influence those plans, making it less certain that Europe’s depleted arsenals will be replenished. As more European political and military leaders come to grips with this fact, it could lead more capitals in the coming months to question the continued wisdom of sending weapons to Ukraine.

Many analysts would probably argue that Denmark, buffered by its proximity to other NATO allies, including the newest ally, Sweden, does not require artillery systems. Or, if it does, that they are not as urgently needed as in Ukraine. The fact that the Danish government had already ordered a replacement system probably also affected the timing of the donation. However, the experience of the generous Danes could soon serve as a cautionary tale for other Allies: In April, Danish media reported that the replacement system, ordered back in 2015 in a scandal-ridden deal that eventually led to the resignation of the Danish defense minister, would be delayed by a year to late 2026, and the costs would be significantly higher than initially anticipated. Having handed over all nineteen CAESAR Howitzers to the Ukrainians, the Danes now face the prospect of being without any artillery for two years.

Indeed, the Danish experience could serve as a harbinger for what may lie ahead for Europe’s armed forces, as they attempt to replenish and upgrade depleted stocks and aged-out weapons systems they have donated to Ukraine. For it is a truth universally acknowledged, that once in possession of a defense contract, that contract will go over budget and over time. Because the European and US armament industry is not yet up to the task of handling the post-2022 surge of new orders, this scenario could arise with every new weapons order placed by the Allies.

There is no doubt that Ukraine needs more armaments. Nowhere was the weapons shortage in Ukraine more acutely felt this year than with 155mm ammunition. Indeed, the high rate of expenditure of ammunition has been one of the war’s unexpected developments, with the Allies consistently underestimating Ukraine’s artillery needs while simultaneously overpromising what they can deliver. The ballyhooed announcement by European Allies last year that they would deliver 1 million rounds of 155mm to Ukraine by this spring, for example, fell significantly short of that number. As French President Emmanuel Macron recently noted, Europe does not just need to purchase more weapons, it needs more factories to build them. But doing so will take time. Even in the United States, where a new 155mm munitions plant just opened in Texas, some analysts are already warning that the Pentagon is not budgeting enough for the production levels required by modern warfare. As production problems emerge and delivery deadlines for replacement systems are pushed farther back, more and more allies could find themselves adopting the position of the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who, when asked why his government was refusing Zelenskyy’s request for its Patriot systems, responded that the systems are “critical to our deterrent capability.”

At the crux of the problem are incompatible timelines. Ukraine needs weapons and ammunition now, but replacing depleted European arsenals will take years. In the interim, European capitals will be faced with increasingly tough questions about what they can afford to provide Kyiv amidst a rapidly deteriorating European security landscape.

Further complicating matters are the long lead times required for defense production and continued uncertainty regarding Europe’s commitment to foot the bill for the long haul. The one-time ‘special’ defense funds announced by some countries in the wake of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion have largely been exhausted already. In Germany and Denmark, a large portion of the funds allocated from this pool have been used to cover interest payments and offset cost overruns in the regular defense budget, rather than new projects as originally intended.

Efforts to collectively fund greater European defense industrial capacity are not faring much better. The much-hyped pre-war European Union’s Permanent Structured Cooperation project, which was designed to jointly develop European defense capabilities, has been slow to get off the ground. Meanwhile, the European Defense Fund—which was established in 2017, but only began operating in 2021 with the mission to promote cooperation between EU companies and boost defense capability—has seen its budget decline from $1.2 billion in 2023 to $1.1 billion in 2024.

Because of Europe’s fixation with budgetary austerity, the prospect of future year increases in defense spending remains uncertain. More than two years into the war, European politicians are still frantically debating the merits of restocking quickly—which often means buying American—versus investing in their own defense industry and “buying European.” In short, Europe’s defense industrial challenges will take years to overcome. All of this suggests we are headed for a dark future during which there will be a widening gap between Ukraine’s needs and what Europe is able and willing to provide. As Kyiv’s appetite for material expands in the coming months in response to continued Russian aggression, Europe’s warehouse locks could tighten.

As it becomes increasingly challenging for Western allies to source the material Kyiv needs to sustain its fight, Allied leaders will need to grapple with difficult trade-off questions about what to give Ukraine and what to keep for themselves. Making matters tougher still, NATO Allies are trying to determine how they will fulfill the national targets allocated to them last year by NATO military authorities, as part of the multi-year NATO Defence Planning process. The first since the start of the 2022 war, the new Minimum Capability Requirements identified by SACEUR General Christopher Cavoli demand significantly more capabilities from the Allies than previous cycles. This is the context for Stoltenberg’s controversial April comments, which asked Allies to prioritize Ukraine’s current security needs over their Alliance-wide commitments to meet the ambitious transformation plans developed by NATO military officials in recent years.

Thus, despite criticism by the Zelenskyy government that Allies have been too slow to send weapons over the past two years, the reality is that Ukraine may soon have to wait longer for weapons. But unlike during the first two years of the war, where the delay was largely due to many NATO members’ fears regarding escalation, future holdups may arise as much from the sorry state of the West’s depleted arsenals and the long lag-time it will take to rebuild them.

Image: NATO

fpri.org · by Sara Bjerg Moller

8. Japan and Philippines trying to finish defense pact for signing in Manila as alarm grows over China

Japan and Philippines trying to finish defense pact for signing in Manila as alarm grows over China

AP · by JIM GOMEZ · June 28, 2024

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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Top defense and foreign affairs officials of Japan and the Philippines will meet in Manila next month to strengthen strategic ties and discuss regional concerns, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said Friday at a time of escalating concerns over China’s actions in the disputed South China Sea.

Details of the agenda of the July 8 meetings of Japanese Foreign Minister Kamikawa Yoko and Defense Minister Kihara Minoru with their Philippine counterparts were not immediately made public, but two officials of both countries told The Associated Press that efforts were underway to finalize a key defense pact which they hope could be signed during the meetings.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to discuss the issue publicly.

During a visit to Manila last year, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos to start negotiations on a reciprocal access agreement which would allow troops to enter each other’s territory for joint military exercises and strengthened defense cooperation. The move is part of efforts to strengthen their alliance in the face of what they regard as China’s growing assertiveness in the region.

Marcos said last year that the proposed defense pact would be beneficial “both to our defense and military personnel and to maintaining peace and stability in our region.” Kishida announced during the Manila visit that a coastal surveillance radar would be given to the Philippines through a grant, making it the first Southeast Asian nation to become a beneficiary of a newly launched Japanese security assistance program for allied militaries in the region.

Additional Japanese patrol vessels, defense equipment and radars will be provided to strengthen the Philippines’ law enforcement capability at sea, Kishida said last year. Japan has supplied a dozen patrol ships in recent years to the Philippines, which is now largely using them to defend its territorial interests in the contested waters.

Japan has had a longstanding territorial dispute with China over islands in the East China Sea. Meanwhile, Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy ships have been involved in a series of tense confrontations in the South China Sea, a key global trade route.

In the worst confrontation so far, Chinese coast guard personnel armed with knives, spears and an axe aboard motorboats repeatedly rammed and destroyed two Philippine navy supply vessels at disputed Second Thomas Shoal last week, injuring several Filipino sailors. Chinese sailors seized at least seven Philippine navy rifles.

The Philippines strongly protested the Chinese coast guard’s actions and demanded payment for the damage and the return of the rifles. China accused the Philippines of instigating the violence, saying the Filipino sailors strayed into what it called Chinese territorial waters despite warnings, prompting its coast guard to take action.

Japan, along with the United States and its Asian and Western allied countries and security partners, expressed concern over the Chinese actions.

“Japan reiterates serious concern over repeated actions which obstruct freedom of navigation and increase regional tensions, including recent dangerous actions that resulted in damage to the Filipino vessel and injuries to Filipinos onboard,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo said after the confrontation.

Washington renewed its warning that it is obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

Marcos and other Philippine officials said the Chinese assault on the Filipino navy personnel last week, which was caught on video and photographs that were made public by the Manila government, was “illegal” and “deliberate,” but did not amount to an armed assault that would activate the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the U.S.

AP · by JIM GOMEZ · June 28, 2024

9. China mocks U.S. presidential debate: "very entertaining"

China mocks U.S. presidential debate: "very entertaining"

Newsweek · by Matthew Tostevin · June 28, 2024

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Chinese commentators mocked the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, pointing out the president's repeated verbal stumbles and the questions over the truthfulness of his rival.

Biden was widely seen as the loser of the debate. With his voice sounding hoarse and sometimes appearing to go off track in his remarks, his performance was criticized by both Republicans and Democrats in America at a time that he had been fighting questions over his age.

"Personal attacks, hazy memory, mocking each other... this debate was very entertaining for many Chinese people," wrote high profile media commentator and former state media editor Hu Xijin on X, where he has more than 560,000 followers despite it being banned for most people in China.

"Objectively speaking, the low-quality performance of these two old men was a negative advertisement for Western democracy," he said, posting clips of the video with a jokey musical soundtrack.

China is seen by the United States as its main strategic rival and Beijing has made clear that it seeks to displace a U.S. dominated world order in its rise to global pre-eminence.

Under the rule of the Communist Party, there are no such thing as presidential debates or national presidential elections and President Xi Jinping has cemented his position as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. At 71, Xi is younger than both Trump, 78, and Biden, 81.

Although Trump criticized Biden in the debate for allegedly being in China's pocket, that drew less attention for Chinese watchers than the performance of the candidates.

"Evenly Matched"

"This chaotic rhythm almost dominated the entire debate, and many people lamented: One has Alzheimer's disease and the other is mentally ill, they are really evenly matched," wrote financial news site Cailianshe.

The state-owned Beijing News said both candidates had exposed their shortcomings. "Biden was habitually confused, and Trump continued to spread rumors," the newspaper said.

Online commentators were also drawn by the nature of the debate, with its personal attacks and the sparring that happened when Trump and Biden compared their skills and performances on the golf course.

"What kind of kindergarten quarrel?," wrote one user on the micro-blogging platform Weibo.

The presidential debate between U.S. President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is shown on a television at a watch party at the Continental Club on June 27 in Los Angeles,... The presidential debate between U.S. President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is shown on a television at a watch party at the Continental Club on June 27 in Los Angeles, California. Inset: The Chinese national flag is seen on a flagpole in Beijing on August 8, 2016. Mario Tama/STR/Getty Images/AFP

Others echoed the line that the whole debate had shown a bad reflection of the Western democracy that Beijing has long accused Washington of trying to foist on other countries around the world.

"This just points out the fundamental problem of American democracy. Americans don't elect a president, but someone who is more suitable to play the president on TV. In tonight's debate, Trump lied and talked nonsense, but most TV viewers didn't notice it. However, Biden's old age and stuttering greatly reduced his score," wrote Chu Mingyu, who has over 1.9 million Weibo followers.

On X, replies to Hu, the former state media editor, noted that such presidential debates would not happen in China.

"Agree that it's a low point, but, unlike Chinese, Americans take the long view. Generations ebb and flow, things will change," wrote U.S.-based Frederick Zimmerman from a verified account.

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Matthew Tostevin

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Matthew Tostevin is a senior editor at Newsweek and is responsible for editorial standards. He has reported from around the world for more than three decades on everything from conflict and politics to economics, business, the environment and more. He started work for the influential Focus on Africa program of BBC World Service radio before moving to the news agency Reuters and then joining Newsweek in 2023. Cities where he has lived include Freetown, Kinshasa, Lagos, Abidjan, Johannesburg, Jerusalem, London, Bangkok and Yangon. You can contact Matthew on m.tostevin@newsweek.com and follow him on Twitter @TostevinM.

Matthew Tostevin is a senior editor at Newsweek and is responsible for editorial standards. He has reported from around the ...

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Newsweek · by Matthew Tostevin · June 28, 2024

10. How will Trump and Biden differ on top foreign policy issues? A post-debate primer on what we learned.

How will Trump and Biden differ on top foreign policy issues? A post-debate primer on what we learned.

atlanticcouncil.org · by dhojnacki · June 28, 2024

There’s been a lot of talk about the style. But what about the substance? During Thursday night’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the two men drew sharp contrasts on their approaches to wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, climate and energy policies, and the future of NATO. We asked our experts to assess the most significant exchanges, what they revealed about the policy differences (or lack thereof) between the candidates, and the potential consequences for the United States’ partners.

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

William F. Wechsler: The three conclusions about the Middle East to draw from the debate

Shalom Lipner: The view from Jerusalem: US-Israel cooperation will suffer with both leaders in crisis

Olga Khakova: An anticlimactic climate discussion where “energy” was only mentioned twice

Matthew Kroenig: Don’t overlook the good news on US support for NATO

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

The three conclusions about the Middle East to draw from the debate

First, the debate proved that it’s time once again to start taking Trump seriously, if not literally, as the odds may have just increased that he will return to office. Trump has a clear message: Hamas and Iran would not have attacked Israel if he had been president, and if he is reelected he will not put any constraints on Israel’s efforts to “finish the job” in Gaza. Biden, Trump argues, is caught in half-measures that don’t satisfy either side, which is what he meant by calling Biden a “bad Palestinian.” Taking Trump seriously requires the Democratic political and foreign policy communities—including those who have protested against the Biden administration’s approach to the war—to recognize that this message will likely resonate with more Americans than they would prefer.

Second, the debate likely strengthened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hand in his efforts to remain in office. Over the decades, Netanyahu repeatedly has proved his deftness in managing both party and coalition politics. Following the largest security failure in Israeli history on October 7, Netanyahu’s strategy to avoid his government’s collapse has been to urge those in his coalition to give him through the end of the Knesset session (July 28) and then to hold on until the outcome of the US election, since a potential Trump victory would reduce Washington’s pressure on Netanyahu and thus the strains on the coalition. That argument is now clearly more persuasive. Moreover, Netanyahu will feel emboldened in his strategy of publicly arguing with Biden, which resonates with the far right of his coalition, and is now much more likely to reinforce much of Trump’s underlying message when he speaks in front of Congress on July 24—all of which will be received warmly by Republicans. Trump hasn’t forgotten his own frustrations with Netanyahu, but that will be rationalized as a problem for future Bibi, not present Bibi.

Third, the debate may have increased the likelihood of Israel launching a war against Hezbollah. For many in Israel, including a not-insubstantial proportion of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF’s) leadership, the core lesson of October 7 is that they can no longer permit the existence of any well-armed adversary on Israel’s borders. Some advocated internally for Israel to strike Hezbollah on October 11 and continue to do so today. Meanwhile, one of the most powerful political challenges for Netanyahu is how to manage the demands of the tens of thousands of Israelis who have had to flee their homes in the north under daily attack from Hezbollah. Israel has raised the volume on its threats in recent weeks, both publicly and behind closed doors, which in part is intended to incentivize Hezbollah to agree to the deal being negotiated by the Biden administration to halt the violence along the border and de-link Israel’s conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon.

Netanyahu is temperamentally risk-averse, so launching a war against Hezbollah while fighting continues in Gaza and tensions are rising in the West Bank would normally be considered uncharacteristic for him. But many in Israel will interpret Trump’s unconditioned support for Israel “finishing the job” against Hamas as also a green light to do the same against Hezbollah. Moreover, I worry that the conventional wisdom in Israel risks overestimating the probability of the rosiest war scenarios and underestimating the risk of a wider, more devastating war that would threaten Israeli population centers.

Notwithstanding the potential for unintentional escalation of the kind that triggered the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, I still think it more likely that a wider war won’t break out before the US election—a scenario that the Biden administration is actively working to avoid. But Netanyahu is well aware that Israel previously launched Operation Cast Lead during the “lame duck” period at the end of the George W. Bush administration. Given the message Trump delivered during the debate, one wonders if Netanyahu might begin weighing the potential advantages of launching a new war against Hezbollah if Trump is elected but before he takes office.

—William F. Wechsler is the senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. His most recent US government position was deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism.

The view from Jerusalem: US-Israel cooperation will suffer with both leaders in crisis

Many people set their alarm clocks for an early wake-up call on Friday morning in Israel, where major networks broadcast the US presidential debate live. Interest in the spectacle among Israelis was palpable—and understandable. Washington’s influence is deeply embedded within the core of almost every hot-button issue currently on Israel’s agenda: the protracted Israeli military campaign in Gaza, the negotiations to free hostages from Hamas captivity, the attempt to resolve tensions with Hezbollah over the Israel-Lebanon border, the drive to thwart Iran’s ambitions to acquire a nuclear-weapons capability, and the effort to formalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Biden administration continues to play a pivotal role on all of these fields and others.

Against that backdrop, the prospect of a lame-duck presidency in the United States—an increasingly likely possibility, amid mounting calls within the Democratic Party for Biden to withdraw his candidacy—injects another dose of dangerous instability into the already hobbled decision-making process of Netanyahu’s government. Barring unforeseen circumstances, the remaining months until January 20, 2025, when the next US president will be inaugurated, will feature a critical US-Israel relationship in which the leaders of both countries are mired in profound crisis, consumed with electoral politics and nursing mutual grievances. Cooperation between their nations will suffer as a result of this toxic dynamic.

Biden and Netanyahu, both weakened, increasingly will be tempted to try to gain leverage in their discussions by appealing to each other’s domestic audience. For Netanyahu, who considers himself a master of US politics, July 24—the date on which he is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress—will provide an instructive bellwether of his intentions. His previous appearance in that venue, in 2015, antagonized Barack Obama’s White House and intensified perceptions of Israel as a partisan cause. A repeat of that performance could restore Netanyahu to Trump’s good graces, but would undoubtedly worsen his predicament with the incumbent US president. With the coming US election still up for grabs, and since power may yet again shift between Democrats and Republicans, it would be wise for the Israeli prime minister to tailor his words so that majorities of both US political parties can continue to advocate for a close relationship with Israel.

—Shalom Lipner is a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He previously served seven consecutive Israeli premiers over a quarter-century at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

An anticlimactic climate discussion where “energy” was only mentioned twice

During Thursday’s debate, the candidates zeroed in on kitchen table issues, such as the cost of living, unemployment, and immigration, along with international priorities in Ukraine and the Middle East. But the largely unmentioned implications of the changing climate and energy insecurity have an outsized impact on all of these issues—and they demand policy leadership from the United States.

Record heat and droughts drive migration and geopolitical tensions; extreme weather events, exacerbated by climate change, cause higher energy costs and destroy housing and critical infrastructure; high temperatures pose a number of health risks. Moreover, US energy policy plays a major role in helping Europe stand up to supply blackmail from Russia and the United States address its overreliance on Chinese supply chains.

When asked how the candidates plan to address the climate crisis, Biden only briefly mentioned his biggest achievement in this area, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act: “I’ve passed the most extensive . . . climate change legislation in history,” he said.

Trump posted a screenshot of his climate and energy talking points ahead of the debate, but he did not voice most of them on the stage. The former president did mention wanting “immaculate clean water” and “absolutely clean air” and how much the Paris climate accord costs the United States, while pointing to insufficient action on climate from China and Russia. He defended his decision to leave the accord during his first term, but stopped short during the debate of committing to leave it again. Staying in the climate accord gives the United States the most leverage in putting more pressure on other polluters and ensuring fair burden-sharing in reducing carbon emissions.

Given that the candidates avoided disclosing their climate and energy strategies on Thursday night, the moderators of the next debate should push for direct answers that give voters a clearer view of what Biden 2.0 climate ambition would entail and how Trump’s all-of-the-above energy and deregulation approach can align with emissions reductions. While climate change may fade into the background as the animating issue for many US voters, its implications for every aspect of society remain salient. Although they approach these issues from very different angles, both candidates have an opportunity to make significant progress on reducing pollution and accelerating decarbonization, and the voters deserve to know what their strategies to do so will be.

—Olga Khakova is the deputy director for European energy security at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center.

Don’t overlook the good news on US support for NATO

In what was otherwise a dispiriting debate, Thursday’s exchanges between Biden and Trump at least signaled good news for the future of US alliances. On the topic of NATO, the candidates sparred, but from the shared assumption that a strong NATO is in the United States’ interest. Biden argued that a failure to stop Putin in Ukraine would lead to attacks against Poland, a NATO ally. He questioned Trump on whether he is “going to stay in NATO or you’re going to pull out of NATO.”

On the campaign trail, Trump has reassured voters that he would not pull out of NATO in a second term and has emphasized the importance of burden-sharing. In Thursday’s debate, Trump argued that he strengthened NATO in his first term because he “got [European allies] to put up hundreds of billions of dollars . . . The secretary general of NATO said, ‘Trump did the most incredible job I’ve ever seen.’”

While the candidates disagreed on much, they seemed to concur that there is no electoral benefit to being seen as weak on NATO. This assessment was supported by a new poll out this week from the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Institute, which found that 61 percent of Americans hold a favorable view on NATO and 72 percent support defending a NATO ally if it is attacked.

The candidates will likely clash on major issues such as immigration and inflation between now and November, but support for NATO remains a central pillar of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.

—Matthew Kroenig is vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

11. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 28, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 28, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-28-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin directed on June 28 the production and deployment of nuclear-capable short- and intermediate-range missiles following the American withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 2019, likely as part of the Kremlin's ongoing reflexive control campaign to influence Western decision making in Russia's favor.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly struck an oil depot in Russia on June 28 and reportedly struck a microelectronics plant and a military unit on the night of June 27 to 28.
• The Ukrainian Armed Forces Center for Strategic Communications (StratCom) reported on June 28 that Ukrainian forces have damaged or destroyed more than 30 Russian military aircraft in the first six months of 2024, although ISW cannot confirm this report fully.
• Many Russian elites have reportedly shifted from criticizing Russia's war effort in Ukraine to supporting it because they assess that Russia is prevailing.
• Russian officials called for harsher punishments in Russia's criminal system, likely in response to the recent terrorist attacks in Dagestan.
• Russia may be creating a shadow fleet to transport Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) and circumvent Western sanctions.
• Ukrainian forces recently regained lost positions near Vovchansk and Kreminna, and Russian forces recently advanced near Chasiv Yar.
• Russian opposition outlet Vazhnye Istorii used Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) data to estimate that over 71,000 Russian men died in the war in Ukraine in 2022 and 2023.

12. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 28, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 28, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-june-28-2024

Key Takeaways: 

• Iran: Iran held its presidential election on June 28. Iran will likely have to hold a runoff election on July 5 given that neither of the two hardline frontrunners—Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Saeed Jalili—withdrew from the election before the first round of voting on June 28. Preliminary reports suggest that most Iranians did not participate in the June 28 election. 
• Iran: Reuters, citing an unpublished International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, reported that Iran installed four new cascades of IR-6 centrifuges in Unit 1 of the Fordow fuel enrichment facility on June 28. 
• Lebanon: Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah discussed security developments in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip with Jamaa al Islamiya Secretary General Mohammed Taqoush on June 28. 
• Gaza: Palestinian fighters have conducted 24 attacks targeting Israeli forces advancing in Shujaiya since the IDF began its operation on June 27. 

13. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, June 27, 2024

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, June 27, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-june-27-2024

Key Takeaways 

• The PRC has increased its violations of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone since President Lai Ching-te’s inauguration on May 20.
• Four Chinese Coast Guard vessels entered restricted waters around Kinmen on June 25.
• A likely state-sponsored PRC cyber threat actor is conducting persistent network infiltration operations against various Taiwanese organizations.
• The PRC Supreme People’s Court and other institutions issued an authoritative legal opinion that threatens advocates of Taiwanese independence with criminal penalties up to the death penalty.
• Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed a controversial legislative reform bill unchanged after a government-mandated second review. President Lai Ching-te signed the bill into law but pledged to file for a constitutional interpretation.
• CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping convened a Military Commission Political Work Conference to emphasize the need to maintain strict military discipline and uphold Party governance.

14. Opinion | I Study Disinformation. This Election Will Be Grim.

Conclusion:

The work of studying election delegitimization and supporting election officials is more important than ever. It is crucial that we not only stand resolute but speak out forcefully against intimidation tactics intended to silence us and discredit academic research. We cannot allow fear to undermine our commitment to safeguarding the democratic process.

Again, I must include this:

From the 2017 NSS (page 14): "A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access the 2017 NSS HERE: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf

Opinion | I Study Disinformation. This Election Will Be Grim.

The New York Times · by Renée DiResta · June 25, 2024

Guest Essay

I Study Disinformation. This Election Will Be Grim.

June 25, 2024, 5:06 a.m. ET

Credit...Vivek Thakker

By

Ms. DiResta is the former research director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, a unit of Stanford University that studies abuse of online platforms.

In 2020, the Stanford Internet Observatory, where I was until recently the research director, helped lead a project that studied election rumors and disinformation. As part of that work, we frequently encountered conspiratorial thinking from Americans who had been told the 2020 presidential election was going to be stolen.

The way theories of “the steal” went viral was eerily routine. First, an image or video, such as a photo of a suitcase near a polling place, was posted as evidence of wrongdoing. The poster would tweet the purported evidence, tagging partisan influencers or media accounts with large followings. Those accounts would promote the rumor, often claiming, “Big if true!” Others would join and the algorithms would push it out to potentially millions more. Partisan media would follow.

If the rumor was found to be false — and it usually was — corrections were rarely made and even then, little noticed. The belief that “the steal” was real led directly to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Within a couple of years, the same online rumor mill turned its attention to us — the very researchers who documented it. This spells trouble for the 2024 election.

For us, it started with claims that our work was a plot to censor the right. The first came from a blog related to the Foundation for Freedom Online, the project of a man who said he “ran cyber” at the State Department. This person, an alt-right YouTube personality who’d gone by the handle Frame Game, had been employed by the State Department for just a couple of months.

Using his brief affiliation as a marker of authority, he wrote blog posts styled as research reports contending that our project, the Election Integrity Partnership, had pushed social media networks to censor 22 million tweets. He had no firsthand evidence of any censorship, however: his number was based on a simple tally of viral election rumors that we’d counted and published in a report after the election was over. Right-wing media outlets and influencers nonetheless called it evidence of a plot to steal the election, and their followers followed suit.

Here’s what we actually did: Teams of student analysts identified social media posts that were potentially misleading the public about voting procedures, or which tried to delegitimize the outcome of an election. Sometimes a nonprofit clearinghouse that included state and local election officials shared with us posts that concerned them. In some cases, if a post we examined appeared to be going viral, and appeared to violate a social media platform’s election policies, we let the companies know. Most of the time, the platforms took no action; when they did act, it was primarily to label the post as disputed, or to attach a fact check.

The real impact of the rumors about us came offline. After the House flipped to Republican control in 2022, the investigations began. The “22 million tweets” claim was entered into the congressional record by witnesses during a March 2023 hearing of a House Judiciary subcommittee. Two Republican members of the subcommittee, Jim Jordan and Dan Bishop, sent letters demanding our correspondence with the executive branch and with technology companies as part of an investigation into our role in a Biden “censorship regime.” Subpoenas soon followed, and the investigations eventually expanded to requesting that our staff submit to closed-door video-recorded testimonies. That included students who worked on the project.

It was obvious to us what would happen next: The documents we turned over would be leaked and sentences cherry-picked to fit a pre-existing narrative. This supposed evidence would be fodder for hyperpartisan influencers, and the process would begin again. Indeed, this is precisely what happened, albeit with a wrinkle. Material the subcommittee obtained under subpoena or in closed-door hearings ended up in the hands of a right-wing group that had sued us, which was led by Mr. Jordan’s longtime ideological ally Stephen Miller. We do not know how.

This brings us to the present, when another election looms. The 2024 rerun is already being viciously fought. Since 2020, the technological landscape has shifted. There are new social media platforms in the mix, such as Bluesky, Threads and Truth Social. Election integrity policies and enforcement priorities are in flux at some of the biggest platforms. What used to be Twitter is under new ownership and most of the team that focused on trust and safety was let go.

Fake audio generated by artificial intelligence has already been deployed in a European election, and A.I.-powered chatbots are posting on social-media platforms. Overseas players continue to run influence operations to interfere in American politics; in recent weeks, OpenAI has confirmed that Russia, China and others have begun to use generative text tools to improve the quality and quantity of their efforts.

Offline, trust in institutions, government, media and fellow citizens is at or near record lows and polarization continues to increase. Election officials are concerned about the safety of poll workers and election administrators — perhaps the most terrible illustration of the cost of lies on our politics.

As we enter the final stretch of the 2024 campaign, it will not be other countries that are likely to have the greatest impact. Rather, it will once again be the domestic rumor mill. The networks spreading misleading notions remain stronger than ever, while the networks of researchers and observers who worked to counter them are being dismantled.

Universities and institutions have struggled to understand and adapt to lies about their work, often remaining silent and allowing false claims to ossify. Lies about academic projects are now matters of established fact within bespoke partisan realities.

Costs, both financial and psychological, have mounted. Stanford is refocusing the work of the Observatory and has ended the Election Integrity Partnership’s rapid-response election observation work. Employees including me did not have their contracts renewed.

This is disappointing, though not entirely surprising. The investigations have led to threats and sustained harassment for researchers who find themselves the focus of congressional attention. Misleading media claims have put students in the position of facing retribution for an academic research project. Even technology companies no longer appear to be acting together to disrupt election influence operations by foreign countries on their platforms.

Republican members of the House Judiciary subcommittee reacted to the Stanford news by saying their “robust oversight” over the center had resulted in a “big win” for free speech. This is an alarming statement for government officials to make about a private research institution with First Amendment rights.

The work of studying election delegitimization and supporting election officials is more important than ever. It is crucial that we not only stand resolute but speak out forcefully against intimidation tactics intended to silence us and discredit academic research. We cannot allow fear to undermine our commitment to safeguarding the democratic process.

Ms. DiResta is the former research director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and the author of “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.”

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

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The New York Times · by Renée DiResta · June 25, 2024

15. Shall We Hunt and Expose a Potential Russian Network Operating in the US Presidential Election?

To view the graphics, images, and data please go to the link below.

Shall We Hunt and Expose a Potential Russian Network Operating in the US Presidential Election?

https://veriphix.substack.com/p/shall-we-hunt-and-expose-a-potential?utm

JOHN FUISZ

JUN 24, 2024

Let’s start by changing our perspective. Suppose we want Trump elected to help resolve Ukraine on more favorable terms. We do not want to get detected, and we’ll need to ensure that our efforts achieve the objective, so they’ll need to be tailored.

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Step 1: Figure out where and when to interfere. There is no need to target a state that is already likely to vote for Trump or Biden. We want to minimize our work to reduce detection.Using public election projections, we see several toss-up states. According to 538 projections, Biden secures the final 44 electoral college votes by winning Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Even if Trump wins Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, he will fall short of the 270 electoral votes needed.

If we are Russia, we would focus on Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. They need to flip one of these states to achieve their objective. To flip Wisconsin, they need to shift 135k votes. Michigan requires 385k, and Pennsylvania needs 220k. They do not need trending TikTok dances or news that will show up in every state. They just need to flip this small group.

At first glance, Wisconsin seems the best focus due to the lower number of votes needed, meaning the attacks will come closer to the election. A good cognitive campaign can swing the vote by 3-5%, usually running 4-6 weeks before the election, so I would not expect much action in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania right now.

Michigan will require at least two and possibly three campaigns, each lasting 4-6 weeks. That means Michigan should start heating up in July. That is where I would be now if I were Russian and where we will look.

Step 2: Look for nudges that will shift belief on Trump in Michigan. I do not have data from Michigan. If we had data, we would know what nudges to use and their impact. That is the Belief3 product and it costs money to run.

However, we do have some accounts that we suspect are part of the Russian network from previous work. This does NOT mean the account is Russian; it just means they tend to post content similar to what Russian accounts may post. Innocents are part of the process. We will work backward to see if this network is focused on Michigan. Then, we can look for attack signatures in any Michigan posts.

Running a quick search in our saved network for “Michigan,” we have a hit on Megavolts001 (EMP Intelligence) on Twitter. Government officials may note that “EMP Intelligence” was an early name used by the Russian SVR system. Coincidence? Who knows.

Megavolts001 is interesting because it was an account we came across in 2018. For those wanting to see the circumstantial path that originally led us to Megavolts001, I’ll include screenshots of the document presented to State GEC, DHS, FBI and others in May 2018. When we see Megavolts001 involved, that is cause for concern.

Megavolts001 tweets like a human-bot combination, active at all hours. The account was relatively slow but became very active on January 7th, a week out from the Iowa Caucus.

Despite being from Arizona, Megavolts has broad interests in locations such as France and the UK. We’ve seen Megavolts001 in several international matters. Megavolts001 has also retweeted “fact-corrected” Tweets, consistent with mis/disinformation-based attacks and/or being sufficiently intertwined in the network to be interesting.

Focusing on Michigan, on June 20th, we have Megavolts tweeting about EVs and concerns over Michigan election laws.

On June 16th, there was a tweet about boating in Michigan.

Let’s take the first tweet about EVs.

We do NOT know if the term “EV” is a positive nudge for Trump and a negative nudge for Biden. What we do know is that EV adoption in Michigan is low, with only 0.39% of registered vehicles (33,150 cars) being EVs. It is not a bad issue to amplify. Let’s see if it has any attack signatures.

Looking at Google Trends, we see that EV searches in Michigan beat the US average and that the trend is increasing. Remember, very few people in Michigan own EVs. The increased interest in EVs may not be economically based (e.g., more people researching EVs to buy one). The increased interest in EVs starting in January is consistent with EV being a potential attack issue.

If EV is an attack issue, we should see other tweets where Megavolts001 uses it, and sure enough, there is one on April 8th.

“Biden’s EV mandate” is interesting phrasing. When any offensive cognitive system pushes content, creating original content that uses the desired nudge is challenging. In this case, we see “Biden’s EV mandate” show up in other posts.

These are faint signatures, sure, but remember we are working backward and with incomplete data. Assuming that EV is a good nudge, if I were Russian, I would simply amplify the issue “EV” or “Biden’s EV mandate” on any social media platform like Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Meta, etc. You do NOT need to link it to Trump. Just mention it.

If you are pro-Trump, amplify away. And that is the problem, because there is NOTHING wrong with amplifying “EV” in US social media. Even IF Megavolts001 is Russian, there is still NOTHING wrong. US laws only apply IF Megavolts001 is being paid by the Russian government, which is hard to determine. 

If you are pro-Biden, do NOT talk about EVs, ever, and under any condition. Change the subject.

Did we just help the Russians? No. I’m not telling them anything they are not already doing. Remember, it takes three waves to ensure the Michigan flips. “EVs” at best are only one of those waves.

Want those other issues? And the associated networks? We’d need data collected by the Belief3 tool, and that costs money. It could be done. It should be done. It would take less than a week to start.

In a properly functioning system, we would have weekly monitoring in the key States, know which demographic segment to focus on, know ALL of the nudges and constantly update them (they do change), and confirm the impact of each nudge to know if damage is being done. If we were protecting the US election, we would be actively monitoring for the use of NEW nudges other than “EV.”

That is cognitive warfare. It is happening now and the US is doing nothing to protect the elections. Because if they were, I would not be able to whip up a Megavolts001 case study like that.

-J

Thanks for reading The Veriphix Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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The attached four pages are VERY circumstantial. ALL of the accounts mentioned in the document should be assumed to be innocent. State GEC has had this since May 2018, and all supporting documentation was provided when State GEC offered a reward to any entity that could help identify foreign interference. State did NOT award any money.

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16. The Biden admin has no firm plan to call out domestic disinformation in the 2024 election

The Biden admin has no firm plan to call out domestic disinformation in the 2024 election

Experts expect a flood of disinformation and deepfakes, but federal officials feel limited in what they can do. “The FBI is not in the truth detection business,” one official said.

June 19, 2024, 6:30 AM EDT

By Dan De Luce and Ken Dilanian

NBC News · by Dan De Luce and Ken Dilanian

The Biden administration has no firm plans to alert the public about deepfakes or other false information during the 2024 election unless it is clearly coming from a foreign actor and poses a sufficiently grave threat, according to current and former officials.

Although cyber experts in and outside of government expect an onslaught of disinformation and deepfakes during this year’s election campaign, officials in the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security remain worried that if they weigh in, they will face accusations that they are attempting to tilt the election in favor of President Joe Biden’s re-election.

Lawmakers from both parties have urged the Biden administration to take a more assertive stance.

“I’m worried that you may be overly concerned with appearing partisan and that that will freeze you in terms of taking the actions that are necessary,” Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, told cybersecurity and intelligence officials at a hearing last month.

A person walks toward the entrance of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Great Lakes Bay Region to vote in Bay City, Mich., on Nov. 3, 2020.Kaytie Boomer / The Bay City Times via AP file

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked how the government would react to a deepfake video. “If this happens, who’s in charge of responding to it? Have we thought through the process of what do we do when one of these scenarios occurs?” he asked. “‘We just want you to know that video is not real.’ Who would be in charge of that?”

A senior U.S. official familiar with government deliberations said federal law enforcement agencies, particularly the FBI, are reluctant to call out disinformation with a domestic origin.

The FBI will investigate possible election law violations, the official said, but does not feel equipped to make public statements about disinformation or deepfakes generated by Americans.

“The FBI is not in the truth detection business,” the official said.

In interagency meetings about the issue, the official said, it’s clear that the Biden administration does not have a specific plan for how to deal with domestic election disinformation, whether it’s a deepfake impersonating a candidate or a false report about violence or voting locations being closed that could dissuade people from going to the polls.

In a statement to NBC News, the FBI acknowledged that even when it investigates possible criminal violations involving false information, the bureau is unlikely to immediately flag what’s false.

“The FBI can and does investigate allegations of Americans spreading disinformation that are intended to deny or undermine someone’s ability to vote,” the statement said. “The FBI takes these allegations seriously, and that requires that we follow logical investigative steps to determine if there is a violation of federal law. Those investigative steps cannot be completed ‘in the moment.’”

The bureau added that it will “work closely with state and local election officials to share information in real time. But since elections are administered at the state level, the FBI would defer to state-level election officials about their respective plans to address disinformation in the moment.”

A senior official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the federal entity charged with protecting election infrastructure, said state and local election agencies were best placed to inform the public about false information spread by other Americans but would not rule out the possibility that the agency might issue a public warning if necessary.

“I won’t say that we wouldn’t speak publicly about something. I would not say that categorically. No, I think it just depends,” the official said.

“Is this something that’s specific to one state or jurisdiction? Is this something that’s happening in multiple states? Is this something that’s actually impacting election infrastructure?” the official said.

CISA has focused on helping educate the public and train state and local election officials about the tactics employed in disinformation campaigns, the official said.

“At CISA, we certainly have not stopped prioritizing this as a threat vector that we take very seriously for this election cycle,” the official said.

The late-breaking deepfake

Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a pro-democracy group that has been urging states to criminalize political deepfakes, said that the current federal approach is a recipe for chaos.

The biggest fear, he said, is a late-breaking deepfake that reflects poorly on a candidate and could influence the outcome of an election. Right now, government bodies — from county election boards to federal authorities — have no plans to respond to such a development, he said.

Then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, his grandchildren and Lady Gaga pose for a photo with college students at Schenley Park in Pittsburgh on Nov. 2, 2020.Drew Angerer / Getty Images file

“If political operatives have a tool they can use and it’s legal, even if it’s unethical, they are pretty likely to use it,” Weissman said. “We are foolish if we expect anything other than a tsunami of deepfakes.”

Disinformation designed to keep people from voting is illegal, but deepfakes mischaracterizing the actions of candidates are not prohibited under federal law and by the laws of 30 states.

The Department of Homeland Security has warned election officials across the country that generative artificial intelligence could allow bad actors — either foreign or domestic — to impersonate election officials and spread false information, something that has happened in other countries around the world in recent months.

At a recent meeting with tech executives and nonpartisan watchdog groups, a senior federal official in cybersecurity acknowledged that fake videos or audio clips generated by AI posed a potential risk in an election year. But they said that CISA would not try to intervene to warn the public because of the polarized political climate.

Intelligence agencies say they are closely tracking false information spread by foreign adversaries, and officials said recently they are prepared if necessary to issue a public statement about certain disinformation if the author of the false information is clearly a foreign actor and if the threat is sufficiently “severe” that it could jeopardize the outcome of the election. But they have not clearly defined what “severe” means.

At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month on the disinformation threat, senators said the government needed to come up with a more coherent plan as to how it would handle a potentially damaging “deepfake” during the election campaign.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee’s chair, told NBC News that the threat posed by generative AI is “serious and rampant” and that the federal government needed to be ready to respond.

“While I continue to push tech companies to do more to curb nefarious AI content of all varieties, I think it’s appropriate for the federal government to have a plan in place to alert the public when a serious threat comes from a foreign adversary,” he said. “In domestic contexts, state and federal law enforcement may be positioned to determine if election-related disinformation constitutes criminal activity, such as voter suppression.”

How other countries respond

Unlike the U.S. government, Canada has published an explanation of its decision-making protocol for how Ottawa will respond to an incident that could put an election at risk. The government website promises to “communicate clearly, transparently and impartially with Canadians during an election in the event of an incident or a series of incidents that threatened the election’s integrity.”

Some other democracies, including Taiwan, France and Sweden, have adopted a more proactive approach to disinformation, flagging false reports or collaborating closely with nonpartisan groups that fact-check and try to educate the public, experts said.

Then-President Donald Trump visits his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., on Nov. 3, 2020.Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images file

Sweden, for example, set up a special government agency in 2022 to combat disinformation — prompted by Russia’s information warfare — and has tried to educate the public about what to look out for and how to recognize attempts to spread falsehoods.

France has set up a similar agency, the Vigilance and Protection Service against Foreign Digital Interference, known as Viginum, which regularly issues detailed public reports about Russian-backed propaganda and false reports, describing fake government websites, news sites and social media accounts.

The European Union, following the lead of France and other member states, has set up a center for sharing information and research between government agencies and nonprofit civil society groups that track the issue.

But those countries are not plagued by the same degree of political division as in the United States, according to David Salvo, a former U.S. diplomat and now managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund think tank.

“It’s tough, because the best practices tend to be in places where either trust in government is a hell of a lot higher than it is here,” he said.

Discord derailed U.S. effort

After the 2016 election in which Russia spread disinformation through social media, U.S. government agencies began working with social media companies and researchers to help identify potentially violent or volatile content. But a federal court ruling in 2023 discouraged federal agencies from even communicating with social media platforms about content.

The Supreme Court is due to take up the case as soon as this week, and if the lower court ruling is rejected, more regular communication between federal agencies and the tech firms could resume.

Early in President Joe Biden’s term, the administration sought to tackle the danger presented by false information circulating on social media, with DHS setting up a disinformation working group led by an expert from a nonpartisan Washington think tank. But Republican lawmakers denounced the Disinformation Governance Board as a threat to free speech with an overly vague role and threatened to cut off funding for it.

Under political pressure, DHS shut it down in August 2022 and the expert who ran the board, Nina Jankowicz, said she and her family received numerous death threats during her brief tenure.

Even informal cooperation between the federal government and private nonprofit groups is more politically fraught in the U.S. due to the polarized landscape, experts say.

Nonpartisan organizations potentially face accusations of partisan bias if they collaborate or share information with a federal or state government agency, and many have faced allegations that they are stifling freedom of speech by merely tracking online disinformation.

The threat of lawsuits and intense political attacks from pro-Trump Republicans have led many organizations and universities to pull back from research on disinformation in recent years. Stanford University’s Internet Observatory, which had produced influential research on how false information moved through social media platforms during elections, recently laid off most of its staff after a spate of legal challenges and political criticism.

The university on Monday denied it was shutting down the center because of outside political pressure. It does, however, “face funding challenges as its founding grants will soon be exhausted,” the center said in a statement.

Given the federal government’s reluctance to speak publicly about disinformation, state and local election officials likely will be in the spotlight during the election, having to make decisions quickly about whether to issue a public warning. Some already have turned to a coalition of nonprofit organizations that have hired technical experts to help detect AI-generated deepfakes and provide accurate information about voting.

Two days before New Hampshire’s presidential primary in January, the state attorney general’s office put out a statement warning the public about AI-produced robocalls using fake audio clips that sounded like Biden telling voters not to go to the polls. New Hampshire’s secretary of state then spoke to news outlets to provide accurate information about voting.

NBC News · by Dan De Luce and Ken Dilanian

17. Danger of War in East Asia Ignored in Debate Despite Beijing’s Growing Aggression

As biased as I am about security in East Asia and northeast Asia in particular I think we all know foreign policy rarely significantly influences election outcomes so I do not expect the presidential candidates to have any substantive discussion of security issues there other than discussing love letters or China trade issues.

I also think when we talk about the danger of war in East Asia we need to consider the nature, objectives, and strategies of the regimes in the region and understand why we think they are on the path to war.

Danger of War in East Asia Ignored in Debate Despite Beijing’s Growing Aggression

America’s allies in the region are all embroiled in conflicts with Communist China or its surrogate, North Korea.

DONALD KIRK

Friday, June 28, 2024

13:36:47 pm

nysun.com

The showdown debate between presidents proved one thing for sure: the next election is not riding on the rising confrontation in East Asia between the forces of freedom and those of communism.

That is, unless war breaks out on the long Indo-Pacific frontier extending from South Korea through Taiwan and south to the Philippines.

All those entities stand on the front line of the Indo-Pacific, all are embroiled in conflicts with Communist China or its surrogate, North Korea.

Washington is committed to defending all of them against dire threats, including nuclear weapons brandished by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, supported by Communist China’s president, Xi Jinping.

Their fearsome names came up when Mr. Trump warned, “We are very, very close to World War III,” and that Mr. Kim, Mr. Xi, and President Putin, too, “don’t respect” and “don’t fear” Mr. Biden.

To which Mr. Biden, referring to notes between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim after their summit in Singapore in June 2018, said, “Those who he cuddles up to, from Kim Jong-un who he sends love letters to, or Putin, et cetera, they don’t want to screw around with us.”

The specter of nuclear war flashed briefly when Mr. Biden asked if Mr. Trump wanted “to start the nuclear war” that Mr. Putin “keeps talking about” if Washington fails to support its NATO allies. Neither breathed a word of the graver danger of Mr. Kim resorting to nuclear weapons against South Korea and Japan.

While the American aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt docks at the South Korean port of Busan and South Korean and Japanese planes play war games off the coast, both candidates seemed oblivious to the danger of conflict between China, Russia and North Korea versus America, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines — and the island democracy of Taiwan.

Nor did they express concern about the signing by Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin of a pact that promises they’ll fight for each other if real war breaks out. Maybe the rhetoric is too hard to take seriously when North Korea, in a battle between K-Pop and K-poop, is reported dropping manure from balloons while South Korea beams raucous music for North Korean soldiers just above the North-South line.

More dangerously, “advancements in North Korean missile technology and growth of its nuclear force means that it poses a credible threat to the homelands of the United States and our Indo-Pacific allies,” writes a deterrence analyst, Jennifer Bradley, for the National Defense University Press.

Watching the debate, no one would have guessed “the prospects of China’s forced unification with Taiwan have dominated security analysis in the last few years,” as Ms. Bradley wrote, or that “China’s ambitions extend much further” — to “establishing its own sphere of influence.”

In a poisonous atmosphere in which a spark could ignite a war, tensions are at their highest in the South China Sea where Chinese ships have rammed Philippine vessels reclaiming rights to shoals and islets that the Chinese insist are theirs.

“The Chinese actions are certainly destabilizing to the region,” said the retiring commander of American forces in the Pacific, Admiral John Aqualino, in an interview with PBS. “They are putting at risk the Philippine Coast Guardsmen, sailors, and those fishermen that operate in their exclusive economic zone within the full rights of the Philippines” — and “could absolutely be a challenge for the United States.”

“The security environment has changed drastically,” said Admiral Aquilino. The Communist Chinese have not just “expanded their military capability,” he warned, “they have now accelerated to dangerous” — just not enough for presidential debate.

nysun.com

18.  The Postwar Vision That Sees Gaza Sliced Into Security Zones

The Postwar Vision That Sees Gaza Sliced Into Security Zones

Competing ‘Day After’ proposals from outside the enclave envision transforming its geography and governance

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-postwar-gaza-plan-palestine-bf36d1c9?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Rory JonesFollow

, Anat PeledFollow

 and Dov LieberFollow

Updated June 29, 2024 12:01 am ET

As Israel prepares to wind down major military operations in Gaza, one question looms large: What happens next?

A plan that is gaining currency in the government and military envisions creating geographical “islands” or “bubbles” where Palestinians who are unconnected to Hamas can live in temporary shelter while the Israeli military mops up remaining insurgents. 

Other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party are backing another, security-focused plan that seeks to slice up Gaza with two corridors running across its width and a fortified perimeter that would allow Israel’s military to mount raids when it deems them necessary. 

The ideas come from informal groups of retired army and intelligence officers, think tanks, academics and politicians, as well as internal discussions inside the military. While Israel’s political leadership has said almost nothing about how the Gaza Strip will look and be governed after the heaviest fighting ends, these groups have been working on detailed plans that offer a glimpse of how Israel is thinking about what it calls the Day After. 

The plans—whether or not they get adopted in full—reveal hard realities about the aftermath that rarely get voiced. Among them, that Palestinian civilians could be confined indefinitely to smaller areas of the Gaza Strip while fighting continues outside, and that Israel’s army could be forced to remain deeply involved in the enclave for years until Hamas is marginalized.

The need to settle on an answer is growing more urgent, as Israel is expected to shift soon to a counterinsurgency phase of fighting that will reduce troops in Gaza and could leave the enclave mired in lawlessness and violent instability if no alternative is found. Adding to the pressure, fighting with Hezbollah on Israel’s border with Lebanon threatens to escalate. 

Palestinians arrive at Deir al-Balah after being displaced from Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. PHOTO: ABED RAHIM KHATIB/DPA/ZUMA PRESS

An Israeli tank takes a position as displaced Palestinians evacuate an area on the outskirts of Rafah on Friday. PHOTO: BASHAR TALEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

“Decisions have to be taken today,” said Israel Ziv, a former Israeli general who helped provide ideas for a plan for Hamas-free humanitarian bubbles in Gaza. 

Netanyahu, in rare comments addressing the issue last week, said the government would soon begin a phased plan to establish a civil administration run by local Palestinians in areas of the north—ultimately, he said he hopes, with security help from Arab states. 

He didn’t explain how any plan would be structured or implemented, and some analysts cautioned against assuming that something concrete was close to fruition. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on postwar planning.

Current and former Israeli officials said Netanyahu was likely referring to the “bubbles plan” discussed among government decision makers.

According to people familiar with the effort, it aims to work with local Palestinians who are unaffiliated with Hamas to set up isolated zones in northern Gaza. Palestinians in areas where Israel believes Hamas no longer holds sway would distribute aid and take on civic duties. Eventually, a coalition of U.S. and Arab states would manage the process, these people said. 

Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party are backing a security-focused plan for postwar Gaza that seeks to slice it into two corridors. PHOTO: JACK GUEZ/DPA/ZUMA PRESS

The Israeli military would continue to battle Hamas outside the bubbles and set up more over time as areas of Gaza are cleared.

Ziv, who oversaw Israel’s exit from Gaza in 2005, proposes that Palestinians who are ready to denounce Hamas could register to live in fenced-off geographic islands located next to their neighborhoods and guarded by the Israeli military. This would entitle them to reconstruction of their homes. 

The process would be gradual, and in the longer term, Ziv envisages bringing the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority back to Gaza as a political solution, with the whole process taking roughly five years as the military fights Hamas insurgents. Under his plan, Hamas could be part of Gaza’s administration, if it frees all the hostages held there and disarms, becoming purely a political movement.

It is a plan fraught with challenges, and a similar approach has failed before. Earlier this year, the Israeli military quietly attempted to work with local Gaza families to distribute aid and replace Hamas, but they were scared off by the militant group’s threats of violence. Netanyahu has said some Gaza Palestinians involved in the earlier plan were killed by Hamas. 

Hamas vowed this week to resist Israel’s plans and to “sever any hand of the occupation attempting to tamper with the destiny and future of our people.”

Palestinians are reluctant to facilitate Israeli control of Gaza after its air-and-ground campaign, which Gaza health authorities say has left more than 37,000 people dead, a majority of them civilians. 

Arab governments have expressed a willingness to play a greater role, with some offering funding and soldiers to manage security. But they have conditioned that support on a broader political track that includes a return to Gaza of the Palestinian Authority and a commitment by Israel to a two-state solution, outcomes the U.S. also seeks.

Netanyahu has refused to consider either of those demands, arguing the Palestinian Authority is too weak and supportive of terrorism. He also faces internal political pressures. Members of the right wing of his narrow governing coalition oppose a Palestinian state, and some even want Gaza to be resettled by Israelis, limiting his ability to address the issue.

A medic carries casualties of Israeli strikes in Gaza City. PHOTO: AYMAN AL HASSI/REUTERS

Women mourn in Deir el-Balah. PHOTO: BASHAR TALEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

“Because the Israeli government continues to refuse or to reject the only viable path forward,” said Hugh Lovatt at the European Council on Foreign Relations, “it will be left with the worst outcome from its perspective, which will be continued open-ended conflict and reoccupation of Gaza.”

Some Israeli think tanks, recognizing that encouraging Arab participation in administering Gaza will be difficult, are pushing for an outright Israeli occupation. 

The Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, a right-wing think tank headed by former head of national security Meir Ben-Shabbat, argues that the Israeli military needs to ensure about 75% of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters in Gaza are no longer capable of fighting before another security force can capably take over the strip. The military estimates it has killed about half the Hamas fighters it believes were operating in Gaza at the start of the war.

“There may be a period of a year or five years, or more or less, where we need some kind of military administration,” Asher Fredman of Misgav said.

Misgav says its thinking helped inform a plan put forward by members of Netanyahu’s Likud party earlier this year, which included the creation of a security perimeter around Gaza and two Israeli corridors cutting across its width. 

Northern Gaza, under the plan, would remain without reconstruction, and Palestinians there wouldn’t be allowed back to their homes until Hamas’s miles-long tunnel network was destroyed. Like the bubbles plan, it promotes the notion of de-escalation zones where aid can be delivered by the Israeli military or by international forces, but stops short of articulating an idea for governance. 

Amichai Chikli, a Likud minister who formulated the plan, personally presented it to the prime minister, according to Chikli’s office. 

Another plan, developed by a nonprofit led by a former head of Israeli military intelligence, argues that the Oct. 7 attacks and the subsequent war mean Israelis and Palestinians can no longer engage with each other in good faith. It advocates working with the U.S. and Arab governments to create a new Palestinian governing body that would work to stop terrorism against Israel.

To thread the needle between Arab reluctance to engage in Gaza without commitments toward a two-state solution and Netanyahu’s refusal to address the matter, the proposal says discussions about the establishment of a Palestinian state should start five years after the war. Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, in which Israeli authorities say militants killed about 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and took approximately 250 hostages, shouldn’t be rewarded with the establishment of a state now, the proposal says. 

Families of victims and survivors of the Hamas attacks in southern Israel attend a memorial event in Tel Aviv on Thursday. PHOTO: GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

“We need to build something new, and in order to build it we need a coalition,” said Avner Golov, of Mind Israel, the nonprofit that helped provide ideas for the plan. 

Another plan published by the Washington-based Wilson Center also advocates a coalition-style approach to the conflict but refrains from calling for Israel to consider the adoption of a Palestinian state. It says the U.S. should establish an international police force to manage security in Gaza and over time hand the job to a yet-to-be-defined Palestinian administration. 

Robert Silverman, a former U.S. diplomat in Iraq who is a co-author, said his team discussed the plan with Israeli officials for months, even changing parts of the proposal to make it more agreeable to Israel’s war objectives and political dynamics, but it stalled with the prime minister’s office.

“He believes we finish the war first and then plan the postwar,” Silverman said of Netanyahu. “All the people who have done this before say that’s a huge mistake.”

Another document, drafted by Israeli academics, that has made its way to the prime minister’s desk draws on historical precedents in rebuilding the war zones in Germany and Japan after World War II, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. It considers how to tackle Hamas’s Islamist doctrine by learning from the defeat of ideologies such as Nazism and that of Islamic State. 

The 28-page document viewed by The Wall Street Journal acknowledges that the process of deradicalizing education and identifying new leadership will be long and complicated and should start as soon as possible, especially in light of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

All of the floated plans assume that Israel will eventually leave Hamas politically and militarily defunct. That’s a blind spot, say Israeli critics of their government’s current policy.

The militant group has its own plans for postwar Gaza, aiming to at least retain security control over the strip and remain a force in Palestinian politics. The group’s organized battalions have been crushed, but its remaining capabilities still leave it the most powerful Palestinian force in the Gaza Strip, and it isn’t content to be sidelined.

“Hamas is already working on their own Day After plan,” said Ehud Yaari, a fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

An excavator pushes away debris from the square in front of the Deir al-Balah municipal building. PHOTO: BASHAR TALEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Write to Rory Jones at Rory.Jones@wsj.com, Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com and Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the June 29, 2024, print edition as 'Shape of Postwar Gaza Is Far From Settled'.

​19. Brexit Backlash: Brits Now Regret Their Populist Revolt

Be careful what you ask for. 

Brexit Backlash: Brits Now Regret Their Populist Revolt

As the U.K. heads to the polls next week, a majority thinks that leaving the EU was a mistake and has delivered few benefits—and new problems.

https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/brexit-british-regret-uk-election-837cbf4c?mod=hp_lead_pos7

By Max Colchester

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, David Luhnow

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 and Josh Mitchell

June 28, 2024

In 2019, Boris Johnson rode to a big election win on a promise to “Get Brexit Done” and finally strike a deal with the European Union for Britain’s departure. Next week, the Conservative Party that delivered Brexit goes to the polls again, this time facing a deficit of more than 20 percentage points and almost certain defeat by the opposition Labour Party. The only question, it seems, is the scale of the wipeout for the hapless Rishi Sunak and his Tories.

Eight years after the referendum, it is safe to say Britain has a serious case of “Bregret.” About 65% of Brits say that, in hindsight, leaving the EU was wrong. Just 15% say the benefits have so far outweighed the costs. Most blame the decision itself, others blame the U.K. government for not taking better advantage of it, and still others say Brexit suffered from bad luck: It took effect shortly before the pandemic and Ukraine war, both of which distracted the government and damaged the economy. 

In the years since 2016, Britain’s economy has slowed to a crawl, growing an average 1.3% versus 1.6% for the G-7 group of rich countries overall. By putting up barriers to trade and migration with its biggest trading partner, Brexit slowed trade and hurt business investment. It caused years of political turmoil as Britain debated how to untangle itself from the EU. And it deeply polarized the country, half of which saw it as a unique chance to regain British sovereignty and half of which felt it had to apologize to Europe for jumping ship. It has left Britain exhausted and its self-confidence dented. 

Prime Ministers Boris Johnson in 2019 and Rishi Sunak last month. Their Conservative Party is likely to be trounced in the coming elections

BEN STANSALL/PRESS POOL; HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

“I’m angry,” says Steve Jackson, a burly taxi driver and part-time construction worker in Boston, a town of 70,000 in eastern England. Boston is known in England for having the country’s tallest parish church, as the birthplace of several founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and as the country’s euroskeptic capital, with 75% of voters having chosen, eight years ago this month, to leave the EU. 

But many people here who backed Brexit feel betrayed. Jackson said that none of the promises made by politicians who lobbied for Brexit have come true: higher wages, cheaper food and energy, more money for healthcare, and less immigration. “We’ve been lied to—lock, stock and barrel.” 

Despite the disappointment, polls show that only a slight majority of Brits want to rejoin the EU and fewer think it is realistic, not least because the bureaucrats in Brussels are unlikely to welcome back their troublesome former partner with open arms. They would probably insist on new conditions like joining the euro single currency and a guarantee that Britain wouldn’t simply leave again in another decade or two. In both London and Brussels, there is a sense that Britain should now do what it does best: Keep calm and carry on. Labour, the likely election winners, say they just want to make Brexit work better. 

Brexit was the first in a series of populist earthquakes to rock western politics, followed soon after by the election of Donald Trump. Both will go down in history as revolts by those who felt left behind by globalization, taken for granted by traditional politicians and looked down on by urban elites. Both set in motion forces that are still playing out. 

The sunlit meadows

Those who championed Brexit said that it would allow the U.K. to take back control over issues like trade, regulation and immigration that it had ceded in joining the EU decades earlier. Johnson promised voters a Britannia unchained from a slow-growing and bureaucratic continent. “We can see the sunlit meadows beyond. I believe we would be mad not to take this once in a lifetime chance to walk through that door,” he said. A month later, 52% of the country agreed. 

Brexit meant different things to different people. For many working-class Brits, it offered the hope of less immigration and less competition from low-wage workers. For some in business, it offered the prospect of a capitalist Britain charting its own course—a Singapore-on-Thames. Many in Europe openly worried that Britain might actually succeed and provide a blueprint for other countries to quit the EU. 

In Boston in Lincolnshire, where 75% of voters chose to leave the EU in 2016, many now feel betrayed. PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES

Today no one in Europe loses much sleep over that threat. Goldman Sachs estimates that the British economy is 5% smaller than it otherwise would have been without Brexit, though it is hard to untangle the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a U.K. think tank, estimated that Brexit has resulted in a lost annual income per capita of £850 (over $1,000) since 2020. 

After the 2007-08 financial crisis, investment spending in the U.K. had recovered faster than the combined average of the EU, U.S. and Canada, according to research by Nicholas Bloom, a British economist at Stanford University. But from 2016 through 2022, U.K. investment was 22% lower than the others. Businesses spent years unsure what new regulations they’d face and whether they’d still have export markets in Europe. Many held off spending to wait for clarity. 

“Suddenly, Brexit happens, it goes sideways,” says Bloom. “You’re in a race, and the cars are going around the track, neck and neck, and then your car gets a flat: That’s U.K. investment."

Investment is now finally picking up again, but businesses still face hurdles. Early this year, the U.K., after four years of delay, released a set of rules on border checks for European imports, including inspection requirements for food. But shortly after, shops like German Deli, a specialty shop in east London, had trouble finding inspectors with the time to certify the imports, forcing it to cut back on everything from liver pâté to German meatloaf, says Susann Schmieder, the shop’s account manager. Sales in March fell by 25%. “We had the first sausage delivery from our usual supplier in May after it took them four months to sort everything out—the paperwork,” she says. 

David Frost, a former British diplomat who spent months in Brussels negotiating the free-trade deal Britain struck with the EU back in 2020, says that he gives Brexit a score of “6 out of 10,” and argues that it is still too early to pass judgment. 

Britain is joining the Trans Pacific Partnership, an Asia-based trade club. It is introducing regulatory reforms to bolster its financial center, including axing an EU cap on banker bonuses. It is overhauling its agricultural subsidies and introducing tweaks to labor-market rules to lessen administrative burdens on employers. It hopes to have a lighter regulatory footprint than the EU on artificial intelligence.  

Frost says that Britain should have gone further. “Overall, the wish was to change the way things have been for the last 20 or 30 years. And we haven’t really done that,” he says.  

Loss of faith 

Beyond the economic hit, Brexit has become a byword for unkept political promises and poor governance. Britain wrestled back control but then struggled to exercise that power. Politicians could no longer simply point the finger at faceless EU bureaucrats. 

‘We have achieved nothing,’ says Anton Dani (pictured), who runs the Cafe de Paris in Boston’s main square. ‘You learn what you already knew: That politicians are liars.’ PHOTO: ANTON DANI

Perhaps the most surprising policy response to Brexit was the U.K. government’s decision to allow a sharp increase in legal migration to help prop up the economy. In the last two years, 2.4 million people have been allowed to come and settle in Britain, dwarfing any such influx before. The government is now tightening rules, but for many who voted for better control of the borders, it has come too late. 

Disappointment is palpable here in Boston, where Polish supermarkets and delicatessens inhabit old Victorian buildings and teams of migrant workers in high-visibility vests work the nearby fields. In the last generation, Boston’s population increased by a third, largely as Eastern Europeans came to work and live there. According to a 2021 census, 20% of the Boston population describes themselves as not British.

Anton Dani, who runs the Cafe de Paris in Boston’s main square, enthusiastically backed Brexit. Dani is an immigrant himself. Born in southern France to Moroccan parents, he moved to the U.K. decades ago and set up his own business. He wants a more competitive Britain and likes immigration but thinks that too many people enter the U.K. to take advantage of government benefits. 

Today Dani says he is angry. Migrants have continued to come from Europe to Boston, he says, pointing to a group of Romanians walking past his cafe. Life in Boston meanwhile hasn’t noticeably improved, he adds. “We have achieved nothing,” he says. “You learn what you already knew: That politicians are liars.”

Today a record 45% of British people “almost never” trust the government to give priority to the nation’s interest, up from 34% in 2019, according to a 2023 poll by the National Center for Social Research. “Some people will say Brexit’s been an absolute economic disaster,” says Raoul Ruparel, a director at the Boston Consulting Group who advised former Prime Minister Theresa May on Brexit. “I think it was actually a much bigger political disaster.”

Matt Warman (pictured), a Conservative lawmaker, won 76% of the vote in Boston in 2019 with the message ‘Get Brexit Done.’ PHOTO: RUI VIEIRA/AP

Matt Warman, the local Conservative lawmaker, won 76% of the vote in Boston in 2019, campaigning on the message “Get Brexit Done” and a promise to “level up” forgotten places around the country by improving their social and economic prospects. Today he is fighting for political survival. Some polls show him losing the district to an upstart anti-immigration party called Reform UK. 

Sitting in a hotel bar on a recent day, Warman concedes that his party dropped the ball on immigration, but he says there were real trade-offs after Brexit. The local farming industry continued to need cheap labor to function, and the local hospital needed nurses, he says. 

Politicians can say “I have a great idea, it is really simple,” says Warman. “And if you then turn out not to be able to deliver your really simple solution, because the solution isn’t really simple, people wonder whether they weren’t lied to in the first place.”

Problems that remain

Brexit has become an example of what the American political scientist Aaron Wildavsky called “The Law of Large Solutions.” As he saw it, big policy solutions intended to fix a big problem often just create a bigger problem, which then “dwarfs the [original] problem as a source of worry.”

For years, Brexit engulfed the British government. In 2018, lawmakers spent 272 hours debating the EU Withdrawal Act, while a full third of the U.K. Treasury’s civil servants worked on Brexit-related matters. The opportunity cost meant that other problems festered while British talent and resources were all aimed at untangling the relationship with Europe.

“If you think about Britain’s big problems, Brexit solved none of them: the crumbling public services, weak economic growth, a shortfall of housing and a need to modernize the energy infrastructure,” says John Springford, an economist at the Centre for European Reform think tank in London. “We’ve lost eight years.” 

In the years since 2016, Britain’s economy has slowed to a crawl, growing an average 1.3% versus 1.6% for the G-7 group of rich countries overall. PHOTO: VICTORIA JONES/PA WIRE/ZUMA PRESS

A few miles north of Boston, Will Grant, who runs Fold Hill farm, spends a sunny afternoon driving around his flat fields of wheat. He voted for Brexit because he believed Johnson was credible, and he was impressed by the business leaders who advocated for the project. “I am not going to apologize for voting for it. But I am not proud of voting for it,” says the 35-year-old. “To think about what we wasted. All that oxygen talking about it, all the words written, all that time spent,” he says. “And this is the result: Something that is minorly bad.” 

Once outside the trade bloc, Britain had to in-source a lot of administration that had previously been handled at an EU level, from trade to food and medicine regulation. Since Brexit, the U.K. civil service has expanded by around 100,000 people. 

The British government copied and pasted nearly 50 years’ worth of accrued EU laws into its own statute books, pledging to amend or remove unsuitable ones. It first estimated there were some 2,000 laws it needed to import. The actual number sits at 6,700 and rising. Just a third have been amended or jettisoned. 

Nigel Farage (pictured) and his euroskeptic Reform U.K. party will likely siphon disillusioned Brexit voters from the Tories in the coming election. PHOTO: OLI SCARFF/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Even Brexit’s central aim of reclaiming national sovereignty proved complicated. To quit the EU, the U.K. agreed to place a customs border through its own country to avoid inflaming sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. The U.K. province of Northern Ireland remains aligned with EU law in some areas to ensure goods can flow without customs checks between it and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member.

Politically, Brexit is now coming full circle. In 2016, when then Conservative leader David Cameron called the referendum, it was in part to neuter euroskeptics in his own party and another upstart politician: Nigel Farage, a cigarette-smoking populist with a big grin who had launched the UK Independence Party, drawing millions of votes from the Tories on a platform to quit Europe. 

Now Farage is back, with a campaign charging that Brexit has been betrayed and immigration left unchecked. His Reform U.K. party will likely siphon hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Brexit supporters from the Tories. Farage says he wants to then engineer a reverse-takeover of the party. 

The man whom Brexit was supposed to sideline now wants to run to be prime minister when Britain is due to hold its next election in 2029. 

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the June 29, 2024, print edition as 'Brexit Backlash: Brits Now Regret Their Populist Revolt Regretting Brexit: ‘We Have Achieved Nothing’'.

20. [Newspoint] Where Marcos has taken us since Duterte

Conclusion:

Marcos may not have sounded as definite and confident as you and I might have liked it, but, again, I’ve heard the remark made all too often these days: Would you have preferred Duterte to Marcos and China to the United States?

[Newspoint] Where Marcos has taken us since Duterte

rappler.com · by Mia Gonzalez · June 29, 2024

Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has just about completed the second year of his six-year presidential term, and he seems to have not done badly – especially by himself and his family. Of the only two things he publicly, specifically committed himself to doing, it’s the self-serving one he gets to do, and that is, in his very words, “to protect my family.”

Concededly, the other promise is much harder to fulfill. First of all, it’s in the nature of prices that you find yourself falling behind, always, and, second of all, the poor state of the economy does not allow for subsidy. So, how can you ever hope for the price of rice to come down to the P20 per kilo Marcos has promised? Its price now is more than two or three times that.

Keeping the family protected, on the other hand, is a mere matter of predisposition to self-indulgent use of power, which is central to the Marcos character. In fact, even before coming to power this second time around, the Marcoses remained scarcely touched, despite the gravity of their crimes. For one thing, none of them went to jail. And after all these nearly 40 years since the dismantling of their patriarch’s dictatorship, only half of the $10 billion worth of plunder they amassed has been recovered.

President now, Ferdinand Jr. has been able to keep the collectors away altogether. For instance, he has avoided paying the P200-plus billion in estate taxes he has long owed, notwithstanding a Supreme Court ruling affirming the assessment. He also has been able to keep his mother, a graft convict, out of jail – she was sentenced in 2018 to serve from six to 11 years.

In a way, Marcos is lucky to have come after Rodrigo Duterte, who left the country in so fine a mess it looked impossible for his successor to do worse. Duterte’s indiscriminate war on drugs left thousands dead. During the COVID-19 pandemic, business slackened, livelihoods disappeared, and the poor subsisted on scanty state aid under lockdown. Duterte cronies, meanwhile, made a killing brokering for ridiculously overpriced medicines and other health supplies, from China mostly.

Duterte also favored China with public-works contracts and as a creditor, in both cases on odious terms, so that when he left office the Philippine debt had ballooned to P12.79 trillion, from P5.9 trillion. Even the one potential source of the nation’s economic hopes has been compromised – the mineral-rich West Philippine Sea. Duterte surrendered control over it, again to China, even after the Philippine territorial claim on it had been affirmed in arbitral proceedings China had itself agreed to as the rival claimant, only to reject the arbitrator’s ruling and proceed with its own aggressive ways.

President Marcos himself could not have been expected to even begin to turn things around. He came in as a close Duterte ally and with a Duterte daughter as his vice president. Furthermore, he had no track record of public service, never mind public leadership – he was most known as Ferdinand Sr.’s spoiled brat. True, he did sit in the Senate, but he only, mainly sat. He and his family focused their efforts on falsifying and deodorizing their smelly past – efforts that obviously paid off with his election as president.

Having now broken with the Dutertes, President Marcos has taken up a subsequent preoccupation – dynastic entrenchment in power, for which much groundwork actually has been laid. Son Sandro is now a member of the House of Representatives and first cousin Martin Romualdez its Speaker. Eldest sister Imee is herself in the Senate, although, an apparent family castaway, she has aligned herself with the Dutertes.

Still, Ferdinand Jr.’s dynastic primacy appears secure, and his political strategizing quite sound.

He has been able to divert public attention from his pursuit of self-interest by conceding to the popular mood when he can, although he tends sometimes to bite off more than he can chew. The P20 per kilo of rice is precisely such a case, and, because it hits consumers right in the gut, he is reminded of it now and then.

But he more or less gets away with certain graver imprudences, because they are just too abstract for the general public to grasp and therefore bother with. One is the P1.8 trillion he already has added to the nation’s debt, bringing its total to 14.62 trillion, and another is the fund he is raising from state banks to invest for promised quick gains but at underplayed risks.

Possibly the most likely reason Marcos has escaped reproach he otherwise would have deserved is that he has made an arguably fair account of himself on what has proved the most emotive issue for Filipinos – China. After all, these postwar generations have not faced any threat of subjection so overt and wanton as that from China – its bullying of Philippine patrols, fishermen, and scientists and researchers in their own territorial waters and the dispatch of its nationals in numbers for the apparent establishment of its own bailiwicks inland.

Polls show that 76% of the nation – that’s three of four Filipinos – approve of Marcos’ assertive stance toward China, a complete reversal from Duterte’s submissiveness. The approval appears to extend to American soldiers’ being allowed again to station themselves in the country, in some cases right inside Philippine military camps. After hosting American army, air force, and naval bases for nearly a century, the Philippines expelled them in 1992, in a surge of anti-colonialist sentiment, refreshed apparently by the United States’ sponsorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s 14-year martial rule.

Evidently, in any case, where China’s own expansionist designs are at issue, pragmatic thinking prevails in favor of the US – and in favor of Marcos too. Normally, taking 24 trips to 17 countries – a trip a month! – would have incited criticisms of insensitive footlooseness amid economic hardships, and it did, in the beginning. But now that he seems able to show something for it, the criticisms have died down.

Marcos has succeeded in rallying other democracies to the West Philippine Sea cause. Among them, in addition to the US, are Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany – the European Union has proclaimed its support in a declaration of its own. For a show of united force, some of them send troops for joint drills with their Filipino counterparts and also warships to linger in those waters. It does help that the Philippines has a treaty with the US that commits one to the other’s defense in the event of a foreign military attack and also that the West Philippine Sea is a waterway, as such designated by international law to allow safe passage to everyone.

Apart from the wealth under it, the sea has a strategic attraction to China: it connects the Philippines by a convenient route to Taiwan, the breakaway democracy China has been threatening to muscle back into its communist embrace. But whether China will risk grabbing the West Philippine Sea once and for all, by armed force, is a question only China’s despotic central committee can answer. The question relevant to us is whether we’re up to the challenge – with Marcos in command.

As it is, China appears to have succeeded in exploiting a flaw in the Filipino character – a culture of corruption and a consequent vulnerability to co-optation. For how explain China’s quick and easy successes? It didn’t need to fire so much as a warning shot to be able to impose much of its will in the West Philippine Sea – it only needed a collaborationist Duterte – neither to set up inland stations – it only needed inside official connections.

No wonder Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. has been just about the only official voice heard openly to declare China a serious national security problem. Not even the police would agree with him, but then, not a few of their own have been found carrying on with Chinese operating gaming and other businesses suspected to be listening posts or sleeper fronts. Asked how he managed to navigate those differences and the confusion they inevitably caused, Teodoro told me the government was finally getting its act together.

Sure enough, President Marcos himself has just made a public delineation of where the “red line” lies. A Filipino death at Chinese hands would come “very close…to an act of war,” he said, adding, presumably as a signal to the US, “Our treaty partner, I believe, also holds that same standard.” Obviously, a Filipino soldier getting a finger crushed, as exactly happened when a Chinese Coast Guard boat recently rammed a Philippine Navy supply craft, does not quite come up to standard.

Marcos may not have sounded as definite and confident as you and I might have liked it, but, again, I’ve heard the remark made all too often these days: Would you have preferred Duterte to Marcos and China to the United States? – Rappler.com

This article is part of “Marcos Year 2: External Threats, Internal Risks,” a series of analyses and in-depth reports assessing the second full year of the Marcos administration (July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024).

rappler.com · by Mia Gonzalez · June 29, 2024

21. The monument to Ukraine’s past corruption

Photos at the link.

The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak

The monument to Ukraine’s past corruption

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/the-monument-to-ukraines-past-corruption?utm

Alessandra visits the former residence of Ukrainian President Yanukovych, now a museum to government looting of public funds – and a reminder of the corruption that Ukraine is now fighting.

ALESSANDRA HAY AND TIM MAK

JUN 29, 2024

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Protesters fighting government forces at barricades on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) on February 19, 2014 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo by Serhii Mykhalchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

It is hard to imagine how Mezhyhirya, a national park outside of Kyiv complete with a beach, a zoo and a retro cars museum, was once a private residence. 

But, after decades of being a national park, through corruption's sleight of hand, in 2002 it became President Viktor Yanukovych’s personal home.

Until ten years ago.

In late 2013, Yanukovych refused to sign a deal that would bring Ukraine closer to the EU, a decision which was made after a meeting between Putin and members of Yanukovych’s party.

The decision brought protesters out onto Kyiv’s Independence Square. And the demonstration forced Yanukovych, an infamously corrupt politician who ten years before had sparked The Orange Revolution after rigging an election, to resign and flee Ukraine. By morning of February 21st, 2014, the presidential guards holding back the protesters outside of his home had been removed.

A decade later, taming corruption has become a key part of the roadmap for Ukraine’s accession to the EU – so it seemed appropriate for me to pay a visit to Yanukovych’s home, which now exists as something of a Ukrainian museum that tracks its corrupt past. Many people see the ongoing war against Russia not as merely against an empire, but a Soviet legacy of graft and government fraud.

The park became a monument to Russian-backed criminality soon after the Maidan Revolution succeeded. As soon as Yanukovych’s escape was made known, protesters entered his home, exposing the decadent life that had been built by looting of public funds: the golden toilets, the restaurant in a pirate ship. 

This was all witnessed by the international community through shaky phone videos uploaded to Youtube by the protesters. 

Inside the Presidential Palace of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych on February 26th, 2014. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell via Getty Images)

One of the first videos to be uploaded shows a man giving a speech to the mass of protesters through the gate to Mezhyhirya and standing behind a sign: “People! Do not destroy signs of decadence.” 

“They [Yanukovych’s team] left everything here and they thought we would destroy it… But we have to have this to show to the children of tomorrow, we have to make sure that this doesn’t repeat,” the man shouted through the gate.

His speech is interrupted by the famous call and response: 

“Glory to Ukraine!...Glory to the heroes!”

This public undressing of Ukrainian corruption was made even more humiliating by the fact that Yanukovych’s paranoia had led him to install CCTV all around the property, thereby recording his entire escape.

The videos also ended up on Youtube and show vans being loaded with paintings and guns and, my favorite detail, the small dog Yanukovych took with him.

Yanukovych’s dog, screenshot from a Youtube video.

The sudden escape left his residence as a moment frozen in time: billiards balls left on a pool table from an interrupted game, papers and books were left scattered across tables.

At first taking back Mezhyhiria was symbolic, with some of the protesters calling this their Ukrainian ‘Bastille’ but now, a decade later, many of the visitors come to simply enjoy the park, despite the fact that little has changed since it belonged to Yanukovych.

When you enter the park, you immediately get a sense of how vast the property is with the segways, bicycles and electric scooters available for rent.

Entrance to the park.

The property’s chaotic opulence has led to the nickname “YanukDisneyland” - a portmanteau of Yanukovych and Disneyland, and became a symbol of the corruption that was crippling Ukrainian democracy. It illustrated why Ukrainians were ready to take it back by force - after all, it was the taxpayers who paid for Mezhyhirya. 

The bizarre collection of activities available at the park give you a better sense of what life was like behind Mezhyhirya’s presidential guards and golden gates.

Map of Mezhyhirya

After doing some research I found out that the ‘aviary with ostriches’ was not a post-Yanukovych addition to the park, but something that he fiercely defended after he was questioned on it after his escape. 

“What’s wrong with supporting?” he responded to the interviewer, who asked, “What did you support?”. “That I supported the ostriches, what’s wrong with that?,” Yanukovych responds. 

Yanukovych’s ostriches.

But the ostriches weren’t the only dependents that Yanukovych was supporting. The private zoo boasts a collection of peacocks, goats, donkeys, rabbits, cows and chickens.

The main residence is a building – half wood, half stone – that looks exactly how a building would if it was designed by somebody with unlimited funds, surrounded by yes-men and with no experience in architecture.

Yanukovych’s main residence

The doors to the main residence are locked and the windows have been frosted over - although I managed to snap a picture.

Inside Yanukovych’s residence

Whether the windows were that way before Yanukovych left, or if it was done after to conceal the true opulence of Yankovych’s lifestyle and how much he stole from the Ukrainian public is unclear.

The gardens that Yanukovych’s living quarters overlook seem to go on forever: the carefully manicured hedges, cypress trees, artificial waterfalls and brooks running past small neoclassical pavilions, beg the question: did Yanukovych really think he was a Roman emperor?

Gardens in front of main residence

After seeing the main residence, one starts to realize that Yanukovych was not only hoarding wealth but also cultural heritage.

I decided that this visit wouldn’t be complete without taking a trip to the private beach. I started to regret not renting a bike after seeing the sprawling private golf course, whose end is met with a steep descent and a thick forest of fir trees.

Yanukovych’s golf course

After about 15 minutes of cyclists and segways passing my friend and I, golden domes started to rise through the trees in the distance: the Mezhyhirya monastery.

The site of the Mezhyhirya monastery is ancient, a priest explained to me, but this building was only built in 2015. 

The site was first settled and used by Cossack priests during the Kyivan Rus period: on one side is a hill and on the other is the Dnieper River, so they were protected from enemy attacks on two sides.

Mezhyhirya monastery 

The monastery was destroyed and rebuilt many times, but during the Soviet period, when the property was a dacha for the Soviet Central Committee, there were only remnants of the monastery to mark the site, the priest explained to me.

The rest of the walk to the beach I was calculating whether we would be able to make it back to the start before the park closed. Thankfully, after some french fries and a swim, we found out you could call a golf cart for two dollars to come and pick you up.

Private beach

On the golf cart ride back I suddenly realized: I had only seen half of the property… The profits of corruption were far more than I could imagine.

Although the era of Yanukovych-style corruption may be over, it is still a cancer that afflicts Ukraine and has now, with a government responsible for funding a military that is already stretched for every possible resource, become more existential than ever.

NEWS OF THE DAY: 

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands!

RUSSIA PREPARES TO TARGET U.S. DRONES: Russia is gearing up to aggressively respond to U.S. drones flying over the Black Sea, arguing that American flights are done to help with Ukrainian weapons targeting. Russia's defense minister said he was asking the military for proposals to "respond promptly" to U.S. drone flights, per The Kyiv Post. 

ZELENSKYY PROMISES PEACE PLAN IN MONTHS: The Ukrainian president promises that he will release a comprehensive peace plan in the next few months. “We don’t have too much time,” he said, pointing out the toll of the war on civilians and soldiers at an EU summit in Brussels. 

MEN FLEEING UKRAINE CONSCRIPTION: Thousands have crossed the border illegally in order to avoid being conscripted into the ongoing war, The Guardian reports. The fees to facilitate the escape run about $8,500 and rising, as more men are mobilized to meet the needs of the Ukrainian military. “I am not made for war. I can’t kill people, even if they are Russians. I won’t last long on the front … I want to build a family and see the world. I am not ready to die,” one of those planning to flee said.

RUSSIA’S NEW STRATEGY – MOTORCYCLE ASSAULTS: With drones striking any massing of vehicles, and areas heavily mined, the Russians have turned to motorbikes and dune buggies for about half of all attacks in some areas of the frontlines, the NYT reports.   

VIENNA HAS BECOME HOTSPOT FOR RUSSIAN SPIES: The number of Russian government employees in Austria has ballooned to over 500, the WSJ reports, with up to half of them working in Europe as spies. Europe expelled some 600 spies after the Ukraine war began, but many simply moved to Austria, where Vienna has become a hub for Russian murder, sabotage and recruitment. The operatives here are believed to have been behind the killing of a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine, and also track Western arms shipments to Ukraine through eastern Europe. 

Today’s Dog of War is this friendly pup that was sniffing for contraband on Ukraine’s railroads, as I entered the country. Thankfully I’m not carrying anything that would make me suspicious!

Stay safe out there. 

Best,

Tim 

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