​Quotes of the Day:

"There are no traffic jams along the extra mile." 

– Roger Staubach

"I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man." 

– George Washington

"To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to change often." 

– Winston Churchill

1. Beijing Stokes Patriotic Fervor and Blames U.S. for Trade War

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 18, 2025

3. Iran Update, April 18, 2025

4. How Pete Hegseth Is Streamlining the Pentagon

5. The New Rules of Podcasting Are Making Our Debates—and Us—Dumber

6. The Big Five - 19 April edition by Mick Ryan

7. The US must sustain counterterrorism operations in Somalia—the costs of retreat are too high

8. Pentagon turmoil deepens: Top Hegseth aide leaves post

9. As Army leaders reconsider needs and rumors swirl, industry braces for potential ground vehicle cuts

10. NGA field testing new processor to speed imagery to US regional commands

11. Ukraine parades Chinese nationals captured fighting for Russia. What message was it trying to send?

12. US says Chinese satellite firm is supporting Houthi attacks on US interests

13. Putin’s Palm Sunday Attack Demands A Response

14.The U.S. Needs to Kick Russia out of Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plants ASAP

15. Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard

16. China-Built Airport in Nepal Was Littered With Corruption, Inquiry Finds

17. How Does a Nation Charm China? Name a Boulevard After Xi Jinping.

18. Undoing Deterrence: The March Toward Armageddon

19. Mike Pompeo: We Don’t Need a Fake Deal With Iran

20. China is sending soldiers to Ukraine to prepare for a Taiwan invasion

21. Why Trump is right to revitalize the Monroe Doctrine

22. The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights

23. Under Trump, National Security Guardrails Vanish

1. Beijing Stokes Patriotic Fervor and Blames U.S. for Trade War

​Who can (and will) win an ideological war?

Beijing Stokes Patriotic Fervor and Blames U.S. for Trade War

Communist Party steels China’s population for ideological battle—an approach that could backfire

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-us-trade-war-strategy-b8ee017d?mod=hp_lead_pos5

By Brian Spegele

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April 18, 2025 10:00 pm ET

China’s leaders are rallying the nation around the flag and seeking to blame the U.S. for many of the country’s economic problems. Photo: go nakamura/Reuters

BEIJING—In the middle of the spiral of tariffs between the U.S. and China this month, the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper sought to prepare the nation for a lengthy struggle against the U.S., one that Chinese leaders promise they will win. 

“Blanket tariffs by the U.S. will deal us a blow, but ‘the sky won’t fall,’” a front-page commentary said. China is strong and by trusting in the party “we will turn challenges into opportunities.” 

As the trade war gathers force, the Chinese leadership is rallying the nation around the flag, a strategy that seeks to blame the U.S. for many of China’s economic problems.

The approach could help empower the party and its leader, Xi Jinping. It could also backfire.

“It’s a little bit of a doubled-edged sword,” said Ja Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore. If the focus is on rallying political support for the party in moments of trouble and the situation still doesn’t improve, “then the party gets blamed.” 

Chinese newspapers carrying stories on China’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. Photo: Kyodonews/Zuma Press

Leaders are signaling that a prolonged, and potentially painful, struggle against the U.S. lies ahead. The showdown, they say, has been bubbling away for nearly a decade, beginning in the first Trump administration, continuing under former President Joe Biden and escalating further in recent weeks. 

Some of the recent messaging has gone as far as to evoke the Korean War, when Chinese troops supported North Korea against a U.S.-backed South Korea, presenting today’s tariff fight as a struggle over ideology as much as trade.

Beneath China’s determination to fight back against what it sees as unjustified acts of U.S. aggression, there are several risks.

First, in retaliating against President Trump’s initial trade blows, China drew even higher tariffs, heaping pressure on an economy grappling with a property-market bust, mounting public debt and weak consumer confidence.

Patriotic fervor also potentially complicates Xi’s ability to make a deal with Trump, as anti-American sentiment can push Chinese officials to take tougher positions to avoid appearing to the Chinese public as if they are backing down under pressure.

Lastly, by framing the trade war as an ideological contest, China’s Communist Party is staking some of its own political legitimacy on winning a fight with Trump.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping Photo: Shen Hong/Zuma Press

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If “the U.S. doesn’t give in at all and the economy gets hit really hard, will the public really accept that?” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University who researches political communication in China.

Even before Trump’s latest tariffs, some academic surveys reported as many as 75% of respondents in China viewed the U.S. negatively.

That doesn’t mean that all Chinese are in favor of escalating tensions with Trump. Many are wary of the economic consequences as Chinese officials vow to “fight to the end.”

“‘Confidence’ is not a policy, and ‘stability’ is not growth,” said a Chinese essay that appeared online in response to the People’s Daily commentary, calling the party’s messaging “delusional self-narration.” The essay has since been removed, but was archived by the California-based website China Digital Times, which tracks censorship in China.

Others echoed the criticism of the People’s Daily. “Bragging costs nothing, but believing in the bragging can cost you everything,” one user on China’s Weibo social-media platform wrote, a relatively common sentiment on social media that Chinese censors have fought against. 

Beijing’s approach so far indicates it believes that it can manage any public criticism and that China faces an even greater threat from being seen as weak against Trump than it does from escalating tensions with the U.S. 

State media says that the U.S. simply can’t manage without many Chinese-made goods, implying that Trump could ultimately be forced to back down on some tariffs.

China also says its economy now is more resilient to withstand pressure on tariffs than when Trump first took office. In recent days, state media has stressed that the U.S. share of Chinese exports fell to around 15% in 2024 from 19% in 2018.

But exports made up roughly one-third of China’s 5% growth in gross domestic product last year, and resistance to an overabundance of Chinese exports extends beyond the U.S., to Europe and other regions. The Trump administration wants to use tariff negotiations with other countries to isolate China, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Workers at a garment workshop in Guangzhou, China. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

Trucks at a logistics center in Zhaoqing, China. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

Chinese officials have also said recently that the government can do more in terms of fiscal and monetary stimulus to lift domestic consumption to offset a decline in U.S. exports. But leaders have long been hesitant to roll out more aggressive policies that economists say would encourage citizens to spend more, with state money instead favoring domestic manufacturing and industry. 

Meanwhile, Chinese officials are ramping up the anti-American rhetoric. Another commentary from the People’s Daily on Wednesday made reference to the Korean War, which in China is known as the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.

“Today’s environment and circumstances are very different,” the People’s Daily said, “but in the face of America’s excessive blows of tariffs, its extreme pressure tactics, and its delusions of subduing China, the Chinese people neither accept defeat nor fear pressure.”

With much of the messaging focused on discrediting Washington, the party has presented Trump as out of touch with American people and businesses who it says oppose tariffs.

At times, Chinese have been told to feel sorry for Americans. 

One commentary from state-run broadcaster CCTV, praising the Beijing city government’s handling of a bout of strong wind in the capital this month, found an opportunity to recall problems with the U.S. government’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“These same failings are fully reflected in the crude and reckless tariffs seen today,” it said.

Write to Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com

Appeared in the April 19, 2025, print edition as 'Chinese Leadership Stokes Patriotic Fervor'.

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 18, 2025

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 18, 2025

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-18-2025

April 18, 2025, 8pm ET

Click here to view our Russia-Ukraine interactive maps.

Click here to view our special reports since 2025.

Click here to read the latest "Russian Occupation Update," a new biweekly product line tracking activities in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

Click here to read the latest "Russian Force Generation and Adaptations Update," a new weekly product line on Russian recruitment efforts, force generation, force reconstitution, and technological adaptations.

Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) Vasily Nebenzya reiterated Russian President Vladimir Putin's rejection of a general ceasefire in Ukraine. Nebenzya claimed on April 18 that discussing a general ceasefire in Ukraine is "unrealistic" and accused Ukraine of not observing the temporary moratorium on long-range strikes against energy infrastructure over the last month. Putin rejected the joint US-Ukrainian 30-day full ceasefire proposal during a phone call with US President Donald Trump on March 18, and senior Russian officials have reiterated Putin's rejection since then, attempting to deflect blame onto Ukraine and extract additional bilateral concessions from the United States. ISW previously noted that any future general ceasefire agreement must include robust monitoring mechanisms, given the Kremlin's efforts to claim that Ukraine was violating the temporary strikes ceasefire without providing evidence, and that it is unclear if Russian officials will accept any meaningful monitoring mechanisms.

Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov announced that the temporary ceasefire on long-range strikes against energy infrastructure ended on April 18. Peskov responded to a question about whether Russia will resume strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities and claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not issued further instructions. Russian officials have not expressed any interest in extending the temporary strikes ceasefire and the actual terms of the ceasefire remain unclear due to the lack of formal, publicly available, joint ceasefire documents. Russian officials accused Ukraine of violating the temporary strikes ceasefire almost daily over the last month, but provided no evidence for most of these accusations.

ISW previously assessed that Russia may intensify its long-range strikes against Ukraine following the end of the strikes moratorium, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned at an event for Ukrainian energy workers on April 17 that Russia may intensify strikes on Ukraine around Easter (April 20). It remains unclear how the ending of the temporary strikes ceasefire may impact Russia's nightly strikes against Ukraine, as the specifics of Putin's previous order to stop strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure also remain unclear. Putin claimed to have issued an order to the Russian military immediately following his March 18 phone call with President Trump to stop strikes on energy infrastructure facilities, but Russian officials have provided no further context about the duration or other specifics of this supposed order.

Kremlin mouthpieces continue to reject all US proposals to end the war in Ukraine that do not concede to all of Russia's demands for Ukraine, including regime change, demilitarization, and significant territorial concessions. Russian propagandist and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan responded on April 18 to Bloomberg's report that the United States proposed freezing the war on the current frontlines, leaving occupied Ukraine "under Moscow's control," and taking Ukraine's NATO membership "off the table" as part of a plan to end the war and claimed that this plan is a "bad deal for Russia." Simonyan claimed that Russia should reject this plan because the plan does not include terms for Ukraine's "denazification" or a formal recognition of occupied Ukraine as part of Russia, and additionally does not include assurances that Europe will not deploy a potential European peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine. Simonyan also attempted to delegitimize Ukraine and the United States as negotiating partners and claimed that "there can be no negotiating with the insane" in reference to the plan and the Ukrainian government. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev urged the United States to "wash its hands" of the war in Ukraine and let Russia "figure it out faster" in a social media post on April 18.

Kremlin officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, have repeatedly stated that they are unwilling to accept any agreement that does not concede to all of Russia's territorial and political demands for Ukraine. US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in an article published on April 17 that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been "fixated" on territorial concessions during their bilateral meetings, indicating that Russian officials likely continue to reiterate their territorial and political demands about Ukraine both in public and in private. Russian officials have noted that Putin remains committed to accomplishing all his goals in Ukraine, which Putin has explicitly defined in part as the "denazification" and demilitarization of Ukraine. Russian officials often invoke the term "denazification" to call for regime change in Ukraine and to demand the installation of a pro-Russian proxy government in Kyiv. ISW previously noted that Russia demanded in the April 2022 Istanbul Protocol draft agreement that Ukraine shrink its military beyond pre-2022 levels and commit to never fielding a military capable of defending the country against future Russian aggression. Putin has also called for Ukraine to concede unoccupied territory to Russia, and Russian officials appear to be considering these demands as the Kremlin's standing guidance on negotiations.

Russian officials' continued insistence on these demands has also set conditions for Russian society to expect these demands to be fulfilled in any conclusion of the war in Ukraine, and Kremlin mouthpieces stating explicitly that these demands must be met even in a peace deal favorable to Russia is a reflection of this long-term rhetorical line. ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin maintains its long-standing goals in Ukraine, and Russian officials continue to indicate and explicitly state that they are unwilling to compromise on these goals.

Key Takeaways:

• Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) Vasily Nebenzya reiterated Russian President Vladimir Putin's rejection of a general ceasefire in Ukraine.

• Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov announced that the temporary ceasefire on long-range strikes against energy infrastructure ended on April 18.

• Kremlin mouthpieces continue to reject all US proposals to end the war in Ukraine that do not concede to all of Russia's demands for Ukraine, including regime change, demilitarization, and significant territorial concessions.

• Russian officials continue to reiterate Russian demands for the elimination of the "root causes" of the war in Ukraine as a precondition for a peace agreement — a reference to Russia's initial war demands that directly contradict US President Donald Trump's stated objective of achieving a lasting peace in Ukraine.

• Ukrainian officials held bilateral talks with US officials and multilateral talks with Coalition of the Willing partners in Paris, France, on April 16 to 18 regarding peace negotiations.

• Ukrainian officials announced on April 17 that the United States and Ukraine signed a memorandum of intent to conclude a future bilateral mineral deal and enhance economic cooperation.

• Russian forces conducted a ballistic missile strike against civilian areas in Kharkiv City on April 18, the latest in a string of high-casualty Russian strikes against civilian areas in Ukraine in recent weeks.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on April 18 that the People's Republic of China (PRC) is supplying Russia with weapons and military materials.

• Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Toretsk. Russian forces recently advanced in Kursk Oblast and near Kupyansk, Lyman, and Kurakhove.

3. Iran Update, April 18, 2025

Iran Update, April 18, 2025

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-april-18-2025

Click here to view ISW–CTP's interactive control-of-terrain map of Syria.

Click here to view ISW's complete portfolio of interactive maps.

Iran proposed a three-stage nuclear deal proposal that caps Iranian uranium enrichment but would leave the necessary infrastructure in place to enable Iran to rapidly rebuild its nuclear program if the deal collapsed. Anti-regime Iranian media reported that Iran proposed a three-stage nuclear deal proposal that capped Iranian uranium enrichment but preserved Iranian nuclear infrastructure, such as advanced centrifuges. The reported plan does not include a timeline for the phases of the deal. This proposal would likely preserve Iran’s ability to rapidly rebuild its nuclear program. Former UN weapons inspector David Albright warned on April 18 that Iran could make enough weapons-grade uranium in 25 days, even with a small low-enriched uranium (LEU) stock, if it maintains all of its current centrifuges. Iran is also developing new advanced centrifuges, such as the IR-8, which Iranian officials have claimed is “sixteen times” more capable than the IR-1 centrifuge. Iran has increased the number of its operational centrifuges since it signed the JCPOA in 2015.

An unspecified senior Iranian official told Reuters on April 18 that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will refuse any deal that requires Iran to dismantle centrifuges, halt uranium enrichment, and reduce its stockpile below Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) levels. The reported Iranian proposal lacks sunset clauses, but leaves Iran’s centrifuge infrastructure intact, which would allow Iran to rapidly rebuild its stockpile of enriched uranium. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio separately stated on April 18 that the United States seeks a durable deal that will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon both now and in the future. The Iranian proposal does not achieve the stated US government objective of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon now and in the future because it leaves the necessary infrastructure in place to rapidly build a weapon if the deal collapses.

Key Takeaways:

• Iran-Proposed Nuclear Deal: Iran proposed a three-stage nuclear deal proposal that caps Iranian uranium enrichment but would leave the necessary infrastructure in place to enable Iran to rapidly rebuild its nuclear program if the deal collapsed.

• China-Houthi Connections: An analysis of available satellite imagery from a Chinese military-affiliated satellite company shows that the vast majority of Houthi attacks took place in areas imaged by the Chinese company. An open-source analyst posted a map on X on April 17 that shows the available satellite imagery overlaid with Houthi attacks on vessels transiting the Red Sea.

• CENTCOM Airstrikes in Ras Issa, Yemen: US Central Command (CENTCOM) struck Houthi fuel stockpiles and oil export and import facilities at Ras Issa Port, Hudaydah Governorate, on April 17.

• US Air Campaign in Yemen: A large proportion of US airstrikes have targeted Hudaydah Governorate, likely in an effort to degrade Houthi targeting capabilities and degrade other Houthi infrastructure. An air campaign can only achieve temporary effects. A campaign to permanently prevent the Houthis from using Hudaydah Governorate to launch attacks targeting international shipping would require a ground operation to take and hold ground.

• US Withdrawal from Syria: The United States will withdraw from three bases in northeastern Syria, including two positions designed to support counter-ISIS operations along the Euphrates River in Deir ez Zor Province. The US troop presence in Syria will drop from 2,000 to 1,400 under the current drawdown plan.

• Turkey-SDF Ceasefire Agreement: The United States reportedly brokered a ceasefire agreement between Turkey and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on April 17.

4. How Pete Hegseth Is Streamlining the Pentagon

​Excerpts:

The memo directs all proposed reorganizations to be routed through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (P&R). But this office is overdue for serious scrutiny itself. P&R sits atop a sprawling HR and compliance bureaucracy with little demonstrated connection to actual military readiness. While it nominally oversees areas like compensation, housing, healthcare, and training, together accounting for a large share of the defense budget, most of the work is already handled by the services or other agencies.

Still, there is much to like in the many ongoing bureaucratic reviews at the Pentagon. Hopefully, significant follow-through is next.

How Pete Hegseth Is Streamlining the Pentagon

April 17, 2025

By: Mackenzie Eaglen

The National Interest

Topic: Security

Region: Americas

April 17, 2025

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As in all things military, execution, not ideas, is key to achieving lasting reforms in the Department of Defense.

The Department of Defense’s new business-minded leaders under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are channeling a venture capitalist’s mindset with a flurry of broad and deep reviews: cut the fat, scale what works, kill what doesn’t. These methods, foreign to the bureaucracy, will ensure the overhauls are substantial and enduring.

The Pentagon’s tech modernization is being reoriented around mission outcome metrics rather than compliance or procurement throughput. Leaders are taking a hard look at internal inefficiencies, from paper-based processes to bloated and redundant office functions to faster acquisition timelines, especially for software and dual-use systems.

First up was the 8 percent budget scrub to reinvest into higher priority investments within the defense budget. Then there was the major defense weapons program review to identify waste and realign government spending with more shared risk with industry. Now the team is plotting to map the mammoth civilian workforce to warfighter priorities exclusively.

The deep dive into the almost-800,000-strong federal defense civilian workforce is especially welcome. This vast group of employees generally only ever gets larger, no matter the push from various administrations to streamline.

In new guidance to senior leadership across the enterprise, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Steve Feinberg, launched a sweeping organizational review to rightsize the workforce consistent with the Secretary of Defense’s interim National Defense Strategy guidance. The directive calls for a fundamental rethinking of the massive federal defense civilian staff in order to simplify operations, eliminate redundancy, and refocus resources.

Feinberg’s instruction aims to put the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy on wartime footing by treating urgency not as a contingency but as the standard for how decisions are made and billets are justified.

“Every civilian role should directly enable lethality, readiness, or strategic deterrence. If not, it should be reclassified, outsourced, or removed,” Feinberg wrote. “Every role must now meet a simple test: If this position didn’t exist today, and we were at war tomorrow, would we create it? If the answer is no, it should be consolidated, restructured, or eliminated.”

The most important part of this initiative is that it targets both headcount and workload at the same time. Previous attempts at workforce reforms failed by cutting people through freezes, caps, or attrition without making corresponding reductions to missions, reporting requirements, or internal processes. The result has been a civilian workforce that only slightly ever shrinks on paper and remains overstretched in practice.

The latest effort explicitly asks what functions can be consolidated, automated, or ended altogether. It directs every Pentagon component to redraw its organizational charts from the ground up, realign civilian roles with outcomes like deterrence, lethality, and speed, and identify the tasks that no longer need to be done at all.

Positions that exist solely to “manage or track documents between systems” are flagged as signs of broken processes. Supervisory billets with minimal staff, redundant policy offices, and standalone coordinators are all targeted for elimination or restructuring.

Another major shift in the review is its approach to technology. The guidance calls for replacing “manual workflows, paper-based processes, and outdated IT platforms,” and urges the Defense Department to “leverage automation and artificial intelligence to power the mission impact of our civilian workforce.”

There is serious room for finding efficiencies through technology, automation, and AI. Research has shown that outdated and underperforming software has cost the Pentagon billions in productivity losses. Pentagon leaders have long acknowledged persistent challenges with fragmented systems, siloed data, and legacy workflows that slow down internal operations.

When paired with a serious effort to eliminate unnecessary work, automation could do more than streamline processes. Smart employment of software could eliminate the need for entire functions and layers of oversight that only exist to manage inefficiency.

The memo directs all proposed reorganizations to be routed through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (P&R). But this office is overdue for serious scrutiny itself. P&R sits atop a sprawling HR and compliance bureaucracy with little demonstrated connection to actual military readiness. While it nominally oversees areas like compensation, housing, healthcare, and training, together accounting for a large share of the defense budget, most of the work is already handled by the services or other agencies.

Still, there is much to like in the many ongoing bureaucratic reviews at the Pentagon. Hopefully, significant follow-through is next.

About the Author:

Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a regular guest lecturer at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security. Ms. Eaglen is also one of the twelve-member U.S. Army War College Board of Visitors, which offers advice about academic program objectives and effectiveness. She also serves on the U.S. Army Science Board, an advisory body that provides guidance on scientific and other matters to the Army’s senior leadership. In 2023, she became a member of the Commission on the Future of the Navy, established by Congress to study the strategy, budget, and policy concerning the future strength of the U.S. Navy fleet.

Image: Joshua Sukoff / Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest

5. The New Rules of Podcasting Are Making Our Debates—and Us—Dumber

I did not realize how influential these podcasters are. 

The New Rules of Podcasting Are Making Our Debates—and Us—Dumber

I celebrated the rise of new media. What could go wrong with ‘democratizing information’? As it turns out, quite a lot. Witness the Douglas Murray and Dave Smith debate.

By Konstantin Kisin

04.17.25 — Culture and Ideas

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-new-rules-of-podcasting-douglas-murray-dave-smith-joe-rogan?r=7i07&utm

“The world of entertainment is not driven by truth-seeking, and the claim that someone’s ideas are false is no longer an effective critique,” writes Konstantin Kisin. (Illustration by The Free Press

Prepare for the unprecedented: I am about to admit I was wrong.

For years, I have celebrated the rise of new media and its impact on our ability to seek truth, challenge false narratives peddled by legacy institutions, and transform the way we conduct our public debate. The rationale behind my thought process seemed solid. After all, “the medium is the message.”

The reason I thought our conversations about politics, culture, and entertainment had become so fake was the rapidly shrinking soundbite and a media elite more interested in winning than learning. Journalism, academia, and politics merged into a monoculture, whose consensus rested primarily on the vigorous inhalation of gases emanating from their own backsides, into which they had firmly inserted their heads.

“I don’t know anyone who voted for Trump” was their mantra. Far from being a confession of ignorance and a lack of perspective, this phrase was uttered with pride at dinner parties to signal membership of the elite class. The response from this contingent to the sequential dismantling of their core assumptions about the way the world works was an attempt to use credentialism to make reality go away: “Experts think vaccinating newborns against Covid is essential. Now pipe down, mask up, and follow The Science™!”

In decades past, absent the ability to make their voices heard, the proles would have had to grumble away about Big Pharma in obscurity as people (mostly hippie lefties) had been doing for ages. But, thanks to the technological revolution—which reduced the cost of running a major broadcasting channel from millions of dollars to the price of a smartphone—the era of gatekeeping was well and truly over.

The discredited mainstream media continued to peddle lie after lie in an attempt to keep its political opponents from governing and being reelected, but it then faced a powerful counterweight. Elon Musk ended the regime of censorship and enforcement bias in the digital public square of Twitter, declaring “You are the media now” as major podcasts and YouTube shows secured audiences most mainstream media outlets can now only dream of. By the time of last year’s presidential election in the U.S. the rise of new media had become undeniable, with many rightly calling it the “podcast election.”

Curious, open-minded, inquisitive podcasters, unrestrained by the need to comply with corporate media message discipline and social media censorship, were finally able to speak freely, seek the truth, and debate controversial ideas in good faith in front of grateful audiences of millions. So far, so wonderful. After all, what could go wrong with “democratizing information”?

Well, as it turns out, quite a lot.

Just as the assumptions of the elite class were proved wrong by the actions of their fellow citizens during the era of Trump, Brexit, and Covid-19, the assumptions some of us held about the future of the media are now crumbling before our very eyes.

With politics becoming the primary form of entertainment in Western society, more of us now get our news and opinions from entertainers rather than serious commentators and, just as importantly, we often struggle to tell the difference between the two. Having transitioned from a career in comedy to my current role as a writer, interviewer, and political commentator, I can hardly complain about the meshing of culture, politics, and entertainment. And I am not complaining; I am merely pointing out that the incentive structures and thought patterns we typically associate with the entertainment business are not the same as those we expect to see in journalism or academia.

This difference was perfectly illustrated in the recent debate between journalist and author Douglas Murray and comedian and podcaster Dave Smith on The Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s biggest podcast.

Officially, the full three-hour discussion was mostly about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, with Smith in the so-called “anti-war camp” and Murray as a supporter of both Israel’s campaign to eliminate Hamas and Ukraine’s struggle to retain its sovereignty and independence. These conflicts and both men’s positions have been debated endlessly; that part of the discussion is less relevant here.

The much more interesting fault lines were exposed on the fringes of the debate. The conversation began with a discussion of Rogan’s decision to host Darryl Cooper, a man described by Tucker Carlson as “America’s most important popular historian.” Cooper himself has the self-awareness not to own the label of historian, instead describing himself as a “storyteller.”

His latest work is a series whose aim is to show World War II from the perspective of the Germans. To those who have studied World War II extensively, like Murray, Cooper’s comments on Carlson’s show and in his podcast with Joe Rogan are obvious—and frankly, boringly familiar—Nazi apologia. Far from being novel, the idea peddled by Cooper that Winston Churchill was a “warmonger” who “turned the invasion of Poland into a global war” because he was “funded by Zionist financiers” formed the core of wartime propaganda fabricated by Joseph Goebbels. The argument Cooper advances—that millions of prisoners of war and civilians died on the Eastern Front because the Nazis failed to plan properly for the invasion—is simply a lie. There is extensive documentary evidence which confirms that the reason millions of POWs and civilians died on the Eastern Front is precisely because the Nazis succeeded in their plans.

Read Niall Ferguson on “The Return of Anti-History”

Because Murray is educated on this issue, he assumes that everyone else, including Smith, is too. Exasperated, he tries to explain that, far from being revolutionary, these ideas have been pushed by discredited historians like David Irving for decades.

“Have you consumed any of his podcasts or anything like that?” Rogan interjects. It turns out Murray hasn’t, and this is later used against him after the episode airs. Unlike Murray, I have listened to Cooper’s podcasts, including the one about the history of Palestine that people often cite in his defense. “He details the persecution of Jews preceding the events he covers, so he couldn’t possibly be antisemitic” is their argument. From this, they conclude that he couldn’t possibly be a Nazi apologist. The reason they make this logical error is that in the entertainment world, words do not have meanings, they have feelings. And thanks to the woke left’s misuse of the word Nazi for the last decade, in Podcastistan the term is not a descriptive label, but a vague, meaningless insult used to cancel people.

Unlike his opponents, Murray clearly understands that the term Nazi apologist has a defined meaning, and the fact that most Nazi apologists are antisemitic does not mean that you have to be antisemitic to fit that description. The Grok definition of a Nazi apologist is “someone who defends, justifies, or minimizes the actions, ideology, or atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, often by excusing Nazi policies or promoting revisionist narratives that distort historical facts.” Since Cooper does precisely this in several appearances on major podcasts, how his series on Palestine would change this reality is clearly as confusing to Murray, who hasn’t listened to it, as it is to me, who has.

Indeed, one of the main areas of misunderstanding in the discussion is the role of expertise. “He doesn’t claim to be an expert” is Smith’s riposte to Murray’s suggestion that Cooper doesn’t know what he is talking about. He uses the same defense when Murray questions Smith’s own willingness to opine on geopolitics. The central critique of Murray here is that he is arguing from authority, which is what mainstream media has done for years to gaslight the public about everything from transgenderism to Covid to war. Smith and his supporters argue that the concept of expertise has been so discredited that he (and anyone else for that matter) is entitled to express any views about any issue they want. The audience, they say, can judge these views themselves. Murray’s attempt to dismiss such views on the basis that they don’t align with expert opinion is seen as an ineffective argument at best and an attempt at credentialism at worst.

There is a sliver of truth to this criticism: Engaging the argument someone is making directly is a much more powerful approach. But to suggest that arguments from authority are entirely invalid is silly.

Almost everything you believe is based on an argument from authority. Light bulbs, for example, are a fairly unsophisticated and omnipresent part of our lives. Yet the number of people reading this article who are capable of explaining how they work without resorting to arguments from authority will be vanishingly small. I am not just talking about the fact that most people couldn’t explain how electricity works; I am talking about the fact that almost everyone who can will be able to do so only by quoting the work of other people, rather than experiments and research they themselves have conducted.

While Rogan seems to side with Smith in this exchange, it is highly unlikely he would adopt this same approach to his own areas of expertise. When it comes to mixed martial arts, his interview guests are the best of the best—the dazzling array of UFC champions, top MMA coaches, respected trainers, and other experts does not appear to include comedian Dave Smith. There is a popular clip on the JRE YouTube channel in which Smith “breaks down” why Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. I was unable to find one of him breaking down Brazilian jiujitsu moves, despite Smith possessing a similar level of expertise on both subjects.

Smith and Rogan are irked when Murray expresses his befuddlement that Smith has become a prominent voice in the debate about Israel and Palestine without ever having visited the Middle East. The shock at the idea that someone ought to see things with their own eyes before commenting on them is palpable. Indeed, in the aftermath of the debate, Smith promoted a popular video in which Murray’s statements to this effect are contrasted with his previous ridicule of the concept of “lived experience.”

This is very low-quality thinking. If you do not see things with your own eyes, your opinions are, by definition, not your own. They are an agglomeration of opinions and facts you have gathered from other sources whose veracity you cannot properly evaluate. That doesn’t necessarily make them wrong. Indeed, most of our opinions about most things are not our own. You know why? Because we get them from people we consider to be authoritative on the subject in question. You might call them “experts.”

The great trick being deployed here is to allege that experts can’t be trusted while relying on a different set of experts. On Ukraine, the nonexpert Smith is using the ideas of people he considers experts, like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs. On World War II, the nonexpert Cooper deploys the arguments of people he considers experts, like Irving. And so on and so forth. “All opinions are valid and should be given a hearing!” scream the people whose entire media diet is made up of people who push only their preferred perspective.

This is where Smith obtains the arguments he makes about countries he has never visited: from other people. And the arguments are then judged not on whether they are true, something Smith does not have the expertise to assess, but on whether they sound true. This is why he routinely makes basic cognitive errors of the kind I described the last time he and I sparred over my viral Israel video.

As for experience, the woke concept of “lived experience” was not ridiculed because experience doesn’t matter. You would have to be deeply dishonest to deny that experiences are informative. If Michael Jordan claimed that there is a “correct way” to dunk a basketball based on his experience and conversations with Kobe Bryant, do you imagine Smith and his defenders would screech about MJ just using “arguments from authority” and “lived experience”?

The reason many of us pushed back against “lived experience,” other than that it is grating tautology, is that it was used as a way to say “you can’t have this opinion on a certain societal issue because of your race, sex, and/or sexuality.” This expanded the concept of “experience” from personal experiences that all of us as individuals have to a kind of generalized knowledge that certain groups allegedly possess by virtue of their skin color or other immutable characteristics. If Murray had claimed that Smith is unqualified to comment because he is not a Middle Easterner, for example, his critics would have a point. Instead he merely pointed out that Smith might become more informed by visiting the region he opines about with such confidence and regularity.

Which brings us, finally, to the biggest sticking point of all. “This is the strongest evidence of thought policing I have ever seen,” says a popular comment under a video of the debate. And it’s true: On numerous occasions throughout the discussion, Murray commits the greatest sin available in Podcastistan: suggesting that certain people shouldn’t comment on certain things and that others should not elevate their voices. Such is the inability to think clearly about this that you would almost certainly receive less pushback for denying that slavery harmed black Americans or claiming the Holocaust didn’t really happen. They simply no longer understand the difference between censorship (“this must be banned”) and morality (“this is a bad thing to do”).

But of course, the world of entertainment is not driven by truth-seeking, and the claim that someone’s ideas are false is no longer an effective critique. Podcastistan is a place where people scold the mainstream media for failing to live up to their standards on honesty and accuracy while having none of their own.

Cooper is a case in point. Even among his defenders, few claim that what he is saying is actually true. That’s not why they like Cooper. They like Cooper because he ticks every box on the new-media checklist:

1. Transgression: Since new media positions itself as a challenge to the mainstream, it rewards, above all, ideas that are transgressive. In an environment where the truth is often met with outrage, saying something controversial is easily confused with saying something true. “If the libs are upset, it must be true” is a poor heuristic for understanding the world. But it is what often passes for thinking in Podcastistan.
2. Charisma: Cooper is charismatic. All media, but new media especially, overindexes charisma. And that is because charisma and authenticity are connected. People who say what they truly think are typically more charismatic than those who filter and obfuscate. But just because someone says what they truly think does not mean that what they think is true.
3. Conspiracy: Cooper’s ideas are conspiratorial. A key element of the new media worldview is that you are constantly being lied to by mainstream institutions. It is extremely helpful to proponents of this perspective that you are, in fact, frequently lied to by mainstream institutions. In this context, ideas that appear to expose a hidden truth always have more appeal.
4. Entertainment Value: Cooper’s podcasts are entertaining. In a world where culture, politics, history, and pretty much everything else is a form of entertainment, entertaining ideas that are wrong appeal more than boring ideas that are true.
5. Political Alignment: As I have explained previously, Cooper’s ideas about the past are popular because they serve a specific political purpose right here in the present.

The incomprehension Smith and his supporters exhibit at the notion that bad ideas ought not be spread widely, and that we do not owe those who insist on uttering them access to our audiences is, I imagine, exactly the sort of incomprehension that a fast-food or Big Pharma executive would exhibit at the suggestion that selling unhealthy food or addictive drugs is a bad thing to do.

It’s a free country, after all. If those industries can poison your body, why can’t Cooper poison your mind?

Konstantin Kisin is a British writer, Sunday Times best-selling author and the co-host of Triggernometry. Read his Substack here.

6. The Big Five - 19 April edition by Mick Ryan

T​he five:

1. The Paradox of Liberty

2. The Next Phase of Military Use of AI

3. China’s Use of Generative AI in Cognitive Warfare

4. Another Chinese General Bites the Dust

5. Deception and EW

The Big Five

The Big Five - 19 April edition

My regular update on global conflict. This week: negotiating peace is hard, the minerals deal, North Korea's support for Russia's war, and discussions about Russians at Indonesian air bases.

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-big-five-19-april-edition?utm

Mick Ryan

Apr 19, 2025

Image: @DefenceU and 14th UAS Regiment

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Big Five. This week, an examination of the Trump administration’s dawning understanding that negotiating peace in the largest and most brutal war in Europe since 1945 is not like negotiating the purchase of a Manhattan office tower. Also, that minerals deal, the North Korean support to Russia’s war effort, and the strategic competition in the Pacific.

As always, I conclude with my top five war and national security reads from the week.

Ukraine

Peace Negotiations and Europe’s Way Forward with Ukraine. This week, Ukraine, European nations and America held talks about ending the war in Ukraine. The talks, convened by the French president in Paris, were designed as a “day of diplomatic mobilisation”. While the talks were accompanied by snark from the U.S. State Department - spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters in Washington that “the French being happy is fabulous. What matters is the end result” - they did not see any more results than U.S. efforts in the past couple of months.

After the talks, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that despite his promises to end the war in 24 hours, President Trump may not be able to end the war at all. Rubio noted that:

The president has spent 87 days at the highest level of this government repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to an end. We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not, which is why we’re engaging both sides….I think the president’s probably at a point where he’s going to say, ‘Well, we’re done. We’re not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end.

President Trump appeared to back up this statement in a news conference towards the end of the week. In his meeting with journalists, Trump stated that:

If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we're just gonna say, 'you're foolish, you're fools, you're horrible people,' and we're just gonna take a pass.

According to this report from CNN, Trump said he would “have to see an enthusiasm to want to end it” from both sides. I mean, does he really think that every single person in Ukraine doesn’t want this to end?

So, what does this all mean?

The Trump administration is working on an unrevealed timeline to achieve something (what this is we don’t really know, other than the mythical aim of flipping Russia) and is keen to move onto other issues. None of those involved in negotiations seem to be able to conceptualise war - and the huge human and strategic stakes involved - as anything different from a run-of-the-mill real estate deal.

And, thus far, the interventions into this conflict by Trump have been disasterous. Not only has he continuously abused the Ukrainian president, and encouraged the Russian president, he has used the “all stick, no carrots'“ approach towards Ukraine and a “all carrots, no sticks” approach towards Russia. Russian information operations and messaging about Russian ownership of Ukrainian territory has been amplified by Trump’s negotiators, and long-time U.S. allies have been marginalised by the administration.

The Trump administration appears to be so blinded by the chimera of economic opportunities in the Russia relationship, and the belief in the fantasical “reverse Nixon strategy” (which has been thoroughly debunked by actual strategy and international relations experts), that it does not understand the real impacts of its ‘efforts’ since January this year. These include:

• The destruction of trust between the Ukrainian people and America.
• A strengthening of Putin’s position in Ukraine, and a reinforcement that he is free to engage in aggression against other European nations without Trump’s interference.
• The likelihood that Europe will probably takeover as the principal intermediary in future peace negotiations, although other parties from the Middle East and China might also play a more important role as well.
• The unlikelihood of further military aid packages from America to Ukraine.
• Encouragement for other authoritarians to engage in aggression against their neighbours in the knowledge that Trump’s administration is unlikely to intercede. This has been most obvious in China’s increase in operations around Taiwan and its activities against Japan.

We have also seen skewing of opinion about Russia in America. According to a Pew Research Center poll released this week, the percentage of Americans who consider Russia an “enemy” has fallen to the lowest point since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. To be fair however, the current figure of 50% is still higher than it was before the war, and the number of Americans who see Russia as a competitor has increased (see below).

Image: Pew Research Center

While I would love to think that the Trump strategy is to give Putin heaps of rope in order to hang himself, so that Trump can then double down on support for Ukraine, it is hard to be that optimistic. The fact that Europe appears to be getting serious about its own defence is a good thing, but issues like strategic intelligence, logistics, defence industry and European military command and control are going to take years to sort out to the degree that Europe alone can provide a robust deterrent against Russian aggression.

While Ukraine is continuously increasing the percentage of weapons, drones and munitions it produces at home (currently over 40%), somehow Europe, Ukraine and other partners are going to have to produce a strategy (which is resourced) very soon that sees them achieve the following in case the Trump administration walks away from the conflict:

• Continue to defend Ukraine with minimal U.S. support in the short and medium term.
• Continue to expand defence industrial production across Europe.
• Continue to enhance the size and capacity of military institutions across Europe to deter Russian aggression.
• Increase the ability to combat Russian misinformation and cognitive warfare against European societies.
• Combat Russian subversion and sabotage in Europe.
• Sustain American support for NATO to the degree that is possible.

Ukraine Minerals Deal. Ukraine and the U.S this week signed a memorandum of intent for a minerals agreement. The proposed agreement includes the establishment of a joint reconstruction investment fund. This would grant America priority access to profits from Ukraine’s critical natural resources, including graphite, lithium, titanium, beryllium, and uranium. The memorandum signed this week is just an interim step before the full minerals agreement is agreed and signed. This will require ratification by Ukraine’s parliament.

The Trump administration sees this arrangement as a way to extort Ukraine to recoup the military and financial assistance provided to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. ​The deal does not provide any security guarantees for Ukraine.

Image: @Svyrydenko_Y

In a post on Twitter / X, Ukraine’s Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko, noted that “the agreement will open opportunities for significant investments, infrastructure modernization, and mutually beneficial partnership between Ukraine and the United States…It is very important that the document notes the desire of the American people to invest together with the Ukrainian people in a free, sovereign, and secure Ukraine.”

The best that is likely to come from this deal is that it draws the U.S. into a longer term partnership with Ukraine, which at some point and in some administration after this one, results in security guarantees. That, however, is almost impossible to imagine under the current U.S. administration.

China Providing Weapons to Russia? This week, President Zelenskyy described how China is providing military support to Russia. The Chinese have denied such assistance throughout the war. NATO, in its 2024 summit communique, described China as a key enabler of Russia’s war. This is the first time that such a staunch statement about Chinese military assistance to Russia has been made. Zelenskyy described how China is providing artillery and gun powder for munitions. While I am sure we will have confirmation one way or the other in due course, the level of Chinese economic assistance to Russia - and probably intelligence support as well - is very significant.

Which leads me to the support for Russia by another founding member of the Arsenal of Authoritarians club: North Korea.

North Korean Support to Russia. This week Reuters published a detailed account of North Korea’s materiel support to Russia’s war effort. The report provided details of transhipment routes and the quantities of munitions provided by North Korea and how these numbers were derived. The report also described how, on at least one occasion, the Ukrainians had destroyed a significant proportion of a just-arrived North Korean munitions shipment at Tikhoretsk in September 2024.

Image: Reuters

This is a very informative and useful report. Not only does it provide an indication of the reliance the Russians placed on North Korean munitions in 2024, it also illustrates the growing collaboration between different authoritarian nations in the production and sharing of weapons and munitions. This growing collaboration was also examined in the latest U.S. Intelligence Community Threat Assessment.

In the past couple of years we have seen the dawn of an Arsenal of Authoritarians across the globe. Given how the key actors in this alignment - China, Russia, Iran and North Korea - share borders and can operate on interior lines, this and their aggressive cognitive warfare and other coercive activities is a very grave threat to democracies in Europe and Asia.

North Korea is supporting Russia in other ways as well. Reports this week also indicate that the North Korean contingent in Kursk, who have learned very quickly about modern war including drone operations, may be part of a Russian offensive in north eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief General Syrskyy stated during the week that these operations had already begun.

Speaking to a Japanese news agency this week, a representative of the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate described how North Korean ground forces had adapted quickly after their high battlefield losses in Kursk. North Korean troops suffered about 5,000 casualties with around 6,000 soldiers remaining in Kursk. As the intelligence official described:

The North Korean soldiers now move in smaller groups of one or two people and have learned to use unmanned aerial vehicles and electronic warfare equipment. They have also adopted Russian battlefield tactics and weaponry despite initial concerns about language barriers…They receive basic instructions to “reach this or that frontier” and then secure positions without requiring constant contact with Russian commanders.

I explored this adaptation battle in a piece earlier this week, which you can read at this link. The North Koreans in Russia have clearly ‘learned how to learn better’ with regards to modern war.

Strategic Strike operations. This week Russia continued its strategic slaughter operations against Ukraine with a strike on civilians in Sumy. The strike, which occured on Palm Sunday, illed 35 people and wounded more than 100, mostly civilians. It also occured just 48 hours after the trip to Moscow by Trump’s peace negotiator, Steve Witkoff.

It was a demonstration of Putin’s contempt for the process as it stands, and his unwillingness to back away from his maximalist position. The U.S. president described the Russian attack as a ‘mistake’. The full count of Russian drone and missile strikes against Ukraine this week is shown below.

Source: Ukrainian Air Force

Ukraine struck back later in the week with at least two separate strikes on the 16th and 17th of April against the Russian missile brigade responsible for the attack on Sumy.

Towards the end of the week, the Russians advised the world that the 30 day ceasefire on attacking energy infrastructure had ended and that they had no intention of continuing the ceasefire.

The Pacific

Image: @USPacificFleet

Recently, the commander of Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Paparo, testified before the U.S. Congress House Armed Services Committee. These hearings are always interesting becasue the most senior military field commanders get to provide their assessments of the the environment in which they operate and their thinking about potential threats, security partners, the impacts of new technologies and overall force readiness.

Some key messages from the testimony bear highlighting:

• China is developing and integrating cutting-edge technologies – AI, hypersonic and advanced missiles, and space-based capabilities – at an alarming pace. China is outpacing the U.S. in testing not only these critical technologies but also technologies from across their military industrial base.
• Beijing's aggressive maneuvers around Taiwan are not just exercises – they are dress rehearsals for forced unification. The PLA escalated military pressure against Taiwan by 300% in 2024.
• Russia has significantly modernized its Pacific Fleet since 2021 with particular growth of its submarine fleet. In 2024 alone, Russia’s Pacific Fleet received three new submarines.
• Russia's growing military cooperation with China, including joint exercises in the Pacific, adds another layer of complexity to the Indo-Pacific security environment. Their combined operations demonstrate increasing sophistication
• The deepening cooperation between China, Russia, and North Korea threatens to exacerbate and accelerate security challenges in the Indo-Pacific, degrading safety and security and accelerating existing tensions and disputes in the region.

The testimony indicates that the correlation of forces in the Pacific is continuing to evolve, and not in a way that favours America and its allies. While China certainly has some challenges with corruption, centralisation of command and integration of its forces across all domains, it is growing bigger, more sophistocated and more capable every year.

Backed by a very deep manufacturing and R&D sector, China is an extraordinarily powerful and capable potential adversary. If nations in the Pacific think that continuing to spend between 2 and 3.5% of the GDP on defence is the answer to this, and a way to deter Chinese agression, I think we might learn the hard way in the near future that it is not.

U.S. Forces in Japan. This week, the U.S. president compained again that the 1960 U.S.-Japan security treaty is "so one-sided". Trump stated that:

We pay hundreds of billions of dollars to defend them, but...they don't pay anything. If we're ever attacked, they don't have to do a thing to protect us. I just wonder who did this, and it's people that either hate our country or didn't care.

Under the agreement, over 50,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed throughout Japan. The U.S. forces there provide a critical deterrent against Chinese agression in the western Pacific. What Trump didn’t mention was the billions of U.S. dollars that the government of Japan pays the U.S. government as part of the agreement, and that both sides have benefitted enormously - and not just economically - from their deepening relationship over the last few decades.

A new, 5-year agreement was signed in 2022, which sees Japan pay US$8.6 billion dollars to the U.S. for the presence of U.S. forces. This equates to about 75% of the cost of keeping U.S. forces in Japan. Given a new agreement is due to be negotiated during this Trump administration, this will be an interesting issue to watch in the coming year or so.

Anti-Ship Missile Firing. Also from Japan this week, plans were announced to conduct the first Japanese Self-Defence Force land-to-ship missile drills The live-fire exercise will be conducted on the island of Hokkaido and will simulate attacks on ships from land-based military forces. The Japanese plans to employ its Type 88 surface-to-ship missile, with a range of over 100 kilometers, in the exercise.

Type 88 Anti-Ship Missile launchers. Source: @IndoPac_Info

Another One Bites the Dust: More Xi Purging. Over the last couple of weeks, it has been rumoured that the Vice Chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission (CMC) General He Weidong may have been detained or removed from his appointment. Newsweek reported in March that He had been arrested. He subsequently missed a tree-planting event that all other members of the CMC attended on the 2nd of April and was reportedly the sole Politburo member to not attend the Central Conference on Work Related to Neighboring Countries last week. He is the second highest-ranking general in the PLA after fellow CMC Vice Chairman General Zhang Youxia.

A Jamestown Foundation article on this topic (which is included in my top 5 recommendations below) proposes that He was promoting corrupt senior officials:

He Weidong is responsible for overseeing the military’s political and disciplinary affairs, but his personnel management and promotion recommendations since the 20th Party Congress in October 2022 have raised significant issues. Many key generals, upon promotion, were found to have corruption problems.

The latest senior official to be purged will only reinforce to remaining generals and officials that their loyalty may officially be to the party, but it is really to Xi. While this might make for quick decision-making for Xi, it will probably increase fear among the officer corps and will impede effective wartime decision-making when more decentralised decision-making models are required.

Russians in Indonesia? A Russian request to use an Indonesian airbase in the eastern regions of Indonesia gained a lot of attention in Australia this week. Janes Defence broke the story Tuesday morning (Australian time) and by that afternoon, questions about the potential for Russian bombers and other aircraft being based in Biak had become a central topic in the ongoing Australian federal election campaign.

Image: Janes

The Russians have not denied that they made the request. Indonesia has denied that it will permit the Russians to base offensive aircraft anywhere within its borders.

For both sides of Australian politics, the story comes at an awkward time. The federal election campaign is in full swing (the election is on 3 May), and neither side has wanted to discuss national security as an election issue, essentially because there are no votes in it.

Federal politicians in Australia (rightly for the most part) percieve the majority of Australians are complacent about defence and national security (we are a long way away from anywhere apparently) and far more concerned about the cost of housing, groceries, fuel and power. So, having a national security scare like this really knocked the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition into a different (and less preferred) campaign mode - at least for a couple of days.

I expect that the issue will probably be forgotten by the time most people cast their votes next month. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the profound changes in the geopolitical situation have gone away and won’t impact Australia. The reality is that whoever gets elected on 3 May 2025, the inability of both sides of politics to describe to the electorate the big geopolitical changes and the impacts these have on national security posture and resources means that Australia will probably suffer some form of strategic shock in the next couple of years.

This won’t come as too much of a surprise to those who study Australia closely. As Donald Horne wrote in his 1964 book, The Lucky Country:

Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck. It lives on the other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.

A tough judgement. But a thoroughly accurate description of our current polity. Such is life in the land down under. I love it dearly, but we can do better.

*****

It’s time to turn to this week’s recommended readings.

This week, I have included an article from on the cognitive warfare challenge for demoncracies as well as two articles on the applications of generative AI in military and national security institutions. I have also included a piece on the disappearance of the Vice Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission and an article on how the clever use of the electromagnetic spectrum can improve military deception.

As always, if you only have time to read one of my recommendations, the first one is my read of the week.

Happy reading!

1. The Paradox of Liberty

I am loving the rebirth of the Small Wars Journal. It is publishing thoughtful and high quality articles about the theory and practice of war, new technologies and a range of others relevant to national security professionals. In this article, the author examines the impacts of new era cognitive warfare on individuals and groups in democratic society. While the focus is on America, it has application well beyond. You can read the full article at this link.

2. The Next Phase of Military Use of AI

The MIT Tech Review this week published a useful look at the next steps in the military applications of AI. While short, it does examine some of the opportunities and risks with the deeper integration of AI into military decision-making models. As for the way ahead, the author notes that “For consumers, it’s agentic AI, or models that can not just converse with you and analyze information but go out onto the internet and perform actions on your behalf. All signs point to the prospect that military AI models will follow this trajectory as well.” The full piece is available at this link.

3. China’s Use of Generative AI in Cognitive Warfare

In an article that reinforces the one above, Reuters covers a new report from the Taiwanese government that examines how China is using generative AI in its efforts to manipulate and split society in Taiwan. You can read the article at this link.

4. Another Chinese General Bites the Dust

Over the last few weeks, rumour have abounded about the disappearance of the Vice Chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission (CMC) General He Weidong. In this piece, the author examines the reasons behind the removal of He from his appointment, and the potential challenges that Chinese president Xi might have in finding an appropriate replacement. You can read the article here.

5. Deception and EW

This week, War on the Rocks published a terrific examination of deception and the contribution of operations in the electromagnetic spectrum to the art and science of decieving the enemy. As the author notes “Trickery will always play a role in warfare. New domains offer novel ways to manipulate and fool an opponent.” You can read the article at this link.

7. The US must sustain counterterrorism operations in Somalia—the costs of retreat are too high

​Excerpts:

The terrorist groups based in Somalia are adapting faster, making broader connections, and integrating deeper than Washington’s withdrawal advocates seem to realize. To misread that evolution as localized or static is strategic negligence. A decision to withdraw at this moment will not be remembered as a tactical recalibration but as an unforced error. To leave is to license the evolution of these terrorist groups; to stay is to disrupt it.

The US must sustain counterterrorism operations in Somalia—the costs of retreat are too high

By Danielle Cosgrove and Doug Livermore

atlanticcouncil.org · by Katherine Walla · April 17, 2025

Amid a deepening security crisis, the Trump administration is reportedly considering whether to reduce the US footprint in Somalia, for example by closing the US embassy in Mogadishu. This potential reversal comes even as the United States continues to carry out airstrikes against Somali militants.

Islamist insurgents, including al-Shabaab and the Somali affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS-S), are making territorial gains. These two groups represent distinct but overlapping threats—each transnational, each integrated into broader jihadist ecosystems, and each capable of destabilizing regional and global security if left unchecked. They are also quickly evolving, including by increasing connections with other groups and malign state actors such as the Islamic Republic of Iran—creating larger geostrategic implications.

To address this evolution, the United States must remain engaged in Somalia; but that does not necessarily require escalation. Strategic engagement through a forward embassy, regional partnerships, and calibrated intelligence operations can disrupt the evolution of the terrorist threat in Somalia—and it costs far less than what it would take to contain fully metastasized, adaptive adversaries down the road.

Increasingly adaptive

For too long, ISIS-S has been treated as an afterthought in Somalia’s counterterrorism landscape, but the group can no longer be ignored: Since 2019, it has evolved significantly, becoming the Islamic State’s most agile, digitally integrated, and externally operational franchise. This has aligned with the Islamic State’s global shift toward a decentralized, node-based network managed by the General Directorate of Provinces. Formerly a localized insurgency attempting to replicate elements of the core caliphate in miniature, ISIS-S is now modular, externally focused, and nonterritorial, with unique technical capabilities that elevate its threat beyond that of traditional insurgent groups.

It does not seek to hold Mogadishu; rather, ISIS-S bypasses the Somalian capital to exploit ungoverned spaces through coordinated disruption. Its efforts destabilize governance; it coordinates its operations via encrypted messaging apps, blockchain-based payment systems, commercial off-the-shelf obfuscation tools, and artificial intelligence-generated multilingual propaganda that enables large-scale recruitment.

The ISIS-S threat is transnational and no longer confined to Somalia; that is apparent with the group’s implication in terror plots overseas, including in Sweden. Perhaps most critically for the United States, the ISIS-S al-Karrar office is understood to serve as a funding node for ISIS-Khorasan, which has proven capable of devastating terror plots, including the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan that killed thirteen US service members.

Al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda’s East African affiliate, has also proven to be far more than a local insurgency—it is a deeply entrenched and militarily assertive force in Somalia, capable of executing complex operations, controlling territory, and challenging both national and international security efforts. This transnational terrorist organization has already exerted influence beyond Somalia, having executed mass-casualty attacks in Kenya and Uganda. In 2020, its operatives struck US and Kenyan forces in Manda Bay, killing three Americans. The group explicitly targets US and Western interests throughout East Africa. Withdrawing now, as al-Shabaab regains momentum, risks allowing it to strengthen its position and expand its influence.

Metastizing menace

Of parallel concern is the mounting evidence of cooperation between al-Shabaab and the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. This partnership represents a dangerous escalation. The Houthis have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to strike maritime targets in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden using anti-ship missiles, drones, and explosive-laden boats. These asymmetric maritime attacks have disrupted vital shipping lanes, endangered commercial vessels, and necessitated multinational naval responses. They also offer a template for al-Shabaab’s future posture.

Growing evidence exists that Houthi weaponry, supplied by Iran, has been transferred into Somalia and reached both al-Shabaab and ISIS-S. These transfers suggest an intensifying convergence of interests but not ideologies. While al-Shabaab, ISIS-S, and the Houthis remain doctrinally divergent, they share three critical traits: a reliance on illicit maritime logistics, the use of asymmetric tactics, and a willingness to cooperate when it serves operational goals. This alignment adds complexity to counterterrorism efforts in the Horn of Africa, blurring the lines between ideological enemies and functional partners.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, just north of Somalia, is a critical chokepoint for global trade, funneling approximately 12 percent of seaborne oil trade flows. Increased attacks or insecurity in these waters would drive up insurance costs, increase shipping expenses, and worsen instability across East Africa and the Middle East. Should al-Shabaab or ISIS-S, either independently or in partnership with the Houthis, begin to harass this artery, it would have immediate implications for the global economy.

But in addition to the potential economic impact, there is also a clear strategic threat from this cooperation. Hostility to the West and asymmetrical warfare exercised by these groups and the militias included in Iran’s Axis of Resistance could pose an enduring threat to US allies and partners in the region. For example, the US Navy could see its operational freedom eroded, and militant activity in the sea lanes around the Horn of Africa—which connect the Mediterranean to the Indo-Pacific—could complicate the United States’ ability to surge naval forces in response to crises involving China in the Taiwan Strait or Russia in the eastern Mediterranean.

Continuity as containment

The 2021 US withdrawal from Somalia offered a preview of what disengagement would yield. Following the withdrawal, al-Shabaab and ISIS-S regrouped, expanded their respective operations, and forged deeper regional ties that present the greater challenges that the United States faces today. Although US forces returned in 2022, the withdrawal had already proved costly.

Today, ISIS-S internally exploits the geography of Somalia, clan connections, and instability to thrive. Al-Shabaab forces inch ever forward in their ongoing campaign to isolate and potentially capture the capital of Mogadishu. Each debate over whether to stay or go provides strategic space that the groups use to adapt.

The post-9/11 experience has demonstrated that power vacuums can be quickly filled by hostile actors. The 2011 withdrawal from Iraq enabled ISIS’s rapid rise. Strategic ambiguity in Libya yielded terrain for jihadist experimentation. Afghanistan’s rapid collapse under the Taliban offered ISIS-Khorasan and al-Qaeda a second wind. Somalia is not an exception: It would be the next domino.

But it’s not just a matter of being present. For example, the 2012 Benghazi attack was not a failure of presence; it was a failure of planning, coordination, and establishing an adequate security posture. Similarly, abandoning Somalia without a coherent containment strategy creates the risk of empowering a transnational terrorist organization with international ambitions while simultaneously allowing Iran to extend its strategic reach.

To maintain its foothold at the most critical junction of East Africa’s security architecture, the United States must prioritize continuity. This includes keeping the US embassy in Mogadishu open, as it provides a platform for intelligence coordination, interagency operations, and diplomatic leverage. Without it, the United States cannot assess—let alone contain—a threat that is actively recombining in real time and posing risks to maritime security, the regional balance of deterrence, and potentially the US homeland.

The terrorist groups based in Somalia are adapting faster, making broader connections, and integrating deeper than Washington’s withdrawal advocates seem to realize. To misread that evolution as localized or static is strategic negligence. A decision to withdraw at this moment will not be remembered as a tactical recalibration but as an unforced error. To leave is to license the evolution of these terrorist groups; to stay is to disrupt it.

Danielle Cosgrove is a senior advisor to the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Group. She is a distinguished guest lecturer at Stanford University, a Stanford Medicine X scholar, and the founder of an acquired threat mapping startup.

Doug Livermore is a member of the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Group, the national vice president for the Special Operations Association of America, and the deputy commander for Special Operations Detachment–Joint Special Operations Command in the North Carolina Army National Guard.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are the authors’ and do not represent official US government positions.

8. Pentagon turmoil deepens: Top Hegseth aide leaves post

Exclusive

Pentagon turmoil deepens: Top Hegseth aide leaves post

“There is a complete meltdown in the building,” one official said.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/18/defense-secretary-chief-of-staff-joe-kasper-departure-00299508

The Pentagon is seen on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023, in Washington. | Carolyn Kaster/AP

By Daniel Lippman and Jack Detsch

04/18/2025 05:27 PM EDT

Updated: 04/18/2025 08:30 PM EDT

Joe Kasper, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff will leave his role in the coming days for a new position at the agency, according to a senior administration official, amid a week of turmoil for the Pentagon.

Senior adviser Dan Caldwell, Hegseth deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, were placed on leave this week in an ongoing leak probe. All three were terminated on Friday, according to three people familiar with the matter, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

The latest incidents add to the Pentagon’s broader upheaval in recent months, including fallout from Hegseth’s release of sensitive information in a Signal chat with other national security leaders and a controversial department visit by Elon Musk.

Caldwell, Carroll, Selnick and Kasper declined to comment. Two of the people said Carroll and Selnick plan to sue for wrongful termination. The Pentagon did not respond to a request of comment.

Kasper had requested an investigation into Pentagon leaks in March, which included military operational plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Musk’s visit and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine.

But some at the Pentagon also started to notice a rivalry between Kasper and the fired advisers.

“Joe didn’t like those guys,” said one defense official. “They all have different styles. They just didn’t get along. It was a personality clash.”

The changes will leave Hegseth without a chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, or senior adviser in his front office.

“There is a complete meltdown in the building, and this is really reflecting on the secretary’s leadership,” said a senior defense official. “Pete Hegseth has surrounded himself with some people who don’t have his interests at heart.”

This week’s terminations follow a purge of top military officers in February, including former Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

“There probably will be more chaos,” said a third defense official. “It certainly reinforces the fear factor, awareness that no one’s job is safe.”

Other officials wondered what this would mean for Hegseth, a still inexperienced Pentagon leader who has just lost many of his top advisers.

“The front office has some really first-rate uniformed military staff, but there’s only so much they can pick up in an organization that big,” said a former Trump administration official. “That kind of dysfunction compounds.”

Democrats pointed to the firings as another example of Hegseth’s inability to lead the agency.

“Everyone knew that Pete Hegseth did not possess the leadership qualities, background, or experience to be Secretary of Defense,” said Chris Meagher, who served as assistant Defense secretary for public affairs during the Biden administration. “Everything we’ve seen since then — the firing of several American heroes because of perceived lack of loyalty, the sloppiness of Signalgate, the complete lack of transparency, and now several political staff being shown the door — has only confirmed he doesn’t have what it takes to lead.”

9. As Army leaders reconsider needs and rumors swirl, industry braces for potential ground vehicle cuts

​Excerpts:

A third industry source said that it’s challenging to make any business case decisions until the FY26 budget request is released.

For example, the source said it seems like speculation changes “day-by- day” to include possible cuts to both existing and new and developmental ground vehicle programs.

“At the same time, [we’re] moving forward in terms of putting the resources in and working on the key programs and the milestones for these competitive programs,” the official added. “We’re not stopping our efforts: We’re moving along like those things that are going to get funded.”

The second source cautioned Army leaders against narrowly looking at the ground vehicle space through two lenses — legacy and modernization — and then funneling funds towards future combat vehicles.

That’s because they said many of the vehicles rolling off the production line today have been significantly upgraded over time (i.e., Abrams evolving iterations or the Self-Propelled Howitzer PIM program).

Also, if the Army decides to cut a hot production line at somewhere like General Dynamics or BAE Systems, it will have second and third order effects for the entire supply chain, Ferrari and industry sources explained.

“The notion that I’ll shut this down and in a couple of years I’ll build a new vehicle, and we’ll start a new production line, that doesn’t work,” Ferrari warned. “You will essentially be irreparably harming not just the first-tier industrial base, but the supply chain.”

As Army leaders reconsider needs and rumors swirl, industry braces for potential ground vehicle cuts - Breaking Defense

"[We’re] trying to figure out what's going to happen," an industry official told Breaking Defense. "I joke about the crystal ball, but it's kind of anybody's guess right now about what could come out."

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · April 18, 2025

A live fire demonstration of the Army’s M10 Booker at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Aberdeen, Md., April 18, 2024. (US Army/Christopher Kaufmann)

WASHINGTON — Out in California’s Mojave Desert, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy Geroge had a clear message for industry: A technology shakeup is afoot for the service that could rock large-scale acquisition programs, including ground combat vehicles.

“I’m tied to overall capability,” the four-star general told Breaking Defense during a recent interview at Ft. Irwin, Calif. “How we do that is probably going to change … [and] with what equipment.”

“Look at how much has changed in technology just in the last couple years, it would make sense that we probably wouldn’t buy the same things that we’ve been buying for a long time,” George added.

George’s comments come amid swirling industry speculation that the Army could make significant cuts to its ground combat vehicle portfolio. And while the service hasn’t committed to any major cuts yet and there’s rampant uncertainty with regard to the service’s budget, defense contractors are already bracing for bad news, according to seven industry sources at both large primes and subcontractors.

“Cuts are all rumor until they are not,” one industry official said.

A second industry source said they’re “trying to figure out what’s going to happen. I joke about the crystal ball, but it’s kind of anybody’s guess right now about what could come out.”

“Literally everything is on the table,” added the source, who like others was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the uncertain situation.

To understand much of the concern, it’s necessary to go back to 2023 when The Marathon Initiative, a non-profit focused on national security topics, published a report [PDF] called “Resourcing the Strategy of Denial: Optimizing the Defense Budget in Three Alternative Futures,” which proposed drastic changes in acquisition for all the services.

When it comes to the Army, the report argued for paring back formations and weapons buys, including terminating the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV), Self-Propelled Howitzer Paladin Integrated Management (PIM) program, and the ongoing Bradley replacement competition, while also reducing the planned buys for upgraded M1 Abrams tanks, the number of Strykers and aircraft upgrades including the AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk.

While that document is almost two years old and not a government publication, in recent months it has gained traction in defense industry circles since its author, Austin Dahmer, is now inside the Pentagon performing the duties of deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, and a co-founder of the initiative, Elbridge Colby, has taken the DoD’s top policy job.

Specifically, a chart of possible cuts drawn from the report has made the rounds, as has additional speculation that projects like the M10 Booker and the embattled Robotic Combat Vehicles program could be in danger, according to all of the industry sources.

When asked about The Marathon Initiative report and the widespread rumors, George said he had read the Marathon document but steered clear of detailing any agreements or diverging views.

“The big thing that I kind of took away from this is one, [I’ve] got to make sure that we know what the Army can do, and I’m very confident with what the Army is going to do for our country,” he said. “[That’s] going to be with digitally connected, mobile, dispersed soldiers that [have a] very low signature, that can operate and provide long-range fires, that can … seize and hold ground.”

Newly minted Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll will ultimately place his name behind any service force structure changes and weapons cuts. And as of today, he had not signed off on any massive overhaul, an Army official told Breaking Defense.

But he is closely studying ways to “free up resources” from older programs and “recycle” them into “things that will help us win the next war” as well as George’s “transformation in contact” push.

The Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll flies in a UH-60 Blackhawk at Fort Irwin on March 13. (US Army/ Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Mejia)

To help make that determination, the service is using a reversal of the Army Requirement Oversight Council (AROC) process, dubbed CORA, to shed requirements in a fast but “judicious manner” and make sure that “it’s not a knee-jerk reaction,” the Army official added.

Army Futures Command head Gen. James Rainey is helping sort through some those requirement questions and has used experiments like this year’s Project Convergence Capstone 5 (PCC5) event to help filter insights back up to Driscoll and George.

“Chief hates a piece of equipment we have. He’s like, ‘I want to kill it.’ And I said, ‘Don’t worry, it just committed suicide at PCC5. … [It went] green to red like a frog in a blender,’” Rainey recently recounted on stage in Huntsville, Ala.

Industry is now bracing to see what’s preserved and what’s tossed into what could be the Army’s blender of death.

‘Industry Needs To Just Hold On’

There are a host of moving pieces in play that could shape Army leaders’ decisions, from the state of tech to the ongoing look at how the service is organized. But one of the primary drivers of that conversation has been around budget constraints.

“We face some hard decisions about how much legacy and enduring capability we continue to pay for it at the expense of transformation,” Rainey told reporters last month. “I don’t want to speak for the chief or secretary, but they see that pretty clearly, that we absolutely have fund transformation.”

Up until earlier this month, the assumption had been that the Defense Department would be operating with a relatively flat budget, with the Army aligned to taking upwards of a 10 percent hit, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, a senior nonresident fellow at AEI, told Breaking Defense. But then President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement this month: The US appears poised for its first $1 trillion defense budget request.

“I think nobody, including the Army, right now knows what might be coming in the next 30 days,” Ferrari said. “Every time you think you’ve got a firm grasp on the funding … something else changes.”

If there is a $50 billion hike in discretionary spending to the fiscal 2026 request, questions start to emerge about whether the Army cut will remain, whether new tech startups will be the victors of that funding and whether the US will maintain a troop presence in Europe, Ferrari added.

“Industry needs to just hold on and wait for the next 90 days for this all to play out … [because] it’s changing hourly,” the retired two-star general said. “I wouldn’t be placing any strategic bets on the game board for the next six months. I wouldn’t be planning to close or open a plant. And even if the defense budget goes to the hill with a line closed, Congress [could reverse it].”

The industry sources from big primes to subcontractors inside the ground vehicle realm say they are doing just that, holding tight and bracing for what may be coming.

A third industry source said that it’s challenging to make any business case decisions until the FY26 budget request is released.

For example, the source said it seems like speculation changes “day-by- day” to include possible cuts to both existing and new and developmental ground vehicle programs.

“At the same time, [we’re] moving forward in terms of putting the resources in and working on the key programs and the milestones for these competitive programs,” the official added. “We’re not stopping our efforts: We’re moving along like those things that are going to get funded.”

The second source cautioned Army leaders against narrowly looking at the ground vehicle space through two lenses — legacy and modernization — and then funneling funds towards future combat vehicles.

That’s because they said many of the vehicles rolling off the production line today have been significantly upgraded over time (i.e., Abrams evolving iterations or the Self-Propelled Howitzer PIM program).

Also, if the Army decides to cut a hot production line at somewhere like General Dynamics or BAE Systems, it will have second and third order effects for the entire supply chain, Ferrari and industry sources explained.

“The notion that I’ll shut this down and in a couple of years I’ll build a new vehicle, and we’ll start a new production line, that doesn’t work,” Ferrari warned. “You will essentially be irreparably harming not just the first-tier industrial base, but the supply chain.”

10. NGA field testing new processor to speed imagery to US regional commands

​Excerpts:

Valiant Shield, INDOPACOM’s massive joint force exercise held every two years, was held “June 7-18, on Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, and at sea around the Mariana Island Range Complex,” according to a June 4 press release from US Pacific Fleet.

That exercise for the first time included allied and partner forces. “With the involvement of U.S. Space Command, VS24 is expanding the multi-domain collaboration that is incumbent on any large-scale exercise or operation,” the release said.

Tradewinds is an annual SOUTHCOM exercise that involves multinational partners in “collective response to counter transnational criminal organizations and natural disasters,” according to a SOUTHCOM press release. The 2024 iteration was held in Barbados May 4-16, 2024.

“COCOMs reported after these tests that J-REN and SlimGIMS not only met the capability gap, but also reduced the time to create a collection request from an hour to 5 minutes,” the NGA spokesperson said.

NGA field testing new processor to speed imagery to US regional commands - Breaking Defense

"COCOMs reported after these tests that J-REN and SlimGIMS not only met the capability gap, but also reduced the time to create a collection request from an hour to 5 minutes," an NGA spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

breakingdefense.com · by Theresa Hitchens · April 18, 2025

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) steams in formation with 7th Fleet ships, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships, as U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and Japan Air Self-Defense Force aircraft fly over in support of Valiant Shield 2024. (US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Timothy Dimal)

WASHINGTON — The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is working with US Combatant Commands (COCOMS) to operationally test an early version of its Joint Regional Edge Node (J-REN) system designed to speed satellite-based intelligence to the battlefield, according to NGA officials.

NGA began development of J-REN — a modernization of NGA’s current information technology “pipe” to more rapidly fulfil commanders’ requests for urgent access to remote sensing imagery and analysis — just last year. The initial program includes hardware and software for four data processing systems that can be placed “at the edge” of a battlefield

“That’s why I’m really happy to tell you it’s already in its initial operating capability. It’s already out there,” Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, the agency’s director, told Breaking Defense April 8 at the annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

J-REN was deployed during exercises last year by US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) and US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), with more to come “this summer,” an NGA spokesperson told Breaking Defense on April 14.

The ever-increasing calls from COCOMS for more timely imagery and analysis from remote sensing satellites has been the subject of a tug-of-war between NGA and the Space Force — an issue the two agencies have been struggling to work out for more than a year.

J-REN is designed to move away from a hub-and-spoke method of collecting and answering requests for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) to a design based on integrating mesh networks capable of avoiding communications roadblocks, Whitworth said.

The concept is to avoid clogging up limited communications bandwidth with overly-dense data packages, while still ensuring that military operators have good enough information to work with, he explained. “Everybody’s taken a picture accidentally in hi-res [high resolution] and then you get frustrated when you can’t even send a text with it.”

In particular, Whitworth noted, J-REN focuses on the needs of commanders in “austere” information environments where communications can be spotty — “maybe somebody at sea, maybe somebody in a tent.”

J-REN also includes a new software application, called SlimGIMS, that streamlines the call and response process for analysis and targeting data tailored to a commander’s needs, he said.

SlimGIMS is a play on NGA’s traditional GEOINT Information Management Systems (GIMS) that gather and process sensor data from a wide variety of government and commercial ISR sensors and disseminate products, such as 3D maps, back out to users across the US government.

The NGA spokesperson said that the “two successful tests” of J-REN “in the 2024 Valiant Shield and Tradewinds exercises” included “a test of the SlimGIMS tasking application.”

Valiant Shield, INDOPACOM’s massive joint force exercise held every two years, was held “June 7-18, on Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, and at sea around the Mariana Island Range Complex,” according to a June 4 press release from US Pacific Fleet.

That exercise for the first time included allied and partner forces. “With the involvement of U.S. Space Command, VS24 is expanding the multi-domain collaboration that is incumbent on any large-scale exercise or operation,” the release said.

Tradewinds is an annual SOUTHCOM exercise that involves multinational partners in “collective response to counter transnational criminal organizations and natural disasters,” according to a SOUTHCOM press release. The 2024 iteration was held in Barbados May 4-16, 2024.

“COCOMs reported after these tests that J-REN and SlimGIMS not only met the capability gap, but also reduced the time to create a collection request from an hour to 5 minutes,” the NGA spokesperson said.

breakingdefense.com · by Theresa Hitchens · April 18, 2025

11. Ukraine parades Chinese nationals captured fighting for Russia. What message was it trying to send?

Ukraine parades Chinese nationals captured fighting for Russia. What message was it trying to send? | CNN

Analysis by Andrew Carey and Victoria Butenko, CNN

 6 minute read 

Updated 1:13 PM EDT, Thu April 17, 2025

CNN · by Andrew Carey, Victoria Butenko · April 16, 2025

A Ukrainian security officer, left, adjusts the handcuffs on a Chinese national, who was captured by Ukrainian forces while fighting on the Russian side, to a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 14, 2025.

Efrem Lukatsky/AP

CNN —

Putting prisoners of war in front of reporters and news cameras is almost certainly a violation of international humanitarian law.

But Ukraine clearly felt any reputational damage it might suffer by doing so in a news conference this week would be outweighed by the fact that it featured two alleged captured fighters from China.

There was more value in giving them a platform to speak, the argument presumably ran, than protecting them “against insult and public curiosity” – something the International Committee of the Red Cross says includes protection from the media.

China has always claimed neutrality in Russia’s war on Ukraine and repeatedly tells its citizens not to get involved in foreign conflicts. All the same, as a key diplomatic and economic lifeline for Moscow, Beijing’s actions are watched closely in Kyiv.

Dressed in combat fatigues and answering questions in Mandarin, the POWs were watched over by armed Ukrainian security personnel, while a translator sat beside them.

The men – who CNN are not naming, nor identifying in any way – told how financial incentives played a key role in their stories.

One said he had been looking for a way to earn money after losing his job during the coronavirus pandemic. The prospect of 250,000 rubles (around $3,000) per month in Russia was more than double what he could expect to earn at home.

As someone with experience in medical rehabilitation, he said he told the recruiter he wanted to do the same with the Russian military. But when he got to Moscow, he was forced into training for a combat role.

Documents were only in Russian, which neither man said they understood. One said that he communicated mainly through hand signals.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during his press conference in Kyiv on March 28, 2025.

Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images

Related article Ukrainian intelligence has identified 155 Chinese citizens fighting for Russia, Zelensky says

CNN has seen a Russian military contract signed by a separate Chinese fighter which gives a possible indication of what the two POWs had agreed to.

The contract, which was shown to CNN by a Ukrainian intelligence source, is written in Russian. Lasting a year, it commits the volunteer, among other things, to “participate in combat, fulfill duties during the mobilization period… emergencies and martial law,” as well as take part in “activity to keep and restore international peace and security” and stopping “international terrorist activity outside the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Once they reached the battlefield, instruction there was also non-verbal. One of the men recounted the chaotic moments that lead up to their capture in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

“When we reached a forest, my captain told me, ‘Da, da, da’ (“Yes, yes, yes” in Russian), signaling me to start the attack. But I did not know where the target was. We passed many Russian positions, and I thought we were heading toward our own bunker. I thought he was joking, so I hid. Then I saw the captain of (another Russian unit) throw in a grenade, and suddenly there were (Ukrainian) drones everywhere.”

The men surrendered. They had been fighting for only three days.

The role of foreign fighters

Foreign fighters have been a part of this war – on both sides – since the beginning.

A list seen by CNN showing non-Russian POWs held by Ukraine as of the end of 2024 showed six Sri Lankan nationals, seven from Nepal, plus individuals from Somalia, Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Egypt and Syria, as well as about a dozen from former Soviet republics.

In January, Ukraine also captured two North Koreans, part of an estimated force of about 14,000 troops sent by Pyongyang to help Moscow’s war effort.

A source at Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence told CNN that Russia needed its foreign fighters because it was now locked into a war of attrition.

“It is unable to maintain the long front line with its own soldiers alone and is taking every opportunity to recruit whoever it can,” the source said.

Since the announcement of the Chinese men’s capture last week – which was followed by Ukraine declaring it had information on a further 155 Chinese citizens fighting for Russia – considerable interest has focused on how they were recruited and whether China’s government had played an active role in some way.

Certainly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did nothing to tamp down such speculation when asked by reporters whether he thought the presence of Chinese nationals in Ukraine was the result of official Beijing policy.

“I don’t have an answer to this question yet. The Security Service of Ukraine will work on it,” he said last week, adding, “We are not saying that someone gave any command, we do not have such information.”

But Zelensky went on to say that Kyiv believed that Beijing was aware of what was happening.

A man rides his bicycle past the building of the Chinese embassy in Kyiv on April 8, 2025.

Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images

The POWs were at pains to indicate otherwise, both saying that they were acting as individuals, pointing to slick recruitment videos posted to TikTok as the source of their inspiration.

One such clip has been circulating on Chinese social media networks for more than a year and appears to have originally been created for a domestic Russian audience, with Chinese subtitles added later.

It shows what appear to be Russian soldiers training and dressed in combat fatigues in the field. “You’re a man, be a man,” it says in Russian, alongside Chinese subtitles, which also explain the payments on offer for signing up.

It is impossible to say if the subtitles were added by an official entity or by social media users, but one of the men said the videos resonated in China, where military prowess is highly prized, but opportunities for direct combat experience are rare.

Why the timing matters

Though Ukraine has hosted news conferences with POWs previously, including one involving combatants from Nepal and several African countries, its decision to platform its Chinese POWs is still unusual.

The timing is important.

It comes amid Kyiv’s attempts to get the upper hand in its battle with Moscow for the ear of US President Donald Trump, whose administration appears to be making little headway in its efforts to convince the Kremlin to agree to a full ceasefire.

Washington has also been heavily focused on China, which some in the White House see as the United States’ main global adversary, and which the administration has been hitting with progressively larger import tariffs.

From Zelensky’s perspective, there is a clear interest in amplifying anything that suggests China’s support for Russia might be more than diplomatic and economic.

But it might not just be the US that Ukraine’s leader is sending a message to.

Anders Puck Nielsen of the Royal Danish Defence College believes Kyiv is also anxious about recent European Union overtures to China, as the two economic powerhouses look for possible joint solutions in the face of Trump’s trade wars.

“Suddenly it seems there might be potential for the Europeans and the Chinese to find common ground on other questions as well,” Nielsen told CNN.

“It has clearly been a political move to really emphasize this aspect (of Chinese fighters in the Russian army),” he added.

Beijing certainly saw it like that.

“We urge the relevant parties concerned to correctly and soberly understand the role of China and to not release irresponsible remarks,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, without mentioning names.

CNN’s Joyce Jiang, Mariya Knight and Daria Tarasova-Markina contributed to this report

CNN · by Andrew Carey, Victoria Butenko · April 16, 2025

12. US says Chinese satellite firm is supporting Houthi attacks on US interests

US says Chinese satellite firm is supporting Houthi attacks on US interests

straitstimes.com · April 18, 2025

WASHINGTON - The U.S. State Department on Thursday accused a Chinese firm, Chang Guang Satellite Technology, of directly supporting attacks on U.S. interests by Iran-backed Houthi fighters and called this "unacceptable".

Earlier, the Financial Times cited U.S. officials as saying that the satellite company, linked to China's military, was supplying Houthi rebels with imagery to target U.S. warships and international vessels in the Red Sea.

"We can confirm the reporting that Chang Guang Satellite Technology Company Limited is directly supporting Iran-backed Houthi terrorist attacks on U.S. interests," State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told a regular news briefing.

"China consistently attempts ... to frame itself as a global peacemaker ... however, it is clear that Beijing and China-based companies provide key economic and technical support to regimes like Russia, North Korea and Iran and its proxies," she said.

Bruce said the assistance by the firm to the Houthis had continued even though the United States had engaged with Beijing on the issue.

"The fact that they continue to do this is unacceptable," she said.

The spokesperson for China's Washington embassy, Liu Pengyu, said he was not familiar with the situation, so had no comment. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China is Washington's main strategic rival and the latest charge comes as the two economic and military superpowers are in a major standoff over trade in which U.S. President Donald Trump has dramatically ramped up tariffs on Chinese goods. REUTERS

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straitstimes.com · April 18, 2025

13. Putin’s Palm Sunday Attack Demands A Response

​Excerpts:

An equally urgent priority is choking off Russia’s ability to fund its war and equip its military with foreign tech.

The economic playbook is clear: slash Moscow’s oil revenues by lowering the G-7’s price cap—a Biden-era sanctions loophole—and hit Chinese and Indian violators of Russian fossil fuel exports with secondary sanctions. These powerful tools bar anyone doing business with sanctions evaders from accessing the U.S. financial system. Trump has already threatened this step: “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault…I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” he recently warned. It’s a strong start.

However, secondary sanctions will not be enough without cutting Biden’s price cap from $65 down to $35 a barrel. That would be far closer to the cost of Russian oil production—a sensitive pain point for Putin.

Additional steps include continuing to tighten export bans on U.S. tech to Russia and directing the Treasury to label Russia a “primary money laundering concern”—a move that would sharply deter foreign banks from doing any business with Moscow.

It is time to show the Kremlin American strength, not accommodation. If Trump is serious about peace in Ukraine, he must be equally serious about applying maximum pressure on Russia.

Putin’s Palm Sunday Attack Demands A Response

April 17, 2025

By: Peter Doran, and Mark Montgomery

The National Interest

Topic: Security

Region: Europe

April 17, 2025

By: Peter Doran, and Mark Montgomery

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Moscow will only take peace negotiations seriously if Washington flexes its muscles.

On Palm Sunday, Russian forces launched another deadly missile strike against Ukrainian civilians—this time in the northeastern city of Sumy. Many of the thirty-five dead and 129 wounded in the attack were Ukrainian Christians gathered to mark one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar. Peace is a long way off in Ukraine, as Russian president Vladimir Putin continues to answer President Donald Trump’s olive branches with violence.

The United States cannot ignore the severity of Russia’s Palm Sunday assault—or the contempt Putin’s sustained bombing campaign shows for Trump’s push for peace. Instead of restraint and soft diplomacy, the White House must take off the velvet diplomatic gloves.

Only maximum pressure on Russia, applied now, will bring Putin to the table on America’s terms.

The brutality of Russia’s Palm Sunday attack was callous, cruel, and deliberate enough to jolt senior figures in Trump’s circle. U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg was appalled, saying it “crosses any line of decency.” Trump advisor Richard Grenell expressed similar shock: “Attacking on the holy day of Palm Sunday?! Dear God.”

Trump is watching. “I’m not happy with all the bombing that’s going on,” he said last week in reference to an earlier Russian strike. “Horrible. It’s a horrible thing. It’s a horrible thing.” Regarding the Palm Sunday assault, however, he was measured. “I was told they made a mistake,” he told reporters.

Horrible or mistaken, Russia’s latest salvo against Ukraine reveals a deeper flaw in the White House’s current negotiation track: it is built on a faulty analysis of Vladimir Putin’s motivations. In matters of war and peace, he responds to strength, not soft diplomacy.

Attacks like the Palm Sunday bombardment of Sumy will continue until the Trump White House stops tiptoeing around Moscow and forces Putin to the table with the seriousness this war demands. How? Trump’s team should look to National Security Advisor Mike Waltz’s earlier blueprint for applying maximum pressure on Moscow.

Before joining the administration, Waltz laid out a strategy rooted in conditional escalation. “If [Putin] refuses to talk [peace],” he wrote, “Washington can, as Mr. Trump argued, provide more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use.” That was smart advice.

The Ukrainians have already benefited from U.S. intelligence sharing and targeting support. This information allows longer-range Ukrainian weapons, such as those provided by the United States (like ATACMS), Europe (Storm Shadow), or domestically built (strike drones), to hit critical Russian targets at maximum range while they are most vulnerable.

Additional U.S. intelligence aids Ukrainians to defend themselves in depth against inbound missiles, drones, and glide bombs, and it gives them insights into impending Russian battlefield movements.

The United States should also support Ukraine by providing two key types of munitions. First, the long-range strike weapons, such as ATACMS and HIMARS, put Russian military assets at risk. Second, air defense munitions, such as replenishments for Patriot systems and NASAMS systems, are needed to defend Ukraine’s people, infrastructure, and military targets. Both munitions are in short supply.

An equally urgent priority is choking off Russia’s ability to fund its war and equip its military with foreign tech.

The economic playbook is clear: slash Moscow’s oil revenues by lowering the G-7’s price cap—a Biden-era sanctions loophole—and hit Chinese and Indian violators of Russian fossil fuel exports with secondary sanctions. These powerful tools bar anyone doing business with sanctions evaders from accessing the U.S. financial system. Trump has already threatened this step: “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault…I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” he recently warned. It’s a strong start.

However, secondary sanctions will not be enough without cutting Biden’s price cap from $65 down to $35 a barrel. That would be far closer to the cost of Russian oil production—a sensitive pain point for Putin.

Additional steps include continuing to tighten export bans on U.S. tech to Russia and directing the Treasury to label Russia a “primary money laundering concern”—a move that would sharply deter foreign banks from doing any business with Moscow.

It is time to show the Kremlin American strength, not accommodation. If Trump is serious about peace in Ukraine, he must be equally serious about applying maximum pressure on Russia.

About the Authors: Peter Doran and Mark Montgomery

Peter Doran is an adjunct senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on X: @PeterBDoran.

Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral. Follow him on X: @MarkCMontgomery.

Image: Sviatoslav_Shevchenko / Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest

​14. The U.S. Needs to Kick Russia out of Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plants ASAP

The U.S. Needs to Kick Russia out of Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plants ASAP

April 17, 2025

By: Viktoriya Voytsytska

The National Interest

Topic: Security

Region: Europe

April 17, 2025

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Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, once supplying 20 percent of domestic energy for Ukraine and even exporting to other European nations. Now it is under Russian occupation, and the American technology inside is at the soldier’s mercy.

As the war in Ukraine drags into its third year, a largely overlooked yet critical issue continues to pose serious risks to global security: the ongoing Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). Seized in the early days of the full-scale invasion in 2022, the ZNPP remains under Russian military control, despite international condemnation and growing concerns from nuclear watchdogs.

With six 1-gigawatt reactors, ZNPP is the largest nuclear facility in Europe and a pillar of Ukraine’s pre-war energy infrastructure, supplying up to 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Its occupation represents not only a direct threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty, but also a grave precedent in the global nuclear order.

For the United States, helping Ukraine regain control of the ZNPP is not merely a show of support but a strategic necessity.

Russia Uses Nuclear Blackmail as a Global Threat

Never before in modern history has a nuclear power plant been weaponized as a tool of war and blackmail. Russia’s militarization of the ZNPP and its use as a bargaining chip in diplomatic negotiations, including reported attempts by Vladimir Putin to leverage the plant during conversations with former President Trump, undermines decades of global nonproliferation efforts.

If Moscow’s unlawful control of the ZNPP is allowed to persist without consequences, it may embolden other authoritarian regimes, namely China, Iran, and North Korea, to adopt similar tactics. The normalization of such behavior could unravel international nuclear governance and dramatically increase the risk of nuclear incidents in future geopolitical conflicts. As the world’s leading force, the United States cannot afford to remain passive.

Defending Zaporizhzhia Protects American Technology and Strategic Assets

A critical yet underreported dimension of this crisis is the involvement of American nuclear technology at ZNPP. U.S.-based Westinghouse has long been a strategic partner in Ukraine’s nuclear sector, supplying atomic fuel as part of Kyiv’s broader effort to diversify away from Russian suppliers. Four of ZNPP’s six reactors operate with Westinghouse fuel assemblies, sensitive technologies protected under U.S. export controls.

Under U.S. law, unauthorized access to this technology constitutes a serious violation with legal consequences. Russian personnel lack the required certifications and clearance to handle Westinghouse nuclear components, making their continued presence at the site not only illegal under international law, but also a direct challenge to U.S. national interests.

Moreover, Westinghouse has suffered substantial commercial losses due to the inability to service or supply the plant under Russian occupation. In line with President Trump’s “America First” economic doctrine, safeguarding U.S. corporate interests abroad is paramount, particularly in the high-tech and strategic energy sectors.

Reinforcing Zaporizhzhia’s Protections and Stability

Beyond the immediate risks of nuclear disaster and technological theft, the occupation of ZNPP has crippled Ukraine’s power grid. The plant, which once produced a quarter of Ukraine’s electricity, has mainly been offline. Combined with Russia’s systematic strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the result is an increasing dependency on costly imports from Europe.

From a purely economic standpoint, restoring the ZNPP is significantly more cost-effective than building new power stations. A ten-gigawatt capacity in gas-fired power plants would cost upwards of $10 billion. Recommissioning ZNPP would require far less, making it a strategic investment opportunity for Western donors seeking cost-efficient energy resilience in Ukraine.

Furthermore, restoring the plant will enable Ukraine to resume electricity exports to the EU, helping stabilize regional markets. Countries like Romania, Poland, and Moldova could all benefit from a reintegrated Ukrainian energy supply, strengthening the Euro-Atlantic energy corridor.

Control over ZNPP also paves the way for deeper U.S.-Ukraine cooperation in strategic sectors. Ukraine has vast reserves of rare earth minerals, critical inputs for clean energy, semiconductors, and defense technology.

As the U.S. works to decouple supply chains from China, a stable, energy-secure Ukraine could become a vital ally in securing these resources.

However, mining and processing rare earths are extremely energy-intensive processes. Without reliable power from facilities like ZNPP, Ukraine cannot unlock its potential as a supplier of critical materials for the U.S. industrial base.

Beyond mineral extraction, Ukraine is also positioned to support the growth of the global digital economy. Nuclear energy provides the stable, low-cost electricity needed for data centers, critical infrastructure in the age of AI, cloud computing, and big data. Ukraine’s nuclear assets, if fully restored, could attract investment from American tech firms seeking cost-effective overseas locations for energy-intensive computing infrastructure.

What Washington Can Do to Help Zaporizhzhia Now

While a military operation to reclaim the ZNPP poses unacceptable nuclear risks, the United States has other levers at its disposal:

1. Economic pressure: Expanding sanctions against Russia’s state nuclear firm Rosatom and other entities involved in the occupation, including export controls and secondary sanctions.

2. Diplomatic engagement: Elevating the ZNPP issue in multilateral forums like the IAEA and G7, and engaging directly with non-aligned nuclear powers to isolate Moscow diplomatically.

For Washington, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is not simply a Ukrainian concern. It touches every key pillar of U.S. foreign policy: nonproliferation, energy security, corporate interest protection, and strategic competition with authoritarian regimes.

Reestablishing Ukrainian control over the ZNPP would:

• Prevent nuclear extortion from becoming a global norm;

• Safeguard sensitive U.S. nuclear technologies;

• Deter similar tactics by adversaries;

• Enhance transatlantic energy stability; and

• Expand U.S. influence in critical mineral and digital infrastructure supply chains.

Failing to act now risks setting a catastrophic precedent that could reshape the global security architecture for decades. The Zaporizhzhia plant is not just a battlefield trophy.

It is a nuclear linchpin in a broader struggle for the future of American foreign policy.

About the Author: Viktoriya Voytsytska

Victoria Voytsitska is a former Ukrainian Member of Parliament and expert in the energy sector, is now a member of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory and an associate at the We Build Ukraine think tank.

Image Credit: Shutterstock/ Howard Cheng.

The National Interest

15. Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard

Sigh...

Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard

An official on the administration’s antisemitism task force told the university that a letter of demands had been sent without authorization.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/business/trump-harvard-letter-mistake.html?smtyp=cur&smid=bsky-nytimes

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Harvard was emailed a letter detailing demands by the Trump administration when administration lawyers were still willing to continue talks.Credit...Sophie Park/Getty Images

By Michael S. Schmidt and Michael C. Bender

April 18, 2025

Harvard University received an emailed letter from the Trump administration last Friday that included a series of demands about hiring, admissions and curriculum so onerous that school officials decided they had no choice but to take on the White House.

The university announced its intentions on Monday, setting off a tectonic battle between one of the country’s most prestigious universities and a U.S. president. Then, almost immediately, came a frantic call from a Trump official.

The April 11 letter from the White House’s task force on antisemitism, this official told Harvard, should not have been sent and was “unauthorized,” two people familiar with the matter said.

The letter was sent by the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sean Keveney, according to three other people, who were briefed on the matter. Mr. Keveney is a member of the antisemitism task force.

It is unclear what prompted the letter to be sent last Friday. Its content was authentic, the three people said, but there were differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled. Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely, according to the three people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions. Others in the administration thought it had been meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard.

But its timing was consequential. The letter arrived when Harvard officials believed they could still avert a confrontation with President Trump. Over the previous two weeks, Harvard and the task force had engaged in a dialogue. But the letter’s demands were so extreme that Harvard concluded that a deal would ultimately be impossible.

After Harvard publicly repudiated the demands, the Trump administration raised the pressure, freezing billions in federal funding to the school and warning that its tax-exempt status was in jeopardy.

A senior White House official said the administration stood by the letter, calling the university’s decision to publicly rebuff the administration overblown and blaming Harvard for not continuing discussions.

“It was malpractice on the side of Harvard’s lawyers not to pick up the phone and call the members of the antisemitism task force who they had been talking to for weeks,” said May Mailman, the White House senior policy strategist. “Instead, Harvard went on a victimhood campaign.”

Still, Ms. Mailman said, there is a potential pathway to resume discussions if the university, among other measures, follows through on what Mr. Trump wants and apologizes to its students for fostering a campus where there was antisemitism.

Mr. Keveney could not be reached for comment. In a statement, a spokesman for the antisemitism task force said, “The task force, and the entire Trump administration, is in lock step on ensuring that entities who receive taxpayer dollars are following all civil rights laws.”

Harvard pushed back on the White House’s claim that it should have checked with the administration lawyers after receiving the letter.

The letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised,” Harvard said in a statement on Friday. “Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government — even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach — do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”

The statement added: “It remains unclear to us exactly what, among the government’s recent words and deeds, were mistakes or what the government actually meant to do and say. But even if the letter was a mistake, the actions the government took this week have real-life consequences” on students and employees and “the standing of American higher education in the world.”

The letter shocked Harvard not only because of the nature of the demands but because it was sent when the university’s leadership and the lawyers it hired to deal with the administration thought they could head off a full-bore conflict with Mr. Trump.

For two weeks, Harvard’s lawyers, William Burck and Robert Hur, listened as Trump officials, in fairly broad strokes, laid out the administration’s concerns about how the school dealt with antisemitism and other issues.

On the administration’s side of this dialogue were three lawyers: Josh Gruenbaum, a top official at the General Services Administration; Thomas Wheeler, the acting general counsel for the Department of Education; and Mr. Keveney.

The back and forth lacked specifics on what the administration wanted Harvard to do. The Trump administration lawyers said they would send Harvard a letter last Friday that laid out more specifics.

By the end of the workday on Friday, the letter had not arrived. Instead, overnight, the lawyers from Harvard received a letter, sent from Mr. Keveney in an email, that was far different from the one the school had expected.

Image

Sean Keveney, acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, is a member of the administration’s antisemitism task force.Credit...Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press

It listed a series of demands that would reshape student and academic life in ways Harvard could never agree to. On Monday, Harvard said publicly that it could not accede to them.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Gruenbaum called one of Harvard’s lawyers, according to two people with knowledge of the calls. At first he said he and Mr. Wheeler had not authorized the sending of the letter. Mr. Gruenbaum then slightly changed his story, saying the letter was supposed to be sent at some point, just not on Friday when the dialogue between the two sides was still constructive, one of the people said.

A lawyer for Columbia University received a similar call from Mr. Gruenbaum around the same time, two people with knowledge of the call said. He, Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Keveney had also been engaged with Columbia about changes the task force wanted that university to adopt, and Mr. Gruenbaum wanted the Columbia lawyer to know that the letter to Harvard was “unauthorized,” the two people with knowledge of the call said.

Mr. Gruenbaum did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Later Monday, Harvard’s corporation and senior leaders were briefed on Mr. Gruenbaum’s assertion that the letter should not have been sent. The briefing left many on Harvard’s side convinced that the letter had been a mistake, three people familiar with the matter said.

Harvard officials, including several who worked in government earlier in their careers, were shocked that such an important letter — bearing the logos of three government agencies, with signatures of three top officials at the bottom — could be sent by a mistake.

But at that point, there was no way for Harvard to undo what had already been set in motion. The university had already declared that it would rebuff the letter’s demands. And despite claiming that the letter should not have been sent, the Trump administration did not withdraw it.

In response to Harvard’s decision to fight, the White House announced that Mr. Trump was freezing $2.2 billion in grants to the school. Within a day, he was threatening to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

Maureen Farrell contributed reporting.

Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations.

Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections.

16.  China-Built Airport in Nepal Was Littered With Corruption, Inquiry Finds

China-Built Airport in Nepal Was Littered With Corruption, Inquiry Finds

A Nepali investigation blamed lawmakers and officials for looking the other way. The $216 million airport receives only one international flight a week.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/business/china-nepal-airport.html

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Crowds welcomed passengers from the first international flight to arrive at Pokhara International Airport in 2023. Nepal is saddled with a Chinese loan it cannot afford to repay.Credit...Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

By Bhadra Sharma and Daisuke Wakabayashi

Bhadra Sharma reported from Kathmandu, Nepal, and Daisuke Wakabayashi from Seoul.

April 18, 2025

A government inquiry into a new $216 million international airport in Nepal’s second-biggest city found that “irregularities and corruption” by officials and lawmakers had allowed a Chinese state-owned contractor to ignore its obligations and charge for work it never completed.

In a 36-page report released Thursday, a parliamentary committee’s investigation into the airport in Pokhara found that China CAMC Engineering, the construction arm of a state-owned conglomerate, Sinomach, had failed to pay taxes, had not finished the project to specification and had used poor-quality construction, all because of corruption and a lack of oversight.

In 2023, The New York Times reported that CAMC had inflated the project’s cost and undermined Nepal’s efforts to maintain quality control, prioritizing its own business interests. Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority, the agency overseeing the airport’s construction, was reluctant to upset Beijing on an important project for both countries, The Times found.

Shortly afterward, an 11-member parliamentary committee started investigating the airport’s construction.

The international airport in Pokhara, a tourist destination at the foothills of the Himalayas, has become a financial albatross for the impoverished country, serving as a cautionary tale about the consequences of borrowing heavily from China for major infrastructure projects.

The airport was built with a 20-year loan from the Export-Import Bank of China, a state-owned lender that finances Beijing’s overseas development work. Nepal must soon start repaying the loan using the profits generated by the airport, which opened in 2023. The airport has fallen well short of its projections for international passengers. There is only one weekly international route landing in Pokhara.

China celebrated the airport’s construction as a “flagship project” of its Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s signature infrastructure campaign, which has doled out an estimated $1 trillion in loans and grants to other countries.

But Nepal has quietly rejected that designation, because it has complicated diplomatic ties with India, its neighbor and rival to China for influence in the region. India, a major destination for Nepali travelers, has not approved any international routes to Pokhara.

In August, Nepal’s communist government, led by K.P. Sharma Oli, who has close ties to Beijing, formally requested that China convert the $216 million airport loan into a grant. Nepali officials have expressed optimism about the request, but there was no formal announcement about an agreement when Mr. Oli met Mr. Xi in November.

The parliamentary committee’s report found that CAMC had failed to complete the work of digging, refilling and adding gravel to the runway, as well as other key components of the airport, despite a contract requiring it to do so. It also found that the construction firm had received payment for aspects of the project that were never built, including a fuel supply facility and a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system. In some of those cases, Nepal’s civil aviation authority was forced to pay for items that CAMC failed to deliver as promised.

The report also stated that Nepali authorities had waived $16 million in taxes for CAMC, even though the contract stated that the company was obligated to pay customs duties and value-added tax on equipment imported from China.

The contract called for two runways for takeoff and landing. However, the airport effectively has only one operating runway, because the second runway is closed for safety reasons, the report said.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and CAMC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“It’s a massive scale of corruption,” said Rajendra Lingden, who led the inquiry. “The corrupt bureaucrats and politicians involved in this scam must be punished.”

The parliamentary committee called for the suspension of the top officials at the aviation agency, including its current director general, citing the risk that they may destroy documents related to the airport’s construction.

A spokesman for Nepal’s aviation agency declined to comment on the investigation’s findings.

Claire Fu contributed reporting from Seoul.

Daisuke Wakabayashi is an Asia business correspondent for The Times based in Seoul, covering economic, corporate and geopolitical stories from the region.

A version of this article appears in print on April 19, 2025, Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Nepal Cites Corruption in Airport Built by China. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

17. How Does a Nation Charm China? Name a Boulevard After Xi Jinping.

How Does a Nation Charm China? Name a Boulevard After Xi Jinping.

China is the biggest foreign patron of Cambodia, where Mr. Xi concluded a tour of Southeast Asia. But the region also needs to curry favor with President Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/business/china-nepal-airport.html

King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia, center left, and Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, on Thursday at Phnom Penh International Airport. Credit...Agence Kampuchea Presse, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Hannah Beech and Sun Narin

Reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia

April 18, 2025

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Cambodia and China? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Xi Jinping Boulevard runs a loop around Cambodia’s fast-growing capital, where signs in Chinese are rapidly overtaking those in English. The ring road around Phnom Penh, which was officially named after the Chinese leader last year, will soon connect to a Chinese-built airport that is being touted as one of the world’s 10 largest.

On Thursday, Mr. Xi, of boulevard renown, landed in Phnom Penh, where there are not one, but two, major thoroughfares named after Chinese Communist Party chiefs. (The other honors Mao Zedong.) Giant red banners greeted Mr. Xi, along with oversized portraits of him fronting new government ministries also built by China. Cambodians who had been paid $2.50 lined the streets, waving Chinese flags.

Mr. Xi’s state visit comes as the United States is threatening a walloping 49 percent tariff on Cambodian exports — like clothes for Nike and Lululemon — and abandoning dozens of aid projects here. Armed with airy promises of investment, Mr. Xi is underscoring with his Southeast Asia tour, which included stops in Vietnam and Malaysia, a clear geopolitical reality. In the superpower contest playing out in this part of the world, one contender is taking a big step ahead: China.

China is by far Cambodia’s largest trading partner and foreign investor, as it is for many other developing nations. Mr. Xi is pitching Beijing as these countries’ greatest champion, in implicit contrast with a United States that under President Trump seems intent on withdrawing from a position of global leadership.

Image

People lined up to greet Mr. Xi at the airport upon his arrival to Phnom Penh on Thursday.Credit...Agence Kampuchea Press, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“This is classic geopolitical theater, and Xi’s timing is no accident,” said Sophal Ear, a Cambodia-born political scientist at Arizona State University. “As the U.S. scales back its footprint in Cambodia, China steps in not just to fill the vacuum, but to showcase itself as the reliable and enduring partner.”

Mr. Xi’s charm offensive doesn’t mean that China enjoys broad popularity in the region. The Chinese leader arrived in Phnom Penh half a century to the day after the genocidal Khmer Rouge marched into the Cambodian capital and began an agrarian terror campaign supported by the Chinese Communist Party.

And Cambodia and other nations are desperate to negotiate down American tariffs to protect their export-led economies. A day before Mr. Xi’s arrival, Cambodian officials met online with Jamieson Greer, Mr. Trump’s top trade official, to try to protect the country’s one million garment workers from punishing duties. Prime Minister Hun Manet of Cambodia has already agreed to lower tariffs on American goods to 5 percent, from 35 percent.

Still, China’s economic heft has allowed Beijing access to markets and territory that would have been almost unthinkable a decade ago. This month Cambodia formally unveiled a naval base refurbished by China, where Chinese warships have docked for months. The base ceremony was followed by joint military drills; naval exercises with the United States have been suspended since 2017.

The Cambodian government has denied that the facility, called Ream, is a de facto Chinese military outpost, part of what American strategists have termed “a string of pearls strategy” to seed Chinese military influence in key sea lanes. In an interview, Gen. Chhum Socheat, the deputy defense minister of Cambodia, said that the country’s leadership was happy to involve any nation willing to help with military upgrades.

“If the U.S. wants to support anything, we welcome that,” he said. “We welcome our friends without any discrimination.”

Image

This photo obtained from Planet Labs PBC and taken on March 19 shows two military ships berthed at a pier at Cambodia’s Ream naval base off the country’s southern coast.Credit...Planet Labs Pbc, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But Chinese construction at Ream, which began in 2022, was built on the razed remains of an American-built facility. U.S. defense documents shared with The New York Times showed that Cambodia had initially asked for and then ignored an offer by the United States to modernize Ream.

Cambodia’s cozy relationship with China was nurtured by Hun Sen, who was the world’s longest-serving prime minister before handing the reins to Mr. Hun Manet, his son, two years ago. In 1984, when Cambodia was still reeling from years of totalitarian terror, Mr. Hun Sen presided over a foreign ministry that denounced China as the “mastermind” of the Khmer Rouge. (The radical Communist regime initially enjoyed support in part because the Cambodian countryside had been devastated by American bombardment spilling over from the Vietnam War.)

But as he tired of democratic checks to his power, like an independent judiciary and robust political opposition, Mr. Hun Sen lashed out at nations that tied their foreign aid to human rights. He accused American diplomats of trying to oust him and praised China as a constant friend. His son has continued the embrace, while obliterating any challenges to the Hun dynasty’s rule.

“The relationship between Cambodia and China has a long history and has grown to an inseparable level,” Mr. Hun Manet said last year when inaugurating Xi Jinping Boulevard. “This relationship is worthy of the values of mutual trust, especially political trust.”

Mr. Xi came to Phnom Penh with 37 vague “cooperative documents” in various economic fields, bringing hope after Chinese foreign investment in Cambodia nose-dived last year. He also expressed “strong support” for a canal that will allow China to ship goods directly to Cambodia, rather than go through Vietnam. Xi Jinping Boulevard runs to the site of the future canal.

Signaling political obedience, Cambodia reiterated that Taiwan is “an inalienable part” of China. This month the Cambodian authorities deported suspects in online fraud operations to China. Some were from Taiwan, which is a separately governed island.

In Malaysia the day before arriving in Cambodia, Mr. Xi witnessed the exchange of dozens of memorandums of understanding, all nonbinding and many amorphous. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia has visited Beijing three times since taking power in late 2022. In a speech honoring Mr. Xi, Mr. Anwar presented his view of the state of the world.

Image

Mr. Xi and Malaysia’s prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, at the official residence of the prime minister in Putrajaya, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Wednesday.Credit...Pool photo by Fazry Ismail

“The rules-based order has been turned on its head, dialogue has yielded to demands, tariffs are imposed without restraint, and the language of cooperation is drowned beneath the noise of threats and coercion,” he said.

Mr. Anwar was not referring to China.

Ultimately, small countries like Cambodia need to maintain flexibility between superpowers, said Chea Thyrith, a spokesman for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

“With President Trump’s administration, we try to maintain a soft, respectful way of working together,” he said. “And with China, we are ironclad friends.”

In 2016, on a trip sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Mr. Chea Thyrith observed the presidential contest between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton. He is now studying for a doctorate in international law at Beijing Foreign Studies University, which hosts students from more than 100 nations.

“It’s undeniable that in history U.S. aid helped the Cambodian people, and we pay gratitude for that,” Mr. Chea Thyrith said. “But now, without Chinese aid, more than 30 roads, bridges, airports, everything else, who helps Cambodia, who gives us aid without any strings attached?”

Back on Xi Jinping Boulevard, Soth Vanna, a teacher whose grandparents were killed by the Khmer Rouge, lamented how his family had not been given the promised compensation for farmland seized to build the new thoroughfare. Even as new malls, highways and condominiums transform Cambodia, farmers are being dispossessed. Activists and politicians who have campaigned for the landless have been beaten or jailed.

Image

Xi Jinping Boulevard on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.Credit...Heng Sinith/Associated Press

Still, Xi Jinping Boulevard brings Mr. Soth Vanna to his workplace fast. Roads bring development. There is a vast shopping center not far away, and a new flyover named for Mr. Hun Manet.

“China has given us a lot,” he said. “They’re building everything.”

Zunaira Saieed contributed reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Hannah Beech is a Times reporter based in Bangkok who has been covering Asia for more than 25 years. She focuses on in-depth and investigative stories.

A version of this article appears in print on April 19, 2025, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: China Reinforces Economic Ties With Cambodia as U.S. Tariffs Loom. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

18. Undoing Deterrence: The March Toward Armageddon

​Excerpt:

In short diminishing USA nuclear capability just as China and Russia are markedly expanding their nuclear capability is somehow going to turn out as a successful strategy that reduces strategic instability and magically restores deterrence. Although such unilateral restraint has never previously worked. And weakness is provocative and can lead to war. And a United States shed of a deterrent strategy will indeed be perceived as weak.

Undoing Deterrence: The March Toward Armageddon

By Peter Huessy

April 18, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/04/18/undoing_deterrence_the_march_toward_armageddon_1104895.html

The disarmament community in their pursuit of global zero makes a number of faulty assumptions. For example, they assume all retaliatory uses of nuclear weapons will quickly lead to the massive exchange of nuclear weapons and trigger a civilization ending nuclear winter. They assume even the use of a single nuclear weapon could devastate a large area from EMP damage and cause widespread panic and mass migration and would escalate to an all-out nuclear exchange as well. In short, no nuclear use, however limited, can be managed or controlled.

Thus, even the current U.S. deterrence strategy of nuclear retaliation, often referenced as a secure, second-strike capability, is dismissed as unworkable.” Consequently, we are told the U.S. can no longer rely upon such a deterrent strategy, as it is dangerous, immoral and a highly unreliable “war fighting” strategy that will not keep nuclear weapons from being used.

The only alternative? Ban all nuclear weapons, as called for by the United Nations treaty outlawing nuclear weapons as agreed to by the UN General Assembly.

In short what the disarmament community has concluded is that nuclear deterrence as now practiced is really a bluff. No rational (“sane”?) American President would order any nuclear retaliatory strike. Since any retaliatory use of nuclear weapons would trigger wholesale nuclear war, such a response has to be discarded. This means that a nuclear armed adversary of the United States could first use nuclear weapons against the United States without fear of a proportionate United States military response. And for all intents and purposes this would leave the enemy’s nuclear forces in a sanctuary free from American retaliatory nuclear strikes.

Absent the current deterrent strategy, what then should the United States do in the face of China and Russia adopting a strategy of escalation to win, or using limited numbers of nuclear weapons to either forestall conventional defeat or secure conventional victory? [Let alone the threat of a massive, pe-emptive strike that worried the United States through much of the Cold War.] As many U.S. military officers have explained, this is serious business, as once nuclear weapons are introduced into a conventional conflict, all the United States assumptions about prevailing in a conventional conflict “don’t hold” or go out the window.

Now both Russia and China have often claimed to have a minimal deterrent strategy, and assert they would not use nuclear weapons first, and threaten only a massive retaliatory strike if hit with nuclear weapons. But then how to explain the decree issued by President Yeltsin in April 1999 declaring for Russia to build highly accurate low yield small battlefield nuclear weapons, plans which the current President (Mr. Putin) has implemented over the past 25 years? Or China’s threat to Japan to repeat the World War II atomic strikes should Japan come to the defense of Taiwan?

Similarly, the disarmament community has ignored the very large current Chinese buildup of nuclear weapons, even claiming hundreds of newly discovered silos were nothing more than prospective energy producing windmills. When subsequently American high ranking military officials confirmed the very real “breathtaking” Chinese build in Congressional testimony, the military brass were falsely accused of warmongering.

What is most dangerous is that advocates of zero nuclear weapons don’t tell us what is to replace current deterrent policy while nations figure out how to get to zero—even though that goal has not been formally adopted by any power possessing nuclear weapons. Without deterrence of any kind, the likelihood of nuclear weapons use will actually increase as the current deterrent strategy would be revealed as just bluff. Especially at a time when America’s enemies are markedly building up their nuclear forces and increasing the salience of nuclear weapons in their national security strategies.

Worse however is the juvenile idea that diplomacy can substitute for current deterrent strategy. But diplomacy leading to what? If China and Russia threaten to use limited nuclear strikes for coercive purposes, what “diplomacy” changes that? As Dr. Kissinger once explained, “A free standing diplomacy is an ancient American illusion. History offers few examples of it. The attempt to separate diplomacy and power results in power lacking direction and diplomacy being deprived of incentives.” Or in a pithier manner, as Senator Malcolm Wallop put it, “Diplomacy without the threat of force is but prayer.” If the United States takes its nuclear forces off the deterrent table, whatever diplomacy we might exercise is going to ring hollow.

Advocates of better diplomacy argue that diplomacy is meant to help us discover the “underlying causes” of why nations have nuclear weapons. It is assumed the U.S. can root out the reason China and Russia are building larger nuclear arsenals just by talking to them.

Well, the United States would first have to figure out the origins of the CCP’s hegemonic ambitions. And its declaration that the moon and Mars to say nothing of Taiwan and the South China Sea, are Chinese territory! Or Russian centuries old paranoia that believes the only secure Russian borders are those that perpetually expand. Or why the end of the USSR was a great tragedy.

If one explores the disarmament literature, the most common explanation for Russia and China’s aggressive stance in world affairs is that “America made them do it” an interesting version of Ambassador Kirkpatrick’s 1984 refrain “They always blame America first.””

There are six common complaints by the global zero advocates.

First the United States started an arms race, although we simply replaced legacy nuclear forces allowed by the 2010 New Start agreement.

Second, the United States built or will build 44-66 missile defense interceptors in Alaska and California, although it is perplexing how dozens of interceptor missiles somehow threaten multiple hundreds and even thousands of enemy warheads.

Third, the U.S. was mean to North Korea, although all the U.S. did was call them out for cheating on the Agreed Framework.

Fourth, the U.S. withdrew from the INF treaty, although Russia was serially violating the treaty terms.

Fifth, the United States withdrew from the JCPOA, but that was because Iran never came clean, as required, on its nuclear military activities.

Sixth, Washington too energetically supports the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Israel, but since when was helping your democratic allies a sin.

Given this mindset, it is not a wonder that the “solutions” pushed by the disarmament community to jumpstart a movement towards global zero start with unilateral USA concessions which, just coincidentally, involve taking down USA nuclear capability whether cancelling the LRSO, the Sentinel or Minuteman III, the JSF or F-35, the SLCM-N, or the B-61 warhead. And not proceeding with any missile defense, dropping our hostile policy toward Iran and North Korea, and restore the INF and the JCPOA.

In short diminishing USA nuclear capability just as China and Russia are markedly expanding their nuclear capability is somehow going to turn out as a successful strategy that reduces strategic instability and magically restores deterrence. Although such unilateral restraint has never previously worked. And weakness is provocative and can lead to war. And a United States shed of a deterrent strategy will indeed be perceived as weak.

Peter R. Huessy is President of Geo-Strategic Analysis and Senior Fellow, National Institute for Deterrent Studies.

19. Mike Pompeo: We Don’t Need a Fake Deal With Iran

​Excerpts:

Just as President Trump did for the last 18 months of his first term, we can apply maximum pressure and deter Iran by denying it the resources it needs to foment terror, rebuild the Shia Crescent, and obtain weapons of mass destruction. Our chokehold on the Iranian regime’s wealth in the first Trump term was effective. Iran was all but broke after less than two years of maximum pressure. The Ayatollah would have faced a massive resource shortfall had President Biden and his team not provided succor to the Iranian regime before Trump’s second term.

Israel, too, sees the opportunity and may well go back to the Begin Doctrine, when then-Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin struck Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, without the blessing of the American president at the time, Ronald Reagan. In essence: Act with U.S. support if possible, but alone when necessary, to prevent a nuclear neighbor from arising.

I’m confident that President Trump understands the range of options and knows that, as he had said of the Obama-Kerry nuclear deal, a bad deal is much worse than no deal. Equally, I assign low probability to the ayatollah signing a satisfactory deal. I hope my skepticism is wrong.

In trying to make a deal, we must not lose sight of the only acceptable outcome: the elimination of Iranian nuclear enrichment, the cessation of its financial and political support for terror proxies, and, ultimately, peace with its neighbors.

Mike Pompeo: We Don’t Need a Fake Deal With Iran

American isolationists on the right, and their allies in Obama-aligned think tanks in Washington, suggest there are only two options: war or a deal. Nonsense.

By Mike Pompeo

04.18.25 — U.S. Politics

An Iranian protester burns a U.S. flag during an anti-Israeli protest at Palestine Square in Tehran, Iran, on April 9, 2025. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

0:00

-7:47

In early April, President Trump reportedly “waved off” an Israeli plan to strike nuclear facilities in Iran. When asked, Trump did not deny it but rather said he preferred to try diplomacy because he thinks “that Iran has a chance to have a great country and to live happily without death.”

The thousands of victims of Iran’s terror machine know all too well that “living happily without death” is impossible under the current regime. And a fake deal focused solely on nuclear enrichment will result in far less happiness and more death, not the reverse—not only for the Iranian people but for human beings all across the world.

Consider the Iranian citizens murdered by the regime, the Americans murdered in the attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut, or those of us, including President Trump, threatened with assassination by Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran. This regime has shown no intention of becoming a normal country but rather daily evinces depravity.

President Trump is pursuing a deal with Iran while it is at its weakest strategic point in decades. Its proxies—Hamas and Hezbollah—have been decimated by Israel. Sunni states, like Saudi Arabia, are readying for normalization with the Jewish state—and are opposed to a nuclear Iran.

The president’s hand could not be stronger.

But as hope springs eternal, President Trump, like at least five presidents before him, wants to make an agreement. To that end, he’s sent negotiators to Rome this weekend to reach a deal. And he wants it to be a “good deal.” Sign me up. Here’s what a “good deal” looks like.

From first principles, a deal that allows the regime to continue on its current trajectory is not a deal worth making. The truth is that today, the regime is weak. As Secretary of State in the first Trump administration, I laid out 12 conditions for an Iran deal. All of those conditions still apply, but they can be condensed into three key areas.

First, Iran must fully and verifiably dismantle all uranium enrichment sites and destroy all equipment and components connected to enrichment activities. This will require Americans on the ground to do the work and require complete, unqualified access for the International Atomic Energy Agency to any site, anywhere in Iran, unannounced, forever. An important technical component of this destruction is a full account of Iran’s previous nuclear weapons research and development efforts. Iran must commit to never enriching uranium or processing plutonium again.

Second, Iran must cease financial, military, and political support to its proxy forces around the region and turn over to the United States the senior leadership of al-Qaeda, which lives comfortably in Iran. No deal made with the regime that leaves its terror proxies intact is to be trusted.

Third, Iran should make peace with its Gulf Arab neighbors and cease threatening them and Israel by dismantling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) external terror network it has built to wreak havoc in the region.

President Trump has made clear that there is another option in the event there is no deal to be made: a military attack on Iran. I agree that this is the alternative. With Iran at its weakest point since the 1979 storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, such an attack could set back the Iranian nuclear program for a significant period, and Israel, Gulf allies, Europe, and the United States could carry this attack out in a manner that reduces the risk of a major Iranian response.

Iran’s closest allies—the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin—are not likely to come to Iran’s aid following such an attack, reducing risk still further. That Iran might use all of its proxies to respond to such an attack is indeed a risk. But what’s more likely is that so long as the strikes only target military and nuclear sites, Ayatollah Khamenei will not risk escalation.

It is worth recalling what happened when President Trump, in his first term, struck IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani. Many condemned the strike, suggesting that it would lead to World War III. Indeed, I was present when many career diplomats and servicemen said the Soleimani strike would result in a massive Iranian regional and global response.

But that’s not what happened. For the most part, Iran folded.

Why? Because the ayatollahs know President Trump would end the regime if a massive response from Iran was so much as tried.

American isolationists on the right, and their allies in Obama-aligned think tanks in Washington, suggest there are only two options—“war or a deal.” This weakens our position and wanders blindly into the false dichotomy the Iranians want us to believe.

This “war or deal” narrative is being peddled by many of the “populist” Tucker Carlson-esque isolationists who have burrowed inside President Trump’s orbit. They repeat this mantra, exactly as President Barack Obama and Secretary John Kerry repeated endlessly—and wrongly.

This is propaganda. It is a false choice propagated by those who would prefer to coddle the regime in Tehran and cut a deal that will ensure that Iran obtains a full-on nuclear weapons program over time. Ironically, this outcome makes war more, not less, likely.

There are a range of options other than war or surrender.

As CIA director and secretary of state, I observed the United States’s wide array of tools to achieve important outcomes. I can tell you it’s not “war or a deal.” Breathless bleating from Carlson’s camp about “war or a deal” is not only wrong, it uses the same failed logic as from the deep-state careerists I would hear from at the State Department who attempted to thwart President Trump’s agenda.

Just as President Trump did for the last 18 months of his first term, we can apply maximum pressure and deter Iran by denying it the resources it needs to foment terror, rebuild the Shia Crescent, and obtain weapons of mass destruction. Our chokehold on the Iranian regime’s wealth in the first Trump term was effective. Iran was all but broke after less than two years of maximum pressure. The Ayatollah would have faced a massive resource shortfall had President Biden and his team not provided succor to the Iranian regime before Trump’s second term.

Israel, too, sees the opportunity and may well go back to the Begin Doctrine, when then-Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin struck Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, without the blessing of the American president at the time, Ronald Reagan. In essence: Act with U.S. support if possible, but alone when necessary, to prevent a nuclear neighbor from arising.

I’m confident that President Trump understands the range of options and knows that, as he had said of the Obama-Kerry nuclear deal, a bad deal is much worse than no deal. Equally, I assign low probability to the ayatollah signing a satisfactory deal. I hope my skepticism is wrong.

In trying to make a deal, we must not lose sight of the only acceptable outcome: the elimination of Iranian nuclear enrichment, the cessation of its financial and political support for terror proxies, and, ultimately, peace with its neighbors.

For another look at Iran policy in the Trump White, read Jay Solomon’s piece “What Will Trump Do About Iran?”

Michael R. Pompeo served as secretary of state from 2018 to 2021.

20. China is sending soldiers to Ukraine to prepare for a Taiwan invasion

​Excerpts:

“China sending in an initial small cohort to join the Russians is consistent with Chinese Communist strategy to initially create plausible deniability and then a veneer of legitimacy for a gradual build-up of those at the front lines,” says Burton. “This will almost certainly be accompanied by the gradual introduction of sophisticated Chinese offensive weaponry,” he added.  

Burton is also concerned that Russia, indebted to China because of the support in Ukraine, will not be able to say no when China demands that Moscow send forces to help it invade Taiwan or another neighbor. 

The Chinese and Russian militaries regularly hold joint drills in East Asia. Therefore, the Pentagon should assume that these two powers, along with North Korea, will fight together during the next war. 

So China probably sees great advantage in Chinese troops, even if just mercenaries, fighting in Ukraine.  

The U.S. and other countries have imposed almost no costs on China for its extensive support for the Russian war effort. We should not be surprised, therefore, that Beijing now thinks it can, with impunity, send soldiers to fight in Europe.  

China is sending soldiers to Ukraine to prepare for a Taiwan invasion 

by Gordon G. Chang, opinion contributor - 04/17/25 12:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5252196-china-soldiers-ukraine/?utm

A former Western intelligence official told Reuters that approximately 200 Chinese soldiers are fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Two current U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, confirm that there are more than a hundred of them. 

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number at 155. His forces have recently captured two of them.

Reuters reports that the U.S. government believes these soldiers are mercenaries and apparently have no “direct link” with the Chinese government. Whether this view is correct or not, Washington and other governments should impose severe costs upon China for permitting its nationals to enter the battle against Ukraine.

As an initial matter, China’s regime is in fact sending soldiers to that Eastern European country. Reuters reports that “Chinese military officers have, with Beijing’s approval, been touring close to Russia’s frontlines to draw lessons and tactics from the war.” The former Western intelligence official told the news service that these officers “are absolutely there under approval.” 

“The Communist Party craves first-hand experience of the battlefield in Ukraine to inform its People’s Liberation Army for its future wars,” Richard Fisher of the Washington, D.C. area-based International Assessment and Strategy Center told me late last week. “For the PLA, the Ukraine battlefield offers the most livid and brutal evolution of the revolutionary and see-saw battle between unmanned weapons and electronic warfare defenses arrayed against them.” 

“If the PLA can grasp and expand on the lessons of the Ukraine battlefield, it can vastly increase its chances of a rapid blitzkrieg victory in Taiwan,” says Fisher.   

It is also likely that the Chinese officers are doing more than observing and reporting back to China. They may also be giving advice to their Russian counterparts. China, after all, has been backing Russia’s war effort from the beginning. 

China almost certainly greenlighted the invasion with its 5,300-word joint statement issued by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Beijing on Feb. 4, 2022, just 20 days before the Russian attack. Putin might have invaded earlier, but he evidently acceded to Chinese wishes and waited until after the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics to hit the former Soviet republic. 

China has during the war supported Putin almost across the board. For instance, Beijing has purchased Russian oil sanctioned by the United Kingdom, U.S. and the European Union, opened its financial and banking systems to Russia’s institutions under sanction, provided military intelligence and diplomatic and propaganda support and sold both dual-use items and, according to some sources, weapons.  

Given Beijing’s support to both Moscow and Pyongyang, it is unlikely that North Korea could have joined the war on Russia’s side without China’s approval. 

With regard to the mercenaries, Beijing probably both knew and approved of their participation in the war. 

“It is unlikely that these soldiers would have been permitted to travel to Russia without the full consent of the Xi regime,” Charles Burton of the Sinopsis think tank told me.  

“Xi runs a near-total surveillance state and pays special attention to the interactions of its nationals with close partners such as Russia,” Burton, also a former Canadian diplomat stationed in Beijing, said. “A couple hundred military-age Chinese men leaving the country to fight in a foreign war is certainly something Beijing would know about.” 

There are, for instance, bound to be Ministry of State Security agents monitoring visa applications for Russia. 

The presence of Chinese soldiers in Ukraine is reminiscent of the “Chinese People’s Volunteers” who went to fight United Nations troops in North Korea beginning in 1950. 

“China sending in an initial small cohort to join the Russians is consistent with Chinese Communist strategy to initially create plausible deniability and then a veneer of legitimacy for a gradual build-up of those at the front lines,” says Burton. “This will almost certainly be accompanied by the gradual introduction of sophisticated Chinese offensive weaponry,” he added.  

Burton is also concerned that Russia, indebted to China because of the support in Ukraine, will not be able to say no when China demands that Moscow send forces to help it invade Taiwan or another neighbor. 

The Chinese and Russian militaries regularly hold joint drills in East Asia. Therefore, the Pentagon should assume that these two powers, along with North Korea, will fight together during the next war. 

So China probably sees great advantage in Chinese troops, even if just mercenaries, fighting in Ukraine.  

The U.S. and other countries have imposed almost no costs on China for its extensive support for the Russian war effort. We should not be surprised, therefore, that Beijing now thinks it can, with impunity, send soldiers to fight in Europe.  

Gordon G. Chang is the author of “Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America” and “The Coming Collapse of China.” 

​21. Why Trump is right to revitalize the Monroe Doctrine

Why Trump is right to revitalize the Monroe Doctrine

China’s activities in the Western Hemisphere pose a direct challenge to US interests and regional security

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-trump-right-revitalize-monroe-doctrine?utm

  By Chuck DeVore Fox News

Published April 18, 2025 5:00am EDT

foxnews.com · by Chuck DeVore Fox News

Why are President Donald Trump and his national security team focused on Panama and Greenland?

Donald Trump understands that modern threats – China’s predatory mercantilism and its massive military buildup, including the ability to destroy our reconnaissance satellites in orbit – requires an urgent reinvigoration of the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine, America’s fundamental national security imperative, seeks to exclude outside powers from the Western Hemisphere. It is key to protecting the U.S. and our neighbors from China’s malicious designs.

President James Monroe discusses the Monroe Doctrine with his Cabinet, including Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, left. From a painting by Clyde O. DeLand. (Getty Images)

Trump understands that Greenland and Panama aren’t merely the key in any potential conflict with China, they are key to deterring China from conflict in the first place.

WHY MAKING AMERICA SAFER MEANS REVOKING VISAS WHEN THREATS ARISE

During WWII and the Cold War, prior to the advent of near-global real-time overhead satellite coverage, America maintained forward bases in a string from Hawaii to Alaska to Canada to Greenland to Puerto Rico to Panama. These bases hosted naval assets, electronic listening posts, early warning radars and airfields for patrol aircraft.

The forward presence not only protected the American heartland, but it also served to guard the sea lanes needed for trade and to support our allies in Europe and Asia.

Trump recognizes the shifting geopolitical landscape, with China’s rise posing a new challenge to U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere – and a secure homeland. In 2019, he expressed interest in purchasing Greenland from Denmark, citing its vast natural resources and strategic Arctic location. This is more relevant than ever, with the Northwest Passage becoming increasingly accessible due in part to Russia and China’s rapidly growing heavy icebreaker fleet.

Video

TRUMP'S GOT IRAN CORNERED BY FOLLOWING REAGAN'S DOCTRINE

Similarly, Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are taking significant steps to secure the Panama Canal – with full cooperation from the Panamanian government.

The Panama Canal is a vital artery for global trade and military logistics. But in 1997, just before Britain handed over Hong Kong to China, Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based shipping and logistics firm, bought the concession that privatized operations of the Panama Canal.

When, in 2020, China ended the "one country, two systems" model with Hong Kong, it meant for all intents and purposes that Hutchison Whampoa (now known as CK Hutchison) must do the Chinese Communist Party’s bidding. This greatly increases the risk to the Panama Canal – and it’s why the firm, reacting to pressure from Panama and the U.S., agreed to sell its global assets to an American holding company. That proposed sale was quickly threatened by the Chinese Communist Party, which instituted an "antitrust review."

TRUMP'S TARIFF TRIUMPH BIG STEP FOR AMERICA'S COMEBACK

Video

Just to be sure, the Trump White House directed the U.S. military to develop options for increasing troop presence in Panama to ensure "unfettered" access to the canal, reflecting concerns about ongoing Chinese threats to the canal’s operation.

Strategic Importance in a Conflict with China

The strategic importance of Greenland and Panama is heightened in the context of a potential conflict with China, particularly if America’s extensive network of reconnaissance and nuclear missile early warning satellites are destroyed by China in its opening attack. Modern warfare relies heavily on satellite technology for communication, navigation and intelligence gathering.

If these assets are compromised, the U.S. would need to rely on traditional methods, such as long-range patrol aircraft and naval vessels, operating from forward bases. Greenland, with its airfields and ports, provides an ideal location for staging operations in the Arctic, deploying assets like the P-8 Poseidon to monitor submarine activity and secure shipping routes.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

The Panama Canal, meanwhile, ensures rapid deployment of naval forces between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, maintaining flexibility in military operations.

Video

This focus on forward bases aligns with the need to defend the homeland and secure vital shipping lanes critical for global trade and military logistics despite enemy efforts. China’s growing naval capabilities, including advanced submarines and aircraft carriers, necessitate robust strategic positioning to deter potential threats and maintain maritime routes.

Historical Parallels: WWII and Cold War Operations

Historical precedents underscore the importance of forward bases in national defense. During WWII, the U.S. established the Caribbean Defense Command – forerunner to today’s U.S. Southern Command – to protect the Panama Canal and monitor German U-boat activity in the Atlantic. Bases in Trinidad, Brazil and Puerto Rico were instrumental in anti-submarine warfare, ensuring the flow of supplies to Europe and preventing Axis powers from gaining a foothold in the Americas.

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During the Cold War, the U.S. maintained a significant military presence in Latin America to counter Soviet influence. Today, in Cuba, what’s old is new again, as China has occupied and upgraded the massive Cold War-era Soviet eavesdropping base at Lourdes. From that perch, China can listen to every cellphone conversation in the American Southeast.

The Broader Challenge

Beyond Greenland and Panama, China’s activities in the Western Hemisphere, such as its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects – some serving as replenishment ports for its navy – pose a direct challenge to U.S. interests and regional security. Along with the malevolent presence of Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, and hostile regimes such as Maduro’s Venezuela, Trump’s team has a big task to clean up decades of neglect in the Western Hemisphere.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM CHUCK DEVORE

foxnews.com · by Chuck DeVore Fox News

22. The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights

The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights

April 18, 20255:00 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

Graham Smith

NPR · by Graham Smith · April 18, 2025

The State Department releases the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices annually. Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images

The Trump administration is substantially scaling back the State Department's annual reports on international human rights to remove longstanding critiques of abuses such as harsh prison conditions, government corruption and restrictions on participation in the political process, NPR has learned.

Despite decades of precedent, the reports, which are meant to inform congressional decisions on foreign aid allocations and security assistance, will no longer call governments out for such things as denying freedom of movement and peaceful assembly. They won't condemn retaining political prisoners without due process or restrictions on "free and fair elections."

Forcibly returning a refugee or asylum-seeker to a home country where they may face torture or persecution will no longer be highlighted, nor will serious harassment of human rights organizations.

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According to an editing memo and other documents obtained by NPR, State Department employees are directed to "streamline" the reports by stripping them down to only that which is legally required. The memo says the changes aim to align the reports with current U.S. policy and "recently issued Executive Orders."

Officially called "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices," the annual documents are required, by statute, to be a "full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights."

Human rights defenders say the cuts amount to an American retreat from its position as the world's human rights watchdog.

"What this is, is a signal that the United States is no longer going to [pressure] other countries to uphold those rights that guarantee civic and political freedoms — the ability to speak, to express yourself, to gather, to protest, to organize," said Paul O'Brien, executive director of Amnesty International, USA.

A spokesperson for the State Department declined to comment on the memo or the human rights reports. NPR confirmed the memo's authenticity with two sources close to the process.

The reports, released in March or April most years, are highly anticipated by foreign leaders and diplomats with a stake in how their countries are portrayed. The 2024 reports were initially completed in January, before President Trump took office, but they've been re-edited by the new administration. State Department sources say the revised versions won't be released until May.

The documents NPR reviewed confirm reporting by Politico that reports of violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people will be removed, along with all references to DEI.

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Among other topics ordered to be struck from the reports:

• Involuntary or coercive medical or psychological practices.
• Arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy.
• Serious restrictions to internet freedom.
• Extensive gender-based violence.
• Violence or threats of violence targeting people with disabilities.

By law, the State Department releases annual reports for every country, and they traditionally follow one basic outline. The cuts ordered in the Trump administration memo are not targeted at specific countries. Rather, they eliminate entire categories of abuses from all the reports.

But some deletions are more noteworthy than others. The Trump administration recently negotiated the transfer of immigrants from the U.S. into El Salvador's notorious prison system. In a draft of the forthcoming report on that country reviewed by NPR, the section on prison conditions is erased. The only remnants of those violations are reports on prison deaths that fall into the category of "extrajudicial killings" and a mention of abuse by prison guards in a legislatively mandated section on "Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment."

In the report on Hungary, a marked-up version of which was distributed as a model for how to apply the new directives, the section titled "Corruption in Government" is struck out. Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been called an authoritarian, and previous reports have noted restrictions to civil liberties. President Trump has called him "a great man and a great leader in Europe."

András Léderer from Hungary's oldest and largest human rights group, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, told NPR that the State Department's new policy weakens the position of human rights defenders in countries that have a problematic track record on these issues.

"You're removing pressure, and it definitely sends the message to the perpetrators that this is not important for [the U.S.] anymore," Léderer said.

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People who specialize in human rights work told NPR they worry about the effect the cuts will have on the documents' influence within the international community.

"You can't overstate the value in the real world of the annual State Department human rights reports being credible and impartial," said Christopher Le Mon, until January a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

"You also can't overstate the damage it will do to that credibility if the Trump administration's edits are seen to diminish — not just the scope of what are defined as human rights, but also if those edits are seen to play favorites."

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complained during the first Trump administration about what he called "a proliferation of human rights," and he moved to pare them back. He formed a Commission on Unalienable Rights that focused on Revolution-era and post-World War II notions of rights, de-emphasizing issues like discrimination and reproductive rights, putting more focus on religious freedom and the right to private property.

The memo reviewed by NPR outlines changes that are far more sweeping.

In 2013, then-Sen. Marco Rubio underscored the importance of these audits, saying they shed light on "foreign governments' failure to respect" citizens' fundamental rights … from the sexual exploitation of women and children to the denial of political rights to minorities."

He said the reports show that "the United States will stand with freedom-seeking people around the world."

As secretary of state, Rubio is now responsible for the reports. He's the person who, traditionally, would promote their release to the public. But under his stewardship, those violations he cited — sexual exploitation of women and children and the denial of political rights to minorities — are being deleted from the reports.

The reports will still include human rights matters that are specifically required by law, including war crimes and genocide, antisemitism, worker rights and child marriage. Attacks on freedom of the press have to be reported, although not those on freedom of expression for regular citizens.

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For all of these required categories, the editing memo dictates that where multiple examples were cited in the original drafts, reporting should be "reduced" to just one example.

Paul O'Brien of Amnesty International called this misguided.

" These things are not meant to be novels or cliffhangers," he said. "They are deeply useful as reference documents for folks with all sorts of different needs. You're trying to understand whether to invest in a country. You're trying to understand how to approach a set of political actors who are now in charge of a country and where you want to hold them accountable."

The reports on Hungary and El Salvador are among 20 countries whose reports, the memo directs, must be flagged for special review by a "Senior Advisor" in the department — a political appointee. The other countries flagged include Argentina, Egypt, South Africa, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Italy, the Philippines, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

Michele Kelemen and Nick McMillan contributed to this reporting.

NPR · by Graham Smith · April 18, 2025

23. Under Trump, National Security Guardrails Vanish

Under Trump, National Security Guardrails Vanish

America’s adversaries have more room to operate, at least in the disinformation space, cybersecurity experts say.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/us/politics/trump-national-security.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

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F.B.I. headquarters. In the past, the bureau would counter foreign disinformation campaigns by calling them out, but it has instead shut down its foreign influence task force.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By Helene Cooper and Julian E. Barnes

Reporting from Washington

April 18, 2025

This month, a network of pro-Russian websites began a campaign aimed at undermining confidence in the U.S. defense industry, according to disinformation analysts.

The F-35 fighter jet was one target. The effort, coordinated by a Russian group known as Portal Kombat, spread rumors that American allies purchasing the warplanes would not have complete control over them, the analysts said.

In the past, U.S. cybersecurity agencies would counter such campaigns by calling them out to raise public awareness. The F.B.I. would warn social media companies of inauthentic accounts so they could be removed. And, at times, U.S. Cyber Command would try to take Russian troll farms that create disinformation offline, at least temporarily.

But President Trump has fired General Timothy D. Haugh, a four-star general with years of experience countering Russian online propaganda, from his posts leading U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.

The F.B.I. has shut down its foreign influence task force. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has ended its efforts to expose disinformation. And this week the State Department put employees who tracked global disinformation on leave, shutting down the effort that had publicized the spread of Chinese and Russian propaganda.

Almost three months into Mr. Trump’s second term, the guardrails intended to prevent national security missteps have come down as the new team races to anticipate and amplify the wishes of an unpredictable president. The result has been a diminished role for national security expertise, even in the most consequential foreign policy decisions.

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General Timothy D. Haugh, a four-star general with years of experience countering Russian online propaganda, was fired by President Trump from his posts leading U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency this month.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Trump administration officials said that is by design. In Mr. Trump’s first administration, some members of his team tried to stop him from executing parts of his agenda, such as his desire to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, or to deploy them against protesters in American cities.

The president does not intend to allow anyone to rein him in this time.

But tearing down guardrails has created room for America’s adversaries to operate more freely in the disinformation space, according to Western officials and private cybersecurity experts.

This is not how the American national security apparatus is supposed to work, national security experts and former officials say.

The National Security Act of 1947 established the National Security Council to ensure that the president received the most expert advice on an array of global issues. The act also led to the establishment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which advises the president on military strategy and planning.

But instead of advice, Mr. Trump is getting obedience.

“Right now, the N.S.C. is at the absolute nadir of its influence in modern times,” said David Rothkopf, the author of “Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power.”

Mr. Trump is skeptical of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, so the Pentagon is considering plans to hand over U.S. command of NATO troops. The president is close to the tech billionaire Elon Musk, so the Pentagon invited him to view plans in the event of a war with China in the Pentagon “tank,” a meeting space reserved for secure classified meetings (the White House stopped Mr. Musk from getting the China briefing).

Mr. Trump fired the director of the National Security Agency and six National Security Council officials on the advice of Laura Loomer, a far-right activist. Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, appeared to have little influence over the dismissals.

“When somebody with no knowledge can come in and level accusations at the N.S.C. senior directors, and Waltz can’t defend them, what does that say?” asked John R. Bolton, one of those who had Mr. Waltz’s job in Mr. Trump’s first term.

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Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, had little influence on the firings of the director of the National Security Agency and six National Security Council officials.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

Back then, Mr. Bolton said in an interview, Mr. Trump made clear that he disliked pushback, once saying: “I knew I should have made Keith Kellogg the national security adviser. He never tells me his opinion unless I want it.”

Mr. Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general, is now Mr. Trump’s adviser to Ukraine.

In February, Mr. Kellogg had cautioned against an Oval Office meeting between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine because he was worried such plans were premature, two administration officials said.

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The meeting took place anyway, and blew up. Mr. Trump temporarily cut off crucial aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine, complaining that Mr. Zelensky had not sufficiently expressed his gratitude.

The rest of the national security team cheered the president.

“Amen, Mr. President,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on social media, applauding Mr. Trump’s stance.

Mr. Zelensky “should apologize for wasting our time for a meeting that was going to end the way it did,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio added during a CNN appearance.

Despite his role, Mr. Kellogg has been eclipsed in negotiating an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine by Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer who was initially tapped to be the special envoy for the Middle East.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, senior members of his national security team became a sort of guardrail against the mercurial instincts of a president often disdainful of anything he sees as reflecting the national security establishment’s policy preferences.

His first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, talked him out of using torture as a tool for interrogating detainees. Mr. Mattis and Mr. Bolton talked him out of withdrawing from NATO. His second chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, and his second defense secretary, Mark Esper, talked him out of using active-duty troops to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters in the legs, as the president had suggested.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon press secretary, did not respond to requests for comment. Brian Hughes, the N.S.C. spokesman, said in a statement that “members of the national security team of the first term actively attempted to undermine President Trump including General Milley calling his then-Chinese counterpart behind the president’s back.”

Mr. Hughes added that it was the job of Mr. Trump’s team to “carry out the elected commander in chief’s agenda, not weaken it.”

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During Mr. Trump’s first term, senior members of his national security team, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, far left, and national security adviser John R. Bolton, right, became a guardrail.Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York Times

The Trump team’s decision to use a commercial chat app to discuss plans for attacking the Houthi militia in Yemen is one example of the way the old security rules have been pushed aside, current and former officials and national security analysts said.

Mr. Mattis, Mr. Esper, Mr. Bolton and Mr. Milley would have all “insisted that the highly classified conversations that were shamefully leaked should have been conducted in the Situation Room,” said retired Adm. James Stavridis, the former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe.

Instead, Mr. Hegseth was the one who shared the sequencing for when the fighter jets would launch for the attack, and Mr. Waltz set up the chat.

General Milley’s immediate successor as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, was fired by Mr. Trump in February; the acting chairman of the chiefs at the time was not in the chat.

The chat itself was a rare window into national security policymaking in Mr. Trump’s second term. The participants included Vice President JD Vance; Mr. Rubio; the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe; and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. They did not discuss the follow-on effects to American forces in the region of an expanded bombing campaign against the Houthis. Mr. Vance fretted about a spike in oil prices and the risk to Saudi oil fields.

Usually, someone would have at least asked whether U.S. bases need to step up security in case of retaliation.

Republicans have defended the Trump administration’s efforts to remove the guardrails on disinformation.

This month, Representative Mark Green of Tennessee, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, praised the administration’s efforts to end the role of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in countering foreign disinformation.

“We want CISA focused on protecting our infrastructure, right?” he said. “That’s what it was formed for. That’s what it needs to be focused on. This disinformation campaign puts the federal government in a place of deciding what is and isn’t justifiable speech and I, as a freedom-loving federalist, don’t like that.”

A study by analysts at Alethea, an anti-disinformation company that has tracked the F-35 campaign, indicates that pro-Russian outlets are already stepping up their propaganda efforts.

“The U.S. government at least publicly seems to be taking a more hands-off approach or prioritizing defense against other threats,” said Lisa Kaplan, Alethea’s chief executive. “So foreign governments are currently targeting government and military programs like the F-35 program — if they can’t beat it on the battlefield, beat it through influencing political discourse and disinformation.”

Alethea found that Russian-controlled websites began pushing narratives after China restricted the export of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets to retaliate against Mr. Trump’s sharp increase in tariffs. The messages claimed that the United States faced a strategic vulnerability that could affect its ability to manufacture the F-35 and other weapons systems.

The Russian postings said that America’s willingness to allow manufacturing to move overseas had made its military edge unsustainable. The websites also amplified the message that U.S. allies no longer trusted that American defense companies would be reliable suppliers.

It is hard to know how much traction the Russian disinformation campaign has gained. But it is tilling fertile ground. Canada, Portugal and other countries are reconsidering their commitments to buy F-35s in the face of Mr. Trump’s criticism of Europe and Canada and his tariff policy.

With the dismantling of the disinformation programs, Ms. Kaplan said, American companies “are increasingly on their own.”

“From what we are seeing, foreign influence efforts may actually be increasing, especially with the rise of anti-Americanism, and it will increasingly target the private sector and different companies of geostrategic and geopolitical importance,” she added.

Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.

A version of this article appears in print on April 19, 2025, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Foreign Influence Faces Fewer U.S. Guardrails. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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