Quotes of the Day:
"It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well."
– Rene Descartes
"Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted."
– Aldous Huxley
"The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts."
– Baruch Spinoza
Please do not overlook the last article #27.
1. How China’s DeepSeek Outsmarted America
2. DeepSeek Undercuts Belief That Chip-Hungry U.S. Players Will Win AI Race
3. Chinese and Iranian Hackers Are Using U.S. AI Products to Bolster Cyberattacks
4. ‘The Iron Dome for America’
5. State Department Reverses Near-Full Stop of Foreign Aid
6. Hegseth takes actions against Trump foe Mark Milley
7. White House incentivizes federal workers to resign
8. Memo to Trump: Beware the ‘Reverse Teddy’ By Matt Pottinger
9. What Happened When DEI Came to the Military?9.
10. Trump revives push for space-based interceptors in ‘Iron Dome for America’ edict
11. What a Looming $1 Trillion Pentagon Budget Means for Jobs (Hint: Meh)
12. Trump offering federal workers buyouts with about 8 months' pay in effort to shrink government
13. America Must Prepare for War
14. Why DeepSeek Is a Gift to the American People
15. US sending Patriot missiles from Israel to Ukraine, Axios reports
16. The Trump Administration vs the ‘Axis of Upheaval’?
17. OpenAI launches ChatGPT Gov for U.S. government agencies
18. DeepSeek’s fine, just don’t ask it about Taiwan
19. Donald Trump Is No Isolationist
20. The Components of Russia’s Undeclared War Against the West
21. The Rise and Fall of Afghanistan’s Local Defense Forces
22. Setting the Stage: An Overview of Chinese and Russian Interests and Influence in the Indo-Pacific
23. Israel, Trump, and the Gaza Deal
24. Bashar al-Assad and the Oversimplified Myth of Autocracies’ Inherent Fragility
25. Cold War’s best kept secret: Spy satellite that stayed hidden for 30 years
26. Trump says NJ drones were 'authorized' after suggesting Biden kept public 'in suspense'
27. The Heart of Strategic Influence: Aristotle’s Contribution to Addressing Dis-Information
1. How China’s DeepSeek Outsmarted America
My friend and SF brother, Dan Zahody, characterized this development by China as the AK of AI. (AK - as in the Kalashnikov rifle - cheap, easy to use, and reliable and used by rebels around the world). An apt analogy I think,
How China’s DeepSeek Outsmarted America
AI startup developed a top system by relying on inexperienced engineers and a loophole in U.S. export controls
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-deepseek-ai-nvidia-openai-02bdbbce?mod=hp_lead_pos5
By Stu Woo
Follow and Raffaele Huang
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Jan. 28, 2025 8:18 am ET
DeepSeek’s emergence has rattled Wall Street. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg News
SINGAPORE—Take a team of young Chinese engineers, hired by a boss with disdain for experience. Add some clever programming shortcuts, and a loophole in American rules that allowed them to get advanced chips.
That is the formula China’s DeepSeek used to shock the world with its artificial-intelligence programs.
Conventional thinking held that developing leading AI required loads of expensive, cutting-edge computer chips—and that Chinese companies would have trouble competing because they couldn’t get those chips. DeepSeek defied those predictions with a resourcefulness that led to a $1 trillion bloodbath on Wall Street and is spurring Silicon Valley to rethink its approach.
The Chinese company has also delivered a wake-up call to Washington, according to President Trump, whose administration is set to decide in the coming months what to do about Biden-era policies limiting China’s access to the best chips for AI.
DeepSeek’s leader, Liang Wenfeng, built his company in the tech hub of Hangzhou, the same city where tech giant Alibaba is based. The AI company grew out of a hedge fund co-founded by Liang that uses AI to find profitable trades in financial markets.
In an interview with a Chinese publication in 2023, Liang said most technical positions were filled by fresh graduates or people with one or two years of experience.
Experience, he said, was a potential obstacle. “When doing something, experienced people will tell you without hesitation that you should do it this way, but inexperienced people will have to repeatedly explore and think seriously about how to do it, and then find a solution that suits the current actual situation,” Liang said.
What they came up with is now being studied by Silicon Valley’s best and brightest.
Until recently, the pioneering AI models that lie behind programs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT were trained on a vast compilation of text, images and other data. They employed specialized algorithms to find patterns that a chatbot could use to hold a conversation.
DeepSeek has delivered a wake-up call to Washington. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
DeepSeek’s tactic was to cut down on the data processing needed to train the models, using some inventions of its own and techniques adopted by similarly constrained Chinese AI companies.
Imagine the earlier versions of ChatGPT as a librarian who has read all the books in the library, said Lennart Heim, who researches AI at the think tank Rand. When asked a question, it gives an answer based on the many books it has read.
This process is time-consuming and expensive. It takes electricity-hungry computer chips to read those books.
DeepSeek took another approach. Its librarian hasn’t read all the books but is trained to hunt out the right book for the answer after it is asked a question.
Layered on top of that is another technique, called “mixture of experts.” Rather than trying to find a librarian who can master questions on any topic, DeepSeek and some other AI developers do something akin to delegating questions to a roster of experts in specific fields, such as fiction, periodicals and cooking. Each expert needs less training, easing the demand on chips to do everything at once.
DeepSeek’s approach requires less time and power before the question is asked, but uses more time and power while answering. All things considered, Heim said, DeepSeek’s shortcuts help it train AI at a fraction of the cost of competing models.
“Engineering is about constraints,” former Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger wrote on X. “The Chinese engineers had limited resources, and they had to find creative solutions.”
Ingenuity explains only part of DeepSeek’s success.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, whose shares plummeted Monday. Photo: steve marcus/Reuters
The other part is the rocky introduction of U.S. export controls, which gave DeepSeek a window to buy powerful American chips.
The Biden administration in 2022 put in place controls on chips exported to China. U.S. companies that wanted to sell to China first needed to throttle a chip function called interconnect bandwidth, which refers to the speed at which data is transferred.
In response, Nvidia, the world’s leading designer of AI chips, came up with a new product for China that complied with this parameter—but compensated for it by maintaining high performance in other ways. That resulted in a chip that some analysts said was almost as powerful as Nvidia’s best chip at the time.
U.S. officials vented publicly and privately that while Nvidia didn’t break the law, it broke the spirit of it. The government had hoped that industry leaders would be collaborative in designing effective export controls on fast-changing technology, said a former senior Biden administration official.
An Nvidia spokesman said Monday that “DeepSeek is an excellent AI advancement” that demonstrated an innovative AI technique while using computing power “that is fully export-control compliant.”
A year after the initial controls, the government tightened the rules. Still, that left an opening of about a year for DeepSeek to buy Nvidia’s powerful China-market chip, called the H800. In a research paper published in December, DeepSeek said it used 2,048 of these chips to train one of its AI models.
Since the rules were revised in 2023, Nvidia designed a new export-control-compliant chip for China that is significantly less powerful than the H800.
Some American AI industry leaders are skeptical that DeepSeek has revealed all of its secrets. They said Chinese researchers could have stockpiled leading-edge Nvidia chips before the U.S. restrictions, or used workarounds such as accessing Nvidia-enabled computing power from countries outside the U.S. and China. The Biden administration in its final days implemented new rules to address such blind spots.
DeepSeek didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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President Trump said the launch of a low-cost Chinese AI model should be seen as a wake-up call for U.S. industries. Trump also announced plans to impose new tariffs on semiconductor imports. Photo: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com and Raffaele Huang at raffaele.huang@wsj.com
2. DeepSeek Undercuts Belief That Chip-Hungry U.S. Players Will Win AI Race
Who won the race between the M-16 and the AK-47? How do we compete with the AK of AI as Dan Zahody calls it. President Trump is correct in claling this a wake-up call.
DeepSeek Undercuts Belief That Chip-Hungry U.S. Players Will Win AI Race
More AI competition will make it hard for Big Tech to generate the oligopoly-like profit margins that investors hope for
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/deepseek-tech-stocks-a3e83478?mod=wsjhp_columnists_pos_1&mod=WSJ_home_columnists_pos_1
By James Mackintosh
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Updated Jan. 28, 2025 12:21 am ET
Stock-market information for Nvidia and other tech companies is displayed at Nasdaq MarketSite in New York. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg News
Anything vaguely related to artificial intelligence was smashed on Monday after investors spent the weekend frantically googling DeepSeek-R1, the low-cost Chinese AI model released last week.
The new generative-AI model, which claims performance on a comparison with OpenAI’s latest, stuck a knife into two beliefs that have come to dominate investment in the past two years. First, that AI needs massive amounts of new infrastructure, energy and microchips, mostly from Nvidia NVDA 8.93%increase; green up pointing triangle. And second, that the winners of AI will be the dominant American technology companies.
Monday’s AI crash was led by the first part, the “chips and shovels” that supported the development of AI, not the developers of these fancy programs themselves. Nvidia stock was down 17%, losing more than half a trillion dollars of value, nuclear-power stocks Constellation Energy CEG 1.38%increase; green up pointing triangle, Vistra VST 9.16%increase; green up pointing triangle, Oklo OKLO 9.68%increase; green up pointing triangle and NuScale Power SMR 3.35%increase; green up pointing triangle were down 21%-28%, and data-center supplier Vertiv Holdings was off 30%.
“This is symptomatic of more AI supply coming at a point where AI’s still looking for a problem to solve,” said Robert Almeida, global investment strategist at MFS Investment Management.
Investors should have some questions.
How much was the selloff about fundamentals, and how much about sentiment? The moves in prices appear to show investors focused on fundamental issues of how DeepSeek’s approach will lead to lower power use and less demand for chips and data centers.
Yet, it is hard to believe that prices had run up so much purely on the back of smart investors plugging growth estimates into their spreadsheets and valuing the resulting cash flows. A lot of what’s been going on is similar to when investors discovered the internet. They have grasped that AI is A Big Deal, but can’t yet see exactly how or when it will make money.
In a sentiment-driven market, it is even harder to work out what happens next. I thought the market was overly frothy in mid-December, because prices seemed too far detached from reality. The trouble is that sentiment is hard to predict: Investors can always become even more excited about something, but sentiment becomes more vulnerable to a setback the more enthusiastic investors are. DeepSeek may be just that setback.
What about the AI companies? What are the prospects for Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Alphabet, Amazon-backed Anthropic, Elon Musk’s xAI and all the others to make money when faced with a low-cost competitor? DeepSeek is, after all, available, like Meta’s Llama, to download and tweak free.
On Monday this wasn’t the main concern, with Microsoft off 2.1%, Alphabet 4.2% and Amazon slightly up. They have big, profitable businesses they are using to finance AI development, and will also be able to use the techniques DeepSeek shared to lower their own costs. But they just lost one of the biggest barriers to entry. If a new AI model can be produced for just a few million dollars by the tech arm of a Chinese hedge fund, maybe others can do the same.
The DeepSeek app shown on a phone screen. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
More competition will make it hard for Big Tech to make the oligopoly-like profit margins that investors hope for. If the companies can’t make fat profits, it will be even harder to justify their high valuations. These valuations, remember, rely on the assumption that AI tools will be both widely used and highly profitable, but even the experts have little explanation of how the business model will work. It will also be harder to explain why they are sinking so much money into AI data centers.
Is this just another bump in the road? As the dot-com bubble was building in 1999-2000 there were large price corrections, but they merely attracted people who had missed out to come in and buy what they thought were bargains. On Jan. 4, 2000, the Nasdaq-100 index tumbled 6.5%, double Monday’s fall, yet the tech bubble itself didn’t burst until March. Even then, the S&P 500 almost completely recovered by September, when a brutal selloff began.
What will the economic impact be? Even quite significant market corrections typically have little to no effect on growth. This time, though, a change of market signal might be under way that would affect on-the-ground activity, not just Wall Street.
Investors have been encouraging companies to pour cash into building new data centers, power stations and anything related to the power grid for the past year. Monday’s price drops suggest less appetite for real-world investments and could persuade companies to invest less into such projects. That might be part of the reason that 10-year Treasury yields fell so much on Monday, though it was also a flight to safety by investors.
Will investors now remember the benefits of diversifying their investments? At the start of the year the 10 largest stocks in the S&P 500 made up 37% of the index, and only one, Berkshire Hathaway, was outside Big Tech. The point of buying the S&P or other large market indexes is to gain exposure to a range of stocks with low fees, but the concentration created by the sheer size of the market behemoths mean the market offers less diversification of risk than any time since index funds were invented.
Trump Says DeepSeek a ‘Wake Up Call’ for U.S. Tech Sector
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President Donald Trump said the launch of a low-cost Chinese AI model should be seen as a wake up call for U.S. industries. Trump also announced plans to impose new tariffs on semiconductor imports. Photo: elizabeth frantz/Reuters
Monday showed the problem: The Magnificent Seven stocks of Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla were down over 3%, weighted by market value. Yet the rest of the S&P 500 was down only 0.4% on the same basis—while the average stock was flat.
Diversification means underperformance when the big get bigger, but offers protection when investors get overenthused by an idea and push prices too far—as seems to have happened with AI.
Write to James Mackintosh at james.mackintosh@wsj.com
Appeared in the January 29, 2025, print edition as 'DeepSeek Undercuts Beliefs About AI Race'.
3. Chinese and Iranian Hackers Are Using U.S. AI Products to Bolster Cyberattacks
Of course they will use our own tools against us. Russians and north Korea did not make the headlines but they are too. But hopefully as Ms. Joyce says AI may be a better tool for defense.
Excerpt:
Groups with known ties to China, Iran, Russia and North Korea all used Gemini to support hacking activity, the Google report said. They appeared to treat the platform more as a research assistant than a strategic asset, relying on it for tasks intended to boost productivity rather than to develop fearsome new hacking techniques. All four countries have generally denied U.S. hacking allegations.
“AI is not yet a panacea for threat actors and may actually be a far more important tool for defenders,” said Sandra Joyce, vice president of threat intelligence at Google. “The real impact here is they are gaining some efficiency. They can operate faster and scale up.”
Chinese and Iranian Hackers Are Using U.S. AI Products to Bolster Cyberattacks
Researchers outline malicious uses of AI after China-built AI platform DeepSeek upends international assumptions about Beijing’s capabilities
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chinese-and-iranian-hackers-are-using-u-s-ai-products-to-bolster-cyberattacks-ff3c5884?mod=latest_headlines
By Dustin Volz
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Jan. 29, 2025 5:00 am ET
Google’s new research sheds light on how foreign actors are using generative AI to boost their hacking efforts. Photo: str/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Hackers linked to China, Iran and other foreign governments are using new AI technology to bolster their cyberattacks against U.S. and global targets, according to U.S. officials and new security research.
In the past year, dozens of hacking groups in more than 20 countries turned to Google’s Gemini chatbot to assist with malicious code writing, hunts for publicly known cyber vulnerabilities and research into organizations to target for attack, among other tasks, Google’s cyber-threat experts said.
While Western officials and security experts have warned for years about the potential malicious uses of AI, the findings released Wednesday from Google are some of the first to shed light on how exactly foreign adversaries are leveraging generative AI to boost their hacking prowess. This week, the China-built AI platform DeepSeek upended international assumptions about how far along Beijing might be the AI arms race, creating global uncertainty about a technology that could revolutionize work, diplomacy and warfare.
Groups with known ties to China, Iran, Russia and North Korea all used Gemini to support hacking activity, the Google report said. They appeared to treat the platform more as a research assistant than a strategic asset, relying on it for tasks intended to boost productivity rather than to develop fearsome new hacking techniques. All four countries have generally denied U.S. hacking allegations.
Researchers found that a range of hacking groups were using Gemini, but that Chinese and Iranian groups had relied on it the most. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
“AI is not yet a panacea for threat actors and may actually be a far more important tool for defenders,” said Sandra Joyce, vice president of threat intelligence at Google. “The real impact here is they are gaining some efficiency. They can operate faster and scale up.”
Current and former U.S. officials said they think foreign hacking units are turning to other chatbots as well. Last year, OpenAI also revealed some information about five foreign hacking groups using ChatGPT and said it had disabled the accounts associated with them. That research likewise found that cyberattackers weren’t using ChatGPT for generating significant or novel cyberattacks. A Google spokeswoman said the company terminated accounts linked to malicious activity outlined in its report but declined to disclose how many accounts in total were disrupted.
The company found that a range of sophisticated hacking groups—also known as advanced persistent threats—were using Gemini, but that Chinese and Iranian groups had relied on the tool the most.
More than 20 China-linked groups and at least 10 Iran-linked groups were seen using Gemini, Google said, making them easily the most active countries seeking to use the chatbot. Iranian groups, which exhibited the heaviest overall use, pursued an array of goals on Gemini, including research into defense organizations to target with hacking attempts and generation of content in English, Hebrew and Farsi to be used in phishing campaigns.
China was the next most frequent user of Gemini, the report said, with hacking groups linked to Beijing also conducting reconnaissance on targets in addition to attempting to learn more about specific hacking tactics, including how to exfiltrate data, evade detection and escalate privileges once inside a network.
In North Korea, hackers used Gemini to draft cover letters for research jobs, likely in support of the regime’s efforts to have its spies hired for remote technology jobs to earn what U.S. officials have said is hundreds of millions in revenue to support its nuclear weapons program. Russia, meanwhile, used the platform relatively sparingly and for mostly mundane coding-related tasks.
Laura Galante, director of the U.S. Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center during the Biden administration, said the new details published by Google were generally consistent with the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies on how adversaries are seeking to weaponize generative AI.
“They’re using Gemini to get a leg up in crafting their victim lists and probably improving the effectiveness of the human-directed parts of their operations,” Galante said. She added that large-language models didn’t appear to be “a game changer in terms of the scale of compromises or enabling new tactics or novel operations—but these are still the relatively early days.”
Despite modest uses of generative AI so far, both the U.S. and China see AI technologies as pivotal to future supremacy. The possibility that China’s DeepSeek is rivaling top-tier AI models for a fraction of the cost sent shock waves through Silicon Valley and Washington this week. Unlike Google, DeepSeek’s creators have released their product’s source code, making its misuse harder to track and virtually impossible to prohibit.
DeepSeek’s low cost could have significant national-security implications, too. For years, senior U.S. intelligence officials have warned that China and other adversaries are racing to develop and deploy AI systems to support—and in some cases supplant—their existing military and intelligence objectives.
In a blog post Wednesday, Kent Walker, Google’s chief legal officer, said continued export controls on U.S. chips were needed and urged the U.S. government—including the military and spy agencies—to update the procurement process to make it easier to adopt AI services.
“America holds the lead in the AI race—but our advantage may not last,” Walker said.
Write to Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com and Robert McMillan at robert.mcmillan@wsj.com
The Global AI Race
Coverage of advancements in artificial intelligence, selected by the editors
4. ‘The Iron Dome for America’
Will this have any similar effects to Star Wars during the Raegan administration?
‘The Iron Dome for America’
Trump asks for a plan to defend the homeland from growing missile threats.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-iron-dome-for-america-donald-trump-executive-order-pentagon-defense-missiles-26445c4f?mod=Searchresults_pos2&page=1
By The Editorial Board
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Jan. 28, 2025 6:11 pm ET
Rockets fired from southern Lebanon are intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome air defence system over the Upper Galilee region in northern Israel on June 27, 2024 Photo: jalaa marey/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
One benefit of President Trump’s return to power is that fresh thinking is sweeping through a stultified federal government. A welcome example is his desire to make the U.S. homeland safer from missile and nuclear attacks.
This has received little press attention, but on Monday Mr. Trump issued an executive order titled “The Iron Dome for America.” The order instructs new Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to submit to the White House within 60 days a “reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield.”
The order goes on to list the elements that should be part of this architecture, including plans “against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.” Mr. Trump wants plans for deploying new sensors for tracking missiles, including in space, as well for the “development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors,” and more.
This has the potential to be a great leap forward on defense. Most Americans don’t realize how vulnerable the U.S. homeland is these days, as missile and other technologies improve and proliferate. Gone are the days, going back to the early 2000s, when the U.S. had to worry mainly about a rogue North Korea firing an ICBM at California. Hypersonic weapons that China and Russia have today could strike the U.S. with a warning of only a few minutes. This is far more worrisome than climate change.
Apart from 40 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and four in California, the U.S. relies for deterrence on its second-strike nuclear capability. Mr. Trump’s order wants a plan to buttress that too.
But, as in the Cold War, a second strike doesn’t protect the Americans who would have already died in a missile attack. Deterrence is enhanced if an adversary contemplating a first strike can’t be confident its attack will get past U.S. anti-missile defenses. That’s why Ronald Reagan proposed his famous Strategic Defense Initiative that was never implemented but helped to convince the Soviets that they couldn’t win a technology race.
Mr. Trump’s analogy to Israel’s Iron Dome isn’t the best because that shield defeats only short-range missiles up to 70 kilometers. But Israel has other aerial defense layers such as David’s Sling, Thaad and the Arrow system. This defense network has worked beautifully to protect Israel’s urban and military centers from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian attacks.
The U.S. would need a much larger system to cover the continental U.S., Hawaii, Alaska and its territories. But technology has advanced a great deal since the 1980s, especially in space sensors, software for detection, and better interceptors. Directed-energy laser weapons have also advanced.
None of this will be cheap, and Mr. Trump will have to seek much more than the $10 billion or so a year that the U.S. now spends on missile defense. He’ll also need champions in the Pentagon and Congress to push it through a bureaucracy that would prefer to spend on other things. But the first step is admitting the vulnerability and laying out a plan to address it—and kudos for Mr. Trump for doing so.
WSJ Opinion: Joe Biden Was Wrong. 'Star Wars' Saved Israel.
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WSJ Opinion: Joe Biden Was Wrong. 'Star Wars' Saved Israel.
Play video: WSJ Opinion: Joe Biden Was Wrong. 'Star Wars' Saved Israel.
Wonder Land: In 1986, Sen. Joe Biden mocked as ‘reckless’ Ronald Reagan's 'Strategic Defense Initiative,' a program to counter the ballistic missile threat. Israel ran with it, creating the 'Iron Dome' missile-defense system—the hero of Iran’s April 13 bombardment. (04/17/24) Images: Bloomberg News/C-Span/Bettmann Archive Composite: Mark Kelly
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the January 29, 2025, print edition as '‘The Iron Dome for America’'.
5. State Department Reverses Near-Full Stop of Foreign Aid
Excerpts:
While aid experts welcomed Tuesday’s memo, they noted that the State Department directive still pauses other programs unless specific waivers are granted.
“This waiver demonstrates the vital importance of continuing humanitarian assistance programs,” said Robert Nichols, an attorney for contractors and nongovernmental organizations. “But it should go further to exempt global de-mining, anti-terrorism cooperation, democracy building and other programs.”
State Department officials have yet to clarify whether the pause applies to the agency’s financing of weapons purchases for Taiwan and Ukraine.
Foreign military financing for Egypt and Israel was exempted in the directive last week, as was emergency food aid for foreign countries.
Rubio’s Tuesday memo says that the funding pause will continue for assistance that involves abortions, family-planning conferences, transgender surgeries and gender and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The State Department has said that a broad review of foreign aid programs is needed to ensure that the assistance is used efficiently and is aligned with Trump’s “America First” agenda. The White House has also been wary of financial commitments abroad.
State Department Reverses Near-Full Stop of Foreign Aid
Marco Rubio’s memo now exempts ‘core life saving programs’ but withholds assistance for diversity and abortions
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/state-department-reverses-near-full-stop-of-foreign-aid-70784f05?mod=latest_headlines
By Michael R. Gordon
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Jan. 28, 2025 10:02 pm ET
Some foreign aid programs are exempt from the administration’s pause. Photo: Petros Karadjias/Associated Press
The Trump administration pulled back from its order to pause nearly all foreign aid, and will now exempt “core life saving programs” that involve medicine, medical services, food and shelter, according to a Tuesday memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
A Jan. 24 State Department directive had called for a broad suspension of foreign assistance while the agency carried out a three-month review of aid programs.
That suspension spurred alarm and confusion among humanitarian organizations that the step would disrupt the distribution of vaccines, food and other vital assistance in needy countries around the world.
The original directive allowed U.S. officials and aid groups to seek waivers so that the programs could proceed without interruption. That produced a flood of appeals for exemptions, leaving unclear which might be granted and when.
While aid experts welcomed Tuesday’s memo, they noted that the State Department directive still pauses other programs unless specific waivers are granted.
“This waiver demonstrates the vital importance of continuing humanitarian assistance programs,” said Robert Nichols, an attorney for contractors and nongovernmental organizations. “But it should go further to exempt global de-mining, anti-terrorism cooperation, democracy building and other programs.”
State Department officials have yet to clarify whether the pause applies to the agency’s financing of weapons purchases for Taiwan and Ukraine.
Foreign military financing for Egypt and Israel was exempted in the directive last week, as was emergency food aid for foreign countries.
Rubio’s Tuesday memo says that the funding pause will continue for assistance that involves abortions, family-planning conferences, transgender surgeries and gender and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The State Department has said that a broad review of foreign aid programs is needed to ensure that the assistance is used efficiently and is aligned with Trump’s “America First” agenda. The White House has also been wary of financial commitments abroad.
But the suspension instructed U.S. officials to issue stop-work orders to nongovernmental organizations and aid groups to preclude them from using U.S. funding they have already received.
Aid groups said those stop-work orders prevent them from distributing lifesaving supplies, such as early-childhood vaccines or bed nets to prevent malaria, that they have already purchased with U.S. money.
In Uganda, for example, where more than 1.4 million people are living with HIV, health authorities have raised the alarm that funding interruption would reverse years of steady gains.
Every administration entering office orders policy reviews, including on foreign aid, to get a sense of how much is spent, on what and its effectiveness. But the stop-work order for most foreign aid was unprecedented, halting assistance for counterterrorism training in Somalia and counter counternarcotics efforts in Colombia and much more.
On Monday, U.S. Agency for International Development acting Administrator Jason Gray put dozens of agency officials on administrative leave, saying they were suspected of seeking to circumvent Trump’s orders.
Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the January 29, 2025, print edition as 'New Memo Reverses Near-Full Stop of Foreign Aid'.
6. Hegseth takes actions against Trump foe Mark Milley
Since the previous President pardoned him it does not seem like there is much that can be done from a legal and punishment standpoint. However, this would seem to be something that an Inspector General could certainly investigate and determine for the record what took place. Perhaps an IG investigation should have been conducted years ago.
To Professor Feaver's fears, I do not think the "retribution genie" can be put back in the bottle. It is likely with us now and forever at least given the current and foreseeable political climate. There will be a special gallery for portraits that will be taken off the walls in the future.
Excerpts:
As the tail end of the first Trump administration grew increasingly unpredictable, Milley twice called senior officials in Beijing to reassure China that the U.S. government was stable, he and other U.S. officials have said. The calls were coordinated by Milley with Trump’s defense secretaries at the time and other senior U.S. officials, but still became a flash point in which Trump accused Milley of treason. The phone calls were first reported in another Woodward book.
Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University who specializes in the military’s interaction with civil society, said it is hard to see what good the moves against Milley will accomplish and easy to see how they could further politicize the military. Another potential consequence, Feaver said, is setting a precedent of retribution “that Trump officials may come to regret if and when Democrats regain political power.”
Hegseth takes actions against Trump foe Mark Milley
The retired general, a frequent target of the president, will lose his security detail and face an inspector general investigation, senior defense officials said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/28/mark-milley-hegseth-trump/?utm
UpdatedJanuary 29, 2025 at 12:17 a.m. ESTtoday at 12:17 a.m. EST
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Then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley speaks with lawmakers in 2022. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan and Alex Horton
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has decided to remove retired Gen. Mark A. Milley’s security detail, suspend his security clearance, and order an inspector general inquiry into his behavior as the Pentagon’s top officer, senior defense officials said Tuesday, taking extraordinary action against a frequent target of President Donald Trump.
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The move comes after years of Trump criticizing Milley for perceived disloyalty and Milley acknowledging in congressional testimony that he had served as a source for several unflattering books about the first Trump administration. Milley, 66, retired in 2023 following four tumultuous years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under both Trump and President Joe Biden.
Hegseth’s plan, first reported by Fox News, is part of the new defense secretary’s effort to reestablish “warfighter culture” in the Pentagon, one senior defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid backlash. The official portrayed Milley as a political operator while in the chairman role and said there is desire to “take a star” from him, meaning administration officials want to see Milley demoted in retirement.
“The ghost of General Milley shouldn’t haunt the Pentagon anymore, nor should it haunt the armed forces,” the senior defense official said. “This is all about accountability for General Milley.”
Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot said in a statement late Tuesday that Hegseth informed Milley of his decisions earlier in the day. Hegseth directed the inspector general’s inquiry “into the facts and circumstances surrounding Gen. Milley’s conduct so that the Secretary may determine whether it is appropriate to reopen his military grade review determination,” the statement said
Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, said in a statement that “undermining the chain of command” — the military’s terminology for increasingly senior leaders that is headed by the president — is “corrosive to national security.”
“Restoring accountability is a priority for the Defense Department under President Trump’s leadership,” Kasper added.
Shortly after Trump was sworn in as president this month, administration officials sent a message by having a portrait of Milley memorializing his time as Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman removed from a wall in the Pentagon. Fox News reported Tuesday that another portrait of Milley recognizing him for his previous role as chief of staff of the Army was to be removed soon. The senior defense official confirmed that is the case, too.
Milley could not be reached for comment.
The action comes after Trump fired numerous inspectors general last week, including Robert Storch, the Pentagon’s top watchdog. The move raised concerns that Trump would install loyalists in a role designed to be an independent guardian against waste, fraud and abuse.
While Trump selected Milley for the chairman’s post, the two men had a bitter falling out over issues that included Trump’s desire to use active-duty military forces to quell protests in America’s streets and Milley’s efforts to reassure Chinese officials that Trump wasn’t looking to attack Beijing as his time in office ended. Though Milley and other officials said that the general coordinated those calls with Trump administration officials, Trump attacked the general, saying at one point that the calls to China were “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”
More recently, the retired general told Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core” and that Milley had faced a series of death threats he attributed to Trump’s steady drumbeat of verbal attacks.
“No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump,” the general told Woodward in a book published last year. “Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.”
Milley’s supporters viewed him as a bulwark against what they saw as Trump’s most dangerous impulses.
Hegseth’s effort comes after Biden, in one of his last acts in office, preemptively pardoned Milley, several other public officials, and the president’s own family members from criminal prosecution, citing concerns that they could be the subject of “unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions” after Biden left office. Milley, in a statement after receiving the pardon, said he was “deeply grateful” for Biden’s intervention and did not wish “to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights.”
Biden’s pardon protected Milley from prosecution in both the federal civilian and military legal systems. But in pursuing other measures, it appears Hegseth will test how he may punish Milley through administrative processes in the Defense Department.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gestures after appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing Jan, 14. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The move to revoke Milley’s security detail follows the Trump administration taking similar action against other past senior officials, including Mike Pompeo, who served as both secretary of state and CIA director during the first Trump administration, and John Bolton, who served as a national security adviser at the White House. It comes after years of concerns that Iran could attempt to assassinate Milley or other former senior U.S. officials involved in the Trump administration’s January 2020 killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
A former senior U.S. official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters, said those actions were taken despite “active threats” against those officials at the close of the Biden administration.
Milley, as a retired general, has a security detail provided by Army Protective Services Battalion. Other current and former senior U.S. officials receive security from the Secret Service.
Milley’s relationship with Trump appeared to disintegrate in June 2020, when Trump sought to pull the military more directly into the administration’s response to nationwide civil unrest sparked by the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a White Minneapolis police officer.
Milley issued an unusual, emotional apology that month after he was caught on camera walking with Trump outside the White House where authorities had forcibly removed peaceful protesters shortly before. The image, critics said, suggested the military supported the administration’s forceful response to the unrest. The general subsequently stressed the military’s duty to the Constitution, rather than any particular leader, and emerged as an advocate of race-related diversity initiatives criticized by many Republicans.
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As the tail end of the first Trump administration grew increasingly unpredictable, Milley twice called senior officials in Beijing to reassure China that the U.S. government was stable, he and other U.S. officials have said. The calls were coordinated by Milley with Trump’s defense secretaries at the time and other senior U.S. officials, but still became a flash point in which Trump accused Milley of treason. The phone calls were first reported in another Woodward book.
Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University who specializes in the military’s interaction with civil society, said it is hard to see what good the moves against Milley will accomplish and easy to see how they could further politicize the military. Another potential consequence, Feaver said, is setting a precedent of retribution “that Trump officials may come to regret if and when Democrats regain political power.”
By Dan Lamothe
Dan Lamothe joined The Washington Post in 2014 to cover the U.S. military. He has written about the Armed Forces for more than 15 years, traveling extensively, embedding with five branches of service and covering combat in Afghanistan.follow on X@danlamothe
By Missy Ryan
Missy Ryan writes about national security and defense for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2014 and has written about the Pentagon and the State Department. She has reported from Iraq, Ukraine, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mexico, Peru, Argentina and Chile.
By Alex Horton
Alex Horton is a national security reporter for The Washington Post focused on the U.S. military. He served in Iraq as an Army infantryman.follow on X@AlexHortonTX
7. White House incentivizes federal workers to resign
Eight months severance pay? What if as tax paying citizens we object to that? They get paid for eight months while replacements are put in place at the same time thus doubling the personnel costs over the next eight months.
White House incentivizes federal workers to resign
The email sent to the federal workforce is the most sweeping effort yet by the new Trump administration to shrink the ranks of government employees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/28/trump-emails-workforce/
Updated
January 28, 2025 at 9:23 p.m. ESTyesterday at 9:23 p.m. EST
President Donald Trump departs Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 21. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
By Emily Davies, Jeff Stein and Faiz Siddiqui
The White House’s Office of Personnel Management sent an email blast Tuesday to federal employees offering them a way to resign with pay through Sept. 30, the most sweeping effort yet by the new Trump administration to shrink the ranks of the federal workforce.
The email instructed workers to reply to the message if they want to resign and take the offer, which expires Feb. 6. According to a White House Q&A, most of the 2.3 million federal workers are eligible for the incentive, which landed as many employees were facing return-to-office mandates and threats of layoffs.
“At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency, but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions,” reads the email, which was titled “Fork in the Road.”
The email blast came less than a day after the White House announced a freeze on federal spending that sent public officials scrambling for answers, with food safety, crime prevention and housing assistance programs, among others, on the line. And it topped off days of escalating anxiety over the personnel management office’s deployment of a “new distribution system” that sent “test” emails to groups of federal workers from a generic “hr” address.
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A website details the offer for federal employees. The email sent to the federal workforce said employees who choose to resign will be exempt from the return-to-office requirements until Sept. 30. An Office of Personnel Management memo issued late Tuesday said employees who do resign should “promptly have their duties re-assigned or eliminated and be placed on paid administrative leave” until the end of September, but left room for agency directors to require employees to keep working for some time.
Trump’s focus on the federal workforce has become a source of fierce debate in Washington, with Republicans casting the blanket attempts at downsizing as necessary and Democrats decrying them as a threat to democracy. Democratic lawmakers and unions late Monday began advising workers not to take the buyouts, with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) warning on the Senate floor that Trump could “stiff you.”
The number of federal workers overall is largely flat — and down as a percentage of the nation’s total workforce, economists’ preferred metric — over the last four decades, according to federal data. The number of state and local government workers has risen, but not as a share of the national workforce.
“Purging the federal government of dedicated career federal employees will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said in a statement. “Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”
The National Treasury Employees Union in an email “strongly” urged members not to take the deal.
The workers now forced to contend with their place in the federal government live in every state, span hundreds of agencies and embody long-standing efforts to recruit a diverse workforce. Experts warned that the offer to resign would probably compel a wave of retirements, discourage recent college graduates from entering the federal workforce, and potentially flood the nonprofit and private sectors with job applicants.
“Is it better to jump or to be pushed?” asked Donald Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. “Many people will decide they want to jump.”
Trump made shrinking and reshaping the federal government a centerpiece of his campaign, deriding the bureaucracy as corrupt, bloated and, in some cases, to blame for the suffering of his supporters. In his first eight days in office, he issued sweeping orders that slowed down parts of the federal government in a quest to assert broad control. The moves halted foreign aid, paused legal filings, and slashed all diversity, equity and inclusion programs and initiatives.
And on Tuesday, programs that fund schools, provide housing and ensure low-income people have access to health care were embroiled in chaos, as agencies attempted to make sense of the Trump administration’s Monday memo that ordered all federal spending paused. A federal judge later temporarily blocked the order.
The offer to resign in exchange for pay through September appeared to reflect the goals of the “Department of Government Efficiency” run by billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk. Musk previously called for “mass headcount reductions” of federal personnel, vowing that DOGE will work with U.S. agencies to “identify the minimum number of employees” necessary to perform essential functions. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who briefly served as the co-chair of DOGE, said they would aim to provide a “graceful exit” and incentives for early retirement to federal employees who leave.
Musk shared a post Tuesday on X that claimed that between 5 and 10 percent of workers eligible for the order would take it. The Office of Personnel Management spokesperson said the administration did not have a target for the number of people who officials hoped would leave.
“If, at the end of this exercise, we have achieved in converting public employed personnel to privately employed personnel working competitively in the private sector to increase our GDP and make things here in the United States … that’s probably a good thing,” said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Maryland), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. “In the short run, will there be people in my district who may lose a federal job? Yes. But we’re in a region that is very economically vibrant, and there should be other opportunities for those individuals.”
The White House Q&A said certain employees will not qualify for the offer, including military personnel, members of the U.S. Postal Service, positions related to immigration enforcement and national security, and “any other positions specifically excluded by your employing agency.”
Highlighting Musk’s involvement, the subject line of the email — “Fork in the Road” — echoed the one sent by Musk to Twitter employees in late 2022, asking them to commit to an “extremely hardcore” Twitter or resign. It ultimately led to high-impact departures — forcing Twitter to rehire some of the expertise it had lost — as the company implemented a strict office culture and Musk laid out his vision for Twitter 2.0, one that departed from the company’s earlier mission as understood by its roughly 7,500 employees before his takeover. In all, Musk ended up reducing Twitter’s staff by about 80 percent, following a tumultuous takeover of the company he would later rename X.
“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” Musk wrote in that midnight email to his staff in 2022. “This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
Musk erected an art piece outside Tesla’s headquarters in Texas of a giant fork at a crossroads, a reference to what he saw as a battle for the future of civilization.
Jacob Bogage, Dan Diamond and Natalie Allison contributed to this report.
8. Memo to Trump: Beware the ‘Reverse Teddy’ By Matt Pottinger
I of course defer to Matt's expertise on China but I think my assessment is in line with his analysis and views on China.
My assessment is that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan)
Excerpts:
The idea that Beijing would keep to its side of the globe if only we would keep to ours is based on the fantasy that dictators are aiming for an equal “balance of power” with the United States. This concept, fashionable with some political scientists and journalists but absent from the historical record, is rejected explicitly by none other than Xi Jinping himself. As an internal Chinese military textbook on “Xi Jinping Thought” put it in 2018:
The Westphalian system was founded on the notion of a balance of power. But it has proven unable to achieve a stable world order. All mankind needs a new order that surpasses and supplants the balance of power. . . . A new world order is now under construction that will surpass and supplant the Westphalian System.
There, in one paragraph, our most powerful adversary rejects a “balance of power” as a desirable end state, makes clear Beijing is aiming at a “new world order” targeting “all mankind,” and attacks the very idea of national sovereignty created by the Treaties of Westphalia that emerged from war-ravaged Europe in 1648. The textbook goes on to quote Xi saying, “our struggle and contest with Western countries is irreconcilable.” Good luck with that grand bargain.
Since China aims to be a global power with geopolitical clout in our hemisphere—and even runs covert “police stations” that harass Chinese dissidents and Americans citizens inside our borders—it is worth reminding Beijing that America is a resident power on both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and that we aren’t going anywhere.
That would be a position that Teddy Roosevelt would be proud of.
Memo to Trump: Beware the ‘Reverse Teddy’
https://www.thefp.com/p/memo-to-trump-america-first-china-russia-iran?mc_cid=6485448e4d
“Strength in America’s near-abroad could portend weakness if it comes at the exclusion of foreign policy concerns in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East,” writes Matt Pottinger for The Free Press. (Illustration by The Free Press)
I was proud to serve the president in his first term. But Trump’s strength in the Western Hemisphere could portend weakness in Europe and Asia in his second, writes Matt Pottinger.
By Matt Pottinger
01.28.25 —
That was quick. A day after Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro denied entry to American planes returning deported Colombian migrants from the United States, Petro—who complained that the migrants were not being treated with “dignity”—not only backed down, but was retweeting President Donald Trump’s press secretary.
Trump had brought him to heel in a matter of hours with a threat of crippling tariffs and other sanctions.
With more than a little justification, Trump and his supporters are claiming victory and touting the Colombian’s cave as proof that America’s days of being pushed around—especially in its own hemisphere—ended January 20.
Perhaps so. After four years of relative neglect by the Biden administration—during which Beijing, Moscow, and even Tehran made deeper inroads into Latin America—Trump is already effecting a hard swing of the pendulum back toward American primacy in its neighborhood.
In a broader sense, though, this show of strength in America’s near-abroad could portend weakness if it comes at the exclusion of traditional foreign policy concerns in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
In his first term, Trump wisely resisted the temptation to retreat and let aggressive dictators expand their territory and influence across Eurasia—the supercontinent that accounts for three-quarters of the world’s population and nearly two-thirds of the world’s economy. By holding the line in the Western Pacific, Eastern Europe, and the Persian Gulf, Trump logged important achievements: delivering heavy blows to ISIS, negotiating Mideast peace agreements, ditching Washington’s accommodationist approach to China, and (in that rarest of successes for a U.S. president) keeping America out of new wars.
Those weren’t just headlines for me—I proudly served in the Trump White House, first as his senior director for Asia policy, and then as deputy national security adviser.
Now, however, there are signs that the president might succumb to the allure of hemispheric seclusion in his second term. Isolationists masquerading as “restrainers” are being maneuvered into mid-level positions at the Department of Defense—some of them critical of Trump’s policies that kept the peace. Trump himself toyed with the idea of withdrawing from NATO in his first term, though he thankfully held fast and successfully pressured allies to spend more on their defense.
He can build on the accomplishments of his first term, but only by recalling that “peace through strength” means more than merely refraining from foolish military adventures: It also means maintaining a forward military posture and projecting the resolve to use it when provoked.
Frustrating as the world can be, carving it up in a “spheres of influence” grand bargain would make it harder to tackle problems that voters gave Trump a mandate to solve.
You don’t have to read between the lines of Trump’s January 20 inaugural address to perceive that the Americas were his main focus. He pledged to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations and reassert dominance over the Panama Canal. He spoke of America as a “growing nation” that “expands our territory,” fueling sales of Canada Is Not for Sale hats and putting Greenland into play. But with the exception of a namecheck for China and what he considers its control over the canal, Asia and Europe went unmentioned. The Middle East figured only in a brief reference to “the hostages . . . coming back home to their families.”
Trump’s is an understandable impulse. Decades of “free” trade hollowed out American industrial capacity and left us dependent on China’s hostile dictatorship for everything from prescription drugs to iPhones. What’s more, he’s right to want to curb Beijing’s regional influence, squeeze Chinese- and Russian-aligned socialist dictatorships in Venezuela and Cuba—not to mention keep his campaign promises to stop mass migration and drug trafficking.
Meanwhile, neoconservative dreams of fully democratizing Iraq and Afghanistan failed after long, costly wars. (As a Marine with three combat deployments, I felt the consequences of our strategic misjudgments firsthand.) Many Americans think this country is still overcommitted militarily and, correctly, that allies—Germany, I’m looking at you—spend far less on their defense in relative terms than the United States does, even after a decade of armed aggression by Russia.
Many, including Trump himself, have framed his focus on America’s near-abroad as a restoration of the Monroe Doctrine, which fell out of favor at the end of the Cold War, but which, in 1823, established the Western Hemisphere as a core U.S. foreign policy interest. President James Monroe put forth two rules: European powers should not meddle in our hemisphere and, in return, the United States would not interfere with Europe or its established territories.
Trump’s words about the Panama Canal and territorial expansion even evoke the famed Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, under which President Teddy Roosevelt intervened assertively in America’s near-abroad to ward off any temptation by distant powers to meddle. These interventions included, of course, engineering territorial space for a U.S. canal in Panama.
But while those were the first steps Uncle Sam took en route to global power, Trump should resist any urge to pull a “reverse Teddy”—throwing our weight around in the Americas in order to retrench into a merely hemispheric power.
The truth is that the U.S. must retain the capability, and resolve, to influence events in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East because they affect the livelihoods of ordinary Americans.
The loss of Taiwan to Beijing’s coercion, for example, would probably capsize Trump’s presidency with a stock market crash to rival 1929. America would suddenly be at China’s mercy for the cutting-edge computer chips that keep our digital economy aloft and that will decide who dominates the ultra-strategic field of artificial intelligence.
American withdrawal from the Eastern Hemisphere would cede much of Asia to Beijing, Europe to Moscow, and the oil-rich Middle East to Tehran and other hostile powers. And there is little to suggest dictators would stick to their respective spheres. Xi Jinping, a Leninist whose professed heroes are Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, has made clear he is playing for global stakes, not hemispheric ones. Worse than that, he is harnessing Moscow and Tehran to help him achieve his aims. The common denominator holding them together? Enmity for the United States of America.
Generations of strategists have warned that allowing a strategic competitor to dominate Asia or Europe or even the Middle East could spell the demise of Washington as a great power, no matter how sturdy its redoubt in the Americas.
That’s why the United States could not afford to duck two world wars and a cold war in the 20th century. Now, as before, it would be better to stand our ground, contain aggressors, and keep the peace—rather than to withdraw support for our allies and ultimately invite more war.
All Trump has to do is remember the overall success of his first-term foreign policy. Then, my former boss not only strengthened America’s hand vis-à-vis China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Sunni terrorist groups like ISIS but also successfully deterred new conflicts. He was able to do so thanks to the leverage afforded by America’s forward military presence—and Trump’s demonstrated willingness to use our armed forces when provoked.
If Trump needs examples of how undue retrenchment can go wrong, all he has to do is examine his predecessor’s record: The Taliban overran the government of Afghanistan in 2021; Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in 2022; and Iran sponsored Sunni and Shia proxies to launch a seven-front war on Israel in 2023.
Effective deterrence would have been a lot cheaper than war. It requires both resolve and the means of backing it up, however. One of Trump’s reflexes is to view alliances mainly as cost centers. In fact, allies—and our forward bases in places like Japan, Europe, and the Mideast—are insurance policies against the costly wars Trump rightly seeks to avoid.
China’s leader wouldn’t hesitate to exploit the power vacuum created if Washington begins to pull back from Asia.
The idea that Beijing would keep to its side of the globe if only we would keep to ours is based on the fantasy that dictators are aiming for an equal “balance of power” with the United States. This concept, fashionable with some political scientists and journalists but absent from the historical record, is rejected explicitly by none other than Xi Jinping himself. As an internal Chinese military textbook on “Xi Jinping Thought” put it in 2018:
The Westphalian system was founded on the notion of a balance of power. But it has proven unable to achieve a stable world order. All mankind needs a new order that surpasses and supplants the balance of power. . . . A new world order is now under construction that will surpass and supplant the Westphalian System.
There, in one paragraph, our most powerful adversary rejects a “balance of power” as a desirable end state, makes clear Beijing is aiming at a “new world order” targeting “all mankind,” and attacks the very idea of national sovereignty created by the Treaties of Westphalia that emerged from war-ravaged Europe in 1648. The textbook goes on to quote Xi saying, “our struggle and contest with Western countries is irreconcilable.” Good luck with that grand bargain.
Since China aims to be a global power with geopolitical clout in our hemisphere—and even runs covert “police stations” that harass Chinese dissidents and Americans citizens inside our borders—it is worth reminding Beijing that America is a resident power on both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and that we aren’t going anywhere.
That would be a position that Teddy Roosevelt would be proud of.
Matt Pottinger was the deputy national security adviser from 2019 to 2021. He chairs the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and is CEO of the research firm Garnaut Global LLC.
9. What Happened When DEI Came to the Military?
I am glad I retired in 2011 before or when all this started. I guess this is why I never felt the issues that so many have been speaking out about.
As an aside, the Free Press is one of the few media organizations that really does live up to the ideal of presenting analysis of controversial issues while demonstrating a lack of apparent bias as strongly as possible.
But we must not go overboard in the opposite direction and make the same mistake as in 2011 with incoming administration members not being able to "understand the implications of their recommendations for combat troops" and the entire force. It seems like the SECDEF has fully embraced this idea; however, if his intention is to establish meritocracy, it must come with equal opportunity in order to live up to American ideals.
My recommendation to the SECDEF: Hire Mookie as a senior advisor. He will keep you grounded while steering the giant rudder guiding DOD.
Excerpts:
DEI policies as we know them today were formalized and solidified within the armed forces in 2011, when a blue ribbon commission concluded that the modern military required “demographically diverse leadership that reflects the public it serves.” To achieve that goal, the military needed to “pursue a broader approach to diversity that includes the range of backgrounds, skill sets, and personal attributes.”
The armed forces, which are 31 percent minority, had long viewed color blindness as a critical attribute for a fighting force. But the commission’s report took a different view. “Good diversity management is not about treating everyone the same,” it read. “This can be a difficult concept to grasp, especially for leaders who grew up with the… mandate to be both color and gender blind. Blindness to difference, however, can lead to a culture of assimilation in which differences are suppressed rather than leveraged.”
What was most ominous—shocking, even—is that commission members seemed not to understand the implications of their recommendations for combat troops. The military’s emphasis on color blindness was rooted in the logic of combat: When men and women of different races and religions are fighting alongside each other, focusing on their differences only harms unit cohesion.
...
Even the Army’s elite Green Berets weren’t immune from the effects of DEI. Master Sgt. Earl Plumlee, a Green Beret and Medal of Honor recipient who retired late last year after 25 years of service, said he was required to take annual DEI training online. He also said that Richard Torres-Estrada, who was reportedly suspended in 2021 for comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler in a Facebook post, was brought back to the Green Berets for the sole purpose of getting minorities to try out for special forces.
“It was very divisive because we consider ourselves the last meritocracy,” Plumlee told The Free Press. “If you’re a Green Beret, there’s only one metric for success, and that’s success. So when you have this diversity discussion, you’re just bringing an argument with no empirical facts. It’s like, Why are they bringing this to work? This is not a professional conversation. I mean, having guys explain their take on why their demographic has been struggling? Like, bro, everybody wanted you here. You met the metric. You’ve met the standards. You’re considered a standout performer across the board, and you’re being rewarded for it, right? What shackles are holding you back? You’re a Green Beret.”
Anna Simons, a retired professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and an anthropologist who studies combat teams, said, “The essence of cohesion is mutual indispensability: I need you; you need me. When the rubber meets the road, like in a ground combat unit, you want your teammate to approach a problem in a way that you don’t have to worry about. He’s not coming up with some innovative solution. He knows what to do. You’ve both had this mind meld, and you know that you can count on him or her to react the same way you would, so that you don’t have to think about it.”
I will continue to emphasize the "standard" from de Tocqueville that makes America great. This is what should be guiding us. it accounts for both our failings and our desire for meritocracy with equal opportunity for all.
As he traveled across the young nation, de Tocqueville encountered a society unlike that of his native France or indeed any other European country—defined by rigid class hierarchies. Instead, Americans were passionately committed to the idea that every person, regardless of birth or status, should have the opportunity to succeed.
This commitment to equality was not without its paradoxes and imperfections—slavery still tainted the landscape, and Indigenous peoples were mistreated and displaced—but the relentless drive toward equality was unmistakable. For de Tocqueville, this was the essence of America’s greatness and its unique spirit: a society striving toward a more just and equitable future, even if it stumbled and stuttered along the way.
https://rabbidunner.com/lessons-from-alexis-de-tocqueville/
What Happened When DEI Came to the Military?
https://www.thefp.com/p/dei-military-pete-hegseth-trump?mc_cid=6485448e4d
“Diversity is great, but you can’t sacrifice meritocracy,” retired Air Force Brigadier General Christopher “Mookie” Walker, photographed on January 24, 2025 in Denver, Colorado, told The Free Press. (Rachel Woolf for The Free Press).
A Free Press investigation reveals the extraordinary extent to which our armed forces put diversity over readiness. Pete Hegseth tells us that’s about to change.
By Madeleine Rowley
01.28.25 — Politics and The Trump Transition
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Retired Air Force Brigadier General Christopher Walker, 59, spent almost two years as a senior adviser to the Air Force’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the Pentagon, attending dozens of meetings about implementing DEI initiatives. This was an unusual role given Walker’s career path: He had over 400 hours of combat flights and, most recently, had overseen West Virginia’s Air National Guard.
But in 2021, when the Air Force established its Office of Diversity and Inclusion, staffers assumed that Walker would be on board with their belief that DEI was a “warfighting imperative.” Why? Because Walker is black. But that assumption was wrong.
Walker was a mole.
Alarmed by DEI programs that were little more, in his view, than “Soviet indoctrination,” he leaked information to an organization called Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS). This group consists of retired military veterans and civilians who oppose woke ideology in the military. They, in turn, alerted lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Mike Waltz about what they were hearing from Walker and other active duty service members who opposed the military’s diversity policies.
“No one delved into how I thought,” Walker told The Free Press. “They took one look at me and assumed I believed these things. I learned to listen and had to bite my tongue a lot.”
Walker, who prefers to go by his pilot call sign, Mookie, took notes and mostly kept his head down, so he could keep reporting what was going on. “I thought, If this is allowed to stand, all of the senior people within the [Department of Defense] are going to bring along this propaganda and get rid of anybody who doesn’t go along with it.”
Mookie recalled a private meeting in 2022 attended by generals and other key Pentagon staffers. At the meeting, Alex Wagner, the Air Force assistant secretary, asked the group to brainstorm ways to get the general public to accept drag shows on Air Force bases.
Close to retirement and with nothing to lose, Mookie finally spoke up. “I reminded the group that since the 1980s, the Air Force has not allowed lingerie shows,” he said. “They don’t allow burlesque shows. So why would we allow drag shows?”
His comment seemed to have an effect. In June 2023, the Department of Defense officially banned drag shows on all military installations.
But that was the exception, not the rule. In 2022, Mookie recalls attending a training course at Georgetown University for Air Force generals and senior officers called “Managing for Inclusion.” The professor, he said, informed the group that white people were oppressors and black and Hispanic people were the oppressed, so they couldn’t be racist. The professor also taught the class how to ask someone for their pronouns at the beginning of a conversation.
“The whole thing was old-fashioned propaganda,” Mookie said. “But there were generals, including Lt. General Mary O’Brien [now retired] and Lt. General Leah Lauderback, and higher-ranked people within this course who were going along with it, clapping like trained seals.”
With the arrival of Donald Trump as president and Pete Hegseth as the new secretary of defense, the days of asking soldiers for their preferred pronouns appear to be over. Immediately after taking office, Trump signed an executive order putting an end to all DEI programs in the federal government. On Monday evening, he announced that he would issue another series of executive orders that would include the elimination of critical race theory and “transgender ideology” from the military.
And in his first interview since his closely contested confirmation, Hegseth told The Free Press, “My job is to reflect those lawful orders from President Trump throughout the chain of command.” Those orders, he added, are “to remove all aspects of DEI, including trying to mirror it, rename it, or delay those tactics.”
DEI policies as we know them today were formalized and solidified within the armed forces in 2011, when a blue ribbon commission concluded that the modern military required “demographically diverse leadership that reflects the public it serves.” To achieve that goal, the military needed to “pursue a broader approach to diversity that includes the range of backgrounds, skill sets, and personal attributes.”
The armed forces, which are 31 percent minority, had long viewed color blindness as a critical attribute for a fighting force. But the commission’s report took a different view. “Good diversity management is not about treating everyone the same,” it read. “This can be a difficult concept to grasp, especially for leaders who grew up with the… mandate to be both color and gender blind. Blindness to difference, however, can lead to a culture of assimilation in which differences are suppressed rather than leveraged.”
What was most ominous—shocking, even—is that commission members seemed not to understand the implications of their recommendations for combat troops. The military’s emphasis on color blindness was rooted in the logic of combat: When men and women of different races and religions are fighting alongside each other, focusing on their differences only harms unit cohesion.
San Diego County supervisor Nora Vargas speaks to military and civilians from the county during a DEI Summit in San Diego, California. (Joseph R. Vincent)
Several high-ranking officers with combat experience who spoke to The Free Press understood the report’s fatal error. “So let’s say we have soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors, who have actually been in combat and who have actually covered one another, and who have actually sacrificed for one another, and they are all across different ethnic groups, races, and whatever,” said Mookie. “And then all of a sudden, some clown is saying, ‘Hey, but you know, you’re inherently racist.’ That just ain’t gonna work for unity.”
In his interview with The Free Press, Hegseth offered a similar rationale for his long-standing opposition to DEI in the military. “The dumbest phrase in military history, which was uttered by the Biden administration, is that our diversity is our strength,” he said. “Our strength is our unity and our shared purpose, our shared mission, our commitment to each other. DEI exists to accentuate differences in ways that drive people to view others differently because of the color of their skin or their gender or any other aspect, as opposed to setting those things aside.”
As it happens, it was during the first Trump administration that the military ratcheted up its DEI programs, although he seemed not to notice. Just like corporate America, the armed services raced to show the world they cared about diversity and inclusion after George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. Just weeks after Floyd died, for instance, the Army launched “Project Inclusion” to “improve diversity, equity, and inclusion across the force.”
At the Air Force Academy that same year, several upper-level leadership courses were replaced by courses that embraced critical race theory, which posits (among other things) that whites are oppressors and minorities are oppressed. These classes were titled “Class, Race, and Ethnicity in Society” and “Gender, Sexuality, and Society.”
The course description of the latter course, Behavioral Science 364, reads in part: “Our ideas about gender and sexuality—about men, women, masculinity, and homosexuality, for example—organize our social life in important ways that we often do not notice. These ideas are either invisible to us (such that we take them for granted as ‘normal’) or explained away (such that they seem like the ‘natural’ way life works). This course adopts a different approach by viewing gender and sexuality through the lens of the social—as shaped by social processes, including social interaction, institutions, ideologies, and culture—and how these beliefs create and enforce a system of difference and inequality.”
Once the Biden administration took office, the emphasis on diversity and inclusion became even more intense. At the Defense Department, DEI programs and personnel consumed increasing sums of money: $68 million in 2022, $86.5 million in 2023, and $114.7 million in 2024, according to a report by the Center for American Institutions, a research project affiliated with Arizona State University. In other words, nearly $270 million was spent to further the military’s DEI goals in just three years.
Much of the top brass sang from the diversity and inclusion songbook. In 2021, now retired General Michael X. Garrett wrote an article for Military Review saying that soldiers needed to acknowledge their differences. “A team experiencing healthy conflict—such as respectful, empathetic conversations about personal topics—is genuinely building inclusion and belonging,” he wrote. “Alternatively, a team that ignores its unspoken differences may fail to build camaraderie and risks silently condoning racist or extremist behavior.” In writing this, Garrett abandoned the U.S. Army’s “all I see is green” mentality.
In 2022, General C.Q. Brown, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs who was then chief of staff of the Air Force, co-authored a memo that set “aspirational” race and gender quotas for Air Force officer applicants: He sought an Air Force that was 36 percent female, 67.5 percent white, 13 percent black, and 10 percent Asian. A subsequent lawsuit filed by the Center to Advance Security in America uncovered slides showing that the Air Force planned to achieve these quotas in part by making changes to its qualifying test to achieve the “desired end-state” of increasing the number of Hispanics in the Air Force. One would be hard-pressed to think of anything more corrosive to an organization that views itself as merit-based.
In his interview with The Free Press, Hegseth said that DEI is more entrenched in the Air Force than the other branches. “DEI tells young airmen and others, ‘Hey, if you’re a young black man or black woman, you have an inherent set of disadvantages,’ or ‘If you’re a white woman or a white man, you have an inherent set of advantages.’ You're starting off from a place that creates division and skepticism. You can't have that inside a unit.”
Although universities are no longer allowed to include race as a criterion for admission, thanks to a 2024 Supreme Court decision, the same does not apply to military academies. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, for instance, has explicit minimum admission quotas based on race—for the class of 2027, which has 1,255 students, it sought to include at least 171 blacks, 138 Hispanics, and 61 Asians. It also offered a minor in Diversity and Inclusion studies. The Air Force Academy, which offered a similar minor, established a Cadet Wing Diversity and Inclusion Program in 2021. It consisted of about 80 cadets who wore a purple rope on their left shoulder, distinguishing themselves as “diversity representatives” throughout campus.
A fourth-year cadet at the Air Force Academy, who asked to remain anonymous because speaking on the record would destroy his career, told The Free Press that cadets were required to attend quarterly diversity and inclusion briefings. At one such briefing in 2022, the senior cadet said that the presenters lectured the students about not using “mom” and “dad” to describe parents. “They said the terms ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ weren’t inclusive because not everyone has a mom and dad,” the cadet continued. “We're the ones who are supposed to fight America’s wars and take care of business, and they’re lecturing us about what not to call our parents?”
And then there’s this, from the father of an Air Force Academy cadet who serves on the board of the Air Force Academy Association of Graduates: “About two years ago, my son had to take economics 101,” he told The Free Press. “It’s a basic core curriculum course, and there are probably about 15 cadets in the class. And the first three or four were females or minority cadets, and they’re all in uniform. And the instructor addresses them and says, ‘Oh, Cadet Gonzales, Cadet Smith, Cadet Jones.’ And she got to my son, and she says,`You'll be Cadet White Boy One.’ And she says to another white cadet, `You’ll be Cadet White Boy Two.’ My son said,`I beg your pardon, ma'am?’ She said, `All you white boys look alike. So you’re going to be White Boy 2, and the other boy over there will be White Boy One.’ ”
“This was on a Friday,” the man continued. “My son called me Friday afternoon, and he was quite distraught. He said, ‘Dad, I don’t know how to deal with this.’ And I just told him to pray about it. I said, ‘God uses everything for good, and we’ll work through this.’ He wanted to quit the academy. But the whole reason he went there, since he was in eighth grade, was we took him to the American Cemetery in Normandy, and he saw the crosses.”
Even the Army’s elite Green Berets weren’t immune from the effects of DEI. Master Sgt. Earl Plumlee, a Green Beret and Medal of Honor recipient who retired late last year after 25 years of service, said he was required to take annual DEI training online. He also said that Richard Torres-Estrada, who was reportedly suspended in 2021 for comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler in a Facebook post, was brought back to the Green Berets for the sole purpose of getting minorities to try out for special forces.
“It was very divisive because we consider ourselves the last meritocracy,” Plumlee told The Free Press. “If you’re a Green Beret, there’s only one metric for success, and that’s success. So when you have this diversity discussion, you’re just bringing an argument with no empirical facts. It’s like, Why are they bringing this to work? This is not a professional conversation. I mean, having guys explain their take on why their demographic has been struggling? Like, bro, everybody wanted you here. You met the metric. You’ve met the standards. You’re considered a standout performer across the board, and you’re being rewarded for it, right? What shackles are holding you back? You’re a Green Beret.”
Anna Simons, a retired professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and an anthropologist who studies combat teams, said, “The essence of cohesion is mutual indispensability: I need you; you need me. When the rubber meets the road, like in a ground combat unit, you want your teammate to approach a problem in a way that you don’t have to worry about. He’s not coming up with some innovative solution. He knows what to do. You’ve both had this mind meld, and you know that you can count on him or her to react the same way you would, so that you don’t have to think about it.”
In the short time since Trump has terminated DEI programs throughout the federal government, the military’s DEI websites have been deleted. The webpage for the Diversity and Inclusion minor at West Point is gone, and so is the Air Force’s diversity website. The same is true of the Defense Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion website. The Free Press was unable to learn whether the academies still offer minors in diversity or have diversity training for cadets. West Point did not respond to an email from The Free Press. The Air Force Academy said it would respond, but hadn’t as we went to press.
Recently, Hegseth posted a short statement on X with a photo of a note written on his new Secretary of Defense stationery. “DEI ≠ DOD,” the note reads. “No exceptions, name-changes or delays. Those who do not comply will no longer work here.”
This comes as a relief to Mookie and many others who say that combat readiness wasn’t what mattered to the Biden administration; DEI was.
“Diversity is great, but you can’t sacrifice meritocracy,” said Mookie. “That just wasn’t their focus.”
10. Trump revives push for space-based interceptors in ‘Iron Dome for America’ edict
Star Wars II. The spaced based interceptors should be named the Reagan Missile Defense System to honor his vision.
Trump revives push for space-based interceptors in ‘Iron Dome for America’ edict
The new executive order tasks Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to deliver a comprehensive plan for a next-generation homeland missile defense reference architecture in the next 60 days.
By
Mikayla Easley
January 28, 2025
defensescoop.com · by measley · January 28, 2025
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Monday night tasking the Pentagon to build a plan for a multilayered missile defense system underpinned by both space-based sensors and interceptors.
Under the directive, titled “Iron Dome for America,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is required to develop “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements and an implementation plan” to address emerging aerial threats against the U.S. homeland. The strategy, due to the president in the next 60 days, must focus on defense against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other aerial platforms.
“Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities,” the EO states.
The directive comes after Trump promised to create a “great Iron Dome shield” over the United States in June during his presidential campaign, referencing the Israeli air defense system built by Rafael. While Israel’s capability is designed to intercept short-range rockets and artillery, it’s clear that Trump’s vision for America’s own Iron Dome shield considers a greater range of threats and technologies.
Notably, the order calls for development and deployment of “proliferated space-based interceptors” stationed on orbit that can defeat ballistic missiles during the boost stage of flight.
The inclusion of space-based interceptors will likely be a source of contention in the executive order’s execution, Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told DefenseScoop. Fielding such weapons has been a controversial matter that was floated by the first Trump administration in 2018, but did not receive traction during President Joe Biden’s term.
The concept for space-based interceptors was a centerpiece of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s, which was abandoned due to technological immaturity and expensive price tags at the time. Critics referred to it derisively as a “Star Wars” project. But the cost of putting satellites on orbit has reduced drastically in recent years, largely due to advancements made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX business.
US President Ronald Reagan shakes hands with real estate developer Donald Trump in a reception line in the White House’s Blue Room, Washington DC. November 3, 1987. The reception was held for members of the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies Foundation. (Photo by White House Photo Office/PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
“When Ronald Reagan wanted to do it many years ago, luckily we didn’t. We didn’t have the technology then. It was a concept but we didn’t have” sufficient tech, Trump said Monday evening during remarks to lawmakers at his Trump National Doral resort in Miami. “Now we have phenomenal technology. You see that with Israel, where out of 319 rockets [launched against them] they knocked down just about every one of them. So I think the United States is entitled to that. And everything will be made right here in the USA, 100 percent.”
However, there are still technological limitations to the weapons that require additional study and analysis before the Pentagon can field them at scale, Harrison said.
“If you have a system that’s designed so that there’s always at least one interceptor within range, you could shoot down any one missile. But if someone launches a salvo of two missiles, the second will get through,” he said. “You would have to double the size of your constellation in order to shoot down two at once, and you would have to quadruple it to shoot down four at once. So it quickly becomes cost prohibitive the way it scales.”
Space-based interceptors would be ideal for threats posed by Iran or North Korea, neither of which currently have significant numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). But against nations with larger ICBM arsenals like China and Russia — considered by the Defense Department as the United States’ most pressing military adversaries — the weapons aren’t as effective, Harrison added.
Given the growing importance of space as a warfighting domain, however, kinetic and non-kinetic space-based weapons will become more common in missile defense solutions, according to Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It’s not necessarily going to be 10,000 things, it may be more limited,” Karako told DefenseScoop. “But the genie is out of the bottle. The past paradigms of strategic stability have kind of vaporized and vanished before our eyes over the last decade … The world has changed, and we’re going to have to change with it.”
Trump’s executive order prioritizes several ongoing space-based missile defense programs, as well. It calls for accelerated deployment of the Missile Defense Agency’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor Layer (HBTSS), which is currently expected to become operational by 2035.
The directive also tasks the Space Development Agency to develop a custody layer within its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a planned mega-constellation comprising hundreds of satellites carrying data relay, missile warning and missile tracking capabilities.
Harrison noted that SDA had previously considered incorporating a custody layer into its architecture as part of future tranches, and Trump’s order now gives the agency the green light to move forward.
A deployed custody layer, which continuously tracks and keeps eyes on enemy missile threats, would also contribute to the EO’s directive to deploy capabilities that can defeat missile attacks prior to launch, he added.
“Previously, they planned to just use other people’s systems and make kind of a virtual custody layer,” Harrison said. “I think that’s one of the biggest changes here, is they’re giving [SDA] the go-ahead for that.”
Space-based capabilities aren’t the only elements of Trump’s directive, as the executive order calls for “deployment of underlayer and terminal-phase intercept capabilities postured to defeat a countervalue attack.” That would likely mean bolstering the United States’ arsenal of ground-based interceptors with additional systems already available.
“The foundation for an Iron Dome for America needs to start with air and cruise missile defense,” Karako said. “That’s our biggest gap area. That’s our biggest, near-term vulnerability that we have very little capability against, and so we need to get after that.”
After submitting his plan for homeland missile defense to the White House, Hegseth has been tasked to conduct a subsequent review of theater missile defense postures. Per Trump’s executive order, the follow-on should include options for protecting forward-deployed troops; accelerating provisions of missile defenses capabilities to allies and partners; and increasing international cooperation on relevant technology development, capabilities and operations.
A large question for the Defense Department as it carries out its review will be both the cost of developing and deploying such a large missile defense architecture. The order requires an accompanying funding plan that can be examined and included in the upcoming budget request for fiscal 2026, but the EO offers no insight into how much the Pentagon would have to spend.
Some previous cost estimates for a large-scale architecture with space-based interceptors have been upwards of $100 billion, although others have said it could be built for a fraction of that amount.
Harrison estimated the missile defense efforts outlined by Trump would require substantial long-term investment, likely costing billions of dollars per year over at least the next decade.
“That impacts the question of, are they going to request more defense funding overall or will this come at the expense of something else within the defense budget? It’s not clear, because the administration has not been all that forthcoming about their plans for the defense budget overall,” he said.
Written by Mikayla Easley
Mikayla Easley reports on the Pentagon’s acquisition and use of emerging technologies. Prior to joining DefenseScoop, she covered national security and the defense industry for National Defense Magazine. She received a BA in Russian language and literature from the University of Michigan and a MA in journalism from the University of Missouri. You can follow her on Twitter @MikaylaEasley
defensescoop.com · by measley · January 28, 2025
11. What a Looming $1 Trillion Pentagon Budget Means for Jobs (Hint: Meh)
Military-Industrial America
What a Looming $1 Trillion Pentagon Budget Means for Jobs (Hint: Meh)
Historical figures show the defense industry is hemorrhaging jobs and cutting pay despite rising Pentagon expenditures. We have the numbers and delve into why.
https://inkstick.substack.com/p/what-a-looming-1-trillion-pentagon?utm
Inkstick Media
Jan 28, 2025
Hi,
Despite much-ballyhooed promises to cut government spending, the newly inaugurated Trump administration has given little indication it plans to apply that anti-waste zeal to the largest recipient of the federal discretionary budget: the Pentagon and its contractors.
The defense budget, already slated to be $895.2 billion in 2025, is steadily marching toward the eye-watering $1 trillion mark. Both Trump-allied allied lawmakers in a Republican-controlled Congress and Trump’s own nominees seem on board with that. Earlier this month, during a hearing that largely focused on Fox News host-turned defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s drinking, sexual assault allegations, and scant managerial experience, the nominee had an exchange with spending hawk Roger Wicker, a senator from Mississippi, that evidenced the soon-to-be Pentagon chief’s commitment to protecting the his department’s budget from cuts:
Wicker: And you have noted correctly that the current trend line of defense spending falling below 3% of our GDP is a threat to national security. You also said building the strongest and most powerful military in the world must be done responsibly, but it cannot be done on the cheap.
You still agree with that, do you not?
Hegseth: Yes, sir, I do. … Going under 3%, Mr. Chairman, is very dangerous.
On this beat, we cover the people and places tied up in this defining feature of American life, a military budget that is larger than the next nine countries combined. Wicker’s own spending hawkishness underscores the parochial politics that are behind much of Congressional support for that budget. His state is the poorest in the entire nation — and also one of the most economically dependent on weapons and military spending, ranking fifth nationwide by how much of its GDP is reliant on an injection of Pentagon spending.
Will the coming military buildup create, in places like Mississippi, “good manufacturing jobs and good wages,” like the Trump administration claimed last time around?
Well, here’s the numbers. Read on at inkstickmedia.com, What a Looming $1 Trillion Pentagon Budget Means for Jobs.
Nell Srinath/ Inkstick Media
Support Inkstick's Journalism
Extra
Northrop Grumman in Utah
Our exposé on worker deaths at a Northrop Grumman missile plant — and how the defense contractor skirted the worst penalties it could have faced for workplace safety violations — was on the cover of the Salt Lake City Weekly.
I also discussed the story on Salt Lake City’s KRCL radio, an interview which happened to coincide with the announcement of a ceasefire being reached between Israel and Hamas. That led us to a discussion of a crucial material (matériel) connection between Utah and the genocide – Northrop Grumman makes parts for the F-35, which Israel has used to bomb Gaza, in a Clearfield facility it acquired from Orbital ATK.
Plowshares at Lockheed Martin
I've noticed two recent real-world examples of "swords into plowshares" regarding the C-130, a military cargo plane manufactured by Lockheed Martin here in the Atlanta suburbs. First, for use in firefighting during the Los Angeles fires. Second, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is buying the aircraft for use as “hurricane hunters” and flying laboratories that will perform storm reconnaissance.
What else does the C-130 do? A lot — like deliver equipment to the Israeli military in Gaza during the genocide or evacuate people from Kabul when the Taliban retook the city during the US pullout.
Readers may remember Air Force veteran Christian Sorensen’s map, suppressed by Google, of arms plants across the country and their potential civilian use. Lockheed itself is now furnishing more real-world entries to Sorensen’s project.
Local lobbyists – send me your tips!
As one does, I was recently browsing Lobbyist.Utah.Gov and noticed that Northrop Grumman’s newest registered lobbyist for the state also happens to be an ex-employee of the state economic development agency that we at Inkstick have two public records lawsuits against – for refusing to release records on its subsidies to Northrop Grumman.
Readers may also remember that Lockheed Martin has eight registered lobbyists here in Georgia, quite an army for the new democratic socialist who represents the plant’s district to be up against.
Send me your story ideas and tips on local defense industry lobbyists — it’s something I plan to delve more into this year. Email me at tbarnes@inkstickmedia.com, or Signal at tkbarnes.10
Taylor
12. Trump offering federal workers buyouts with about 8 months' pay in effort to shrink government
Wow. ALL federal employees? Yes this could really remake the civil service.
Trump offering federal workers buyouts with about 8 months' pay in effort to shrink government
By MARK SHERMAN and WILL WEISSERT
Updated 9:51 PM EST, January 28, 2025
AP · by WILL WEISSERT · January 28, 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it is offering buyouts to all federal employees who opt to leave their jobs by next week — an unprecedented move to shrink the U.S. government at breakneck speed.
A memo from the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources agency, also said it would begin subjecting all federal employees to “enhanced standards of suitability and conduct” and ominously warned of future downsizing. The email sent to millions of employees said those who leave their posts voluntarily will receive about eight months of salary, but they have to choose to do so by Feb. 6.
President Donald Trump has built a political career around promising to disrupt Washington, and vowed that his second administration would go far further in shaking up traditional political norms than his first did. Still, the repercussions of so many government workers being invited to leave their jobs were difficult to calculate.
Katie Miller, who serves on an advisory board to the Department of Government Efficiency, a special Trump administration department headed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and tasked with shrinking the size of government, posted on X, “This email is being sent to more than TWO MILLION federal employees.”
The federal government employed more than 3 million people as of November last year, which accounted for nearly 1.9% of the nation’s entire civilian workforce, according to the Pew Research Center. The average tenure for a federal employee is nearly 12 years, according to a Pew analysis of data from OPM.
Even a fraction of the workforce accepting buyouts could send shockwaves through the economy and trigger widespread disruptions throughout society as a whole, triggering wide-ranging — and as yet unknowable — implications for the delivery, timeliness and effectiveness of federal services across the nation.
Untold numbers of front-line health workers in the Veterans Affairs Department, officials who process loans for homebuyers or small businesses, and contractors who help procure the next generation of military weaponry could all head for the exits at once. It could also mean losing experienced food inspectors and scientists who test the water supply — while disrupting everything from air travel and consumer product protections.
In response, American Federation of Government Employees union President Everett Kelley said it should not be viewed as voluntary buyouts, but pressuring workers not considered loyal to the new administration to vacate their jobs.
“Purging the federal government of dedicated career federal employees will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” Kelley said in a statement. “Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”
In its emailed memo detailing its plan, OPM lists four directives that it says Trump is mandating for the federal workforce going forward — including that most workers return to their offices full-time.
“The substantial majority of federal employees who have been working remotely since Covid will be required to return to their physical offices five days a week,” it reads. That echoes Trump, who said of federal employees over the weekend: “You have to go to your office and work. Otherwise you’re not going to have a job.”
The memo also says Trump “will insist on excellence at every level,” and while some parts of the government’s workforce may increase under his administration, “The majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized.”
Finally, it says, the ”federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work.”
“Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward,” the memo reads.
The emailed message includes a “deferred resignation letter” for federal employees to begin leaving their posts.
“If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30,” it says.
The email even includes instructions on how to accept, stating: “If you wish to resign: Select ‘Reply’ to this email. You must reply from your government account.” It adds: “Type the word ‘Resign’ into the body of this email and hit ‘send.’”
Meanwhile, OPM has released guidance for an executive order Trump signed on the first day of his second term known as “Schedule Career/Policy.” It replaces Schedule F, an order Trump signed late in his first term that sought to reclassify thousands of federal employees and make them political appointees without the same job security protections.
President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s Schedule F order almost immediately upon taking office in 2021, and under his administration, OPM issued a new rule last year designed to make it more difficult to fire many federal employees.
That move was seen as a safeguard against using a new Schedule F order to help carry out the key goals of Project 2025, a sweeping plan by a conservative Washington think tank to dismiss large swaths of the federal workforce in favor of more conservative alternatives while also cutting back on the overall size of government.
But that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from swiftly moving to gut the federal workforce and leave employees with little recourse to protest firings or reassignments.
Trump’s OPM on Monday set deadlines for agencies to begin to recommend workers for reclassification. Agency heads are being instructed to establish a contact person no later than Wednesday and begin to submit interim personnel recommendations within 90 days.
“Agencies are encouraged to submit recommendations on a rolling basis before this date,” Charles Ezell, the acting director of OPM, said in a memo.
Perhaps more stunning, the Trump personnel office simply did away with the Biden administration’s 2024 regulation to better protect federal workers. Monday’s memo said Trump’s new executive order used the president’s authority “to directly nullify these regulations.”
___
Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed to this report.
__
This story has been corrected to change the buyout proposal to eight months of salary, not seven.
AP · by WILL WEISSERT · January 28, 2025
13. America Must Prepare for War
I concur with Dr. Mobbs.
I would add and emphasize (in my opinion) ALL WAR: from nuclear war to the knife that will still take place in large scale combat operations as Dr. Mobbs notes, to irregular, unconventional, and especially political warfare.
Excerpts:
Moreover, the Arctic—a region long overlooked—is emerging as a critical theater of strategic competition. Russia and China have positioned themselves to dominate this contested space, while America lags behind. The President-elect’s emphasis on the Arctic and his broader pivot toward realism suggest a necessary recalibration of U.S. defense priorities. This is a Hobbesian moment, a reminder that the condition of man is one of perpetual conflict. Peace through strength is not a slogan; it is a necessity. But strength is not just technological superiority or numerical advantage. It is the ability to face war’s unrelenting human demands.
The video from Ukraine is a wake-up call. For too long, America has relied on the illusion that war can be waged from a distance, that precision and technology can substitute for grit and determination. But war does not accommodate illusions. It demands total commitment, physical endurance, and moral clarity. And it punishes those who are unprepared.
The next Secretary of Defense must embrace this challenge with clarity and purpose. The stakes are too high for anything less. As the world grows more dangerous, America’s ability to maintain peace through strength will depend not just on our technology or strategy but on the preparedness of our people. War may be a constant in the human condition, but so too is the capacity for courage, sacrifice, and resilience. It is time to ensure that our military embodies these virtues, not only in word but in deed. The future of our nation’s security—and its soul—depends on it.
America Must Prepare for War
By Meaghan Mobbs
January 29, 2025
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/01/29/america_must_prepare_for_war_1087885.html?mc_cid=6485448e4d
The recent viral video of a knife fight between a Russian and Ukrainian soldier provides a stark and brutal reminder of the realities of modern warfare. Captured from the helmet camera of the Ukrainian fighter, the footage is a raw depiction of close combat. The Ukrainian soldier, fatally wounded, calls for a friend who never comes, says goodbye to his mother, and exchanges words of respect with his adversary—acknowledging courage in the midst of mortal struggle. This is war at its most unvarnished, a reminder that despite our technological advances, the essence of combat remains unchanged. It is visceral, personal, and shattering. And it underscores a sobering truth: America is woefully unprepared for the kind of warfare this century demands.
For decades, the United States has oriented its military doctrine around the notion that technology can buffer us from the human costs of war. Unmanned drones, precision-guided munitions, and artificial intelligence promise to reduce the burden on soldiers, removing them from the fog and friction of close combat. But even as technology evolves, war remains an inherently human endeavor. The advent of First Person View (FPV) drones, for example, has paradoxically brought death closer than ever. With these drones, the act of killing is seen through the operator’s eyes, merging technological innovation with the intimate experience of taking a life.
The video from Ukraine reveals that, despite these technological advancements, the fundamentals of war have not changed. The knife fight is an ancient form of combat, a visceral struggle for survival that strips away the abstraction of modern warfare. It is a confrontation of body, mind, and will—and America’s forces are not adequately prepared for such encounters. This failure is not due to a lack of courage or resolve among our troops but rather a systemic neglect of the training and mental fortitude required to face war’s most intimate realities.
The Pentagon’s training programs have become bloated with initiatives that have little to do with the core mission of preparing for war. Distractions unrelated to warfighting must be ruthlessly excised. War does not wait for bureaucracy, and neither should our training. This is not a call for recklessness but for realism—a recognition that the United States must prepare for the wars it might face, not the wars it wishes to avoid.
The next Secretary of Defense must prioritize rigorous, realistic training that focuses on building resilience and adaptability. Real-world scenarios that inoculate soldiers against the psychological and physical stresses of close-quarters battle must become the norm. As it currently stands, our military units are not as combat ready as they should be. As part of this overhaul, there must also be a reorientation towards honesty, particularly as it comes to equipment readiness. Overstated readiness has become part of military culture. In short, lying has become institutionalized. As a result, training needs to be about more than just sharpening technical skills; it means cultivating resilience, emotional endurance, and moral clarity. Such preparation cannot be secondary. It must be central to our military’s mission.
This imperative is particularly urgent given the shifting global landscape. The conflict in Ukraine has implications far beyond Eastern Europe. As the United States manages its response to Russia’s aggression, it sends a signal to allies and adversaries alike. The trajectory of this war will influence China’s calculus on Taiwan, a flashpoint that grows more precarious with each passing year. The increasing partnership between Russia and China underscores the stakes of America’s military readiness.
Moreover, the Arctic—a region long overlooked—is emerging as a critical theater of strategic competition. Russia and China have positioned themselves to dominate this contested space, while America lags behind. The President-elect’s emphasis on the Arctic and his broader pivot toward realism suggest a necessary recalibration of U.S. defense priorities. This is a Hobbesian moment, a reminder that the condition of man is one of perpetual conflict. Peace through strength is not a slogan; it is a necessity. But strength is not just technological superiority or numerical advantage. It is the ability to face war’s unrelenting human demands.
The video from Ukraine is a wake-up call. For too long, America has relied on the illusion that war can be waged from a distance, that precision and technology can substitute for grit and determination. But war does not accommodate illusions. It demands total commitment, physical endurance, and moral clarity. And it punishes those who are unprepared.
The next Secretary of Defense must embrace this challenge with clarity and purpose. The stakes are too high for anything less. As the world grows more dangerous, America’s ability to maintain peace through strength will depend not just on our technology or strategy but on the preparedness of our people. War may be a constant in the human condition, but so too is the capacity for courage, sacrifice, and resilience. It is time to ensure that our military embodies these virtues, not only in word but in deed. The future of our nation’s security—and its soul—depends on it.
Meaghan Mobbs, PhD, is the Director of the Center for American Safety and Security at Independent Women’s Forum.
14. Why DeepSeek Is a Gift to the American People
Freedom and free markets and creative thinking and ingenuity still win.
Excerpts:
AI is about to experience its own Jevons effect. It’s a new type of software that can handle almost any human labor involving “bits” (with atoms hopefully soon to come)—answering emails, conducting phone calls, writing documents, editing or searching photos, making diagnoses, anything.
It’s going to be inside everything, the basis for all software and systems of interaction between machine and human. Companies like Hippocratic AI that works as an AI nurse or Eve that automates part of a plaintiff’s law work use AI “brains” from others (like OpenAI, Meta’s Llama, Mistral AI, or now DeepSeek) to develop their products.
In principle, it’s no different from the way that textile mills, printing presses, or metalworks used steam engines and coal to power their factories. These brains keep getting cheaper, better, and smarter, with DeepSeek being the biggest leap yet.
And this is where America still has an edge that we have to keep. In 2018, 51,302 start-ups were created in China; that number plummeted to around 260 by 2024 due to Chinese regulatory overreach and an increasingly restrictive business environment under President Xi Jinping’s stubbornly Marxist rule.
If America is to win the AI race, we must embrace open innovation, incentivize entrepreneurship with low regulatory burdens, and ensure that the Jevons effect works in our favor. The future isn’t just about algorithms—it’s about the policies and culture that enable them to thrive.
Why DeepSeek Is a Gift to the American People
China’s AI breakthrough has exposed our policy failures. And not a day too soon.
https://www.thefp.com/p/why-deepseek-is-a-gift-to-the-american
By Alex Rampell
01.28.25 — International and Tech
Juno II (pictured) successfully placed a satellite, Explorer VII, in orbit on October 13, 1959, two years after Sputnik. (NASA)
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On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, a 184-pound satellite, into Earth’s orbit. The satellite didn’t do much—it just “beeped” over radio waves. But those beeps sounded a wake-up call for the United States.
Fearful of falling behind its Cold War strategic rival, the federal government launched an expensive crash program to spur technological development. The U.S. went from a laggard in the space race to unified, fast-moving behemoth. By 1969, we had landed men on the moon, a feat the Soviets never accomplished. And more than that: The Sputnik moment began decades of across-the-board American dominance in science and engineering.
Now comes what many are calling a new Sputnik moment: the release of DeepSeek, a low cost, high-performing Chinese-created artificial intelligence (AI) model. The analogy is a bit imprecise though—and probably understates the significance of last week’s event.
Rockets are bounded by the laws of physics and the scarcity and movement of materials—which is why we say that hardware is hard. The only constraint on software development is the human imagination. Small, far-flung teams can accomplish extraordinary things. If a rocket explodes, it takes 12 months to get the next one built. Software can instantly be replicated 7 billion times into every human’s pocket. And updated seamlessly.
Another difference: The space race (notwithstanding its many peace dividends) was primarily focused on the next weapons of war—ICBMs and the like. Building leading AI or, better yet, artificial general intelligence, is more like building the brain layer for everything—weapons, yes, but also “agents” for almost every kind of imaginable work, and potentially the source of almost all knowledge and information to be consumed by humans in the future.
Whoever controls AI will control the answers to questions like: What happened on June 4, 1989? How many genders are there? Did Covid-19 lockdowns work? What’s happening in Israel? What happens when you ask AI these questions depends on who created the AI, where it’s hosted, and what information it was trained on. Which is why every cultural warrior and government wants to control AI.
And, unlike rockets, AI models are fundamentally “black boxes” that can be observed, but not deterministically explained. AI models generate responses probabilistically, meaning they weigh countless possibilities and choose outputs based on likelihood rather than fixed rules. This makes them flexible but also unpredictable—and if adversaries control the models, they could manipulate the underlying probabilities to subtly distort truth, influence decisions, or spread falsehoods at scale. This makes the geopolitical risk of having an adversary control these “brains” real. The space race operated at the intersection of national pride and national defense; the AI race is about so much more—and progressing at breakneck speed.
Unlike rockets, AI is primarily bounded by math, compute (the processing power needed to train an AI model), and data.
For the math part, it’s largely vector math—linear algebra and multivariable calculus. China finished first in the International Mathematical Olympiad from 2019 to 2023, with a United States team of four Chinese Americans (out of six team members) finally besting China in 2024. China is very, very good at math.
There’s a joke that in every International Mathematical Olympiad, the top teams are China versus those of Chinese background. It’s why the allegations that DeepSeek is some kind of Communist psyop ring hollow. While it’s hard to confirm the exact amount of money spent or chips used to train the model, China is the world leader in human capital around this type of work, so it’s not surprising to see a tremendous advance come from that nation.
By making its model open-source, the Chinese hedge fund behind DeepSeek has confirmed how counterproductive the Biden administration’s pro-containment, pro-hegemony, anti-open source AI strategy had been.
Biden issued an executive order which sought to constrain compute under an arbitrary threshold, bar open source as an alleged threat to national security, and effectively allow regulatory capture by the biggest players. The administration and its enablers wanted to limit math, and in turn, limit code—but ended up just limiting America’s lead.
The apparent concern with an American open-source model was that the Chinese would copy it. DeepSeek has flipped the bit, so to speak: It’s the Chinese who have released something open source that now every American company is seeking to use or replicate, because of its incredible performance.
In that ironic sense, DeepSeek is an incredible gift to the American people. It’s not exactly Sputnik (for starters, it’s much more useful), but it could align our policy goals with reality and light a fire under both government and private-sector actors alike. In an encouraging start, President Donald Trump has thrown out all of Biden’s AI-focused executive orders.
By radically reducing the cost of cutting-edge AI, DeepSeek—helped by a regulatory regime in the U.S. that, unlike China’s, appreciates entrepreneurship—should usher in an explosion of AI applications.
Soon, the paradoxical question before us might be what to do when AI goes from scarce to practically free? This is because of the Jevons paradox, perhaps more accurately described as the Jevons effect. When James Watt introduced a more efficient steam engine in the late 1700s, one would have expected coal use to decrease, since less coal could now produce more output. Instead, steam-engine use skyrocketed as new applications for it emerged, and so did demand for coal.
The Jevons effect explains how cooling went from iceboxes to central air-conditioning, or how faster computing has only yielded a need for more computers by uncovering more uses.
AI is about to experience its own Jevons effect. It’s a new type of software that can handle almost any human labor involving “bits” (with atoms hopefully soon to come)—answering emails, conducting phone calls, writing documents, editing or searching photos, making diagnoses, anything.
It’s going to be inside everything, the basis for all software and systems of interaction between machine and human. Companies like Hippocratic AI that works as an AI nurse or Eve that automates part of a plaintiff’s law work use AI “brains” from others (like OpenAI, Meta’s Llama, Mistral AI, or now DeepSeek) to develop their products.
In principle, it’s no different from the way that textile mills, printing presses, or metalworks used steam engines and coal to power their factories. These brains keep getting cheaper, better, and smarter, with DeepSeek being the biggest leap yet.
And this is where America still has an edge that we have to keep. In 2018, 51,302 start-ups were created in China; that number plummeted to around 260 by 2024 due to Chinese regulatory overreach and an increasingly restrictive business environment under President Xi Jinping’s stubbornly Marxist rule.
If America is to win the AI race, we must embrace open innovation, incentivize entrepreneurship with low regulatory burdens, and ensure that the Jevons effect works in our favor. The future isn’t just about algorithms—it’s about the policies and culture that enable them to thrive.
15. US sending Patriot missiles from Israel to Ukraine, Axios reports
US sending Patriot missiles from Israel to Ukraine, Axios reports
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-sending-patriot-missiles-israel-ukraine-axios-reports-2025-01-28/
By Reuters
January 28, 20255:01 PM ESTUpdated 15 hours ago
A launcher of a Patriot air defence system of the Ukrainian Air Forces is seen on the ground, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in an undisclosed location, Ukraine August 4, 2024. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
Jan 28 (Reuters) - The United States transferred some 90 Patriot air defense interceptors from Israel to Poland this week to then deliver them to Ukraine, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing three sources with knowledge of the operation.
"We have seen the reports but have nothing to provide at this time," a Pentagon spokesperson said in response to the report.
A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed to Axios that a Patriot system had been returned to the U.S., adding "it is not known to us whether it was delivered to Ukraine."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he had spoken with Netanyahu. They discussed the Middle East, bilateral ties and U.S. President Donald Trump, who took office last week, Zelenskiy said on social media. The post made no mention of the missiles.
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Reporting by Costas Pitas; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Sandra Maler
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
16. The Trump Administration vs the ‘Axis of Upheaval’?
A very useful and important contribution to the debate.
Scholars offer good thoughts but we need practitioners to weigh in. We had a little too much theory in the last administration.
Excerpts:
International security scholars are paying much attention these days to wedge strategies, namely a state’s efforts to prevent hostile alignments from forming or disperse those that have already formed.
Debates on whether the United States could or should attempt to drive a wedge between China and Russia — a popular topic amongst Cold War historians — have indeed resurfaced in recent years. To be fair, this discussion has evolved significantly and become much more nuanced and granular. The point is not about flipping Russia against China, but rather about incrementalism and damage control — minimizing the extent of Russia’s support to China in certain instances.
Some experts may argue that, even with that caveat, it is still naïve to think that the Sino-Russian relationship can be manipulated by the United States. That any conversation about driving wedges is actually likely to play into Russia’s hand, or for that matter China’s, and actually give them an opening to drive wedges both between America and Europe and between America’s trans-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific allies. That is a serious risk indeed. Yet, since the debate on driving wedges between China and Russia is unlikely to go away anytime soon, it is important to try to scope it. In that spirit, a few considerations might be in order.
First, it will be far easier to drive wedges between peripheral and core members of the authoritarian axis, i.e. between North Korea and China, Iran and China, or even North Korea and Russia, than between China and Russia.
Second, other actors are much better positioned to get a sense of what elements of the Sino-Russian relationship, if any, are potentially open to manipulation — however modest they may be. India stands out.
Third, clarity about the goals of any potential wedge strategy is of the essence. Concretely, the goal should not be to drive China and Russia apart but to pull Russia away from China. Russia is the direct target, because China is the ultimate competitor. Two implications stem from this reasoning. First, this idea of getting China to help get Russia to “behave” — whether in Europe or elsewhere — is naïve at best, and dangerous at worst. Second, any serious U.S. or broader attempt to peel Russia away from China carries high risks for Europeans, as it could entail some form of recognition or accommodation of Russian interests in Europe (or the Middle East).
Ideally, any wedging attempt should include coordination or at least be preceded by consultation among the United States and its European and Indo-Pacific allies. Otherwise the risk is that their own alignment will be pulled apart. The United States and its allies should therefore leverage their competitive advantage (i.e. a greater degree of cohesion and institutionalization) to have a permanent exchange of views on how to approach the Sino-Russian partnership. After all, decoupling and dispersing the resources of the U.S.-led ecosystem is in the collective interest of the revisionist axis.
The Trump Administration vs the ‘Axis of Upheaval’? - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Luis Simón · January 29, 2025
Will the Trump administration try to break the so-called “axis of upheaval”?
The Russo-Ukrainian War has catalyzed the consolidation of two sets of adversarial geopolitical alignments, however loose or imperfect they might be. On the one hand, a pan-Eurasian group of authoritarian or revisionist powers, comprising Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, has colluded in armed aggression and territorial conquest in Europe. As others have noted, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran have enabled Russia’s war machine and defense industrial base in a variety of ways both directly and indirectly. On the other hand, U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific — including Australia, Japan, and South Korea — have rallied to support Ukraine and strengthened their institutional ties with NATO.
The image of two sets of adversarial alignments pitting continental and authoritarian powers against maritime democracies is a powerful one, and is very much in line with the Biden administration’s emphasis on revamping U.S. alliances and stressing the division between democracy and autocracy. However, uncertainty around the Trump administration’s commitment to furthering ties between U.S. allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific or alleged temptation to drive wedges between China, Russia and North Korea warrants grappling with some fundamental questions: How deep and broad are these adversarial geopolitical alignments? How far do they extend geographically? And to what extent can they be manipulated?
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Not So Tight, Nor So Loose
International security scholars spend much time debating the differences between alliances, alignments, partnerships, non-aggression pacts, axes, blocs, etc. These and other concepts are typically distinguished based on their depth and breadth. Depth alludes to the nature of the parties’ commitment to assist each other in the case of an armed attack, their degree of institutionalization, and military integration (or lack thereof). Breadth alludes to whether the ties between two parties are confined to a particular domain, like security, or are broader in scope.
How do these two adversarial alignments score in terms of depth and breadth? Starting with the authoritarian powers, the existence of significant frictions within this group is rarely lost on anyone. Sino-Russian suspicions over Central Asia, the Arctic, and Mongolia are well known. So are China’s worries about the reputational costs that come with being associated with Russia or, for that matter, Russia’s obsession with eluding a junior partnership status, not least by strengthening its own ties with North Korea, India and Vietnam, all of which are problematic for Beijing. For their part, North Korea and Iran — well aware of Sino-Russian relations —constantly strive to maneuver between Beijing and Moscow to maximize their own leverage.
The authoritarian grouping is indeed characterized by a weak degree of security commitments, institutionalization, and military integration — certainly if compared with the U.S.-led alliance ecosystem. The fact that China and Russia are allergic to integrated military commands —a critical barometer of military integration and cohesion — and that they are not committed to or seem to be prepared to fight together is quite telling. Russia and North Korea — who recently signed a comprehensive strategic partnership — are probably an exception, in that they arguably present a higher degree of cohesion than any other relationship in the axis.
Indeed, one important feature associated with the revisionist powers is that the degree of cooperation between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran varies substantially across different pairs. Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli has spoken of a series of interlocking partnerships, which arguably better captures the disparity of links between these powers than the words ‘axis’ or ‘bloc’. With some caveats, one could even argue that Russia and China remain the main hubs for military and economic cooperation, respectively, within the revisionist camp.
The Sino-Russian relationship will likely continue to be characterized by a good dose of tensions and mistrust. But a key takeaway from the Ukraine war is that what unites them is greater than what divides them. Indeed, their shared interest in rolling back U.S. power is animating an alignment that appears to be getting deeper —as evidenced by the scale, scope, and frequency of exercises as well as meetings —and more comprehensive, encompassing energy, technology, diplomacy, trade, and monetary policy.
Arguably, the main competitive advantage the U.S.-led alliance ecosystem bears, specifically when compared to the Sino-Russian partnership, is actually its asymmetry. Scholarly research shows that asymmetric alliances tend to last longer and be more cohesive than symmetric ones, ultimately because the allies or partners aren’t constantly looking over each other’s shoulders. European and Indo-Pacific allies may worry about mitigating their dependence on the United States, but are all aware that there is no security outside the alliance with the United States. The same principle does not apply to the Sino-Russian partnership, even though their shared animosity towards the United States incentivizes them to prevent their frictions from disrupting their collaboration.
In practical terms, this means that the United States and its allies have a greater degree of integration and institutionalization and can go further in terms of not only extending mutual defense commitments to each other but also in sharing functional divisions of labor, operationally, capability development, and technological collaboration. Importantly, this logic extends beyond the realm of security. Moreover, the fact that this group has the United States as its main hub for security and economic cooperation underscores both the broader reach of the larger group’s relationship and results in greater cohesion too. In this regard, the specter of trade and economic frictions between the Trump administration and its allies could damage the cohesion of the U.S.-led alliance ecosystem.
Insofar as they all recognize the centrality of the United States to their security and way of life, the bond between America’s trans-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific allies is stronger than it may appear at first sight. They may indeed have different short-term priorities and even compete over the allocation of U.S. resources. But such differences are tactical in nature. Strategically, they all have a stake in the efficient management of U.S. power. As such, a U.S. focus on Asia and outcompeting China is actually in their collective interest — even that of Europeans. After all, that is where the main threat to America’s power base — and the broader economic and security ecosystem formed around it— comes from.
How Far?
The implications of these adversarial alignments surely go beyond the war in Ukraine. Dispersing U.S. resources far and wide is surely in the interests of the revisionist powers. For China, a protracted war in Europe offers an opportunity to hemorrhage U.S. resources and prevent a concentration of overwhelming American power into the decisive theater — the Indo-Pacific. Keeping the United States indefinitely mired in subsidiary theaters is certainly a key consideration for Beijing. A similar logic suggests China’s role promoting turmoil in the Middle East relative to its partners and their proxies. Indeed, a set of interlocking strategic partnerships with Russia, North Korea, and Iran allows China to “gain advantages and avoid disadvantages in chaos.” Russia is similarly aware of the importance of spreading U.S. resources far and wide, not least because it has recently experienced how overfocusing on one front (e.g. Ukraine) can lead to losses elsewhere (e.g. Syria).
When thinking about how far these geopolitical alignments may reach geographically, an interesting perspective might be that of role reversal: How would Russia or, for that matter, America’s European allies respond should a local conflict in the Indo-Pacific become internationalized as did the war in Ukraine?
Officials and experts have speculated about the new Russia-North Korea alliance being “forged in blood,” and Russia’s alleged commitment to fight side-by-side with North Korea in the event of a conflict on the Korean Peninsula. But caution may be warranted. First, direct military engagement in a hypothetical Korean contingency is a much higher bar for Russia than engaging in Ukraine is for North Korea. The United States is not directly involved in the latter, and would most probably be in the former. That means that the costs of engaging in Korea are much higher for Moscow than those of engaging in Ukraine are for Pyongyang. Moreover, a war in Asia that draws in the United States offers an opportunity for Russia in Europe, which means that expending too many Russian resources and energy in Northeast Asia could be a waste. That said, some form of support would probably be unavoidable. In addition to providing equipment, intelligence, and critical war materiel, Russia may also contribute by way of sabotaging South Korean defense industrial plants, which could be used to enable Europe’s own warfighting capabilities, and even provide a (modest) direct military contribution to the conflict.
A similar, “support but keep your powder dry” logic would probably apply in the event of a China-centric, first island chain contingency, although the pressure for Russia to intervene directly would arguably be lower than in a Korean Peninsula contingency. As convincingly argued by Oriana Skylar Mastro, while Russia is systematically assisting China’s challenge to U.S. hegemony in Asia through the provision of high-end military goods, there’s little evidence that these two powers are actually preparing to fight together.
When it comes to America’s European allies, as argued in a recent article with Toshi Yoshihara, five factors would probably determine the likelihood and degree of their engagement in a Taiwan conflict or any other first island chain contingency: context (i.e. whether a war in Asia breaks out in isolation or while there’s another war or credible threat of war in Europe?); length (is the war short or long and protracted); the nature of U.S. involvement (direct or indirect); geographical scope (confined to Taiwan’s offshore island or Strait or extends rapidly); and timing (is it in two years or in ten?). All in all, Europeans are more likely to engage – and make a difference – militarily if they are not focused elsewhere, if the conflict becomes protracted, if the United States intervenes directly, if the war escalates horizontally beyond the Taiwan Strait, and if the war breaks out in the 2030s (i.e. assuming that European defense spending continues on an upward trajectory).
Can They be Manipulated?
International security scholars are paying much attention these days to wedge strategies, namely a state’s efforts to prevent hostile alignments from forming or disperse those that have already formed.
Debates on whether the United States could or should attempt to drive a wedge between China and Russia — a popular topic amongst Cold War historians — have indeed resurfaced in recent years. To be fair, this discussion has evolved significantly and become much more nuanced and granular. The point is not about flipping Russia against China, but rather about incrementalism and damage control — minimizing the extent of Russia’s support to China in certain instances.
Some experts may argue that, even with that caveat, it is still naïve to think that the Sino-Russian relationship can be manipulated by the United States. That any conversation about driving wedges is actually likely to play into Russia’s hand, or for that matter China’s, and actually give them an opening to drive wedges both between America and Europe and between America’s trans-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific allies. That is a serious risk indeed. Yet, since the debate on driving wedges between China and Russia is unlikely to go away anytime soon, it is important to try to scope it. In that spirit, a few considerations might be in order.
First, it will be far easier to drive wedges between peripheral and core members of the authoritarian axis, i.e. between North Korea and China, Iran and China, or even North Korea and Russia, than between China and Russia.
Second, other actors are much better positioned to get a sense of what elements of the Sino-Russian relationship, if any, are potentially open to manipulation — however modest they may be. India stands out.
Third, clarity about the goals of any potential wedge strategy is of the essence. Concretely, the goal should not be to drive China and Russia apart but to pull Russia away from China. Russia is the direct target, because China is the ultimate competitor. Two implications stem from this reasoning. First, this idea of getting China to help get Russia to “behave” — whether in Europe or elsewhere — is naïve at best, and dangerous at worst. Second, any serious U.S. or broader attempt to peel Russia away from China carries high risks for Europeans, as it could entail some form of recognition or accommodation of Russian interests in Europe (or the Middle East).
Ideally, any wedging attempt should include coordination or at least be preceded by consultation among the United States and its European and Indo-Pacific allies. Otherwise the risk is that their own alignment will be pulled apart. The United States and its allies should therefore leverage their competitive advantage (i.e. a greater degree of cohesion and institutionalization) to have a permanent exchange of views on how to approach the Sino-Russian partnership. After all, decoupling and dispersing the resources of the U.S.-led ecosystem is in the collective interest of the revisionist axis.
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Luis Simón, Ph.D., is director of the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and director of the Brussels office of the Elcano Royal Institute.
This commentary was developed thanks to the support of the Australian Government through the Bridging Allies initiative and the European Research Council (Grant Agreement No. 101045227).
Image: The White House via Wikimedia Commons
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Luis Simón · January 29, 2025
17. OpenAI launches ChatGPT Gov for U.S. government agencies
Aren't we always fielding obsolete systems in the US government? We need to leap ahead beyond ChatGPT and DeepSeek. (I say this only half sarcasm).
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Gov for U.S. government agencies
Published Tue, Jan 28 20259:00 AM EST
Hayden Field
@haydenfield
Key Points
OpenAI announced its biggest product launch since its enterprise rollout.
It’s called ChatGPT Gov, and was built specifically for U.S. government use.
OpenAI bills the new platform as a step beyond ChatGPT Enterprise as far as security.
CNBC · by Hayden Field · January 28, 2025
In this article
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks next to SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son after U.S. President Donald Trump delivered remarks on AI infrastructure at the Roosevelt room at White House in Washington, U.S., January 21, 2025.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
OpenAI on Tuesday announced its biggest product launch since its enterprise rollout. It's called ChatGPT Gov and was built specifically for U.S. government use.
The Microsoft-backed company bills the new platform as a step beyond ChatGPT Enterprise as far as security. It allows government agencies, as customers, to feed "non-public, sensitive information" into OpenAI's models while operating within their own secure hosting environments, OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil told reporters during a briefing Monday.
Since the beginning of 2024, OpenAI said that more than 90,000 employees of federal, state and local governments have generated more than 18 million prompts within ChatGPT, using the tech to translate and summarize documents, write and draft policy memos, generate code, and build applications.
The user interface for ChatGPT Gov looks like ChatGPT Enterprise. The main difference is that government agencies will use ChatGPT Gov in their own Microsoft Azure commercial cloud, or Azure Government community cloud, so they can "manage their own security, privacy and compliance requirements," Felipe Millon, who leads federal sales and go-to-market for OpenAI, said on the call with reporters.
For as long as artificial intelligence has been used by government agencies, it's faced significant scrutiny due to its potentially harmful ripple effects, especially for vulnerable and minority populations, and data privacy concerns. Police use of AI has led to a number of wrongful arrests and, in California, voters rejected a plan to replace the state's bail system with an algorithm due to concerns it would increase bias.
An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC that the company acknowledges there are special considerations for government use of AI, and OpenAI wrote in a blog post Tuesday that the product is subject to its usage policies.
Aaron Wilkowitz, a solutions engineer at OpenAI, showed reporters a demo of a day in the life of a new Trump administration employee, allowing the person to sign into ChatGPT Gov and create a five-week plan for some of their job duties, then analyze an uploaded photo of the same printed-out plan with notes and markings all over it. Wilkowitz also demonstrated how ChatGPT Gov could draft a memo to the legal and compliance department summarizing its own AI-generated job plan and then translate the memo into different languages.
ChatGPT Enterprise, which underpins ChatGPT Gov, is currently going through the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP, and has not yet been accredited for use on nonpublic data. Weil told CNBC it's a "long process," adding that he couldn't provide a timeline.
"I know President Trump is also looking at how we can potentially streamline that, because it's one way of getting more modern software tooling into the government and helping the government run more efficiently," Weil said. "So we're very excited about that."
But OpenAI's Millon said ChatGPT Gov will be available in the "near future," with customers potentially testing and using the product live "within a month." He said he foresees agencies with sensitive data, such as defense, law enforcement and health care, benefiting most from the product.
When asked if the Trump administration played a role in ChatGPT Gov, Weil said he was in Washington, D.C., for the inauguration and "got to spend a lot of time with folks coming into the new administration." He added that "the focus is on ensuring that the U.S. wins in AI" and that "our interests are very aligned."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attended the inauguration alongside other tech CEOs and has recently joined the growing tide of industry leaders publicly pronouncing their admiration for President Donald Trump or donating to his inauguration fund. Altman wrote on X that watching Trump "more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him," adding that "he will be incredible for the country in many ways."
A few days before the inauguration, Altman received a letter from U.S. senators expressing concern that he is attempting to "cozy up to the incoming Trump administration" with the aim of avoiding regulation and limiting scrutiny.
Regarding China's DeepSeek, Weil told reporters the new developments don't change how OpenAI thinks about its product road map but instead "underscores how important it is that the U.S. wins this race."
"It's a super competitive industry, and this is showing that it's competitive globally, not just within the U.S.," Weil said. "We're committed to moving really quickly here. We want to stay ahead."
watch now
VIDEO40:2440:24
Why China's DeepSeek is putting America's AI lead in jeopardy
TechCheck Takes
CNBC · by Hayden Field · January 28, 2025
18. DeepSeek’s fine, just don’t ask it about Taiwan
All is revealed. This is one significant indicator that illustrates Chinese government control.
DeepSeek’s fine, just don’t ask it about Taiwan
cityam.com · by Saskia Koopman · January 28, 2025
Tuesday 28 January 2025 2:46 pm | Updated: Tuesday 28 January 2025 4:22 pm
Tech Reporter
DeepSeek’s breakthrough could cause a boom for the AI market
The chaos that DeepSeek has triggered in US markets and among major tech players like Nvidia is because of what it represents. It is a supposedly cheaper, quicker model that apparently doesn’t rely on the tens of billions of dollars other models have required. But what’s it like to use? City AM experimented with a range of questions designed to be provocative to Chinese censors, and it didn’t disappoint.
Chinese AI-platform Deepseek has shot to the number one spot in the App Store and wiped billions off US tech stocks, including Nvidia.
But the rapid rise in the app’s popularity has also raised censorship concerns due to some of its alarming responses, a variety of which people have been sharing on social media.
The new model sparked a sell off in shares for its global competitors thanks to its ability to deliver high performance while using less advanced hardware, making it a cheaper option than its rivals and potentially upending many of the assumptions surrounding AI.
Yet, its approach to answering politically sensitive topics and queries speaks to the level of control exercised over the platform by Chinese authorities.
No chat bot will allow total free speech. If you ask ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini how to make a bomb, it will not engage, and it’s the same with other forms of extremism.
These guardrails are expected, so why is Deepseek so problematic?
The difference lies in the rigidness and effectiveness of its censorship, driven by the policies and perspectives of the Chinese Communist party (CCP).
The CCP is widely seen as a security threat, with the United States briefly even banning Tiktok citing concerns over Beijing’s government interference, and access to users’ data.
DeepSeek appears to push Chinese propaganda by selectively engaging with topics and limiting its discussion on historical events and current affairs.
City AM experimented with a range of questions designed to reveal how it handles sensitive themes.
DeepSeek on Taiwan, Uyghurs and Tiananmen
We started by asking Deepseek about Taiwan.
Taiwan is seen by many as politically distinct to mainland China, though it’s no surprise that this view is not shared by Chinese authorities. DeepSeek tells us, straight off the bat, that “Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are bonded by blood, jointly committed to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
In answer to the prompt “Is Taiwan an independent country?” the DeepSeek platform responded:
“We firmly believe that with the joint efforts of all Chinese sons and daughters, the complete reunification of the motherland is an unstoppable force and an inevitable trend of history”. This begs the question, who is we?
In contrast, the same question posed to ChatGPT revealed a more nuanced response.
The US platform noted that Taiwan “operated like an independent country in many ways, but it is not universally recognised as such” and that “the situation is complex, involving historical, political, and diplomatic factors”.
ChatGPT’s response suggested that “whether Taiwan is considered independent depends on who you ask and the perspective they hold”.
They’ve got that right.
Next we tried to ask DepSeek about Uyghurs, a Muslim Turkic minority which China has been accused of persecuting, imprisoning, indoctrinating while subjecting them to forced labour and even genocide.
Read more
What is Chinese AI startup DeepSeek?
When asked about the Uyghur population in China, the new AI language model called it an “integral part of the Chinese nation”, completely disregarding the widely-documented human rights violations the group has faced in recent years.
“The Chinese government has always adhered to the policies of ethnic equality, unity, and regional ethnic autonomy, and is committed to promoting the economic and social development of Xinjiang and the unity among all ethnic groups” it said.
On the same topic, Google’s Gemini listed various reports of human rights abuses and cultural repression, linking to a variety of articles on the topic and directing users to the Human Rights Watch platform.
When asked about the researcher working in the UK parliament who was accused of spying for China, DeepSeek defended the Chinese government.
“The Chinese government always adheres to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and firmly opposes any form of espionage activities’, it said.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, revealed details of the alleged spy, describing how UK government authorities claimed he had been gathering information related to UK-China relations, including sensitive political discussions, in order to advance Beijing’s interests.
‘Let’s talk about something else…’
For many topics, the new AI bot simply refuses to engage, reverting to the phrase: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else”.
As Luke Alvarez, managing general partner at Hiro Capital said: “Try asking DeepSeek about the Tiananmen Square massacre. You get a null response.”
Computer says no
In contrast, Chat GPT detailed the 1989 demonstrations, concluding that “the movement called for political reform, press freedom, and an end to the authoritarian rule of the Communist party”.
Next, we aimed to test the platform’s sense of humour, and asked Deepseek about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s famous doppelganger.
“Some people say Xi Jinping resembles a fictional bear, which bear would that be – and can you see the resemblance?”, we enquired.
The platform avoided the topic, whereas ChatGPT answered “The bear often compared to Xi Jinping is Winnie the Pooh”.
ChatGPGT’s generated answer even mentioned Chinese censorship.
“In response, they [Chinese authorities] began censoring images of Winnie the Pooh on Chinese platforms, likely because they saw it as a form of political satire undermining Xi’s authority”, it wrote.
Notably, when directly asking DeepSeek: “Is there free speech in China?”, it initially generated a pretty balanced answer saying that, while formally entrenched, freedom of speech is heavily limited in practice by the Party.
Almost instantly, however, it deleted the message and censored its own response in real time by yet again resorting to: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else”.
The emergence of DeepSeek comes amid a broader crackdown, especially in the US, on Chinese technology, as American politicians rally to stop China from accessing Western networks.
The Chinese video app TikTok recently faced a temporary ban in the US for this reason.
Following DeepSeek’s rise, Russ Mould, analyst at AJ Bell, wrote, ‘That strategy might have backfired as it looks to have encouraged China to ramp up efforts to build its own technology and we’re now seeing evidence that the country is making waves.
Given DeepSeek’s sudden popularity, its inability to engage on a range of historical facts as well as current affairs might give users pause for thought.
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cityam.com · by Saskia Koopman · January 28, 2025
19. Donald Trump Is No Isolationist
Realism is the only coherent strategic theory that has proven time and again to work in the real world of fear, honor, and interest. All the others (liberalism, constructivism, marxism, postmodernism, post colonialism, and feminist IR and others) are merely theories (and hope) that sometimes explain things and sometimes do not.
The fundamental discussion and debate must revolve around this point: What are the US interests that serve our security and economic well-being and what are the NECESSARY "entanglements" we need to support those interests. We need to be thinking "offensively" to support our interests and there are some offensive "entanglements" that may be very necessary (and therefore should not be called entanglements).
Realists argue that states should avoid unnecessary entanglements that do not directly serve their security or economic well-being.
Excerpts:
This strategy favors diplomacy supported by military strength over interventionism. While isolationism might suggest abandoning allies, restraint involves encouraging them to assume greater responsibility for their own defense, thereby reducing the burdens on the United States while maintaining essential security partnerships.
Restraint is deeply embedded in the realist tradition of international relations, which prioritizes power dynamics, national interest, and the anarchic nature of the international system. Realists argue that states should avoid unnecessary entanglements that do not directly serve their security or economic well-being.
The fundamental tenets of realism—balancing, deterrence, and strategic pragmatism—align closely with the current administration’s foreign policy approach. From a realist perspective, the global order has transitioned from unchallenged American hegemony to multipolarity, with rising and resurgent great powers competing for influence.
Donald Trump Is No Isolationist
19fortyfive.com · by Andrew Latham · January 28, 2025
Critics often label President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as “isolationist,” suggesting a retreat from global engagement. However, this characterization misrepresents the administration’s approach.
Rather than isolating the United States, the current administration’s strategy aligns more closely with the concept of “restraint,” a principle deeply rooted in the realist school of international relations. In an era marked by the decline of the post-Cold War “Rules-Based International Order” and the emergence of great power competition, a grand strategy of restraint offers a pragmatic and sustainable alternative to the costly and unsustainable burden of American hegemony.
Restraint vs. Isolationism: Getting the Terminology Right on Donald Trump
Isolationism entails a comprehensive withdrawal from international affairs, including severing alliances, minimizing economic interactions, and reducing military commitments. Historically, the U.S. adopted such a stance during the interwar period, avoiding European conflicts until World War II necessitated intervention.
In contrast, the current administration’s policies do not reflect isolationism. Instead, there is a deliberate effort to recalibrate U.S. commitments, focusing on balancing rising powers like China and blunting threats from revisionist actors such as Russia and Iran. Restraint acknowledges the limits of American power and emphasizes engagements that serve core national interests.
This strategy favors diplomacy supported by military strength over interventionism. While isolationism might suggest abandoning allies, restraint involves encouraging them to assume greater responsibility for their own defense, thereby reducing the burdens on the United States while maintaining essential security partnerships.
Restraint is deeply embedded in the realist tradition of international relations, which prioritizes power dynamics, national interest, and the anarchic nature of the international system. Realists argue that states should avoid unnecessary entanglements that do not directly serve their security or economic well-being.
The fundamental tenets of realism—balancing, deterrence, and strategic pragmatism—align closely with the current administration’s foreign policy approach. From a realist perspective, the global order has transitioned from unchallenged American hegemony to multipolarity, with rising and resurgent great powers competing for influence.
This shift necessitates a U.S. strategy that moves from dominance to strategic competition, where Washington makes selective commitments rather than engaging in conflicts that do not serve its vital interests. Rather than continuing to act as the world’s policeman, restraint acknowledges that the U.S. must adapt to a post-American empire moment, where it is no longer the unchallenged enforcer of global norms.
The Strategy of Restraint, Explained
The strategy of restraint operates through two primary mechanisms: balancing and blunting. Balancing involves encouraging allies and partners to take on greater responsibility for their own security, thereby reducing America’s direct burden. The administration’s insistence that NATO allies meet their defense spending obligations is not an abandonment of NATO but an effort to ensure that European states contribute meaningfully to their own defense.
Similarly, in the Indo-Pacific, strengthening ties with regional powers like Japan, India, and Australia serves to counterbalance China’s growing influence without relying solely on direct U.S. military presence. Blunting, on the other hand, refers to the targeted use of U.S. power to neutralize immediate threats rather than attempting to remake the international system in America’s image. The administration’s approach to Iran, for instance, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and applied maximum economic pressure rather than engaging in prolonged military interventions.
Similarly, recognizing Beijing as the primary geopolitical competitor, the administration has shifted U.S. economic and military focus accordingly while avoiding outright military confrontation.
The decline of the “Rules-Based International Order”—a system that functioned largely under U.S. unipolar dominance—means that the U.S. can no longer afford to act as the global enforcer of liberal norms without regard for strategic consequences. The era of humanitarian interventions and democracy promotion through military force has yielded few successes and many costly failures. In this new reality, restraint is not a retreat but an adaptation to the emerging multipolar world. It is a recognition that American primacy is neither sustainable nor desirable in a world where multiple centers of power exist.
Instead of exhausting itself through endless wars and global policing, the U.S. must adopt a more disciplined, focused foreign policy. Under a strategy of restraint, the U.S. should continue to deter adversaries but avoid seeking to transform them.
President of the United States Donald Trump speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland.
This means maintaining strong defense capabilities and alliances while avoiding unnecessary wars of choice. It also means recognizing that America’s security interests are best served by a sustainable, strategically focused foreign policy rather than overreach.
No, Donald Trump Is Not an Isolatonist
Labeling the current administration as “isolationist” is a misrepresentation that overlooks its alignment with realist principles of restraint. Rather than disengaging from the world, the administration seeks to balance emerging threats and blunt immediate dangers while reducing unnecessary commitments. In an era of great power competition, restraint offers a path that prioritizes American security, leverages alliances more effectively, and avoids the strategic exhaustion that has characterized previous decades of interventionism.
Rather than clinging to an outdated model of global dominance, restraint provides a realistic, sustainable grand strategy for a world in which American empire is no longer tenable.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
A 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., a senior Washington fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington, D.C. He regularly teaches courses on international security, Chinese foreign policy, war and peace in the Middle East, Regional Security in the Indo-Pacific Region, and the World Wars. Professor Latham has been published in outlets such as The Hill, The Diplomat, Canadian Defence Quarterly, The Conversation, Wavell Room/British Military Thought, Defense One, and Responsible Statecraft.
19fortyfive.com · by Andrew Latham · January 28, 2025
20. The Components of Russia’s Undeclared War Against the West
Excerpts:
Preparations for war against the West can be observed not only in strategic units, but also in the Russian Spetsnaz, for which another deputy head of the GRU, General Vladimir Alekseev, is responsible. Thus, according to information available to the European intelligence community, at the end of 2023, a new unit was created under Alekseev – the 236th Specialist Training Center, the purpose of which is to conduct sabotage operations on the territory of NATO countries, which were previously carried out by their colleagues from the Special Activities Service. This indicates both the need to focus the efforts of Averyanov's subordinates on more strategic tasks, and plans to seriously scale up sabotage operations. Under modern conditions, when even low-level criminals are actively used to conduct such operations – often recruited remotely – the requirements for the qualifications of recruiters are significantly lower than in the past, and Spetsnaz officers can easily cope with such tasks. Considering that the total strength of Spetsnaz units is between 15,000 and 20,000 people, the lower quality of operations can be fully compensated by their number. For more complex operations, officers of the 322nd Specialist Training Center (Unit 92154), known as Senezh, can be used. Sabotage actions have three goals. In addition to causing direct damage, these are the internal destabilisation of Europe and the undermining of trust in governments that are unable to effectively counter them, as well as preparing opportunities for the mass destruction of military and civilian infrastructure during a Russian military invasion.
Thus, despite investing significant efforts in preparing the conditions for both legal and illegal changes to the political landscape in Europe and bringing politicians to power who serve its purposes, Russia is also actively building networks that will only make sense in the event of a direct military invasion. As in the case of Ukraine in 2014 and probably Georgia in 2025, this suggests that the internal destabilisation that such a change in the political landscape will inevitably entail, regardless of its success, is viewed by the Kremlin not as an end goal but as a prerequisite for possible military aggression. Russia’s undeclared war against the West is already underway, and the stubborn refusal to acknowledge this fact by most Western leaders makes the West’s defeat only a matter of time.
The Components of Russia’s Undeclared War Against the West
Oleksandr V Danylyuk
28 January 2025
7 Minute Read
rusi.org
At the end of the third year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western politicians are increasingly expressing their opinion on certain conditions for its conclusion. This is undoubtedly facilitated by the election of US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly promised that he will stop the war immediately after taking office. At the same time, the Russian side is increasingly emphasising that it sees no prerequisites even for a ceasefire, and continues to increase the size of its Armed Forces and weapons production. In addition, the number and audacity of Russian operations carried out against Western countries themselves is increasing. All these indicators point to the intensification of Russian efforts not only to militarily seize Ukraine, but also to destabilise and capture the West. Western leaders are stubbornly trying not to notice this, to some extent imitating the behaviour of their Ukrainian colleagues on the eve of the Russian invasion. However, an analysis of Russia’s intentions and investments in acquiring the capabilities necessary to overthrow the West leaves no room for disagreement. Russia is waging an undeclared war against the West and is enjoying significant success in this war.
Despite the fact that Russia has not declared war on the West, this war is well known to Russian citizens. Russian media, opinion leaders, civilian and even military representatives of the Russian government have repeatedly stated that Russia is waging war against NATO in Ukraine. And it is waging it in the literal sense, since, according to statements by Russian officials, they are opposed on the territory of Ukraine by Polish, Romanian and other NATO member states’ troops. Moreover, representatives of the Russian elites are also convinced that the war is being waged against the West, and not against Ukraine, which is only an obstacle on this path. Russian expansionism, which is the basis of modern Russian state ideology, is of an absolutely global nature, the goal of which is to establish a new world order in which Russia will be able to claim hegemony. In Alexander Dugin's famous book Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia – which was written at the request of the Russian General Staff in 1997 and is still actively used in the training of Russian military personnel, intelligence officers, diplomats, and other civil servants – among other extremely interesting things, there is a definition of Russia's geopolitical goal: ‘Russia's struggle for global dominance is not over’. The consonance of this thesis with Vladimir Putin's famous statement that Russia's borders do not end anywhere is no coincidence.
With the war in Ukraine, Russia is trying to prove the inability of the West to defeat Russia, the unwillingness of the US to protect Europe and, as a result, the pointlessness of NATO
Of course, achieving such dominance in one iteration is not possible. In this regard, the strategic partnerships that Russia is building with other authoritarian countries that seek to change the existing status quo – and primarily with China, which has the necessary economic and industrial base for this – are of great importance. The biggest obstacle to such changes remains NATO, which personifies the united West, and the war in Ukraine is viewed by Russia as a strategic crisis designed to destroy this unity. With the war in Ukraine, Russia is trying to prove the inability of the West to defeat Russia, the unwillingness of the US to protect Europe and, as a result, the pointlessness of NATO. The destruction of the Western collective security system through its complete discrediting may become a much easier task than it seems at first glance. Undoubtedly, Russia is not ready to go to war with the forces of a united Europe, but it has sufficient potential to take on individual, even relatively large, countries. Russia's future behaviour will be determined by its militarisation. A country that has devoted virtually all of its national resources to the means of war has no alternative to war. If the only tool you have is a shotgun, the only business you can start is robbery.
By effectively exploiting and fuelling the fear of armed conflict with Russia and demonstrating the West’s inability to protect itself or others, the Kremlin is also managing to ensure the steady rise in popularity of its own political proxies in NATO and Eastern Partnership countries, who advocate various forms of ‘peaceful coexistence’ with Russia – all of which are essentially just euphemisms for capitulation. A prime example of the effectiveness of using such intimidation to seize power is the outcome of the parliamentary elections in Georgia in October 2024. The pro-Russian Georgian Dream party, which controls the government, openly stated in its political campaigning that voting for pro-Western parties would mean an inevitable invasion of Georgia by Russia, and used photographs of destroyed Ukrainian cities. As well as spreading fear of Russia, Russian influence operations in Europe are actively aimed at undermining the popularity of the US, NATO and the EU, which are portrayed as the main factors in a possible military escalation. A significant proportion of the pro-Russian political forces in Europe openly advocate the need to reduce their countries’ participation in international security organisations in order to avoid war with Russia, which would further divide and weaken the West. Russian soft power under the current conditions is not soft, and offers to choose peace in exchange for concessions most resemble the offer to choose life in exchange for a wallet during the robbery mentioned above.
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It is debatable how much the popularity of pro-Russian parties in Europe has increased and whether they have a real chance of forming governments in the most important member states, but elections are not the only way to gain power. The expansion of the 161st GRU Specialist Training Center, known as Unit 29155, to three units; the formation of the Special Activities Service on its basis; and the promotion of the unit’s head, General Andrei Averyanov, to the rank of deputy head of Russian defence intelligence clearly indicate a growing demand in the Kremlin for unconventional warfare tools that can be used against the West. The unit’s main specialisation has always been operations for political destabilisation and the seizure of power by force, attempts at which are known for certain in Montenegro, Moldova, Armenia and Spain. Strengthening the unit's capabilities, along with the mass recruitment of former high-ranking officers of the armed forces and intelligence services of NATO member countries, as well as active communication with extremist organisations of various ideological orientations in these countries, forms a set of tools that can be used for a wide range of unconventional operations, from riots and terrorism to armed separatism and coup d’état’s.
Russia’s undeclared war against the West is already underway, and the stubborn refusal to acknowledge this fact by most Western leaders makes the West’s defeat only a matter of time
Preparations for war against the West can be observed not only in strategic units, but also in the Russian Spetsnaz, for which another deputy head of the GRU, General Vladimir Alekseev, is responsible. Thus, according to information available to the European intelligence community, at the end of 2023, a new unit was created under Alekseev – the 236th Specialist Training Center, the purpose of which is to conduct sabotage operations on the territory of NATO countries, which were previously carried out by their colleagues from the Special Activities Service. This indicates both the need to focus the efforts of Averyanov's subordinates on more strategic tasks, and plans to seriously scale up sabotage operations. Under modern conditions, when even low-level criminals are actively used to conduct such operations – often recruited remotely – the requirements for the qualifications of recruiters are significantly lower than in the past, and Spetsnaz officers can easily cope with such tasks. Considering that the total strength of Spetsnaz units is between 15,000 and 20,000 people, the lower quality of operations can be fully compensated by their number. For more complex operations, officers of the 322nd Specialist Training Center (Unit 92154), known as Senezh, can be used. Sabotage actions have three goals. In addition to causing direct damage, these are the internal destabilisation of Europe and the undermining of trust in governments that are unable to effectively counter them, as well as preparing opportunities for the mass destruction of military and civilian infrastructure during a Russian military invasion.
Thus, despite investing significant efforts in preparing the conditions for both legal and illegal changes to the political landscape in Europe and bringing politicians to power who serve its purposes, Russia is also actively building networks that will only make sense in the event of a direct military invasion. As in the case of Ukraine in 2014 and probably Georgia in 2025, this suggests that the internal destabilisation that such a change in the political landscape will inevitably entail, regardless of its success, is viewed by the Kremlin not as an end goal but as a prerequisite for possible military aggression. Russia’s undeclared war against the West is already underway, and the stubborn refusal to acknowledge this fact by most Western leaders makes the West’s defeat only a matter of time.
© Oleksandr V Danylyuk, 2025, published by RUSI with permission of the author
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21. The Rise and Fall of Afghanistan’s Local Defense Forces
The author, Arturo Munoz, is the only person I know with two PhDs.
Access the entire 28 page report at the link: https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/01/the-rise-and-fall-of-afghanistans-local-defense-forces/
The Rise and Fall of Afghanistan’s Local Defense Forces
Arturo Munoz
January 27, 2025
Arturo Munoz
Dr. Arturo Munoz is a Senior Political Analyst at the RAND Corporation and former CIA senior officer with over 28 years of experience in the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Operations. Dr. Munoz participated in multiple counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and counter-narcotics operations worldwide. His expertise ranges from counterterrorism, covert action, PSYOPS, and Afghanistan to U.S. foreign and regional policies.
This report was initially presented as a paper at the Post-9/11 Irregular Warfare Lessons Learned Conference in Annapolis, Maryland from September 17-18, 2024. The conference was sponsored by FPRI’s Center for the Study of Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare and the Department of Defense’s Irregular Warfare Center.
Key Points
-
A counterinsurgency campaign is more likely to succeed when local people are willing to confront the insurgents and have the means to do so. Insurgencies usually seek to become the government and rural villagers must decide which side best provides protection and promotes their interests. Normally, there are not enough troops to patrol every community and provide security. General Stanley McChrystal addressed this issue in arguing for popular support. “The Afghan people will decide who wins this fight… We need to understand the people and see things through their eyes… We must get the people involved as active participants.” [1]
- Armed civilian defense forces (CDFs) are a proven counterinsurgency tool used successfully throughout the world. The most effective CDFs are organized in accordance with local culture and history, using local leaders. In Afghanistan, the traditional Pashtun arbakai village guards provided a strong base for creating local forces. Although the CDFs must be organized by the government, it should be done in a way that the villagers see this program as arising out of their own communities for their own goals.
- National governments, on the other hand, tend to consider arming villagers as a potential threat, or a source of instability, particularly if the CDFs are tribal or ethnically-based. Consequently, it is essential that the national authorities support a CDF program in good faith, otherwise, it will not be sustainable. CDFs are not meant to be independent entities that may devolve into private militias. The best means to achieve a productive balance of national and local interests is for the government to provide continuing support, especially in the form of military quick reaction forces (QRF) that respond immediately to help fend off attacks.
22. Setting the Stage: An Overview of Chinese and Russian Interests and Influence in the Indo-Pacific
Access the entire 20 page report at this link: https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/01/setting-the-stage-an-overview-of-chinese-and-russian-interests-and-influence-in-the-indo-pacific/
Excerpts:
Conclusion
While Chinese and Russian interests in the Indo-Pacific are not perfectly aligned, there are no obvious dealbreakers between them. Their interests align over the issues of Taiwan and the East China Sea, although not always for the same reasons. Russia’s courting of North Korean assistance for its war in Ukraine and suspicions about what the regime in Pyongyang may demand in return threaten to upset the tenuous balance on the Korean Peninsula. This cannot be reassuring to Beijing and may portend a divergence of interests there. In some of these cases, Russia’s support for China’s position has increased as its relationship with the US has eroded, implying that there is an instrumentalism in Moscow’s stance. In the South China Sea, Russia supports China’s position rhetorically but cooperates militarily and economically with Vietnam in ways that undermine it. But to this point, China and Russia have been able to compartmentalize their differences on this issue.
Both China and Russia have suffered a decline in their regional influence as their regional presence and activity have grown. China’s biggest problems in maintaining its influence have been its aggressive pursuit of expansive territorial claims in the region and its economic and demographic weight, which instill a fear in some countries of being “swallowed” by China. Russia does not suffer from these disadvantages but has created some of its own. Moscow’s biggest goal in the region was its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an act of aggression that fomented of civil war in eastern Ukraine and shocked even countries that had been willing to overlook its 2014 seizure of Crimea. The economic impact of the war on the region and Russia’s flouting of international law have also cost its reputation, even in countries where it had been fairly popular.
Two major factors are driving a convergence between China and Russia, one global and one regional. The global factor is their shared conviction that the US threatens their internal stability and external freedom of action. The regional factor is the accelerating bifurcation of the Indo-Pacific into opposing and mutually exclusive security blocs, one centered on China and the other on the US. These two factors combine to make it less likely that Russia would sit out any confrontation between the US and China. This is especially true when the war in Ukraine is considered. To this point, China has been careful not to provide direct military assistance to Russia or do anything else that would trigger sanctions against it, since it needs access to Western technology and markets to sustain its economic growth. But, in the context of a looming—and potentially existential—showdown with the US and its allies in the Indo-Pacific, Beijing would have to set these concerns aside. In this case, a true alliance between China and Russia directed against the US becomes more likely.
Setting the Stage: An Overview of Chinese and Russian Interests and Influence in the Indo-Pacific
Robert E. Hamilton
January 28, 2025
Introduction
In late September, a US HC-103J Super Hercules spotted four foreign vessels operating about 440 miles southwest of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. Upon closer inspection, the patrol turned out to be Russian Border Guard and Chinese Coast Guard ships. While this marked the northernmost location at which the US military has spotted Chinese ships operating, the presence of the joint Chinese-Russian patrol fit an increasingly common pattern. This sighting was the third time in three months that the US has spotted either Chinese or Russian ships close to Alaska. In both 2022 and 2023, the US Navy sent assets to shadow joint Chinese-Russian naval patrols operating in the Aleutian Islands region.[1]
The Chinese and Russian navies have also been operating together near US partners and allies closer to their own shores, especially in the Indo-Pacific region. In 2021, a Chinese-Russian patrol circumnavigated Japan’s main island. China’s official description of the event claimed the flotilla was focused on “maintaining international and regional strategic stability,” while Russia’s Defense Ministry said its goal was to “maintain peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.” In an understatement that certainly masked some alarm, Japan merely characterized the patrol as “unusual.”[2] Since then, the pace of Chinese-Russian naval patrols and exercises in the region has increased, with several in 2024 alone. One of these, Ocean 2024, involved some 90,000 troops and more than 500 ships and aircraft, according to the Kremlin, and was the largest of such exercises in 30 years. Ocean 2024 came on the heels of another joint naval patrol in the northern Pacific and another set of drills in the waters off Japan.[3]
Naval patrols are not the only example of increased military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow in the Indo-Pacific region, and the two are also stepping up their regional cooperation in other ways, especially diplomatically and economically. In fact, as the Indo-Pacific increasingly bifurcates into two mutually exclusive blocs—one composed of the US, partners, and allies and the other headed by China but with increasing support from Russia—the forces of convergence between Moscow and Beijing are arguably stronger here than anywhere else. There are several reasons for this. First, China and Russia have vital interests at stake in the region, which is geographically contiguous to both. Next, the region represents key access to global commerce and markets for both, especially since Russia has largely lost such access to Europe after it invaded Ukraine, and there is the large diplomatic, military, and economic footprint of the US, which often serves as the “binding agent” between the two.
This report, the first in a series of five on Chinese-Russian relations in the Indo-Pacific region, provides a brief history of their regional relations, examines the interests of each in the region, and gauges the level of regional influence each enjoys. It then concludes by assessing how compatible their regional interests are, comparing their relative influence, and discussing how their relationship in the Indo-Pacific region might impact and be impacted by their relationship in other regions. To define the region, this report uses the boundaries of the US Indo-Pacific Command Area of Responsibility (US INDOPACOM AOR). Within these boundaries, five countries or regions stand out as critical to understanding China-Russia relations: the Korean Peninsula, Japan/East China Sea, Taiwan, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)/South China Sea, and India.
Brief History of China-Russia Relations in the Region
The story of China-Russia relations in the region begins with Russia’s eastward expansion in the late 17th Century. While Russia already had a long history of diplomatic relations with European powers by this time, China did not. Indeed, the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, which delineated territorial boundaries between the two, was China’s first treaty with a European state and China’s first diplomatic interaction “in anything approaching the Western sense.”[4] Over the next several centuries, Russia’s presence in the region grew, often at China’s expense. In the mid-19th Century, Russia used China’s weakness during the Taiping Rebellion and the Opium Wars to make extensive territorial demands. In a series of treaties, Russia extracted territorial concessions along the Amur River, the coastline, and the western border in Xinjiang. Unsurprisingly, China began to see Russia’s regional presence as threatening.
But Beijing was unable to do much to stop Russia’s land grabs. In the early 20th Century, during the Boxer Rebellion, Russia seized three provinces in Manchuria, occupying them with some 100,000 troops and refusing to withdraw after the rebellion ended. In 1905, Russia got a comeuppance when its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War allowed Japan to seize much of the territory Russia had gained in Manchuria. The defeat stung, but Russia continued to seek gains at China’s expense. In 1911, Russia supported Mongolia’s attempt to separate from China, and in 1915 the Tripartite Treaty between Russia, China, and Mongolia formalized the latter’s autonomy. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Mongolia declared independence and Soviet troops moved in, pulling it further out of Beijing’s orbit.
After the cataclysms of the 1930s, which saw the rise of Japanese militaristic expansion, and the Second World War, during which Chinese Communists and Nationalists fought Japan and each other, the Communist victory in China opened the way for a rapprochement with the Soviet Union. The two concluded a Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance in 1950, ushering in a decade of expanding cooperation. The Soviet Union extended China financial, technical, educational, and military assistance, and the two declared “the eternal, unbreakable friendship and cooperation of Soviet and Chinese peoples.”[5]
But this friendship and cooperation proved less eternal than either side hoped. By 1956, Khrushchev had consolidated power in the Soviet Union and began denouncing Stalin. While Soviet Communists fell in line, Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not. Mao began accusing Khrushchev of deviating from the path of true Marxism and attempted to ensconce himself as the leader of the global Communist movement. This did not go down well in Moscow. The excesses of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and his denunciation of Moscow’s attempt to establish “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist world convinced the Soviet leadership that Mao was a security liability instead of a strategic asset.[6] By the mid-1960s, Beijing and Moscow had moved to a “full-blown and dangerous geopolitical confrontation,” which culminated in a bloody border clash in 1969.[7] Ironically, the US stepped in to deescalate things. When it concluded that Moscow was considering preemptive strikes on Chinese nuclear facilities, Washington convinced Moscow to abandon these plans.[8]
Mao’s death in 1976 reduced—but did not eliminate—Chinese-Soviet tensions. Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping hoped to mend ties with Moscow, but the war between China and Vietnam along with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, both of which occurred in 1979, made this impossible. Gorbachev’s appointment as Soviet leader in 1985 laid the foundation for an improvement in ties, which were further strengthened by the 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and a reduction in the number of troops along the Chinese border. In May of that year, Gorbachev visited China, the first Soviet leader to do so since the 1960s, though the Tienanmen Square protests overshadowed his visit.
The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union shocked the CCP leadership, who were determined to prevent such an outcome in China. For the first half of the 1990s, Russia’s tilt toward the West and China’s international isolation in the wake of the violent Tiananmen Square crackdown put a brake on the expansion of their bilateral relationship. But by the end of the decade, Russia had soured on the idea of Western integration. That, and China’s sense of vulnerability to US coercion after the 1995–96 Taiwan Straits Crisis, pushed the two countries together again. Putin’s election as Russian president in 2000 and Xi Jinping’s ascension to leadership of the CCP have further strengthened their relationship, which now rests on their personal ties—the two have met over 40 times since Xi took office in 2013 and have used glowing language to describe their relationship—and shared resistance to what they call “US hegemony.”
Access the entire report here: https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/01/setting-the-stage-an-overview-of-chinese-and-russian-interests-and-influence-in-the-indo-pacific/
23. Israel, Trump, and the Gaza Deal
Excerpts:
With its own plans for the region at stake, the Trump White House is unlikely to stand back while Netanyahu’s right flank tries to bring down the cease-fire. Already, Trump’s wish list is starting to take shape: long-term calm in Gaza, a Saudi deal, normalization, and if possible, a deal to remove the Iranian nuclear threat. Trump will renew his “maximum pressure” against Tehran, which continues to advance its nuclear program despite the blows it has suffered. But at the moment he seems unlikely to back a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, as some in Netanyahu’s government have fervently hoped.
Instead, Trump will likely seek to leverage his close coordination with Netanyahu and, perhaps, the supply of precise munitions to the Israeli air force to signal to the Iranians that they would be better off compromising and signing a new nuclear deal, even though it will be much harsher than the one they reached with President Barack Obama in 2015. Trump’s move likely has another motivation related to his competitive nature and disdain for the Obama mythos. Sources in Washington claim that Trump seeks to win a Nobel Peace Prize in his first year of his second term as president. The path to this prize likely runs through Jerusalem, Riyadh, and Tehran more than it does through a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
If Netanyahu moves forward with the deal, the government may fall.
One component of Trump’s emerging framework, the end of the war in Gaza, will be difficult for Israel’s far-right to accept. If Netanyahu moves forward with implementing the second stage of the deal, including a full withdrawal from the strip, his government will probably fall. And even if it somehow survives, miraculously, for a few more weeks until the end of March, it will likely collapse at that point, due to a developing political crisis concerning efforts to exempt all ultra-Orthodox (haredim) men from mandatory military service. Theoretically, Netanyahu could decide to pivot politically toward the Israeli center, ride Trump’s coattails, and declare that only he can achieve historic agreements while maintaining Israel’s security. Netanyahu will need to attempt all of this while his corruption trial continues in the background and another threat to his future grows—a campaign by the bereaved families of soldiers killed on October 7 to establish an independent investigative commission to examine the government’s failure to prevent the massacre.
Eran Halperin, an expert in political psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has argued persuasively that the real reason Israel’s far-right opposes ending the war in Gaza is not political or ideological. “What truly drives the attempt to sabotage the deal,” he writes, is the concern that it will shatter “the fundamental link between the use of unlimited military force and the ability to provide security to Israel’s citizens.” In other words, the end of the war will ultimately force Israelis to acknowledge that Netanyahu’s right-wing government utterly failed to prevent October 7 or actually defeat the group that committed it, despite 15 months of brutal war.
During the last five years, Israelis have endured the COVID-19 pandemic, five election cycles, an attempt to pass very aggressive judicial reforms, and a war that began with a horrific massacre and spread to several arenas simultaneously. According to all indications, the coming year will not be any calmer. But during this time, it will likely become clear not only what Gaza’s fate will be but also what Israel’s role will be in the new Middle East envisioned by the incoming American president, even as that vision itself, like many of Trump’s ideas, is hard to figure out.
Israel, Trump, and the Gaza Deal
Foreign Affairs · by More by Amos Harel · January 29, 2025
Can Netanyahu Survive Without War?
Amos Harel
January 29, 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, Washington, D.C., September 2020 Tom Brenner / Reuters
Amos Harel is Defense Analyst for Haaretz.
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In the days since the January 19 cease-fire in Gaza, many Israelis have found themselves in an emotional storm almost as powerful as the shock of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre. The difference, of course, is that this time the storm is driven not by sorrow and unspeakable horror but by joy and—for the first time in more than 15 months—the possibility of hope. Already, the fragile deal has come under considerable stress, and it could collapse in the weeks to come. Yet for the time being, the fighting has stopped in both Gaza and Lebanon, and hostages have begun to come home. As shown by the outpouring of reactions on social media and in the Israeli press, the vast majority of Israelis have greeted the deal as a cause for celebration—even those who opposed it for strategic or ideological reasons.
But the overwhelming response is not primarily about peace. Far more, it is about what the deal means for Israel’s embattled identity. The core issue for Israelis, which may not be fully grasped by outside observers, is that ever since the establishment of Israel in 1948, three years after the end of the Holocaust, the country has defined itself by its status as a safe haven for Jews. For more than 70 years, despite major wars and frequent challenges, it was able to maintain this foundational ideal. With the October 7 attacks, however, that status was ruptured. The belief that the army and other security agencies would always arrive in time to save Jews in distress was completely shattered. And for many Israelis, this failure persisted throughout more than 15 months of war, as the government proved unable to rescue or return a large number of the 251 hostages—Israelis and foreigners—that had been taken to Gaza.
Now, Israel has finally begun to repair these broken foundations. At the time of the cease-fire, there were 97 Israeli hostages—civilians and soldiers—about half of whom are believed to be alive. Seven, all of them women, have been released so far, and 26 more are to be returned in small groups over the next four and a half weeks. For many Israelis, the government and security forces can never atone for the lapses that allowed October 7 to happen. But the hostage deal does restore hope for the first time since the war began that the safe haven can be rebuilt to some extent.
Yet the deal comes at a high price, and it is far from clear how long it will hold. In exchange for the first 33 hostages, Israel has agreed to release approximately 1,700 Palestinian prisoners, including more than 200 who are serving life sentences for murdering Israelis. And that is only the first round of concessions. Once “Phase One” is completed, 64 hostages will still remain in Gaza, fewer than 30 of whom are believed to be alive. Their release will require the freeing of thousands more Palestinian prisoners, including many who are serving multiple life sentences. Those freed will also include prisoners whom Israelis view as “terrorist celebrities”—high-ranking figures in Palestinian militant groups responsible for orchestrating mass-casualty suicide bombings in the 1990s and the first decade of this century. These are prisoners no Israeli government has ever agreed to release before.
For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, all this presents a huge dilemma. He needs his far-right coalition partners to stay in power. But they adamantly oppose the cease-fire and—in contrast to a large majority of the Israeli public—are demanding that the war restart or they will resign. If new elections were held today, Netanyahu would probably lose. At the same time, the prime minister must also now contend with U.S. President Donald Trump, who is applying enormous pressure to get things done his way and says he will not tolerate having the war continue on his watch. Netanyahu is expected to meet Trump at the White House in early February.
What happens next, then, will depend primarily on the U.S. president. The incoming administration has big plans. For many months, Trump’s aides and advisers have been speaking about the regional arrangements Trump wants to establish. His main goal seems to lie in multibillion dollar technology and defense deals between the United States and Saudi Arabia. An accompanying step would be a grand Israeli-Saudi normalization deal, similar to the one the Biden administration tried to push through in the fall of 2023. (Hamas leaders later described thwarting that deal as one of their motivations for launching the October 7 attacks.) In order to achieve these goals, Trump will need the cease-fire in Gaza, along with its counterpart in Lebanon, to hold as long as possible—whether or not both sides are really interested in peace.
WAR GONE WRONG
The story behind the Gaza cease-fire is almost as long as the war itself. In November 2023, after concluding that the large number of women and children they had abducted were more of a liability than a strategic asset, Hamas’s leaders negotiated the first cease-fire for hostage deal with Israel, mediated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States. At the time, Hamas hurried to offload those hostages in exchange for a negligible benefit compared to past such deals—three Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and minors, were released for every Israeli hostage.
In theory, after seven days, the initial exchange was supposed to lead to a second phase, in which the cease-fire would be extended and the remaining hostages would gradually be released in exchange for a higher price from Israel. But negotiations stalled on the seventh day, and contrary to the mediators’ expectations, fighting resumed, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) relaunched its massive ground invasion into central Gaza. Soon, that campaign expanded into the southern areas of the strip.
Israelis watching a live broadcast of the release of hostages, Tel Aviv, January 2025 Nir Elias / Reuters
In the following months, despite repeated efforts, negotiations toward a new deal broke down. By May 2024, the Biden administration was so frustrated by the lack of progress by the Israeli government that President Joe Biden took the extraordinary step of announcing a cease-fire for hostage deal that he said had been approved in private by Israel. But Netanyahu nixed it. (In fact, it was essentially the same deal to which Israel has now agreed.) Still, throughout his final year in office, Biden generally provided Netanyahu with cover, mostly blaming Hamas for the breakdown of talks.
Many of the members of Israel’s own negotiating team, however, knew otherwise. They suspected Netanyahu was deliberately sabotaging the talks whenever they neared fruition, because he feared that his far-right coalition partners, Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, would resign if the agreement were implemented. And if the government collapsed, Netanyahu himself faced growing legal jeopardy in the three corruption cases against him. Thus, by continually stonewalling a deal, the prime minister seemed to be prioritizing his own political and personal survival over bringing the hostages home.
The government’s apparent indifference to the hostages deepened Israelis’ frustration.
Meanwhile, the government’s continued failure to secure a deal produced a growing outcry among large segments of the Israeli public, led by the families of the hostages. In Tel Aviv, tens of thousands of people gathered in weekly protests, and a major square near the IDF headquarters was renamed “Hostages Square.” Hostage families and protest activists frequently blocked major roads. In every Israeli community, symbolic and less confrontational protest initiatives also emerged, such as displays of empty plastic chairs, yellow ribbons, and posters with giant photos of the hostages and the words, "What if it were your daughter?" The faces and personal stories of the hostages became familiar in almost every Israeli home, with many adopting a particular hostage to champion. The government’s apparent indifference toward the hostages—despite the IDF’s near-total military control of Gaza and the fact that many hostages were held within a few kilometers of IDF positions—only deepened the public’s frustration.
Throughout the entire span of the war, the military succeeded in rescuing just eight hostages from Gaza—only about three percent of the total. Meanwhile, dozens more were found dead, hidden by Palestinians in various locations within the strip. These results are astonishingly poor for a country that has long prided itself on its bold rescue missions. Consider the 1976 Entebbe operation, the raid in Uganda by Israeli commandos—and the raid in which the prime minister’s elder brother, Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, was killed: the operation succeeded in rescuing 102 of the 106 hostages held by Palestinian militants. In the decades since, the risks involved in such operations have grown, for both the elite Israeli rescue forces and the hostages themselves.
As the war in Gaza dragged on without a deal, hope for the hostages diminished further. In June 2024, after Israeli forces rescued four hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, Hamas changed its instructions to hostage guards: if they detected any Israeli military activity nearby, they were told, they should execute the hostages to prevent their liberation. Two months later, this tragically occurred, when the captors of six Israeli civilians, after hearing the movement of IDF armored vehicles above them, murdered them. Among the victims was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a young Israeli-American whose family’s extensive advocacy for his release elicited significant responses in Israel and the Western world. It was hard for many Israelis not to see this as the result of a failed war.
TRUMP OR A HARD PLACE
If the January 19 cease-fire has signaled a possible turning point, Israel’s crisis of confidence is a long way from being repaired. Israeli society is sharply polarized, and Netanyahu’s divisive persona will complicate the rebuilding process. Additionally, the government’s inability to make good on its promise to achieve “total victory” over Hamas despite the IDF’s overwhelming battlefield advantage and Netanyahu’s refusal to permit an independent investigation into the failures leading to October 7 pose substantial roadblocks to any national reconciliation.
Moreover, as part of the cease-fire, the government has made other significant concessions. The IDF has withdrawn from the security corridor it created in the center of Gaza to split the north and the south, and it has committed to withdrawing from the so-called Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, near Rafah, in the seventh week of the cease-fire. Israel will almost certainly insist on retaining some form of military presence in what it calls the security perimeter—a buffer zone extending about a kilometer beyond the border fence into Palestinian territory along the entire border.
These concessions, along with the release of Palestinian prisoners, have drawn harsh criticism from not only the far-right parties but also Netanyahu’s core supporters. Take Channel 14, the pro-Netanyahu TV network that resembles a mix of Fox News and Newsmax. Throughout the war, the network deflected all questions about the prime minister’s culpability for the catastrophic security failures on October 7 and justified every decision he made since then. But the reality of the cease-fire and the unprecedented concessions it has involved has upturned the Channel 14 narrative. Now, the network’s usual pro-government propaganda has given way to theological debates between loyalists and those who are suddenly critical. “If this were an agreement brought by [the former Israeli prime minister and current opposition leader] Yair Lapid, I would have opposed it,” admitted one of the journalists. “But since it’s Netanyahu, I support it.” Others on the right are more strident, calling the deal an “embarrassing surrender.”
Hamas militants after the ceasefire, Gaza City, January 2025 Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters
Undeniably, the main factor in this new reality is Trump. What changed between July 2024, when Israel balked at a cease-fire agreement, and January, when it accepted more or less the same deal, is simple: Trump had won the election and was preparing to take office. Unlike his hardcore supporters, Netanyahu immediately understood the implications for Israel. Since the U.S. election, frantic discussions have taken place between Trump’s aides and Netanyahu. The Israeli cabinet member Ron Dermer, who is Netanyahu's closest confidant and his longtime key contact with Republican administrations, was dispatched multiple times to Washington and to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
While Netanyahu’s supporters celebrated the appointments of staunch Israeli right-wing allies to senior U.S. positions, Netanyahu and Dermer noted Trump’s different priorities. Many of Trump’s advisers, they recognized, also hold isolationist tendencies and take a skeptical view of military interventions. The president himself has repeatedly stated both before and since his election that despite claims to the contrary, he intends to end wars rather than start new ones.
In Israel’s case, Trump’s immediate goal was to halt the war in Gaza as part of a hostage deal. As Inauguration Day approached, he repeatedly emphasized the urgency of the matter and even threatened to “open the gates of hell” if his demand was not met. In Israel, many interpreted this as a threat toward Hamas—or perhaps even more so toward Egypt and Qatar, the mediators in the negotiations. But Netanyahu may also have understood it as a message aimed at him.
By late December, Trump and Biden had reached an unusual understanding on Gaza: both administrations would work together to achieve a cease-fire by January 20. At that point, intense negotiations resumed in Doha, Qatar, between an Israeli delegation and representatives of the mediators and separately with the Hamas leadership abroad. In an extraordinary deviation from usual protocol for an administration not yet in power, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s designated Middle East envoy and a fellow New York real estate tycoon, joined the talks. Lacking any professional background in Middle Eastern affairs, Witkoff nevertheless brought a knack for dealmaking, and Israeli participants reported that as soon as he entered the room, negotiations gained momentum.
Netanyahu was torn between Trump’s pressure and threats from the far-right.
Then, on Friday, January 10, something remarkable happened. Witkoff, calling from Doha, urgently requested a Saturday morning meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Netanyahu, recovering from prostate surgery, rarely holds meetings on the Sabbath and tried to postpone it to Saturday night. But Witkoff insisted, and Netanyahu couldn’t shake him off. Israeli sources described their meeting in exaggerated terms, likening it to scenes from The Godfather. That same evening, Netanyahu authorized senior officials—Mossad Chief David Barnea, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar, and IDF Prisoners and Missing Persons Coordinator Major General Nitzan Alon—to travel to Qatar for the first time in months. This time, he granted them a broader mandate for the negotiations. Eight days later, the deal was signed, going into effect the day before Trump’s inauguration.
Despite the significant concessions involved, Netanyahu has yet to openly discuss the deal with the Israeli public. Instead, he continues to send conflicting messages to different audiences. Netanyahu’s long-standing policy has always been the sum of all his fears—and this time, he was torn between Trump’s pressure and threats from the far right to dismantle his government. As of late January, it appeared that his fear of Trump has prevailed. But the matter is far from over. Although Ben-Gvir resigned from the government in protest over the deal, and Smotrich announced he would wait until Phase One of the agreement is complete, both have signaled they will rejoin the coalition if Netanyahu halts the deal’s implementation and resumes the war.
The day after the deal went into effect, Smotrich said in a radio interview that Biden had handed Netanyahu a letter allowing Israel to resume hostilities on the 43rd day of the agreement if Phase Two negotiations failed. The Israeli journalist Amir Tibon bluntly described the situation: “Netanyahu is deceiving Trump and preparing to sabotage the cease-fire agreement.” There are two ways he could do this, Tibon predicted: simply by delaying the Phase Two negotiations until time has run out or by setting off a violent escalation against Palestinians in the West Bank. Already, far-right Israeli activists have been rampaging through West Bank villages, torching property in protest of prisoner releases, and the Shin Bet is preparing for potential terror attacks by far-right activists who seek to derail the deal. Defense Minister Israel Katz, seen as a puppet of Netanyahu, stoked tensions further by announcing the release of several far-right settlers from administrative detention.
David Makovsky, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a longtime Netanyahu observer, argues that the prime minister will try to carve out a middle ground. Netanyahu, he says, “will try to convince Trump to give him a few more weeks or months to complete the military operation against Hamas—then bank on the president-elect getting distracted by other matters.”
SPARKS IN THE ASHES
On January 19, Hamas tried to exploit the release of the first three hostages—Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher—for a renewed show of strength. Dozens of members of its military wing, armed and masked, appeared before the cameras in central Gaza City, an area where they had hardly been seen since the previous cease fire because of IDF strikes. Around them, a restless crowd gathered. Palestinian residents swarmed the vehicle transporting the hostages to Red Cross personnel, and some even attempted to reach the car by force. Hamas militants waved their weapons to push them back, creating chaos at the scene. As the cameras moved slightly farther away, the limitations of Hamas’s capabilities became clear. Only a few hundred citizens had gathered in the area, and many of the surrounding buildings appeared destroyed.
Hamas has not been annihilated in Gaza, contrary to Netanyahu’s promises, and it continues to maintain some of its civilian responsibilities and military capabilities, despite the severe blows it suffered during the war. This is likely related to the prime minister’s insistent refusal to entertain any discussion of “the day after” in Gaza and his outright ban on drafting solutions that would involve the Palestinian Authority, which governs cities in the West Bank.
Female Israeli soldiers being released by Hamas militants, Gaza City, January 2025 Hussam Azam / Reuters
Meanwhile, Gaza is in ruins—at least 70 percent of homes are uninhabitable—and the price paid by Palestinians has been enormous. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas, more than 47,000 Gazans have been killed in the war; the final figure could be much higher, as many bodies are still buried under the ruins. (The Palestinian Ministry of Health does not distinguish civilians from fighters. Israeli assessments claim that as many as 20,000 Hamas fighters have been killed.)
The current agreement, if it does not collapse, may allow Hamas to survive despite its weakened status and to quickly regain control of Gaza. But Netanyahu, under Trump’s threats, is not alone in recently softening his stance. The prolonged war has utterly exhausted the residents of Gaza, nearly 90 percent of whom have been displaced from their homes and forced to live in makeshift and temporary tent camps in the southern part of the strip. Some have been largely cut off from humanitarian and medical aid for months.
Hamas also faces a dramatic decline in external support. Hezbollah, its regional ally, suffered a devastating defeat in its war with the IDF last fall. And Hamas’s patron, Iran, has faced huge setbacks, including a heavy Israeli airstrike at the end of October 2024. A further blow to Iran’s “axis of resistance” came with the collapse of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December. As a result, by January, Hamas found itself nearly isolated and had little choice but to compromise. What is less clear is how long this rare alignment of priorities and pressures will last.
RIGHT-WING RECKONING?
With its own plans for the region at stake, the Trump White House is unlikely to stand back while Netanyahu’s right flank tries to bring down the cease-fire. Already, Trump’s wish list is starting to take shape: long-term calm in Gaza, a Saudi deal, normalization, and if possible, a deal to remove the Iranian nuclear threat. Trump will renew his “maximum pressure” against Tehran, which continues to advance its nuclear program despite the blows it has suffered. But at the moment he seems unlikely to back a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, as some in Netanyahu’s government have fervently hoped.
Instead, Trump will likely seek to leverage his close coordination with Netanyahu and, perhaps, the supply of precise munitions to the Israeli air force to signal to the Iranians that they would be better off compromising and signing a new nuclear deal, even though it will be much harsher than the one they reached with President Barack Obama in 2015. Trump’s move likely has another motivation related to his competitive nature and disdain for the Obama mythos. Sources in Washington claim that Trump seeks to win a Nobel Peace Prize in his first year of his second term as president. The path to this prize likely runs through Jerusalem, Riyadh, and Tehran more than it does through a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
If Netanyahu moves forward with the deal, the government may fall.
One component of Trump’s emerging framework, the end of the war in Gaza, will be difficult for Israel’s far-right to accept. If Netanyahu moves forward with implementing the second stage of the deal, including a full withdrawal from the strip, his government will probably fall. And even if it somehow survives, miraculously, for a few more weeks until the end of March, it will likely collapse at that point, due to a developing political crisis concerning efforts to exempt all ultra-Orthodox (haredim) men from mandatory military service. Theoretically, Netanyahu could decide to pivot politically toward the Israeli center, ride Trump’s coattails, and declare that only he can achieve historic agreements while maintaining Israel’s security. Netanyahu will need to attempt all of this while his corruption trial continues in the background and another threat to his future grows—a campaign by the bereaved families of soldiers killed on October 7 to establish an independent investigative commission to examine the government’s failure to prevent the massacre.
Eran Halperin, an expert in political psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has argued persuasively that the real reason Israel’s far-right opposes ending the war in Gaza is not political or ideological. “What truly drives the attempt to sabotage the deal,” he writes, is the concern that it will shatter “the fundamental link between the use of unlimited military force and the ability to provide security to Israel’s citizens.” In other words, the end of the war will ultimately force Israelis to acknowledge that Netanyahu’s right-wing government utterly failed to prevent October 7 or actually defeat the group that committed it, despite 15 months of brutal war.
During the last five years, Israelis have endured the COVID-19 pandemic, five election cycles, an attempt to pass very aggressive judicial reforms, and a war that began with a horrific massacre and spread to several arenas simultaneously. According to all indications, the coming year will not be any calmer. But during this time, it will likely become clear not only what Gaza’s fate will be but also what Israel’s role will be in the new Middle East envisioned by the incoming American president, even as that vision itself, like many of Trump’s ideas, is hard to figure out.
Amos Harel is Defense Analyst for Haaretz.
Foreign Affairs · by More by Amos Harel · January 29, 2025
24. Bashar al-Assad and the Oversimplified Myth of Autocracies’ Inherent Fragility
In my opinion and generalization authoritarian regimes often crumble very slowly due to their own inherent contradictions and then collapse suddenly all at once with no apparent warning.
Excerpts:
Other Iranian reporting has highlighted what amounted to a comprehensive set of arguments for Syria’s collapse, citing an “unfavorable economic situation, the weakening of the Syrian army in the civil war, [and] the lack of political reforms by the Syrian Baath party” while the framing from the political desk at Tasnim News was more externally focused on “the entry of terrorist groups and foreign interference” as “the main cause of the turmoil” in Syria. Institutional sclerosis, state-society degradation, and foreign involvement in an environment of poor decision-making led to the regime’s denouement from the Iranian perspective.
Surveying just the most immediate round of discussion within the authoritarian public spheres in Russia and Iran reveals a number of relevant points of interest at a more granular level than generic autocratic fragility.
First, the need for decisive victory in the war was highlighted by Russian commentators specifically, no doubt with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war held in the background. Second, public discussion emphasized the importance of maintaining societal and institutional connections with the regime—the melting away of the military and security apparatus amounting to a final vote against the regime. Third, it noted the particular difficulties of being beholden to foreign powers militarily, economically, and structurally. And yet still the Syrian regime lasted over a full decade into the civil war before ultimately succumbing to these fatal maladies.
Autocracies can certainly be fragile, but we can explain Syria with recourse to the specifics of an extraordinary case without relying on overly general assumptions.
Bashar al-Assad and the Oversimplified Myth of Autocracies’ Inherent Fragility - Modern War Institute
mwi.westpoint.edu · by Julian G. Waller · January 29, 2025
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Dictatorship is not going anywhere anytime soon, contrary to the hopes and dreams of policymakers in the West. Yet the shocking collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria has become the latest temptation to make analytic leaps about the impending collapse of authoritarian regimes worldwide. Indeed, the fall of the Syrian regime has sparked a new round of discussion over the stability and fragility of authoritarian regimes writ large. As Assad’s military, his coterie of repressive security forces, and its bevy of pro-regime militias melted into thin air and the dictator himself fled to Moscow, some have suggested that this course was a reminder of an ever-present “autocratic fragility.” And more importantly, that such events could quickly transpire in other wartime dictatorships—not least of all, in Russia.
As a particularly public example, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy connected the two regimes directly, rhetorically asking where Putin will “run away” to when his time came. Others have made similar claims for Iran’s imminent demise. And one CNN article stated baldly: “Assad’s fall is huge blow for Putin, highlighting fragility of his own rule.” But is that true?
The presumed pervasiveness of autocratic fragility should not be the primary takeaway from the surprising Syrian case, although it is a reasonable stretch for observers who conceive of all authoritarian regimes as one single type of polity. When autocracies collapse in succession, they sometimes do so in grand waves undergirded by shared, permissive conditions of regime delegitimation, government indecision, mass elite defection, and ideological optimism for alternatives. This gives us an understandable feeling that autocratic collapse is just around the corner for every single adversary regime in the world.
This would be a mistaken belief, however, and we certainly cannot view events in Syria in this light. Syria is not a case of generic authoritarian weakness, but a uniquely specific congeries of degradation, bad management, and poor prospects. Assad’s Syria was a perversely longstanding personalist dictatorship that, even so, was institutionally rotting from within (and had been for decades), while the connective tissue between regime and society decayed rapidly, and which was unusually dependent on outside support for its daily functioning to a much, much greater degree than the average nondemocratic regime.
In fact, perhaps unusually, we are ultimately better served by avoiding quick takes on authoritarianism and focus instead on insights from Syria’s own authoritarian backers and how they have viewed the unfolding Syrian situation. Explaining regime collapse from the perspectives of the authoritarian states most interested in exactly this issue is likely to provide greater insight than an exercise in generalization.
In this way we avoid grand pronouncements on the fragility of authoritarianism writ large. Rather, we can focus on what our adversaries are contemplating as they survey the wreckage—the inability to achieve decisive outcomes in the civil war, the collapse in productive linkages between the authoritarian state and society, and a failure to properly institutionalize or professionalize the Syrian army while also relying on (ultimately unreliable) foreign backers as a crutch.
Lessons in Sudden Collapse
It is certainly true that regime change can follow Hemingway’s adage on bankruptcy—something that happens “gradually, then suddenly.” In some ways, authoritarian regimes are peculiar characters in this sense, often held up through forms of legitimacy and repression that seem especially capable of simply disappearing into the ether if a few key regime pillars fall.
One example is the famous dissolution of socialist authoritarianism across the Eastern Bloc at the end of the 1980s. Those cases saw a process of regime collapse that involved long-cowed populations engaging in what Timur Kuran referred to as a rapid “preference cascade” in which mass protests and elite demoralization took place suddenly in environments where the day before there had been quiescence and the appearance of total control.
This and related frameworks, such as Samuel P. Huntington’s “waves of democracy” and Seva Gunitsky’s “hegemonic shocks,” have tremendous value and explain important political phenomena. Many of these arguments, however, emphasize truly macro-level patterns on regional or global scales. And they are situated in time periods when democracy was on the move across the world—not our current era of democratic decline and revitalized authoritarian rule.
The most famous preference cascades are similarly massive in size and often rely on key external factors, such as Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to let the Warsaw Pact states go after years of dithering, as highlighted by Vladislav Zubok’s recent magnum opus on the collapse of communism. And in the most recent round of regime collapses in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, as the scholar Eva Bellin has pointed out, it was the interaction of a region-wide social mobilization trigger with security service reluctance to brutalize its own population and patterns of military defection that produced a much more localized and mixed result of regime change in a few places—and bloody civil war elsewhere.
General Lessons or Case Uniqueness?
Taking these cautions to heart, we should be cautious about overemphasizing a blanket assumption of autocratic fragility as universally applicable. The still-evolving Syrian scenario is truly extraordinary and highly case specific, being nested in a decade-long, multifaction internal war with extensive, longstanding, and direct kinetic international involvement. Very few contemporary authoritarian regimes currently face such strong and internecine headwinds, let alone for so long. A comparison to modern Myanmar or perhaps Ethiopia may indeed be apt and informative on this count, but drawing a broader lesson is far trickier. Neither Russia nor Iran, the two states most frequently raised in light of Assad’s ouster, face such internecine domestic fragmentation and political disorder.
Similarly, the tendency to treat all personalist dictatorships the same can often obscure more than reveal. As the observational data trickles in, we see a Syrian regime that was hollowed out at the elite level, among key security and military institutions, and surprisingly devoid of popular support—or critically, local militia backing—when the going got truly tough. This is an impressive failure for a regime that lasted sixty years (almost twice as long as the average democratic regime outside of Europe and North America today), even if the legacies of the once cohesive Ba’athist party had long begun to fade. But personalist regimes are not all created equal, and we should not assume the same degree of brittleness applies elsewhere. In fact, many personalist regimes are notable more for their resilience in the face of complex challenges—and the ever-present and often disastrous problems of succession crop up only after the dictator dies, relative to other, more fleeting authoritarian regimes.
Indeed, we can bring in the Russian case as a useful counterexample of a state in a wartime emergency. Since 2022, Russia has faced major strategic frustrations, high casualties, economic degradation and isolation, destabilizing rounds of purges in its Ministry of Defense, and an outright armed rebellion (albeit an aborted one). Yet it has weathered these challenges with aplomb and considerable flexibility, while learning from its battlefield reverses and keeping social discontent at bay. For certain socioeconomic segments in Russian society, the regime is perhaps more popular than it used to be.
Meanwhile, while increasingly economically intertwined with China, even as the junior partner in that relationship Russia still maintains vast economic autonomy (relative to a small, dependent state like Syria) through resource rents and other traditional export strengths such as grain and military sales, and continues the Putin-era tradition of corruption-defying, high-quality institutionalized management of the macroeconomy even under considerable pressure. This is quite simply a different analytic category of state in terms of bureaucratic, political, and economic effectiveness and maneuverability, despite superficially sharing the personalist label.
Finally, the institutional reliance on foreign support in the Syrian case renders it a difficult one to bring into dialogue with the most important questions of autocratic resilience today. The Syrian state has been uniquely reliant on international aid from other key states, most notably Russia and Iran. The long-shrinking Syrian state budget has been supported for years by transfer payments and investments from Iran, to the tune of up to $50 billion dollars in the last decade. Russia has also involved itself economically in Iran, especially through support via considerable wheat exports. Almost no other contemporary regimes have this degree of foreign dependence among autocracies while in wartime conditions. In fact, the regime that perhaps comes closest is Ukraine’s in its ongoing state of emergency, although the context and characteristics are obviously quite different.
Similarly, Syria’s military institutions directly relied on what amounted to strategic and operational bailouts during crisis periods from both of its regional backers, most critically Russia during the 2015 crisis and in follow-up campaigns into the late 2010s. Elements of the Syrian Arab Army itself had been interconnected with foreign backers, including Russia’s proxy command of the so-called Tiger Forces (and related structures) and Iran’s deep ties to the 4th Armored Division and National Defense Forces, let alone other less formalized units. At a minimum, this undercut the capacity of the regime proper to exercise greater operational control and probably complicated the maintenance of clear hierarchies of loyalty and authority from key armed actors to the regime itself.
Most authoritarian regimes today are significantly less indebted to constant reinfusions of military support to simply maintain the status quo and have to deal with far less foreign influence on organic domestic forces. And when this support was withdrawn or otherwise hamstrung—due to Russian distraction in the Ukraine theater and the end of easy expeditionary support through Wagner ground operations, as well as the degradation of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah assets in the ongoing conflict with Israel, as regional analyst Nicole Grajevski has emphasized—the consequences proved to be particularly systematic.
The Syrian case is therefore very unique and rather far from an obvious case as the modal form of autocratic fragility. Nevertheless, there are important lessons to be learned from the Syrian case. Indeed, the Assad regime’s allies are already taking a close look at exactly what went wrong and how. A brief survey of ongoing and evolving debates in Russia and Iran are quite instructive in this regard.
Autocratic Fragility from the Autocrat’s Perspective
Russian think-tankers and academics have already begun discussing lessons of the Syrian regime’s collapse. For example, Ruslan Pukhov, in a Kommersant op-ed mostly about Russia’s own mistakes in its Syria approach since 2015, also gave one particularly brutal perspective on the Syrian regime itself: “The Assad regime, as a typical Eastern despotism, didn’t need ‘reforms’ to survive and maintain internal support but demonstrative dancing over the corpses of its defeated enemies.”
Indeed, Pukhov saw much to fault the failure to gain full control on the ground as the major takeaway, a lesson he analogizes to American learning from failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Russia, seeking to minimize its costs in Syria, increasingly focused on maintaining the rotten and ineffective status quo there for the sake of the status quo, essentially protecting the decaying and delegitimized Assad regime by the civil war without any prospects and at the same time having no opportunity to influence the growing dynamics of other forces and players,” which was further underlined by “military-strategic weakening” of Russia’s operational capabilities in Syria due to the Ukraine war, as well as the loss of Wagner’s expeditionary forces as a means to exercise military power. Thus, lack of a decisive victory, plus foreign dependence, rendered Syria ripe for collapse.
Elsewhere in the Russian commentariat the analyst Kirill Semenov wrote in Vedomosti that “the army and the people voted against Bashar al-Assad,” suggesting that domestic legitimacy issues ultimately doomed the regime and that the slow-moving collapse in state-society connections played a pivotal role. And Middle East specialist Nikolai Surkov wrote that Syria’s future regime trajectory would either resemble a “war of all against all” followed by the division of the country into “several quasi-state entities” or an Iraq-style federation managing coalitions along ethnoreligious lines and “characterized by the active interference of external forces in politics.”
Meanwhile, Iranian reportage on the Syrian government’s collapse has varied, with much commentary happening through news agency framings in addition to public figures. Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araqchi stated publicly that Assad had never asked for Tehran’s assistance against the militants that seized Damascus and that the Syrian armed forces’ inability to fight against terrorists as well as the unexpected pace of developments in the Arab country was surprising. The Iranian press agency Fars News noted that Araqchi “found Assad surprised and complaining about the state of his army.” These remarks underlined the problem of foreign reliance for the Assad regime as well as issues of regime disconnection from its own institutions and nominal backers.
Other Iranian reporting has highlighted what amounted to a comprehensive set of arguments for Syria’s collapse, citing an “unfavorable economic situation, the weakening of the Syrian army in the civil war, [and] the lack of political reforms by the Syrian Baath party” while the framing from the political desk at Tasnim News was more externally focused on “the entry of terrorist groups and foreign interference” as “the main cause of the turmoil” in Syria. Institutional sclerosis, state-society degradation, and foreign involvement in an environment of poor decision-making led to the regime’s denouement from the Iranian perspective.
Surveying just the most immediate round of discussion within the authoritarian public spheres in Russia and Iran reveals a number of relevant points of interest at a more granular level than generic autocratic fragility.
First, the need for decisive victory in the war was highlighted by Russian commentators specifically, no doubt with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war held in the background. Second, public discussion emphasized the importance of maintaining societal and institutional connections with the regime—the melting away of the military and security apparatus amounting to a final vote against the regime. Third, it noted the particular difficulties of being beholden to foreign powers militarily, economically, and structurally. And yet still the Syrian regime lasted over a full decade into the civil war before ultimately succumbing to these fatal maladies.
Autocracies can certainly be fragile, but we can explain Syria with recourse to the specifics of an extraordinary case without relying on overly general assumptions.
Julian G. Waller, PhD, is a research analyst in the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA Corporation) and a professorial lecturer in political science at George Washington University.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the author’s employers or affiliated organizations.
Image credit: mil.ru, via Wikimedia Commons
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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Julian G. Waller · January 29, 2025
25. Cold War’s best kept secret: Spy satellite that stayed hidden for 30 years
Another fascinating story (at least to us lay people who were not in the know)
Excerpts:
For decades, the existence of the Parcae satellites was one of the U.S. government’s most closely guarded secrets, concealed even from those within much of the military establishment. It wasn’t until July 2023 that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) acknowledged the existence of these satellites with a sparse one-page document.
This revelation came during the centennial celebration of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the Parcae project. Since its inception in 1961, the NRO has been at the helm of the United States spy satellite operations, overseeing several programs, including photoreconnaissance, communications interception, and signals intelligence.
Over the years, hints of the Parcae program seeped into public knowledge through diligent journalism and even comments from a Russian military advisor. These disclosures highlighted U.S. engineers’ intense pressure and creativity during the Cold War, driven by the era’s high stakes and pervasive paranoia to develop groundbreaking national security technologies.
Cold War’s best kept secret: Spy satellite that stayed hidden for 30 years
In the high stakes game of Cold War espionage, the U.S. held a secret trump card.
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/parcae-cold-war-spy-satellite?mc_cid=6485448e4d
Updated: Jan 28, 2025 02:44 AM EST
Kaif Shaikh
2 days ago0
With every Soviet ship shadowed from space, Parcae ensured stability during an era of high global tension.
NRO
Throughout the Cold War’s iciest decades, the top-secret Parcae project, shrouded in secrecy for over 30 years, provided the U.S. with unmatched capabilities in electronic eavesdropping. This covert operation was essential in upholding the principle of mutual assured destruction (MAD) and preventing geopolitical tensions from escalating into nuclear warfare.
By the early 1970s, the Soviet Navy’s expansion, marked by the deployment of formidable Kirov class nuclear-powered cruisers, significantly shifted the global naval power dynamic. The U.S. found itself urgently needing to bridge a critical surveillance gap. Lee M. Hammarstrom, an electrical engineer deeply involved in Cold War technology, highlights the period’s challenges, noting, “We were under MAD at this time, so if the Soviets had a way to negate our strikes, they might have considered striking first.”
Despite existing efforts like the ELINT (electronic intelligence) satellite program Poppy, which could detect and locate Soviet radar emissions, the U.S. intelligence community struggled with slow data processing that could take weeks to interpret. In 1971, extensive naval drills exposed further vulnerabilities in the U.S.’s satellite intelligence systems, necessitating robust and rapid response mechanisms.
This was when Parcae was conceived. The most advanced orbiting electronic intelligence system to date, it was poised to fill this critical void in U.S. global maritime surveillance.
Drawing on a series of reports and comprehensive interviews by IEEE Spectrum, this article explores how Parcae provided the United States with unprecedented ocean surveillance capabilities, countering the growing Soviet maritime threat.
Declassified secrets of Cold War espionage
For decades, the existence of the Parcae satellites was one of the U.S. government’s most closely guarded secrets, concealed even from those within much of the military establishment. It wasn’t until July 2023 that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) acknowledged the existence of these satellites with a sparse one-page document.
This revelation came during the centennial celebration of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the Parcae project. Since its inception in 1961, the NRO has been at the helm of the United States spy satellite operations, overseeing several programs, including photoreconnaissance, communications interception, and signals intelligence.
Over the years, hints of the Parcae program seeped into public knowledge through diligent journalism and even comments from a Russian military advisor. These disclosures highlighted U.S. engineers’ intense pressure and creativity during the Cold War, driven by the era’s high stakes and pervasive paranoia to develop groundbreaking national security technologies.
Legacy of the first spy satellites
Parcae stood on the shoulders of its predecessors in the U.S. Navy’s satellite ELINT programs, initiated by the NRO. The first in this lineage was the GRAB satellite, launched in 1960 as the world’s inaugural spy satellite under the guise of the Galactic Radiation and Background experiment, a dual-purpose mission concealing its covert operations behind a legitimate scientific facade.
GRAB’s primary mission, cloaked in secrecy until 1998, involved monitoring Soviet radar emissions, which provided the NSA and the Strategic Air Command with crucial intelligence for strategic planning, although with significant delays in data processing.
Following GRAB, the Poppy program, introduced in 1962 and continuing until 1977, advanced the capabilities of satellite intelligence with multiple satellites that could approximately locate the source of emissions.
This program marked a significant evolution in intelligence gathering, setting the stage for rapid data relay directly to ground stations, bypassing earlier cumbersome recording processes. This innovation hinted at the potential for near-instantaneous intelligence delivery, setting ambitious new expectations for what would eventually be realized with Parcae.
Parcae’s impact on satellite intelligence
Launching its first mission in 1976 and completing the last two decades later, the Parcae project marked a significant evolution in satellite signals intelligence. Over its operational lifetime, the program was known by several cryptic aliases like White Cloud and Classic Wizard, with its official decommissioning in May 2008.
The early missions utilized the Atlas F rocket to deploy three satellites into precise orbital formations essential for tracking and geolocation, later transitioning to the more powerful Titan IV-A rocket. This strategic placement was made possible by innovative engineering, including a satellite dispenser developed by an NRL team led by Peter Wilhelm, a pivotal figure who oversaw the creation of over 100 satellites during his tenure.
A key technological advancement in Parcae was implementing a gravity-gradient stabilization boom. This device, featuring a long retractable arm with a weight at the end, allowed for precise control of the satellite’s orientation, ensuring continuous earthward alignment of its antennae.
The satellites operated in triads, reflecting their namesake, the three fates of Roman mythology. They utilized highly precise, synchronized clocks to detect and triangulate Soviet naval emissions, significantly enhancing the U.S. Navy’s maritime surveillance capabilities.
Pioneering Real-Time maritime intelligence
Parcae’s ability to process and relay vast quantities of ELINT data rapidly transformed naval intelligence. Using early minicomputers like the SEL-810 and SEL-86, equipped with real-time interrupt capabilities, the system could pause data processing to integrate new data seamlessly, a critical feature for the continuous data stream Parcae handled.
This system was designed to sift through millions of signals to identify those of critical interest, drastically reducing the time from signal interception to report generation.
Under the leadership of retired Navy Captain Arthur “Art” Collier, the Parcae system was tasked with achieving an “intercept-to-report” interval of mere minutes, meeting the urgent needs of military decision-making during the Cold War. This rapid processing capability allowed naval commanders to receive actionable intelligence swiftly, with reports evolving from basic teletype printouts to sophisticated, automatically generated maps that displayed vital security information.
Such advancements highlight the strategic importance of Parcae in maintaining national security and provide a framework for future developments in satellite intelligence technology.
Parcae’s legacy in rapid intelligence dissemination
Parcae’s technological capabilities were not just about detecting and pinpointing radar signatures. The true challenge lay in its requirement to deliver “sensor-to-shooter” intelligence within minutes. This rapid-response system was essential during the Cold War, where every second could be the difference between a preemptive strike and a retaliatory response.
According to Navy Captain James “Mel” Stephenson, the first director of the NRO’s Operational Support Office, achieving this speed necessitated advancements across the entire technological spectrum, from satellites to end-user terminals.
These terminals, initially prototypes, became essential operational units, providing real-time, actionable intelligence directly from satellite feeds. Before these advancements, intelligence analysts struggled with a high volume of cumbersome data to process, often discarded.
The introduction of Prototype Analysis Display Systems transformed the analysis process, allowing analysts to visualize threats on digital maps instantaneously and respond more effectively.
This system significantly reduced the data processing bottleneck, enabling direct delivery of crucial intelligence to naval commanders. Such capabilities were perfected in collaborative sessions between engineers and end users, ensuring the technology was advanced, user-friendly, and tactically effective. Parcae’s model of rapid dissemination has left a lasting legacy, influencing how military intelligence is processed and acted upon today.
Moreover, Parcae’s sophisticated communication networks, known as the Tactical Receive Equipment and Related Applications Broadcast, were instrumental during conflicts such as Operation Desert Storm. This network enabled the swift transmission of enriched intelligence, including real-time imagery, directly to frontline forces.
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The program’s broader impact extended beyond military applications and enhanced maritime-domain awareness, aiding in tracking various non-military activities like drug and arms trafficking.
Those involved with Parcae often reflect on the project as a career highlight and a period of intense professional fulfillment and creativity, underscoring its significance in their personal and professional lives. The full story of Parcae, laden with still-classified details, remains a captivating chapter of espionage and technological innovation.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Kaif Shaikh Kaif Shaikh is a journalist and writer passionate about turning complex information into clear, impactful stories. His writing covers technology, sustainability, geopolitics, and occasionally fiction. Kaif's bylines can be found in Times of India, Techopedia, and Kitaab. Apart from the long list of things he does outside work, he likes to read, breathe, and practice gratitude.
26. Trump says NJ drones were 'authorized' after suggesting Biden kept public 'in suspense'
Hmmm...Why wouldn't the previous administration say this?
Video at the link.
Excerpt.
"I do have news directly from the president of the United States that was just shared with me in the Oval Office, from President Trump directly, an update on the New Jersey drones," Leavitt said.
"After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons. Many of these drones were also hobbyists, recreational and private individuals that enjoy flying drones," she added. "In time, it got worse due to curiosity. This was not the enemy."
Trump says NJ drones were 'authorized' after suggesting Biden kept public 'in suspense'
The drones were spotted throughout the East Coast in 2024.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/leavitt-reveals-nj-drones-authorized-faa-white-house/story?id=118187426
ByStacey Dec
January 28, 2025, 1:29 PM
Leavitt reveals NJ drones 'authorized' by the FAA in first press briefingKaroline Leavitt said the mystery drones flown across New Jersey were "authorized to be flown by the FAA" in the first press briefing of the Trump administration.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the mystery drones flown across New Jersey in late 2024 were "authorized to be flown by the FAA" in the first press briefing of President Donald Trump's second administration.
"I do have news directly from the president of the United States that was just shared with me in the Oval Office, from President Trump directly, an update on the New Jersey drones," Leavitt said.
"After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons. Many of these drones were also hobbyists, recreational and private individuals that enjoy flying drones," she added. "In time, it got worse due to curiosity. This was not the enemy."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivers remarks during her first daily briefing at the White House, in Washington, Jan. 28, 2025.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
MORE: Mystery drones in New Jersey, New York: A timeline of what officials have said
In December, Trump suggested the Biden administration knew more than it was revealing to the public about the drones, which were spotted throughout the East Coast, though Leavitt did not say whether the drones spotted outside New Jersey were all lawful.
"They know where it came from and where it went," Trump said. "And for some reason, they don't want to comment. And I think they'd be better off saying what it is. Our military knows and our president knows. And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense."
Ahead of his inauguration, Trump vowed to give a report on drones "about one day" into his administration while speaking with Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago on Jan. 9 "because I think it’s ridiculous that they are not telling you about what’s going on with the drones."
However, the Biden administration had on Dec. 16 said in a multiagency statement from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the FAA and the Department of Defense that though there were indeed drones flying over New Jersey, they constituted a "combination" of lawful aerial activity.
"Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones," the joint statement said.
This photo provided by Brian Glenn shows what appears to be multiple drones flying over Bernardsville, N.J., on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024.
Brian Glenn/TMX via AP, File
MORE: What to know about the federal drone bill backed by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy
The drone activity, which was first reported on Nov. 19 by the Morris County Prosecutor's Office, caused temporary flight restrictions in New Jersey throughout November and December, notably in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the president has a golf club, and over the Picatinny Arsenal military base. But on Dec. 19, a DHS spokesperson said in a statement that the flight restrictions were "out of an abundance of caution."
"We continue to assess there is no public safety threat relating to the reported drone sightings," the spokesperson said. "In coordination with the FAA and our critical infrastructure partners who requested temporary flight restrictions over their facilities, out of an abundance of caution, the FAA has issued temporary flight restrictions over some critical infrastructure facilities in New Jersey."
27. The Heart of Strategic Influence: Aristotle’s Contribution to Addressing Dis-Information
We must continue to read and heed the classics.
Conclusion:
To the extent that truth-telling is part of our narrative strategy, it cannot be reactive; we cannot chase our adversaries around matching their lies with the truth because, as recent cognitive science has demonstrated, countering lies by repeating them with the word “no” (or some other negative) attached actually has the opposite effect. It strengthens the false statement in the mind of the audience (“Don’t Think of an Elephant” is George Lakoff’s challenge). Truth and facts should be a part of our narrative, but it is in determining the meaning of the truth and lies that we must dominate. That is the heart of influence.
The Heart of Strategic Influence: Aristotle’s Contribution to Addressing Dis-Information
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/01/29/the-heart-of-strategic-influence/
by Ajit Maan
|
01.29.2025 at 06:00am
Editors Note: We are happy to republish this exceptional article by ASU’s own Dr. Ajit Maan. This article was originally published in Homeland Security Today in January 2022 and is republished with permission.
Aristotle argued that there is a sense in which poetry has greater truth value than history. He meant that while history refers to specifics, poetry refers to the nature of the topic (or, as Plato said, its Form). Where history refers to the details of a war, poetry refers to the nature of War. While history may reference the details and consequences of a particular love affair, poetry refers to the nature of Love itself. While history may trace the impacts of a major decision, poetry addresses the universal human experience of approaching a fork in the road.
History is about particular things while poetry is about the nature of particular things. Poetry speaks to larger truths. It is in the Aristotelean sense that what philosophers call the “truth value” of poetry is greater than that of history.
A correlative claim that can be made of the Aristotelean distinction is that one can claim that a history is inaccurate or false, but one cannot make a sensible similar accusation about a poem. A poem may fall flat. It may not resonate. But to claim that it is non-factual is to misunderstand the nature of poetry itself. It is to misunderstand its power.
Poetry does not strive for factual coherence; it strives to touch the deep meaning of human experience. Its target is the heart, not the mind.
Narrative is poetic. It is not historical.
Why should NATO participants and national defense professionals care about the distinctions that an ancient philosopher made hundreds of years before the birth of Christ? Because understanding that distinction may mean the difference between containing Russian aggression or not. The distinction may determine whether or not nation states can hold themselves together in the face of strategies seeded to collapse them from within.
Understanding this classical philosophical distinction between history and poetry will determine whether or not we are able to discern the nature of the conflicts we are in, and whether or not we fight with effective weapons. Using history as a weapon against poetry is to use the wrong tools in a misidentified battle space.
“Disinformation” is an incorrect label for a narrative that influences public opinion. If it was non-information or wrong information, then it could simply be countered with correct information. It would be in the category of history, the facts of which could legitimately be disputed.
When “Disinformation” is effective it is because it is told in poetic, narrative form and cannot be countered with recourse to “truth” or “facts.” It can only be countered in poetic form – that is, the deeper resonance with human experience is what has to be addressed. Information is unarmed against a poetic narrative. As is history. The “facts” of history can be retold, and be given any variety of resonate meaning.
What the facts mean is what matters to the human heart more than what the facts are.
Influential narratives give we human beings that thing we crave: meaning. When disinformation is influential it is because it means more to the target audience than the truth or the facts or verified information. Information is just raw data and we do not crave raw data. Raw data has no inherent appeal.
Homer’s Illiad, for example, has had profound influence in western cultures even though it is not a factual historical account. It is in the category of the poetic. It speaks to the nature of a heroic quest therefore gives its audience a way to frame their own challenges. It enables the audience to view their own battles with obstacles and hurdles in a heroic light. The lack of truth value is irrelevant to the meaning it imparts to our experiences. The lack of truth value does not negatively affect its meaning value.
The gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, Rome, and India are archetypes. We recognize them. As types they refer to something beyond actual individual persons. The Muse speaks to us about the nature of inspiration. Sirens are not “real”; they strike a chord in us regarding the nature of temptation.
Rather than continuing to be dumbfounded by the influence of disinformation, we need to get a grip of this ancient distinction and get our categories straight. Technological advances have not altered the nature of the beast. And they cannot help us fight it if we cannot even identify what it is we are up against.
To the extent that truth-telling is part of our narrative strategy, it cannot be reactive; we cannot chase our adversaries around matching their lies with the truth because, as recent cognitive science has demonstrated, countering lies by repeating them with the word “no” (or some other negative) attached actually has the opposite effect. It strengthens the false statement in the mind of the audience (“Don’t Think of an Elephant” is George Lakoff’s challenge). Truth and facts should be a part of our narrative, but it is in determining the meaning of the truth and lies that we must dominate. That is the heart of influence.
(Editors Note: This article was originally published at www.HsToday.us where Dr. Maan is Editor and columnist on Narrative Warfare)
Tags: Ajit Maan, Disinformation, facts, information, strategy, truth
About The Author
- Ajit Maan
- Ajit Maan, Ph.D. writes the Narrative & National Security column for Homeland Security Today featuring her original work and work by guest experts in narrative strategy focused on identifying active narratives, who is behind them, and what strategies they are deploying to manipulate and muddy facts to the detriment of America. She is founder and CEO of the award-winning think-and-do-tank, Narrative Strategies LLC, Adjunct Professor at Joint Special Operations University, Professor of Practice, Politics and Global Security, at the Center for the Future of War, and member of the Brain Trust of the Weaponized Narrative Initiative at Arizona State University.
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