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Quotes of the Day:
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
– Winston Churchill
"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."
– Anais Nin
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."
– John Quincy Adams
1. Authoritarians are on the march
2. With no way out of a worsening war, Zelensky’s options look bad or worse
3. Gaza War Turns Spotlight on Long Pipeline of U.S. Weapons to Israel
4. U.S. and China in high-level talks to deport more Chinese nationals, Mayorkas says
5. US and Chinese military officials met in Hawaii to discuss operational safety in the Pacific
6. Chinese state, social media echo Russian propaganda on concert hall attack
7. Inside Pentagon’s Shaky Efforts to Combat Russian Disinformation
8. From Pizzagate to the 2020 Election: Forcing Liars to Pay or Apologize
9. Opinion | How to start winning the information war
10. Power by Proxy: How Iran Shapes the Mideast
11. Have we entered the age of AI warfare?
12. Stuck in Gaza
13. Countering China’s Influence in Myanmar
14. Something rotten in the Israeli Defense Force? by Andrew Milburn
15. The curiously quiet reaction to Oppenheimer in Japan
16. What you need to know about cancer in the special operations community
17. Myanmar's military-ruled capital attacked by drones
18. Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack?
19. Starting from Beginning Part 2: Strengthening Foreign Partnerships by Utilizing Training, Education for Intercultural Exchanges
20. Korea’s Artificial Sun Just Shattered a Fusion Record
21. Battelle Awarded $350M US SOCOM Contract
22. The Biden-Kishida summit should set the stage for a unified U.S.-Japanese military command
23. What Liberals Get Wrong About ‘White Rural Rage’ — Almost Everything
1. Authoritarians are on the march
We need to recognize the authoritarian strategy, understand it, EXPOSE it (as this article is doing), and attack with a superior political warfare strategy.
The themes and messages and political actions necessary to defeat our adversaries should be easy to discern when we understand what our adversaries are doing, such as China outlined below.
Excerpts:
The subtlety the Chinese argument misses is the fact that cynical politicians sometimes set out to engineer insecurity because they know that frightened people yearn for strongman rule. That is what Bashar al-Assad did in Syria when he released murderous jihadists from his country’s jails at the start of the Arab spring. He bet that the threat of Sunni violence would cause Syrians from other sects to rally round him.
Something similar happened in Russia. After economic collapse and jarring reforms in the 1990s, Russians thrived in the 2000s. Between 1999 and 2013, GDP per head increased 12-fold in dollar terms. Yet that did not dispel their accumulated dread. President Vladimir Putin consistently played on their ethno-nationalist insecurities, especially when growth later faltered. That has culminated in his disastrous invasion of Ukraine.
Even in established democracies, polarising politicians like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, former presidents of America and Brazil, saw that they could exploit left-behind voters’ anxieties to mobilise support. So they set about warning that their political opponents wanted to destroy their supporters’ way of life and threatened the very survival of their countries. That has, in turn, spread alarm and hostility on the other side.
Even allowing for this, the Chinese claim that universal values are an imposition is upside down. From Chile to Japan, the World Values Survey provides examples where growing security really does seem to lead to tolerance and greater individual expression. Nothing suggests that Western countries are unique in that. The real question is how to help people feel more secure.
Authoritarians are on the march
They argue that universal values are the new imperialism, imposed on people who want security and stability instead. Here is why they are wrong
The Economist
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THE FALL of the Berlin Wall in 1989 held out the promise that growing prosperity would foster freedom and tolerance, which in turn would create more prosperity. Unfortunately, that hope disappointed. Our analysis this week, based on the definitive global survey of social attitudes, shows just how naive it turned out to be.
Prosperity certainly rose. In the three decades to 2019, global output increased more than fourfold. Roughly 70% of the 2bn people living in extreme poverty escaped it. But individual freedom and tolerance evolved differently. Many people around the world continue to swear fealty to traditional beliefs, sometimes intolerant ones. And although they are much wealthier these days, they often have an us-and-them contempt for others.
The World Values Survey takes place every five years. The latest results, which go up to 2022, canvassed almost 130,000 people in 90 countries. Some places, such as Russia and Georgia, are not becoming more tolerant as they grow, but more tightly bound to traditional religious values instead. At the same time, young people in Islamic and Orthodox countries are barely more individualistic or secular than their elders. By contrast, the young in northern Europe and America are racing ahead. Countries where burning the Koran is tolerated and those where it is a crime look on each other with growing incomprehension.
On the face of it, all this supports the campaign by China’s Communist Party to dismiss universal values as racist neo-imperialism. It argues that white Western elites are imposing their own version of freedom and democracy on people who want security and stability instead.
In fact, the survey suggests something more subtle. Contrary to the Chinese argument, universal values are more valuable than ever. Start with the subtlety. China is right that people want security. The survey shows that a sense of threat drives people to seek refuge in family and racial or national groups, while tradition and organised religion offer solace.
This is one way to see America’s doomed attempts to establish democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the failure of the Arab spring. Amid lawlessness and upheaval, some people sought safety in their tribe or their sect. Hoping that order would be restored, some welcomed the return of dictators.
The subtlety the Chinese argument misses is the fact that cynical politicians sometimes set out to engineer insecurity because they know that frightened people yearn for strongman rule. That is what Bashar al-Assad did in Syria when he released murderous jihadists from his country’s jails at the start of the Arab spring. He bet that the threat of Sunni violence would cause Syrians from other sects to rally round him.
Something similar happened in Russia. After economic collapse and jarring reforms in the 1990s, Russians thrived in the 2000s. Between 1999 and 2013, GDP per head increased 12-fold in dollar terms. Yet that did not dispel their accumulated dread. President Vladimir Putin consistently played on their ethno-nationalist insecurities, especially when growth later faltered. That has culminated in his disastrous invasion of Ukraine.
Even in established democracies, polarising politicians like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, former presidents of America and Brazil, saw that they could exploit left-behind voters’ anxieties to mobilise support. So they set about warning that their political opponents wanted to destroy their supporters’ way of life and threatened the very survival of their countries. That has, in turn, spread alarm and hostility on the other side.
Even allowing for this, the Chinese claim that universal values are an imposition is upside down. From Chile to Japan, the World Values Survey provides examples where growing security really does seem to lead to tolerance and greater individual expression. Nothing suggests that Western countries are unique in that. The real question is how to help people feel more secure.
China’s answer is based on creating order for a loyal, deferential majority that stays out of politics and avoids defying their rulers. However, within that model lurks deep insecurity. It is a majoritarian system in which lines move, sometimes arbitrarily or without warning—especially when power passes unpredictably from one party chief to another.
A better answer comes from prosperity built on the rule of law. Wealthy countries have more resources to spend on dealing with disasters, such as pandemic disease. Likewise, confident in their savings and the social safety-net, the citizens of rich countries know that they are less vulnerable to the chance events that wreck lives elsewhere.
Universal and valuable
However, the deepest solution to insecurity lies in how countries cope with change, whether from global warming, artificial intelligence or the growing tensions between China and America. The countries that manage change well will be better at making society feel confident in the future. And that is where universal values come into their own. Tolerance, free expression and individual inquiry help harness change through consensus forged by reasoned debate and reform. There is no better way to bring about progress.
Universal values are much more than a Western piety. They are a mechanism that fortifies societies against insecurity. What the World Values Survey shows is that they are also hard-won. ■
The Economist
2. With no way out of a worsening war, Zelensky’s options look bad or worse
What comes next? What are the second and third order effects if Ukraine's ability to fight effectively is not sustained?
Excerpts:
Pessimism about Ukraine’s battlefield chances has increased in recent months as Russian forces have regained the initiative on the battlefield, largely because Ukrainians are short on troops and ammunition.
Ukraine is reliant on its Western partners for weapons, but a $60 billion security package from the United States has been stalled in Congress for six months. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s government is struggling to address its personnel shortages as measures to mobilize more soldiers have divided society.
Kyiv is now bracing for the possibility that aid from the United States could be cut off. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said recently that the package could be put to a vote next week but it is expected to face revisions, such as perhaps providing the money as a loan, which would add to Ukraine’s already huge debt.
Even if the aid is approved soon, the delay has sent a clear signal that future assistance is not guaranteed, especially with the U.S. presidential election this year. Officials also worry that Europe lacks the production capacity to compensate for a U.S. shortfall, especially in artillery and air-defense ammunition — Ukraine’s biggest needs.
Zelensky has said Ukraine is prioritizing domestic production but so far makes only a small fraction of its needs. Russian forces are now firing six times as much as the Ukrainians along the front line.
With no way out of a worsening war, Zelensky’s options look bad or worse
By Isabelle Khurshudyan
April 6, 2024 at 1:00 a.m. EDT
The Washington Post · by Isabelle Khurshudyan · April 6, 2024
KYIV — As Russia steps up airstrikes and once again advances on the battlefield in Ukraine more than two years into its bloody invasion, there is no end to the fighting in sight. And President Volodymyr Zelensky’s options for what to do next — much less how to win the war — range from bad to worse.
Zelensky has said Ukraine will accept nothing less than the return of all its territory, including land that Russia has controlled since 2014. But with the battle lines changing little in the last year, militarily retaking the swaths of east and south Ukraine that Russia now occupies — about 20 percent of the country — appears increasingly unlikely.
Negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war — something Zelensky has rejected as long as Russian troops remain on Ukrainian land — is politically toxic. The Ukrainian public is hugely opposed to surrendering territory, and Putin shown no willingness to accept anything short of Ukraine’s capitulation to his demands.
The status quo is awful. With the fight now a grinding stalemate, Ukrainians are dying on the battlefield daily. But a cease-fire is also a nonstarter, Ukrainians say, because it would just give the Russians time to replenish their forces.
Ukrainian and Western officials view Zelensky as largely stuck. Aid from the United States, Ukraine’s most important military backer, has been stalled for months by Republicans in Congress. Previously approved modern fighter jets — the U.S.-made F-16 — are expected to enter combat later this year — but in limited quantity, meaning they will not be a game changer. NATO countries are still exercising restraint in their assistance, evidenced by the recent uproar after French President Emmanuel Macron said European nations should not rule out sending troops.
“How will Zelensky get out of this situation? I have no idea,” said a Ukrainian lawmaker who, like other officials and diplomats interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about the highly sensitive politics. “And of course it concerns me.”
Most tricky for Zelensky will be managing his own country’s expectations. Support for him among Ukrainians remains high, but after two years of war and steep casualties, the “solidarity is fraying,” said a Western diplomat in Kyiv.
A senior Ukrainian official said: “Everyone wants quick solutions, but everyone has come to understand that there won’t be quick ones.”
This was supposed to be an election year for Zelensky, but Ukraine’s constitution prohibits elections under martial law, and some officials here worry that Russia will try to cast Zelensky as an illegitimate ruler once he is serving longer than his elected five-year term — despite the inherent hypocrisy in Putin’s own repeated disregard for term limits.
Zelensky will also have to live up to his own promise — which he restates regularly — of returning Ukraine to its 1991 borders, including Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia illegally invaded and claimed as its own 10 years ago.
“Smart people know that’s not realistic,” the Ukrainian lawmaker said, adding: The political leadership “needed to adjust this rhetoric at some point.”
Pessimism about Ukraine’s battlefield chances has increased in recent months as Russian forces have regained the initiative on the battlefield, largely because Ukrainians are short on troops and ammunition.
Ukraine is reliant on its Western partners for weapons, but a $60 billion security package from the United States has been stalled in Congress for six months. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s government is struggling to address its personnel shortages as measures to mobilize more soldiers have divided society.
Kyiv is now bracing for the possibility that aid from the United States could be cut off. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said recently that the package could be put to a vote next week but it is expected to face revisions, such as perhaps providing the money as a loan, which would add to Ukraine’s already huge debt.
Even if the aid is approved soon, the delay has sent a clear signal that future assistance is not guaranteed, especially with the U.S. presidential election this year. Officials also worry that Europe lacks the production capacity to compensate for a U.S. shortfall, especially in artillery and air-defense ammunition — Ukraine’s biggest needs.
Zelensky has said Ukraine is prioritizing domestic production but so far makes only a small fraction of its needs. Russian forces are now firing six times as much as the Ukrainians along the front line.
“Look, we have been without ammunition for half a year already. Not enough of it, at least,” the Ukrainian official said. “Well okay, it will get worse. And so what? What other options are there? If partners who have promised to give us ammunition don’t give it, of course the situation gets worse. But the image of the U.S. will get worse in the world.”
A year ago, the mood in Kyiv was cautiously optimistic as Ukraine readied a large counteroffensive with modern tanks and fighting vehicles freshly provided by Western partners. But that assault failed to make significant gains, and the new weapons did not prove decisive.
Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia targeting military infrastructure and logistics such as oil depots have increased, but Kyiv’s forces are still under pressure along the front line and lately have been pushed backward.
Ukrainians have resigned themselves to a long war. Some have been fighting since 2014, when Russia first stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine.
“Ukraine does not have the power to make another offensive,” said one Western ambassador. “There are two scenarios. One scenario is they get the support to maintain defensive lines. … The second is there is not enough support and Ukraine will defend itself anyway, desperately and with less manpower.”
If Kyiv faces Russian forces with inadequate support this year, the ambassador said, there will be increased casualties and territorial losses, putting Ukraine on the back foot.
Ukraine and its partners must prepare for 2025 as “another year of war, not peace talks,” the ambassador said. “If [the] West wants peace, it should not only respond to current Ukrainian needs, but use 2024 to provide Ukraine with everything that’s necessary to enter into offensive mode and make substantial gains in 2025.”
But Ukraine must meet some needs on its own. Field commanders have reported troop shortages along the front line, especially infantry who deploy at the forwardmost positions. Military commanders have pushed for a large-scale mobilization but Zelensky has voiced doubt even as Kyiv says Moscow is planning to conscript 300,000 more soldiers.
Zelensky recently signed a law that lowered Ukraine’s minimum draft age to 25, but he has said mobilizing some 500,000 more troops, as Ukraine’s former commander in chief suggested, won’t happen. Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the new military chief, has said the 500,000 figure was “significantly reduced” after a personnel audit. Meanwhile, a draft law in parliament to widen the parameters of who can be conscripted has undergone thousands of amendments.
A second Western diplomat in Kyiv said Zelensky’s administration and Ukraine’s parliament are playing “political ping pong” on mobilization because it is unpopular. While thousands volunteered to fight early in the war, few who have not already signed up want to now.
“Nobody wants to really bear the responsibility at this point,” said the diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
“But it will have to be done,” the diplomat said. “I mean, you cannot go on like this. I hear about people who are at the front who just can’t take it anymore. And then when they come back here on leave and they see all these young guys who could be there, I would be resentful of that. So you get social tensions surrounding that as well.”
A large-scale mobilization would also pose economic challenges. The money for soldier salaries cannot directly come from foreign aid, and some industries already face labor shortages. Ukraine’s economy is under strain from repeated missile and drone attacks targeting energy infrastructure, which also scare away foreign business investment.
So how long can Ukraine withstand being at war? The Ukrainian lawmaker said the country will not survive the status quo for another 10 years. Others, however, think the fight could go on even longer.
“This is an unpleasant thought but when some people say it might take decades, no one challenges that,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, a professor at the Kyiv School of Economics and former government minister.
“No one will concede territory, but people understand that getting it back might take a long time,” Mylovanov added. “What form can that take? Views differ here. A long war with eventually a victory? A sudden collapse in the Russian power structure? A successful counteroffensive? But that requires a very different type of support than what Ukraine has now.”
Siobhán O’Grady, David L. Stern and Anastacia Galouchka contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · by Isabelle Khurshudyan · April 6, 2024
3. Gaza War Turns Spotlight on Long Pipeline of U.S. Weapons to Israel
If our military support to Israel is reduced or eliminated because of US domestic police there could be serious consequences in the Middle East.
Excerpts:
The United States and Israel have had tight military relations for decades, stretching across multiple Democratic and Republican administrations. Israel has purchased much of its critical equipment from the United States, including fighter jets, helicopters, air defense missiles, and both unguided and guided bombs, which have been dropped in Gaza. Legislation mandates that the U.S. government help Israel maintain force superiority — or its “qualitative military edge” — over other Middle Eastern nations.
The process of arms delivery to Israel is opaque, and the pipeline for weapons to the country is long. The United States has sent tens of thousands of weapons to the country since the Oct. 7 killings by Hamas attackers, but many were approved by Congress and the State Department long ago and funded with money mandated by the Obama-era agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding.
Because of a legal loophole, the State Department does not have to tell Congress and the public about some new arms orders placed by Israel since Oct. 7 since they fall below a certain dollar value. Congressional officials have criticized the secrecy, which stands in contrast to the Biden administration’s public fanfare around arms deliveries to Ukraine.
Since the Hamas attacks, State Department officials have continued to authorize arms shipments to Israel that are tranches of orders, or what officials call “cases,” approved earlier by the department and by Congress — often years ago, and often for delivery in batches over a long period. Officials describe this step as pro forma. The authorizations have occurred almost daily in recent weeks, and are in line with Mr. Biden’s policy of giving full support to Israel.
...
Martin Indyk, a special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the Obama administration, said “the problem with this American largess is that it has bred a sense of entitlement among Israelis over the years.”
Israel’s dependence on the United States has grown “exponentially because its deterrent capability collapsed on Oct. 7,” he said, noting that Israel would need the U.S. military to help ward off major assaults by Hezbollah or Iran. The Biden administration needs to use that leverage to shape the Israeli government’s behavior, he added.
Within the State Department, there has been some dissent about the arms transfers, reflected in three cables sent to Mr. Blinken last fall and in an internal exchange after a recent White House move.
Mr. Biden issued a national security memorandum in February requiring all recipients of U.S. military aid to provide written promises that their forces abide by international law. The move was intended to defuse growing pressure in Congress.
Critics say the exercise adds little to existing U.S. requirements that military aid recipients observe international and humanitarian law.
Gaza War Turns Spotlight on Long Pipeline of U.S. Weapons to Israel
President Biden sends arms to Israel under an Obama-era $38 billion aid agreement that runs until 2026. Israel’s purchases include the types of bombs dropped in Gaza.
An Israeli Blackhawk, an American-made helicopter, during a drill in northern Israel in February.Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters
By Michael Crowley and Edward Wong
Michael Crowley and Edward Wong, diplomatic correspondents in Washington, have traveled regularly to the Middle East with the U.S. secretary of state since the Israel-Gaza war began.
April 6, 2024, 5:05 a.m. ET
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In the fall of 2016, the Obama administration sealed a major military agreement with Israel that committed the United States to giving the country $38 billion in arms over 10 years.
“The continued supply of the world’s most advanced weapons technology will ensure that Israel has the ability to defend itself from all manner of threats,” President Barack Obama said.
At the time, the agreement was uncontroversial. It was a period of relative calm for Israel, and few officials in Washington expressed concern about how the American arms might one day be used.
Now that military aid package, which guarantees Israel $3.3 billion per year to buy weapons, along with another $500 million annually for missile defense, has become a flashpoint for the Biden administration. A vocal minority of lawmakers in Congress backed by liberal activists are demanding that President Biden restrict or even halt arms shipments to Israel because of its military campaign in Gaza.
Mr. Biden has been sharply critical of what he on one occasion called “indiscriminate bombing” in Israel’s war campaign, but he has resisted placing limits on U.S. military aid.
The United States and Israel have had tight military relations for decades, stretching across multiple Democratic and Republican administrations. Israel has purchased much of its critical equipment from the United States, including fighter jets, helicopters, air defense missiles, and both unguided and guided bombs, which have been dropped in Gaza. Legislation mandates that the U.S. government help Israel maintain force superiority — or its “qualitative military edge” — over other Middle Eastern nations.
The process of arms delivery to Israel is opaque, and the pipeline for weapons to the country is long. The United States has sent tens of thousands of weapons to the country since the Oct. 7 killings by Hamas attackers, but many were approved by Congress and the State Department long ago and funded with money mandated by the Obama-era agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding.
“At any given time, delivery on these sales is constantly taking place,” said Dana Stroul, who recently departed as the Pentagon’s top official for Middle East affairs.
Mr. Biden has the power to limit any foreign arms deliveries, even ones previously approved by Congress. Far from cutting off Israel, however, he is pushing a request he made shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks for $14 billion in additional arms aid to the country and U.S. military operations in the Middle East. The money has been stalled in Congress amid disputes over Ukraine aid and U.S. border security and faces growing Democratic concern.
Because of a legal loophole, the State Department does not have to tell Congress and the public about some new arms orders placed by Israel since Oct. 7 since they fall below a certain dollar value. Congressional officials have criticized the secrecy, which stands in contrast to the Biden administration’s public fanfare around arms deliveries to Ukraine.
Since the Hamas attacks, State Department officials have continued to authorize arms shipments to Israel that are tranches of orders, or what officials call “cases,” approved earlier by the department and by Congress — often years ago, and often for delivery in batches over a long period. Officials describe this step as pro forma. The authorizations have occurred almost daily in recent weeks, and are in line with Mr. Biden’s policy of giving full support to Israel.
Image
An Israeli Air Force F-35 fighter jet, a modern stealth aircraft produced by Lockheed Martin.Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But Mr. Biden hinted on Thursday about a possible shift. In a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Biden warned that U.S. policy could change if Israel did not take more action to protect civilians and aid workers in Gaza, according to a White House summary of the conversation.
Israel regularly receives arms from the U.S. Defense Department, as well as directly from American weapons makers. The largest arms orders are often filled over years in smaller groups of specific items. For such cases, arms buyers like Israel come to the U.S. government saying they are ready to pay for part of an order.
When the Defense Department is supplying the arms — which includes the most expensive weapons systems — the State Department then tells the Pentagon to issue a letter of acceptance to the buyer. That authorization is often a pro forma step, and a buyer signing it means there is now a legal contract to fill that part of the larger order.
The State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which manages foreign defense relationships and arms transfers, typically acts within two days of hearing about a buyer’s fulfillment request to tell the Defense Department to issue the letter. If defense officials decide to fill the case by placing an order with a U.S. weapons maker, the assembly and shipment would normally take years.
For Israel’s immediate needs since Oct. 7, defense officials have drawn from U.S. military stockpiles, including one in Israel.
Updated
April 5, 2024, 4:48 p.m. ETApril 5, 2024
April 5, 2024
Israel and other nations also sign contracts directly with American weapons makers. These orders go through a State Department review (and occasionally congressional review, depending on the price tag). The State Department regularly issues four-year export licenses to the companies, and provides less public information on commercial orders.
Israel is awaiting State Department approval for 24,000 assault rifles it requested before Oct. 7 — a direct commercial order that has drawn scrutiny from some officials in the department and lawmakers because of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Since Oct. 7, Israel has asked the United States to expedite filling cases from long-existing orders, U.S. officials said. State and Pentagon officials have complied.
Given the politics around Israel, any change would have to come from Mr. Biden.
Israel’s recent requested fulfillments — and the resulting drawdowns from U.S. stockpiles — have included munitions ranging from 250- to 2,000-pound bombs. Many cases have been for 500-pound bombs, said a U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities and opacity around arms sales.
Image
President Biden speaking about the Israel-Gaza war from the Oval Office last October.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times
Some of what Israel has requested since Oct. 7 is meant to enhance its defenses against actors besides Hamas, including Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias in the region, as well as Iran itself. U.S. officials say one reason for their reluctance to limit arms sales to Israel is the risk of weakening its deterrence against those foes.
Shortly before seven aid workers for World Food Kitchen were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Monday, State Department officials told the Pentagon to issue a letter of acceptance to Israel for a case of munitions, U.S. officials said.
That batch follows other shipments sent to Israel over the years to fulfill large munitions orders approved by Congress and the State Department in both 2012 and 2015, U.S. officials said.
In rare instances, an assistant secretary of state has asked department officials to refrain from telling Pentagon counterparts to issue a letter of acceptance because of concerns about the customer country, said Josh Paul, who resigned from the department’s political-military bureau in October to protest Mr. Biden’s war policy.
“They can say, ‘You know what, we changed our minds,’” Mr. Paul said, stressing that top U.S. officials can intervene at any point before the customer receives a title of ownership.
Since Oct. 7, Israel has placed new orders. The State Department only needs to notify Congress when a price tag is above a certain threshold. That amount varies by country and the type of military aid. If Israel orders a major weapons system, the department only tells Congress if the tranche is valued at more than $25 million.
Congressional officials are pushing the State Department to give them more information on orders that fall below the price tag threshold.
At least three of the new Israeli orders have crossed the threshold required for congressional review, however — and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken bypassed that twice. Last December, Mr. Blinken invoked a rare emergency authority to avoid legislative review and push through two of those orders worth $253 million in total, for tank ammunition and for artillery shells. The Pentagon then drew from U.S. stockpiles to send those quickly to Israel.
The State Department told Congress in January about a third one — an $18 billion order of F-15 jets that Israel placed after Oct. 7. The department is seeking approval from four lawmakers on two congressional committees with oversight of arms transfers. Two Republicans approved the order in January, a U.S. official said, and two Democrats apparently have not so far.
The Biden administration is pressuring the Democratic lawmakers to approve the order, after which the State Department would officially notify it. The order is one of the biggest from Israel in years. The first jets would not be delivered until 2029 at the earliest, one official said.
And Israeli officials are expected to place an order for F-35 jets soon, U.S. officials said.
Image
An Israeli F-15 fighter jet over southern Israel last summer.Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters
Martin Indyk, a special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the Obama administration, said “the problem with this American largess is that it has bred a sense of entitlement among Israelis over the years.”
Israel’s dependence on the United States has grown “exponentially because its deterrent capability collapsed on Oct. 7,” he said, noting that Israel would need the U.S. military to help ward off major assaults by Hezbollah or Iran. The Biden administration needs to use that leverage to shape the Israeli government’s behavior, he added.
Within the State Department, there has been some dissent about the arms transfers, reflected in three cables sent to Mr. Blinken last fall and in an internal exchange after a recent White House move.
Mr. Biden issued a national security memorandum in February requiring all recipients of U.S. military aid to provide written promises that their forces abide by international law. The move was intended to defuse growing pressure in Congress.
Critics say the exercise adds little to existing U.S. requirements that military aid recipients observe international and humanitarian law.
After Israel submitted its assurances last month, officials in the two State Department bureaus that focus on human rights and on refugees raised concerns with Mr. Blinken about Israel’s commitment, a U.S. official said. But Mr. Blinken accepted Israel’s assurances.
Speaking in general terms, Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said last month that when it comes to Israel, U.S. officials “have had ongoing assessments about their compliance with international humanitarian law.”
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state. More about Michael Crowley
Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 24 years from New York, Baghdad, Beijing and Washington. He was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists for Iraq War coverage. More about Edward Wong
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4. U.S. and China in high-level talks to deport more Chinese nationals, Mayorkas says
What is these migrants are seeking asylum from an oppressive government becasue of threats to their lives and what if they are at risk of imprisionment, torture, and possible death if they are deported back to China? Is that not part of the criteria for granting asylum?
And of course we should also be asking why is there a large increase in migrants from China?
U.S. and China in high-level talks to deport more Chinese nationals, Mayorkas says
The negotiations come as the number of Chinese nationals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization rose to 24,000, an elevenfold increase over the prior year.
NBC News · by David Noriega and Julia Ainsley
The U.S. is conducting high-level discussions with China aimed at increasing the number of Chinese nationals deported from the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in an exclusive interview with NBC News.
Such an agreement would be a breakthrough in U.S.-China relations and American immigration policy. China has long been uncooperative with U.S. efforts to deport Chinese citizens back to their country, according to American officials.
In the last two years, that has become especially consequential as the number of migrants from China illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has skyrocketed to the tens of thousands.
Mayorkas told NBC News that China’s refusal to accept deportations “may be changing.”
“We have been working with the People’s Republic of China to actually receive individuals whom we have determined are not eligible to remain in the United States,” Mayorkas said. He added that he raised the issue in February when he met in Vienna with his Chinese counterpart, Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong.
Mayorkas said he is “hopeful” that these discussions will lead to a change in the current situation. "We are in a wait and see posture but we are working with our counterparts," he said. "It's a process."
The talks come as the number of Chinese nationals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization has exploded. Customs and Border Protection logged over 24,000 such crossings in Fiscal Year 2023, up from just over 2,000 the prior year — a more than elevenfold increase. This is part of a larger surge in the number of migrants from all over the world making the dangerous journey to the U.S.’s southern border, which saw record-high illegal crossings in December.
The meeting that included Mayorkas and Wang, his counterpart, took place in Vienna on Feb. 18. NBC News is reporting for the first time that these binational security talks included a potential agreement on deportations.
The talks come amid a broader thaw in relations between the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies, after a Chinese spy balloon's flight over the U.S. sparked a diplomatic crisis. A historic in-person summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping took place in San Francisco in November, followed by a phone conversation Tuesday.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas with the Minister of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China, Wang Xiaohong, in Vienna, Austria.DHS photo by Tia Dufour
Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement provided to NBC News that China cooperates with efforts to repatriate illegal immigrants. “Illegal immigration is an international problem that needs the cooperation of relevant countries to solve it together,” Liu said. “China has had good cooperation with some countries on the issue of repatriating illegal immigrants, and is willing to continue to strengthen cooperation with relevant countries on this issue.”
Liu’s statement also said, “The Chinese government adheres to the principle of ‘verification first, then repatriation’ in repatriating illegal immigrants. We will accept repatriation of Chinese citizens who have been verified to be from mainland China.”
The U.S., though, has for years counted China among a list of “recalcitrant” or “non-cooperative” countries when it comes to deportations, a list that has at times included other geopolitical adversaries like Russia, Venezuela and Cuba.
DHS cited China’s noncooperation in a 2021 report on “the threat posed by the people’s Republic of China,” writing that “Beijing’s refusal to cooperate forces ICE to release hundreds of PRC nationals, many with convictions for violent crimes, into American communities, jeopardizing public safety.”
In 2022, in retaliation for a visit by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, a self-ruling island Beijing claims as its territory, China officially cut off cooperation on deportations, formalizing what had been de facto policy. That a new agreement on deportations is currently under discussion marks a stark change from recent years.
Immigrants wait to be transported by U.S. Border Patrol agents after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on March 7, 2024.John Moore / Getty Images file
Although the U.S. is able to deport some people to China every year, it has to resort to expensive and logistically challenging “Special High-Risk Charter” flights, sometimes via South Korea, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement records.
The U.S. successfully deported eight Chinese citizens last week, according to a U.S. official who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity.
ICE records indicate it deported 288 people to China last fiscal year; meanwhile, the number of Chinese nationals living in the U.S. with final orders of deportation is around 100,000, according to internal data obtained last year by The New York Times.
An agreement allowing expanded, direct deportations to China would likely have a large impact on these numbers. However, such deportations would still be resource-intensive, and thus likely overwhelmed by the current number of arrivals. Most migrants apprehended at the southern border, whether from China or elsewhere, are released into the United States to await yearslong proceedings in severely backlogged immigration courts.
Mayorkas told NBC News that the recent, bipartisan Senate bill on immigration would have fixed those backlogs, but the measure was blocked by pro-Trump Republicans. Until Congress acts, he said, his department will be unable to meaningfully reduce migration from China or elsewhere.
“Fundamentally, our system is not equipped to deal with migration as it exists,” Mayorkas said.
NBC News · by David Noriega and Julia Ainsley
5. US and Chinese military officials met in Hawaii to discuss operational safety in the Pacific
Do the Chinese feel the same way about these "safety concerns" as we do? Or are we mirror imaging?
Excerpts:
A senior US military official told reporters this week that the talks in Hawaii were “critical to ensuring the safe operation of our military force.”
“Both of us owe it to our service members to ensure that we operate safely,” the official said, adding that this was the “first of the operational safety types of conversations we’ve had because of the cancellations by the PRC in the past couple of years.”
This week’s meeting was the first to follow President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November 2023, when the two leaders committed to maintaining military-to-military communication. This week was also the first in-person meeting in years, as the last MMCA event in December 2021 was held virtually.
The MMCA meetings between the US and China have been happening since 1998.
Biden and Xi also spoke on the phone on Tuesday, discussing various topics like countering narcotics, artificial intelligence, and climate change. It also served as a “check in” on the November conversations, which included discussions about the military-to-military relationship between the two countries, a senior administration official told CNN.
US and Chinese military officials met in Hawaii to discuss operational safety in the Pacific | CNN Politics
CNN · by Haley Britzky · April 5, 2024
Published 12:19 PM EDT, Fri April 5, 2024
In this photo provided by the US Navy, military representatives from US Indo-Pacific Command, US Pacific Fleet, and US Pacific Air Forces meet with People's Republic of China People's Liberation Army representatives for the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement Working Group in Honolulu, Hawaii in early April.
Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Randi Brown/US Navy
CNN —
US and Chinese military representatives met in Hawaii this week to discuss the safety of forces in the Pacific, marking the first in-person meeting of its kind in years after cancellations by China.
The Military Maritime Consultative Agreement Working Group meeting was held in Honolulu on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Eighteen officials from China’s People’s Liberation Army attended, alongside 18 representatives from the US military’s major commands in the Pacific, including officials from US Indo-Pacific command, US Pacific Fleet, and US Pacific Air Forces.
A senior US military official told reporters this week that the talks in Hawaii were “critical to ensuring the safe operation of our military force.”
“Both of us owe it to our service members to ensure that we operate safely,” the official said, adding that this was the “first of the operational safety types of conversations we’ve had because of the cancellations by the PRC in the past couple of years.”
This week’s meeting was the first to follow President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November 2023, when the two leaders committed to maintaining military-to-military communication. This week was also the first in-person meeting in years, as the last MMCA event in December 2021 was held virtually.
The MMCA meetings between the US and China have been happening since 1998.
Biden and Xi also spoke on the phone on Tuesday, discussing various topics like countering narcotics, artificial intelligence, and climate change. It also served as a “check in” on the November conversations, which included discussions about the military-to-military relationship between the two countries, a senior administration official told CNN.
In January, US and Chinese officials also met at the Pentagon to discuss relations after two years of cancellations by China.
The head of the US delegation and director of Northeast Asia Policy for INDOPACOM, Army Col. Ian Francis, said in a release on Friday that the MMCA meeting is the military’s “primary means to directly discuss air and maritime operational safety with the PLA.”
The senior military official said this week that there has been a “reduction in unsafe behavior” between US and Chinese aircraft over the Pacific, which they called an encouraging sign and one they wanted to ensure continued.
A senior defense official echoed the same, but added that the US continues “to see the PRC acting very dangerously and unlawfully against routine maritime operations the Philippines is conducting in the South China Sea.”
US officials said in October last year that there had been more “coercive and risky” behavior from Chinese pilots against US aircraft over the last two years than in last decade. But in January, two US defense officials told CNN that China’s unsafe interceptions of US military aircraft had eased.
CNN · by Haley Britzky · April 5, 2024
6. Chinese state, social media echo Russian propaganda on concert hall attack
Excerpt:
It is not out of character for the Chinese state and social media to echo Russian propaganda and disinformation, especially when it targets the United States.
Chinese state, social media echo Russian propaganda on concert hall attack
April 03, 2024 9:41 AM
By Yang An
voanews.com · April 3, 2024
Taipei, Taiwan —
Specious theories designed to implicate Ukraine and the United States in connection with the late March terror attack in Russia are spreading on China’s state media outlets and on its heavily censored social media platform Weibo.
False claims that paint Kyiv and Washington as masterminds of the attack have fueled debate in Russia even after Islamic State-Khorasan — also known as IS, IS-K, ISIS and Daesh — claimed responsibility for killing at least 143 people and injuring nearly 200 at the Crocus City Hall music venue in suburban Moscow.
In China, an editorial in the state-run Global Times insinuated that “many observers linked the incident to the ‘hybrid war’ form of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.”
“Some Western thinkers have begun to speculate whether Washington had played a role in this terrorist attack,” it said without elaborating.
Without citing names or clear attribution, the Global Times repeated Russia’s false accusations that the U.S. failed to share “key intelligence” that could have helped Russian security services prevent the attack.
In fact, the U.S. warned the Russian authorities two weeks before the attack and shared appropriate intelligence, as it would do “for any other country,” John Kirby, White House national security communications adviser, told VOA.
SEE ALSO:
White House Reveals Urgency of Warning Russians of Potential Terror Attack
“We provided useful, we believe, valuable information about what we thought was an imminent terrorist attack,” Kirby said. “We also warned Americans about staying away from public places like concert halls. So, we were very direct with our Russian counterparts appropriately to make sure that they had as much useful information as possible.”
Addressing a Russian intelligence agency board meeting three days before the attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the U.S. warning as “outright blackmail” intended “to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
The Global Times also criticized Washington for being “slow to condemn the incident in a timely manner, which shocked the international community.”
In fact, the United States was among the first nations to condemn the Moscow attack, and on March 30, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy placed flowers at the site.
SEE ALSO:
Ambassadors Lay Flowers at Site of Moscow Concert Hall Massacre
With the Chinese Communist Party’s tight censorship of online content, contrarian views are quickly taken down, and the lack of independent media leave disinformation spread by state-controlled news outlets unchallenged.
Some, however, have voiced skepticism.
“I personally think it’s unlikely that the United States was behind this terrorist attack,” Jin Canrong, a scholar of international relations with an established “anti-American” reputation, wrote on Weibo.
The comments by Jin, who is a professor at the Renmin University of China, provoked heated reaction, with some Weibo users accusing him of being a U.S. sympathizer.
Since the attack, conspiracy theories echoing Russian propaganda have dominated the narrative on Weibo, typically boosted by anonymous pro-Russian and pro-Chinese influencers with millions of followers.
Weibo influencer Drunk Rabbit posted to his nearly half a million followers: “It is no wonder that the Russian people do not believe that this was done by IS. They all firmly believe that Ukraine and its masters who are at war with Russia planned and carried out this atrocity.”
To prove the point, the user posted two side-by-side video clips showing former U.S. Presidents Barak Obama and Donald Trump.
Drunk Rabbit’s caption read: “Obama: ‘We trained ISIS,’” and “Trump: ‘Obama was the founder of ISIS.’”
“Both former presidents have confirmed that the United States is the creator of ISIS,” Drunk Rabbit continued. “Regarding the terrorist attack on the Moscow Concert Hall in Russia, what other evidence is needed?”
The quotes by Obama and Trump, however, are taken out of context and, in the case of Obama’s remarks, twisted to mean the opposite of what he said.
Trump’s claim has been debunked by fact-checkers and terrorism experts who traced Islamic State’s roots to 2002, six years before Obama was elected president, and Trump himself walked the remark back, calling it “sarcasm.”
It is not out of character for the Chinese state and social media to echo Russian propaganda and disinformation, especially when it targets the United States.
voanews.com · April 3, 2024
7. Inside Pentagon’s Shaky Efforts to Combat Russian Disinformation
DTRA is a victim of Russian information warfare.
Inside Pentagon’s Shaky Efforts to Combat Russian Disinformation
Internal documents reveal how the US struggled to fend off ‘Russian lie’ about US support for Ukraine weapons labs
Russia Ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, shows documents during a March 2022 UN Security Council emergency meeting after the country accused the US of funding research into the development of biological weapons in Ukraine (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-04-05/-latest-russian-lie-and-the-pentagon-s-struggle-to-combat-it?srnd=economics-v2&sref=hhjZtX76
By Jason Leopold
April 5, 2024 at 10:30 AM EDT
I love document dumps. Recently, a Defense Department office dropped 2,500 pages in response to one of my FOIA requests. They provide a pretty revealing – and somewhat startling – look at how the Biden administration struggled to counter a Russian disinformation campaign after the Ukraine invasion. If you haven’t yet, sign up now to get FOIA Files delivered to your inbox every Friday.
Not long after Russia launched airstrikes in Ukraine in February 2022, siren-blaring-emoji tweets bombarded my Twitter feed. They all had a similar message: that some of Russia’s targets were laboratories where Ukraine had secretly been developing biological weapons with the help of the US government. The “bombshell” allegations seemed to be an obvious attempt to justify the invasion. They garnered thousands of retweets on right-wing media. Soon Fox News was amplifying the claims.
The stories had a huge impact. One poll in late March of that year found that more than a quarter of Americans believed the US-Ukraine bioweapons theory. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene authored a bill that gave the charges an air of credibility.
We now know the story was a massive Russian disinformation campaign, boosted by China and followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Nevertheless, it sent a little-known Defense Department office into damage control mode.
That’s what I found in the trove of acronym-heavy documents that I obtained from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, also referred to as DTRA, the division that was singled out by Russia and accused of operating biowarfare labs in Ukraine. I filed a FOIA request with DTRA and asked for emails, memos, letters, reports, talking points – pretty much everything – to find out what happens when a government agency becomes the target of a disinformation campaign by a foreign adversary.
The ‘latest Russian lie’
DTRA was launched in 1998 to thwart global threats from chemical, biological, and nuclear materials that could be turned into weapons of mass destruction. That year the DOD unit took over the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which was established after the fall of the Soviet Union to secure and dismantle the region’s nuclear and chemical weapons.
In 2005, work inside Ukraine expanded through another DTRA initiative that was designed to control the spread of infectious diseases: the Biological Threat Reduction Program. Ukraine’s president at the time, Leonid Kuchma, solicited help from the US to reduce threats from dangerous pathogens inside former Soviet biological weapons labs. Since then, the US has spent about $200 million on training, equipment and upgrades at the labs in Ukraine.
Click here to view the documents (page 1)
It took me more than a year to liberate the DTRA records. Some were redacted under a privacy exemption and the so-called deliberative process privilege, FOIA’s most abused exemption. Still, there’s a lot here. The documents provide a rare behind-the-scenes look into an escalating disinformation war during a critical two-month period after the Ukraine invasion.
One name that stands out prominently in the cache is Robert Pope, the director of DTRA’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program. On March 6, 2022, Pope forwarded an email to DTRA’s acting director, Rhys Williams. The email was from a Wall Street Journal reporter seeking comment on a Russian military spokesman’s assertion that Russia had “uncovered a biological weapons program in Ukraine funded by the US defense ministry that was destroyed on February 24.”
In the email, Pope said he’d suspected that his agency would eventually wind up in Russia’s crosshairs.
“We've been communicating with many of our partners on the disinformation since before the Russian invasion,” Pope wrote. “We will continue to do so and assess how we may need to adjust messaging or prioritization in anticipation of this latest Russian lie gaining traction.”
In the weeks after the invasion, the Biden administration coordinated a counter narrative through a flurry of fact sheets and slickly produced videos. But the records reveal how the US government struggled to combat the misinformation, especially once it was amplified by China.
“Our media monitors are seeing a substantial uptick in disinformation on” DTRA’s “projects in Ukraine -- from an average of 50 articles per day to over a thousand in the last 24 hours,” Pope wrote in a March 9 email to Williams. “We have also seen reporting from China's Foreign Ministry spokesman echoing Russian charges, which has received extensive coverage in both the Chinese and Russian news and social media circles.”
Click here to view the documents (page 798)
Frustration mounts
Pope’s response in subsequent emails gives a glimpse of the frustration unfolding inside DTRA. He expressed outrage at the attacks on the agency, and the growing number of news stories that maligned DTRA’s work. In an internal listserv, he also reminded colleagues of DTRA’s core mission.
Click here to view the documents (page 475)
For the next month, Pope and other senior officials coordinated with the White House National Security Council and the State Department on talking points to be used during public appearances.
Click here to view the documents (page 47)
However, officials from across the government appeared to have botched the messaging, according to the emails, which cited “weak answers” from then Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby.
Click here to view the documents (page 1124)
The Biden administration grew increasingly desperate as Russia’s information war evolved into a minor diplomatic crisis. On March 18, a White House official warned that Russia was preparing to spread the false Ukraine lab claims at a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting.
“Russia is convening the UNSC again this morning to launder its disinformation,” a White House official wrote in the email to Pope and a handful of other officials, whose names were redacted. “We'd like to explore with you some fresh, creative approaches to turning Russian disinformation upside down.”
A White House National Security Council call was held later that day to help prepare for a meeting the following week to “solicit good ideas from DoD on how to deal with the problem.”
But a summary of the meeting that was emailed to DTRA officials underscored the administration’s lack of preparedness.
“It was led by one junior staffer who recognized the problem - but was not deep at all on the topic,” according to the summary. “The entire discussion was about a narrow public affairs approach to the problem.”
Click here to view the documents (page 1156)
Pope believed the best way for DTRA to fight back was through the media. At first it appeared to work. A handful of news outlets published stories about the Russian disinformation campaign and featured on-the-record interviews with Pope, according to the emails.
But then things took a dark turn.
“Yesterday's propaganda dump from Russia includes several DTRA personnel by name, face, and bio,” Pope wrote to Williams. “Adding DTRA's security and counterintelligence leaders on the cc line for situational awareness.”
It’s unknown whether any of the personnel named in the “propaganda dump” were threatened or in physical danger. The documents don’t say, and DTRA didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Prank call to Powell
Speaking of Ukraine, remember last year when a pair of Russian pranksters posed as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and ended up on a call with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell? Well, I filed a FOIA request with the Federal Reserve Board for any relevant documents. The agency handed over some emails, which mostly consisted of correspondence with reporters seeking comment about the incident. An additional 120 pages were withheld “due to an ongoing investigation.”
In one of the emails, a spokesperson brushed off the incident when she was asked about it by a Fox News reporter, saying such prank calls had “happened to a number of other officials,” including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former President George W. Bush (and his father).
“I really hope that fox business might decide not to give fraudulent hoaxes more attention and legitimacy by further spreading their work,” the spokesperson wrote.
Click here to view the documents (page 1)
8. From Pizzagate to the 2020 Election: Forcing Liars to Pay or Apologize
From Pizzagate to the 2020 Election: Forcing Liars to Pay or Apologize
Michael J. Gottlieb is part of a cadre of lawyers deploying defamation, one of the oldest areas of the law, against a tide of political disinformation.
“I’ve always despised bullies that pick on defenseless or seemingly defenseless people,” said Michael J. Gottlieb, who has represented clients targeted by political disinformation.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/us/politics/defamation-lawsuits-michael-gottlieb.html
By Elizabeth Williamson
Elizabeth Williamson has covered the Sandy Hook families’ long court battle against Alex Jones for The Times and her book. She reported from Washington.
- Published March 31, 2024
- Updated April 3, 2024
Michael J. Gottlieb can never remember the exact amount — it’s $148,169,000— that a jury ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to pay the Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. But Ms. Freeman’s words after the December 2023 victory are indelible to him.
“Don’t waste your time being angry at those who did this to me and my daughter,” said Ms. Freeman, 65, who with her daughter Ms. Moss, 39, was falsely accused by Mr. Giuliani of aiding an imagined plot to steal the 2020 presidential election.
“We are more than conquerors.”
Less than a decade ago, the two women would have struggled to find a lawyer. But Mr. Gottlieb, a partner at the firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher and a former associate counsel in the Obama White House, represented them for free. Convinced that viral lies threaten public discourse and democracy, he is at the forefront of a small but growing cadre of lawyers deploying defamation, one of the oldest areas of the law, as a weapon against a tide of political disinformation.
Mr. Gottlieb has also represented the owner of the Washington pizzeria targeted by “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists as well as the brother of Seth Rich, a young Democratic National Committee staff member whose 2016 murder ignited bogus theories implicating his family. In the Giuliani case, Mr. Gottlieb, his law partner Meryl Governski and other members of his team worked with Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that pushes for laws and policies to counter what it sees as authoritarian threats.
Before the Trump era and the explosion of social media, though, such cases were virtually nonexistent.
“The new information landscape we’re in is a little bit like the Wild West — a lawless space,” said Ian Bassin, a co-founder of Protect Democracy. Lawyers, he said, have turned to defamation, which is legally defined as any false information, either published, broadcast or spoken, that harms the reputation of a person, business or organization. “It’s one of the most effective and only strategies for dealing with these out-and-out falsehoods,” Mr. Bassin said.
In the past few years, more than a dozen high-profile defamation cases have made their way through the courts. A majority have been brought against defendants on the right, but the right brings lawsuits too, often against media organizations.
In 2020 and 2021, The Washington Post, CNN and NBC settled a defamation case brought by Nick Sandmann, a Kentucky high school student, who said the outlets had wrongly described his encounter with a Native American elder as a racially tinged confrontation. Mr. Sandmann’s suit against other outlets, including The New York Times, ended last week when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Payouts have been particularly large for defamation cases against the right. In January the lawyer Roberta Kaplan defeated former President Donald J. Trump in court when a jury ordered him to pay $83 million for defaming her client, E. Jean Carroll, a writer he sexually abused. Last year lawyers from the firm Susman Godfrey secured a $787.5 million settlement for Dominion Voting Systems from Fox News, one of the biggest ever in a defamation case, after Fox aired bogus theories falsely linking the company to election fraud. In late 2022 Sandy Hook families defamed by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones won a total of nearly $1.5 billion from juries in Texas and Connecticut, though Mr. Jones has yet to pay them anything.
The Spread of Misinformation and Falsehoods
- Influencing the Election: Covert Chinese accounts are masquerading online as American supporters of Donald Trump, promoting conspiracy theories, stoking domestic divisions and attacking President Biden ahead of the election in November, according to researchers.
- Taking Political Lies to Court: A small but growing cadre of lawyers is deploying defamation, the legal concept of false information, against a tide of political disinformation in the Trump era.
- Unproven Rumors: Unsupported claims about celebrities and public figures, including Britney Spears and Catherine, Princess of Wales, keep gaining traction online. Whatever the motivation, what lingers is an urge to question reality.
- Mock News Sites: A handful of websites suggesting a focus on local news have cropped up in the United States, but they are Russian creations, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among crime, politics and culture stories.
In other cases, the people harmed, like Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, cannot afford lawyers or struggle to find firms willing to pursue defendants unable or resistant to paying big damages, like Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Gottlieb has tried to fill that gap.
Image
Shaye Moss, center, being comforted by her mother, Ruby Freeman, as she testified in a House committee hearing in 2022. Rudolph W. Giuliani was ordered to pay Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman $148 million late last year.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times
“The cost of bringing a defamation suit to trial can be enormous, often exceeding a quarter-million dollars’ worth of expenses, to say nothing of the value of attorney time,” said Mark Bankston, a lawyer for some of the Sandy Hook families defamed by Mr. Jones.
Mr. Gottlieb and his team refer to their cases as a “hobby” in service to those whose lives and reputations have been damaged by people with power and large online followings. “I’ve always despised bullies that pick on defenseless or seemingly defenseless people,” Mr. Gottlieb, 47, said in an interview in his K Street office in Washington. “There are so many ways to make your political points without endangering individual people’s lives.”
Mr. Gottlieb’s day job is filled with the powerful client list more typical of big Washington law firms. He has represented Venezuela’s Citgo petroleum company; helped the billionaire Steven A. Cohen beat a potential lifetime ban on managing client money after accusations of insider trading at Mr. Cohen’s former hedge fund; and worked with President Biden’s son Hunter on behalf of a Romanian real estate tycoon whose seven-year prison sentence for corruption was later vacated by a Romanian court.
“I understand there are definitely people who would say, ‘Wait a minute — litigation for Citgo is not the same as the litigation you’re doing for Ruby and Shaye,’” he said. “I feel fortunate to have had a career where I’ve had a wide variety of cases and have a practice that works different skill sets and different parts of my brain.”
“However people want to think about it and look at it is sort of fine with me.”
The Post-Truth World
Mr. Gottlieb, who was a clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens and served on an Obama administration anti-corruption task force in Afghanistan, had his first foray into the post-truth world in 2016. That was when Mr. Jones and his Infowars outlet spread the lie that Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party operatives were running a child sex trafficking ring out of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizzeria owned by James Alefantis.
In December of that year, a man who had been binging on Infowars “Pizzagate” episodes fired a rifle inside the restaurant. No one was injured, but the gunman’s trip to Washington to avenge an imagined crime foreshadowed a series of violent attacks by conspiracy theorists, including the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Image
Mr. Gottlieb represented the owner of Comet Ping Pong in Washington, who was targeted by “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists.Credit...Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times
Image
In another defamation case, Alex Jones was ordered by juries in Texas and Connecticut to pay almost $1.5 billion to the Sandy Hook families he defamed.Credit...Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
Mr. Jones insisted that the First Amendment protected the lies he had broadcast, like most defendants in these cases. But threatened with a lawsuit, he made an on-air retraction and removed all Pizzagate content from Infowars’ website and social media channels. The full settlement remains confidential.
Soon after the Pizzagate case, Mr. Gottlieb represented Aaron Rich, whose brother Seth Rich, 27, worked for the Democratic National Committee and was gunned down in a botched robbery in 2016. The case remains unsolved, and wild theories that Seth Rich was killed by Democrats spread from online fever swamps to Fox News. Aaron Rich and his parents were implicated in the plots, doxxed and harassed.
“If this had happened to me or my brother or sister and somebody was doing this to my parents, I would go ballistic,” Mr. Gottlieb said. “And no one was helping them.”
In 2018 Mr. Gottlieb and Aaron Rich sued The Washington Times as well as an internet provocateur, Matt Couch, and a businessman, Ed Butowsky, for spreading falsehoods that the two brothers had sold D.N.C. documents in a plot that resulted in Seth Rich’s murder. Mr. Rich eventually received a confidential settlement that included a retraction of the falsehoods spread by both men and the newspaper, as well as an apology to the Rich family. Mr. Rich’s parents retained Susman Godfrey and sued Fox News. They obtained a confidential cash settlement, but no apology.
The Rich case had taken years. At one point Mr. Gottlieb was named in a sweeping defamation lawsuit filed by one of the defendants, which was later dropped.
The aftermath of the 2020 election brought more calls from potential clients. Mr. Gottlieb appealed for help to Mr. Bassin, who had served with Mr. Gottlieb in the Obama White House Counsel’s Office.
The Georgia Case
Less than two months later, Mr. Gottlieb and his team were writing the complaint in Ruby Freeman, et al., v. Rudolph Giuliani.
Image
In December, a jury in federal court in Washington ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss $148 million.Credit...Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock
In his frenzied public scramble to make his case that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani, the former president’s lawyer, had spread the false story that Ms. Freeman and her daughter Ms. Moss had colluded to falsify results while counting ballots in Georgia. He falsely claimed that a video showing Ms. Freeman handing a small item to her daughter — a ginger mint — was the two women exchanging USB thumb drives “as if they’re vials of heroin and cocaine.”
Mr. Trump echoed the bogus allegations. In an infamous taped phone call with Georgia election officials, Mr. Trump named Ms. Freeman again and again, calling her a “professional vote scammer” and “hustler.”
Threats poured in to the two women. People called them traitors and, using racial slurs, demanded they be lynched or shot. Others banged on Ms. Freeman’s front door and lurked outside her home, forcing her into hiding. Ms. Moss had to give up her job as an election worker and struggled to find work.
Mr. Giuliani said he would prove his innocence. But he failed to submit court-ordered documents, testify or call witnesses. In the courtroom, he fiddled with his phone and rolled his eyes while the two women described their terror.
In December, a jury in federal court in Washington ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss the $148 million. The case was put on hold after Mr. Giuliani declared bankruptcy, and Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss are now suing Mr. Giuliani again, for his continued false statements about them.
Image
“Don’t waste your time being angry at those who did this to me and my daughter,” said Ms. Freeman. “We are more than conquerors.”Credit...Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock
Law for Truth, part of Protect Democracy, has in the meantime filed defamation suits against the makers of the election conspiracy theory film “2000 Mules”; James O’Keefe, the former leader of Project Veritas, a right-wing group known for its sting operations; and Kari Lake, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, on behalf of people smeared by lies Ms. Lake told about the 2020 election.
Despite the activity, lawyers who see themselves as crusaders against lies are not declaring victory. Their cases are high profile and target key disinformation spreaders, but they acknowledge that they do not put a dent in more general widespread disinformation, like false statements about Covid vaccines.
“I think these lawsuits may be effective in stemming some of the worst viral disinformation,” said Katie Fallow, a senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “But there may be limits to how effective these lawsuits can be when there are other incentives, particularly political ones, to keep spreading it.”
Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Read by Elizabeth Williamson
Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.
Elizabeth Williamson is a feature writer for The Times, based in Washington. She has been a journalist for three decades, on three continents. More about Elizabeth Williamson
A version of this article appears in print on April 2, 2024, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: From Pizzagate to 2020 Vote: Forcing Liars to Pay or Apologize. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
9. Opinion | How to start winning the information war
From the late Senator Lieberman. He was one of the last real politicians (along with Senator McCain). I wonder where we would be today if McCain had chosen Lieberman as his running mate in 2008.
As Matt Armstrong armies (and he will correct me if I am wrong) effect information operations requires leadership at the national level. The key is leadership and not simply organizations whether USIA or the GEC. But why have we not heard more from the Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy? The answer if elbow.
Excerpts:
When Congress abolished the USIA, it simultaneously created the office of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. The intent was for that office to continue all of the USIA’s activities except for news broadcasting. Unfortunately, the State Department has treated that office as an unwanted child for the past 24 years, underfunding it and leaving it vacant 40 percent of the time, rendering it virtually mute.
As a measure of the counternarrative lost when the USIA disappeared, its archives contain 20,000 films it produced. One even won an Oscar. The films were not newsreels; they were documentaries meant to persuade. They served as counternarrative to Soviet lies and distortion. Very little counternarrative in modern form — videos that could be disseminated on social media — has been produced since.
As an example of what could be, consider the excellent video “To the People of Russia,” produced by the office of Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Elizabeth M. Allen. It undermines Putin’s casting of the United States as an enemy by recalling with vivid news clips dramatic examples of Russian and American cooperation, from World War II to the exploration of space. And it supports Russian antiwar protesters. When the U.S. Embassy in Moscow tweeted the video early last year, it provoked a harsh and threatening response from the Kremlin.
The video was produced more than a year ago, and nothing like it has appeared since. That halting effort in counternarrative stands as a metaphor for the larger U.S. failure to engage seriously in the battle for human minds. The president and Congress should take note and act.
Opinion | How to start winning the information war
By Joseph I. Lieberman and Gordon J. Humphrey
April 2, 2024 at 11:41 a.m. EDT
The Washington Post · by Joseph I. Lieberman · April 2, 2024
Joseph I. Lieberman was a U.S. senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013 and the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000. Gordon J. Humphrey is a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire. Lieberman drafted this piece with Humphrey in the months before Lieberman died on March 27.
“Democracies are taking a battering,” the editorial board of The Post wrote in December. “Russia and China are running rings around us,” asserts former CIA director and defense secretary Robert M. Gates.
The Post and Gates have underscored our failure to go on the offensive in the information war by using counternarrative that asserts our values and ideals and explains the priceless advantages of freedom, the rule of law, a free press and freedom to assemble and express opinion. This failure has weakened national security and emboldened adversaries.
The regime of Vladimir Putin, for example, brazenly floods computers around the world daily with malicious falsehoods. Americans are particular targets of false narratives designed to sow confusion about our institutions — including our elections — and to undermine American confidence.
Formerly, we thought about national security in terms of battles on land, at sea and in the air. The newest battlefield is the human mind. Our adversaries are fully deployed on that field of battle. We are all but absent. Thus, we are losing the information war by default to malefactor regimes in Russia, China and Iran.
What explains this alarming state of affairs? Lack of leadership and lack of means. No one is in charge of telling America’s still-inspiring story to the world. For three years, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, part of the State Department, has urged the White House and Congress to designate a lead official in the information war. The recommendations appear to have been ignored. This reflects inattention at the very top.
As for lack of means, since 1999, when Congress unwisely abolished the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the United States has lacked the capability to fight back using counternarrative. We have the invaluable Voice of America, of course, but VOA’s product is news. News is not counternarrative. It is not the marshaling of truth and fact to tell our story. Putin’s high standing in domestic polls and in some nonaligned countries is proof we need more than news to achieve victory on the battlefield of the human mind. We need counternarrative as well.
Joe Biden was one of 49 senators who voted against abolishing the USIA. It should be an easy walk for the president to take the steps necessary to get us on the offensive.
The president should immediately require the National Security Council to produce a strategic plan that puts us on the offensive, a plan that includes the use of counternarrative. He should designate the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs with responsibility for executing the plan and ask Congress to fund it robustly. And he should take a personal interest and stay involved.
The personal involvement of President Ronald Reagan in using counternarrative to help win the Cold War is instructive. Reagan appointed a longtime California friend, Charles Z. Wick, who had experience in the motion picture industry, as USIA director. His access was such that Reagan afterward called him “my principal adviser on international information.”
When Congress abolished the USIA, it simultaneously created the office of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. The intent was for that office to continue all of the USIA’s activities except for news broadcasting. Unfortunately, the State Department has treated that office as an unwanted child for the past 24 years, underfunding it and leaving it vacant 40 percent of the time, rendering it virtually mute.
As a measure of the counternarrative lost when the USIA disappeared, its archives contain 20,000 films it produced. One even won an Oscar. The films were not newsreels; they were documentaries meant to persuade. They served as counternarrative to Soviet lies and distortion. Very little counternarrative in modern form — videos that could be disseminated on social media — has been produced since.
As an example of what could be, consider the excellent video “To the People of Russia,” produced by the office of Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Elizabeth M. Allen. It undermines Putin’s casting of the United States as an enemy by recalling with vivid news clips dramatic examples of Russian and American cooperation, from World War II to the exploration of space. And it supports Russian antiwar protesters. When the U.S. Embassy in Moscow tweeted the video early last year, it provoked a harsh and threatening response from the Kremlin.
The video was produced more than a year ago, and nothing like it has appeared since. That halting effort in counternarrative stands as a metaphor for the larger U.S. failure to engage seriously in the battle for human minds. The president and Congress should take note and act.
The Washington Post · by Joseph I. Lieberman · April 2, 2024
10. Power by Proxy: How Iran Shapes the Mideast
Maps/graphics at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/06/world/middleeast/iran-hamas-hezbollah-houthis-iraq.html
Power by Proxy: How Iran Shapes the Mideast
By Alissa J. Rubin and Lazaro Gamio April 6, 2024
The New York Times · by Lazaro Gamio · April 6, 2024
For years, Iran has been the outsider.
Predominantly Persian-speaking in a region where most people speak Arabic, overwhelmingly Shiite where most are Sunni, it has been crippled by Western sanctions meant to make it a pariah.
Yet Iran has succeeded in projecting its military power across a large swath of the Middle East. Its reach equals — if not eclipses — that of traditional power centers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
And now, spurred by the war in the Gaza Strip, armed groups that Iran has fostered over the past 45 years have mobilized simultaneously toward similar goals: diminishing Israeli power and confronting its closest ally, the United States.
Iran has tried to capitalize on its outsider position by seeking out disempowered Shiite populations and offering to train and arm them, and by working with the sympathetic government of Syria.
The shadow war between Israel and Iran broke into the open this week, when Israel struck an Iranian Embassy compound in Syria and killed seven Iranian commanders, renewing fears of a broader conflict. Iran has promised to retaliate, but the calculus is tricky: The Iranians want to avoid igniting a full-fledged war that might drag in the United States and threaten the survival of Iran’s regime.
Altogether, Iran now supports more than 20 groups in the Middle East, directly or indirectly, with a combination of arms, training and financial aid. The United States has designated them as foreign terrorist organizations, and many of their leaders have been hit by sanctions, as has Tehran.
While they are often lumped together, and they do in fact share many of Iran’s goals, these groups also have some purely local interests. And, with a few exceptions, Iran does not completely control them.
Here is a look at the most prominent of the armed groups backed by Iran.
Hamas
A close ally, it gives Tehran a direct link to the Palestinian struggle, a cause that resonates across the Arab world.
The New York Times
Hamas dominates the Palestinian guerrilla fight against Israel that is based in the Gaza enclave, which their political wing took control of in 2007.
Recent actions
On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza, killing roughly 1,200 people, including women and children, according to Israeli authorities, and taking more than 200 hostages.
Since its creation in 1987, Hamas has launched numerous strikes on Israel, often working with another Iranian-backed militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In 2021, the two groups fired 4,000 rockets into Israel over an 11-day period.
How they are linked to Iran
U.S. officials do not believe that Iran initiated the Hamas attack or that it had even been informed about it in advance.
But Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad together receive more than $100 million a year from Tehran in addition to weapons and training, according to a 2020 U.S. State Department report. In a 2022 interview, Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said Hamas received about $70 million a year.
Iran has not just provided weapons and training to both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, it has also taught Hamas to make and assemble its own weapons from local supplies.
Although Hamas and other Palestinian groups follow the Sunni branch of Islam and have a different political orientation from Iran, they share antagonism for Israel and anger over the legacy of Western colonialism.
Iran’s outreach to Hamas began in Lebanon in the early 1990s after Israel forced hundreds of Palestinians, including Hamas leaders, to go there. In Lebanon, Hamas adherents quickly forged ties with members of another militia, Hezbollah, Shiite Muslims whose links to Iran were already well established. Through Hezbollah, Hamas became connected to Iran.
At times, however, that relationship has ruptured.
During the Arab Spring of 2011, Hamas backed the anti-government forces in Syria while Iran backed President Bashar al-Assad. And in 2015, Hamas leaned toward supporting Saudi Arabia against the Houthi forces in Yemen favored by Iran.
But since then, there has been a rapprochement both between the Hamas leadership and Mr. Assad, and between Hamas and the Houthis.
Military capabilities
For the most part, Hamas is equipped with comparatively unsophisticated weapons — but quantity makes up for what the group’s arsenal lacks in quality.
Before the war Hamas had thousands of short-range and medium-range rockets that can travel at least 125 miles. From Gaza, some of them can reach as far as the Israeli cities of Eilat and Haifa, as well as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
It also has a large number of Russian-made, portable anti-tank missiles, which the group has used against Israeli troops in Gaza in recent months, according to weapon experts. And it has drones that it has used to attack Israeli tanks and communication nodes.
Within Gaza, Hamas has the ability to manufacture and assemble at least some of these weapons, using parts from Iran, as well as from China and Russia. It is not clear if those countries supplied them or if they were obtained through Iran and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah
The largest, oldest and best-trained Iranian proxy group in the Middle East.
The New York Times
Hezbollah, a Shiite organization, has become the predominant political and military power in Lebanon.
Recent actions
Hezbollah, a longtime antagonist of Israel’s, began turning up the pressure on Israel’s border after the war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, launching strikes across the border. Israel has counterattacked, and many civilians on both sides of the border have been forced to flee their homes.
The most sustained conflict between Hezbollah and Israel was in 2006. That fight made clear how formidable Hezbollah forces had become, but it took a deep toll on the Lebanese, killing more than a thousand people, mostly civilians, and displacing more than 900,000.
How they are linked to Iran
Hezbollah receives significant financial support from Iran, though the exact amount is hard to ascertain. One U.S. official testifying in 2018 put the amount at $700 million, but offered no evidence for that number. However, Iran’s cash support for Hezbollah has diminished over time, reflecting the impact of long-term sanctions coupled with the more recent intense sanctions ordered by President Donald J. Trump and maintained by President Biden.
Iran has nevertheless been able to maintain its backing for Hezbollah in many other ways. It continues, for example, to provide not just arms but also sophisticated technological know-how so that Hezbollah engineers can manufacture weapons locally. The ability to produce its own weapons has made Hezbollah into one of the best-supplied militias in the Middle East.
Experts on Iranian military strategy say that Tehran views Hezbollah forces in Lebanon as its first line of defense should Israel attack Iran.
Iran’s ties to Hezbollah date to Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, which started in 1975. By 1980, Lebanese Shiite Muslims, inspired in part by Iran, had begun an armed struggle against the Israeli military presence in southern Lebanon.
There were many reasons for Iran to aid the fighters, analysts say, but one big one was that doing so presented an opportunity for it to insert itself back into the political fabric of the Arab Middle East. A war with Iraq had left it cut off from much of the region, and especially from Sunni Muslim rulers wary of Iranian leaders.
Military capabilities
Estimates by the U.S. military and arms experts put Hezbollah’s arsenal, the largest of the Iranian-linked groups, at about 135,000 to 150,000 rockets and missiles. Others estimate it is even larger. With ranges of up to 200 or so miles, they allow the militants to reach targets deep inside Israel.
Among the weapons, analysts estimate, are between 100 to 400 recently retrofitted missiles with precision-guidance systems that can be programmed to land within meters of their targets. The technology is predominantly Iranian and Russian, though it is sometimes modified by Hezbollah’s weapon experts.
Military analysts view Hezbollah’s fighting force as more disciplined, better trained and better organized than most Middle East armies. It is made up of about 30,000 troops and 20,000 reservists. And, according to analysts, it has the ability to quickly recruit and train thousands of new foot soldiers through its role as a political power and a social-service provider in many Lebanese communities.
The Houthis
A recent addition to Iran’s network of allies, these militants have been attacking vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a major shipping route.
The New York Times; Area of control via the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute
The Houthis became the de facto rulers of Yemen after taking control of the capital in 2014. They now control about a third of the country, home to 70 to 80 percent of the population, according to U.S. officials.
Recent actions
A Houthi attack on March 6 in the Red Sea killed three seamen, wounded four others and damaged their Barbados-flagged cargo ship so badly that it sank. Other Houthi strikes have targeted vessels owned by Britain and Greece.
Since the war in Gaza broke out, the Houthis, expressing solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, have launched more than 60 missile and drone strikes on ships transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since the day the war in Gaza began, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The attacks have affected commerce worldwide. Shipping through the Red Sea and Suez Canal has dropped at least 50 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. Some industry analysts say the decrease is closer to 80 percent.
Ports in southern Mediterranean countries are feeling the losses most acutely. Houthi missiles have also targeted Israel’s southern port of Eilat.
Before the war, the Houthis attacked targets in the United Arab Emirates and in Saudi Arabia.
How they are linked to Iran
For the most part, the Houthis receive weapons and training from Iran instead of direct financial support, but experts say they have also received narcotics, and, in the past, some petroleum products, both of which can be resold, giving the Houthis needed cash. In December 2023, the U.S. Treasury placed sanctions on individuals and on money exchanges in Iran, Turkey and Yemen that were involved in transferring millions of dollars from Iran to the Houthis.
The Houthis share Iran’s adherence to Shiite Islam as well as its antipathy for Saudi Arabia. During Yemen’s civil war, Iran and Hezbollah helped the Houthis fight against both the Yemeni government and its Saudi backers.
Military capabilities
Estimates vary widely on the Houthi militia’s manpower and the size of its arsenal.
Experts say it has about 20,000 trained fighters, but in interviews, Houthi leaders have claimed to have as many as 200,000, and in 2015 the United Nations put the number at about 75,000.
What is clear, based on the recent attacks, is that the Houthis have some highly trained units adept at operating increasingly sophisticated drones as well as anti-ship ballistic missiles and missiles intended for stationary targets on land.
Most of the anti-ship missiles and drones have been intercepted by U.S. or British warships or have fallen into the sea without doing damage.
But the Houthis have hit their targets often enough to increase risks and insurance costs, leading many major shippers to avoid the Red Sea route. Container traffic through the Red Sea has dropped 70 to 80 percent. That has meant a noticeable reduction in business at some European ports.
The European shipping giants Maersk, based in Denmark, and Hapag-Lloyd, based in Germany, are routing most of their loads around the Cape of Good Hope despite the added delivery time and cost. Those companies continuing to thread their way through the Red Sea are relying primarily on U.S. and European navies for protection.
According to a recent U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report and a United Nations report, many of the Houthis’ weapons are either Iranian or variations on Iranian models. They have used ballistic and cruise missiles to hit targets in southern Israel, more than 1,000 miles away.
Most recently, the Houthis have deployed sea drones, some that skim the water and others that travel under the surface. The underwater ones are considered to be relatively advanced weaponry, according to Western intelligence analysts and the U.S. Naval Institute.
Iraqi Armed Groups
Iran has secured far-reaching influence on its neighbor and is a power both in Iraqi politics and in business across most of the country.
The New York Times; Approximate areas of activity based on data from the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute
For nearly 20 years, Iraq has been a breeding ground for increasingly powerful Shiite militant groups. While they are less known than Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, they have been just as determined to strike U.S. targets.
Four in particular have had a hand in a number of the attacks in recent years: Kata’ib Hezbollah (which is unrelated to Hezbollah in Lebanon), Harakat al Nujaba, Kata’ib Sayyid al Shuhada and Asa’ib Ahl al Haq.
Recent actions
As war flared in Gaza in October, two of those groups turned up their strikes on American positions in Iraq. Kata’ib Hezbollah and Harakat al Nujaba launched 166 attacks on U.S. military installations in Iraq and Syria, according to a Pentagon spokesman.
The early attacks wounded about 70 troops, with most of the injuries relatively minor. On Jan. 28, however, a strike on a resupply base on the Jordanian-Syrian border killed three U.S. troops and wounded more than 34.
How they are linked to Iran
The Iraqi groups’ links to Iran go back almost two decades, and over the years Tehran has given them money, weapons and training.
Today, Iran still provides training and weapon parts as well as technical and strategic support. The Shiite groups, however, are now part of the Iraqi government’s security apparatus under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces, which includes more than 35 armed groups. The Iraqi government covers the salaries of most of the rank and file. It is unclear if Iran augments the salaries for commanders and the groups’ leadership.
Iran is believed not to dictate the groups’ targets or the timing of their attacks, but it does have some sway in persuading them to hold fire.
That is what happened after the deadly strike on the U.S. resupply base in January. Iran reportedly put intense pressure on the groups in Iraq to halt their strikes on U.S. camps and installations. The groups reluctantly agreed, although some continued to carry out occasional attacks in Syria and Israel.
Military capabilities
Kata’ib Hezbollah, which analysts estimate has between 10,000 and 30,000 fighters, uses drones, rockets and missiles with ranges of up to about 700 miles, according to the U.S. Central Command.
With Iran’s help, the group has gained the capacity to retrofit missiles to make them more accurate. It also has a variety of attack drones, including ones that can travel up to 450 miles. A drone was used in the attack on the resupply base that killed three American troops.
Harakat al Nujaba and Kata’ib Sayyid al Shuhada have fewer troops — analysts estimate their troop numbers are closer to 1,000 to 5,000 — but use similar weapons. They operate primarily in Syria and have attacked Israel.
Syrian Armed Groups
Nowhere has Iran given more resources to a regional government than Syria, which has been at war for over a decade.
The New York Times; Approximate areas of activity based on data from the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute
Tehran has spread its resources widely, backing armed elements both outside and within the Syrian government. In contrast to Lebanon, where Iran has focused its efforts on a nonstate armed entity, in Syria the support has gone to both government and nongovernmental armed actors.
Two are proxy groups made up of fighters recruited in Iran and entirely controlled by the Quds Force, the external military and intelligence service of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Others are local forces made up of fellow Shiite Muslims, of Sunnis or of a mix of the Sunni, Shiite, Alawite and Christian faiths.
How they are linked to Iran
Iran has helped prop up President Bashar al-Assad in numerous ways, including through billions of dollars in loans to the government, supplies of discounted oil and payments to help sustain Syria’s military forces.
The Revolutionary Guards also field at least two militias in Syria: the Fatemiyoun brigade, made up of Afghan refugees, and the Zainebiyoun brigade, made up of Pakistani refugees. They reportedly pay other armed contingents more modest salaries.
Iran’s involvement in Syria goes back to just after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when Syria supported the new government in Tehran as others shunned it. Iran sees Syria as a strategic partner offering it overland access to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Military capabilities
Syria is also where Iranian-backed forces retrofit, manufacture and store weapons that Iran then distributes to armed groups in Syria and around the region, above all Hezbollah. Over the past 12 to 15 years, at Iran’s behest, the Syrian government has retooled some of its weapon facilities into production centers for retrofitting midrange rockets and missiles with precision-guidance systems, according to Israeli defense and intelligence reports.
The existence of these sites, some of which are underground for protection, became public in 2022 when an Israeli defense minister, Benny Gantz, spoke out about them after Israel bombed Syria and the strikes set off secondary explosions. The United States has also bombed Iranian weapon stores in Syria.
Syria also has a history of chemical-weapon production dating to the 1970s and of short- and midrange missiles adapted for their delivery, according to French intelligence officials. In 2023, the U.N. Security Council concluded that Syria still had chemical-weapon stores despite numerous international efforts to compel the government to destroy them.
The New York Times · by Lazaro Gamio · April 6, 2024
11. Have we entered the age of AI warfare?
Excerpts:
International efforts, such as the US-led Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, have aimed to establish guidelines for the ethical deployment of AI in warfare, said Forbes. More than 50 countries have signed the declaration, which states that military use of AI must comply with international and humanitarian law and attempt to "minimize unintended bias and accidents".
But Israel is not a signatory to the non-binding declaration, nor are Russia, China and other major world powers. "Perhaps what is emerging about AI's role in Gaza will encourage the world to negotiate an actual treaty on such things," said Forbes.
"Autonomous weapons are an early test of humanity's ability to deal with weaponized AI, more dangerous forms of which are coming," said Paul Scharre, the director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, on Foreign Affairs. "Global cooperation is urgently needed to govern their improvement, limit their proliferation, and guard against their potential use."
Have we entered the age of AI warfare?
The Week · by Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK · April 5, 2024
(Image credit: Illustration by Stephen Kelly / Getty Images)
By
published 5 April 2024
The Israeli military allegedly used an artificial intelligence system to identify potential Palestinian targets in Gaza based on apparent links to Hamas, according to an Israeli media investigation citing military intelligence sources.
The AI system, called Lavender, at one point identified up to 37,000 Palestinians as potential Hamas militants and targets for possible air strikes. The claim comes from the testimony of six alleged Israeli intelligence officers given to Israel-based media organisations +972 Magazine and Local Call.
According to +972 Magazine, the Israeli army gave "sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists" in the early stages of the war. There was "no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based".
Israel's alleged use of powerful AI systems in its war on Hamas "has entered uncharted territory for advanced warfare". It not only raises a "host of legal and moral questions" but it is also "transforming the relationship between military personnel and machines", said The Guardian.
One source told +972 Magazine that military personnel served only as a "rubber stamp" for Lavender's decisions, with about "20 seconds" devoted to each target before a bombing was authorised. This was despite knowledge that the system produced "errors" in about 10% of cases, and was "known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all", said the magazine.
The Israeli military has strongly denied the claims. "The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] outright rejects the claim regarding any policy to kill tens of thousands of people in their homes," it said in response to the allegations.
It said that the Lavender system was "simply a database whose purpose is to cross-reference intelligence sources, to produce up-to-date layers of information on the military operatives of terrorist organisations".
The supposed utilisation of powerful AI systems, such as Lavender, has enabled life-or-death decision-making processes based on "statistical mechanisms", said The Guardian, rather than human emotion and human-led decision-making. As one intelligence officer who allegedly used Lavender told the paper: "The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier."
"Technological innovation has always changed warcraft," said Andreas Kluth on Bloomberg in March. "It's been that way since the arrival of chariots, stirrups, gunpowder, nukes and nowadays drones, as Ukrainians and Russians are demonstrating every day." The most pressing "existential" question over the use of AI in warfare is now less about AI itself, and more to do with the level of human oversight. "Will the algorithm assist soldiers, officers and commanders, or replace them?"
The deployment of AI-enabled weapon systems has profound implications for the future of warfare, according to Dr Elke Schwarz, lecturer in political theory at Queen Mary, University of London. It may lead to the "objectification of human targets, leading to heightened tolerance for collateral damage" as well as weakening moral agency among operators of AI-enabled targeting systems, "diminishing their capacity for ethical decision-making" in the heat of battle.
"We don't want to get to a point where AI is used to make a decision to take a life when no human can be held responsible for that decision", said Dr Schwarz.
What next?
International efforts, such as the US-led Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, have aimed to establish guidelines for the ethical deployment of AI in warfare, said Forbes. More than 50 countries have signed the declaration, which states that military use of AI must comply with international and humanitarian law and attempt to "minimize unintended bias and accidents".
But Israel is not a signatory to the non-binding declaration, nor are Russia, China and other major world powers. "Perhaps what is emerging about AI's role in Gaza will encourage the world to negotiate an actual treaty on such things," said Forbes.
"Autonomous weapons are an early test of humanity's ability to deal with weaponized AI, more dangerous forms of which are coming," said Paul Scharre, the director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, on Foreign Affairs. "Global cooperation is urgently needed to govern their improvement, limit their proliferation, and guard against their potential use."
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Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK
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Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.
12. Stuck in Gaza
Excerpts:
For now, Netanyahu and Biden seem to be trying to wait each other out, hoping that the other will leave office and thus make his country more cooperative. The Biden administration’s decision to allow a cease-fire resolution to go through the UN is a good first step. Biden’s suggestion that further U.S. aid to Israel would be conditioned on a course correction in Gaza, a threat made during a tense phone call with Netanyahu, was also promising. Similar signaling is necessary—for example, more public statements from the president and other senior officials on the need for a cease-fire as part of a hostage exchange—as is continuing to press against the Rafah invasion.
The United States often has trouble influencing small allies when its vital interests are at stake. That is why in years past leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq often ignored U.S. requests even when the United States had thousands of troops helping secure peace in their countries. It is why today Ukraine often ignores U.S. military advice and why Taiwanese leaders at times flirt with declaring independence despite U.S. pressure not to do so. The same is true of Israel. The country sees itself as fighting an existential fight in Gaza, and its prime minister is locked in a struggle for political survival, so it is unlikely to accommodate itself to Washington.
But even though the United States’ influence is limited, it does exist. After half a year of nearly steadfast support, it’s time for the Biden administration to firmly push Israel in the direction it should go anyway. Honesty is what friends owe friends.
Stuck in Gaza
Six Months After October 7, Israel Still Lacks a Viable Strategy
April 5, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by Daniel Byman · April 5, 2024
Six months after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Israel seems stuck. Its war in Gaza has inflicted grievous blows on Hamas, and the group is unlikely to be able to carry out another comparable attack for some time, if ever. The price for this success is high, however, both in terms of Palestinian lives and Israel’s reputation. Israel remains far from its goal of destroying Hamas, and it seems trapped in a military campaign that is likely to make only incremental progress at huge cost.
After October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swore to “destroy Hamas” by killing its leaders, shattering its military forces, and demolishing its infrastructure. He has vowed to prevent another such attack and promised to seek the return of the hostages Hamas took, including the bodies of those who are dead. And he has made clear that he wants to ensure that Israel’s other enemies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, are deterred from attacking.
Although Israel has hit Hamas hard, it has failed to set the stage for a new, successful government in Gaza, a prerequisite for keeping Hamas down in the long run. And despite pressure from Washington, Israel appears to be doubling down on its current short-term approach, planning a major operation in the city of Rafah that would offer only marginal military gains but would exacerbate Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and further diminish Israel’s reputation. Because Israel’s current leaders don’t seem to care about answering the question of who will govern Gaza, the best one can hope for in the next six months is that Israel dials down the intensity of its violence in Gaza while dialing up the amount of aid flowing in. But this approach will satisfy neither Israelis nor Palestinians.
A GLASS HALF FULL?
Israel has made significant progress toward its goal of destroying Hamas. The Israeli military claims that its operations have forced 18 of Hamas’s 24 battalions to disband. Israel has also killed several of the group’s top military leaders, including Marwan Issa, who helped plan the October 7 attack and was perhaps the third most important Hamas leader in Gaza. And Israeli forces have destroyed many of Hamas’s tunnels, fortified positions, and arms depots.
A repeat of October 7 is unlikely not just because Hamas’s forces are weak but also because Israel has been shaken from its complacency. More than a year before the attack, Israeli intelligence had intercepted Hamas’s battle plan and, after that, identified specific indicators that the plan was in motion. Had Israel acted on that intelligence—by attacking fighters as they were gathering, sending even a few helicopters to the border, or reinforcing garrisons in southern Israel—Hamas would have failed. Since October 7, however, Israel has become hyperalert to the threat, and the danger now is not complacency but overreaction. It’s easy to imagine Israeli forces striking hard and fast when even a glimmer of intelligence suggesting a Hamas attack appears, with little concern about validating the information first.
When it comes to Israel’s other enemies, deterrence appears to be holding. Hezbollah, perhaps Israel’s fiercest foe, has moved cautiously in its back-and-forth with Israel along the Lebanese border, in large part because it fears that if it doesn’t, its strongholds in Beirut may end up looking like Gaza. When Israel has struck Hezbollah-linked targets in Syria and in the process killed Syrian soldiers, as it did in March, the regime of Bashar al-Assad has protested but done little else.
Even now, after six months of war, Israelis remain willing to sacrifice: over 200 Israeli soldiers have died during the campaign, a high number for the casualty-averse country. The scale and horrific nature of October 7, including widespread sexual violence, generated a strong will to fight. Immediately after the attack, Israel called up around 300,000 reserves. Although many of these Israelis have ended their service, some are still mobilized, and Israel plans to lengthen service in the future despite the cost to the Israeli economy and the disruption to ordinary Israelis’ lives. “Destroying Hamas” may be a strategic bumper sticker—a vague slogan—but it remains popular.
OR HALF EMPTY?
Yet despite these accomplishments, Israel’s military campaign is sputtering. Killing Issa dealt Hamas a blow, but the two most prominent leaders, Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar, remain at large. Although Hamas’s battalion structure has been hit hard and the group may not be able to fight in large formations, it is far from crushed. Hamas still has thousands of fighters under arms. Its members now fight in smaller groups, with bands of a dozen or less attacking Israeli forces and then hiding in the rubble, darting into the remaining tunnels, or blending in with the civilian population.
Perhaps Israel’s biggest failure concerns the hostages. The release of 112 hostages and rescue of several more left 130 in Hamas’s hands. The Israeli government has announced that 34 of those are presumed dead, and it’s possible that far more have perished. Hamas claims that Israeli military operations have killed over 70 hostages. The same tunnels that hide Hamas’s fighters and leaders also hide its captives, and it is hard to target Gaza as extensively as Israel has done without inadvertently killing some of them. There is no simple answer to the hostage conundrum. Almost all Israelis want to hit Hamas hard, but the country is split between those who are willing to embrace a cease-fire so the hostages can be returned and those, including Netanyahu, who would rather risk the hostages’ lives than let up on Hamas.
If Hamas regained power, it would try to siphon off aid to rebuild at least some of its infrastructure and recruit new military forces. Thus, destroying Hamas also means destroying its political power, and you can’t beat something with nothing. But whatever damage Hamas’s military has suffered, the group remains popular compared with its rivals. Most Palestinians see the October 7 attack as justified, including 71 percent of people in Gaza. Although polls suggest that Palestinians are disillusioned with all the current factions, Hamas is more than twice as popular as its chief rival, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which holds sway in the West Bank.
Israel’s tactical successes have come at a huge human cost. Over 32,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza, many of them children. Over 1.7 million people have been displaced, and much of the population is at risk of famine and disease. Beyond the carnage of the war itself, Israel has put in place numerous burdensome procedures for aid to reach Gaza, reducing them only slowly in the face of international criticism. The problem is even worse within the strip itself, where the absence of a government makes it hard to distribute aid to the neediest.
Israel has failed to set the stage for a new, successful government in Gaza.
As a result, Israel’s international reputation is suffering. Citing Israel’s seeming indifference to the human costs of its war, European officials are increasingly criticizing the country, with polls showing that European publics are less and less supportive, too. For the last decade, Israel has focused not on courting the West but on normalizing relationships with pro-Western Arab states, with Saudi Arabia as the prize. Now, however, Arab governments that made peace with Israel, such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, are under pressure from their own people, who express outrage at Israel’s campaign in Gaza and its broader treatment of the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia, which had been exploring normalization with Israel before October 7, now insists that Israel must first agree to a plan for a Palestinian state before talks can resume.
Support from the United States, Israel’s most important ally, has also fallen. Among Americans in general, favorable views of Israel have declined from 68 percent to 58 percent over the past year. The decline is even sharper among younger Americans, where favorability has fallen by a staggering 26 percentage points, dropping from 64 percent to 38 percent. The Gaza war may be setting the stage for a generational shift in U.S. foreign policy. Democratic voters now evince more sympathy for the Palestinians than the Israelis. President Joe Biden, who in the days after October 7 strongly sided with Israel, is now steadily becoming more critical. In early March, his administration declined to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for a lasting cease-fire in Gaza.
Although the war is popular in Israel, the Netanyahu government is embattled, and its political weakness has profound consequences for the fight against Hamas. Before October 7, antigovernment protests had swept much of Israel, and concerns about the Netanyahu government’s far-right agenda, such as its plan to weaken the Israeli judiciary, endure. Netanyahu himself faces corruption charges even as the war goes on, and he is desperate to keep his coalition together. If an election were held today, polls indicate he would lose to his rival, Benny Gantz of the National Unity party, who is currently serving in Netanyahu’s war cabinet.
To ensure a united political coalition and thus avoid an election in the near term, Netanyahu has opposed a cease-fire and otherwise tried to keep the far right happy, resisting calls for more religious Israelis to serve in the military and distributing arms to far-right settlers in the West Bank. Extremist ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir not only oppose a cease-fire with Hamas, they also rabidly oppose the PA. Their dislike of the group explains why Netanyahu has rejected calls for the PA to play a role in governing postwar Gaza—a stance that puts him directly in opposition with the United States.
Netanyahu also rejects Palestinian sovereignty in general. In a January news conference, he criticized U.S. calls for a pathway to a Palestinian state and vowed that Israel would maintain “security control” over the West Bank, explaining his logic this way: “All territory we evacuate, we get terror, terrible terror against us.” That position pleases Israel’s far right, but it antagonizes Arab states that, however much they hate Hamas, still need to listen to popular demands for Palestinian rights. It also falls flat with many Western leaders who have spent decades pushing a two-state solution.
THE WAR GOES ON
Some of the problems Israel is encountering in Gaza were inevitable. Given the scale of the violence on October 7, it would have been impossible for any Israeli leader not to have ordered at least a limited, short-term invasion of Gaza. And a campaign in Gaza was always bound to be fraught. With its high population density, the strip is an extraordinarily difficult place to run sustained military operations. There is no easy way to move civilians out of harm’s way, and Hamas’s willingness to hide among civilians made considerable Palestinian casualties inevitable.
But even so, there were missed opportunities. Israel could have allowed far more aid to flow to Gaza to alleviate some of the humanitarian cost and fend off international criticism that it was punishing noncombatants. It could have embraced a cease-fire (beyond the seven-day one in November) as part of a hostage exchange, which would not only have perhaps freed more prisoners but also helped the country regain international support. And it could have kept its military operations in Gaza more precise and more limited, reducing civilian casualties. All these steps, of course, would have given Hamas more breathing room, which is why Israel avoided taking them. Perhaps most important, if least politically realistic, both before and after October 7, Israel could have supported a Palestinian alternative to Hamas as a government of Gaza, working with Arab states to ensure its legitimacy and international partners to fund it. Hamas would have hated this step—but so would the Israeli right, a coalition Netanyahu has determined he cannot ignore.
Such counterfactuals aside, it is questionable that Israel’s actual, hard-hitting approach can achieve much more on the ground in a way that would significantly change the overall picture in the coming months. In March, the Netanyahu government approved a plan to attack Rafah, the final Hamas stronghold in Gaza where over a million displaced Palestinians have now sought refuge. If the government goes through with the plan, Israeli forces could presumably kill more fighters and maybe even finally corner Sinwar, Deif, or both. They would do so, however, at a massive cost to Gaza’s civilians, who have nowhere left to go and are at risk of starvation and disease. And although killing Deif and Sinwar would provide some catharsis for Israelis (and political benefit for Netanyahu), the tactical benefit would be limited: Hamas has a deep bench of leaders it can draw from to replace those it has lost.
More important, permanently uprooting Hamas requires a different government in Gaza, one that can rule for years and, in the process, displace Hamas’s role in providing law and order, social services, and other essentials. Failing to establish that sort of government means that in the event of an Israeli withdrawal, even a few thousand fighters—and Hamas currently boasts far more than a few thousand—could easily reestablish Hamas’s control, especially given the credibility the organization has gained in its latest fight with Israel. Without a strong force replacing Hamas throughout Gaza, the group will try to reestablish itself in weakly controlled areas. Israel already got a glimpse of this problem in March, when Hamas fighters regrouped in al Shifa hospital, which Israel had previously cleared at the cost of much opprobrium, forcing Israeli forces to attack the facility once again.
Some of the problems Israel is encountering in Gaza were inevitable.
A new government in Gaza, however, would be very hard to establish. The PA is the best bet, and it remains the Biden administration’s preferred postwar ruler. But the PA is corrupt and illegitimate, as well as discredited by its longtime failure to wrest meaningful concessions from Israel. Even with revitalized leadership, Hamas would oppose it in Gaza, especially if it sought to displace the group rather than simply provide basic services. A PA government in Gaza would need billions of dollars in outside support to hold on to power and years to establish itself as an independent source of authority. But Netanyahu rejects even this modest proposal.
The result, then, is a military campaign facing diminishing returns but no plan for what comes next. No one is governing the Gaza Strip now. Should Israeli forces largely or entirely withdraw, it is possible that Gaza becomes akin to a failed state, with a mix of local leaders, warlords, and tribes ruling different areas, or simply no one in charge at all—as has already begun to happen in much of the strip. Such a situation wouldn’t rock the far-right coalition, because it doesn’t offer any hope of greater Palestinian autonomy, but it also won’t solve the problem of who will govern Gaza.
Israeli military forces thus are likely to stay in Gaza for a long time to come. Even if Israel and Hamas agree to a cease-fire as part of a hostage release, it probably won’t last indefinitely, since Israeli forces are likely to conduct regular attacks to keep Hamas off balance, as nothing else would prevent the group from again consolidating power, at least in select areas, in the absence of an alternative government. In this scenario, which may already be coming to fruition, the meager hope is that the conflict transforms into simply a more limited war. Israeli forces would incur far fewer casualties, while Palestinians in Gaza would benefit from less violence and more aid. As the conflict settled down and the humanitarian catastrophe eased, Israel would hope that world headlines would move on from Gaza. At that point, perhaps the country could restart normalization talks with Saudi Arabia and mend its relationship with Washington.
If this scenario comes to pass, day-to-day life for Palestinians would go from horrific to miserable, an improvement but hardly a satisfying one. Hamas, meanwhile, would gain breathing room as Israeli operations diminish but still not be able to return to power in the face of regular raids and bombing campaigns. Gaza would remain a war zone, and any serious rebuilding would still have to wait.
TIME FOR PRESSURE
Israeli society as a whole, not just Netanyahu and his right-wing allies, is committed to crushing Hamas, and it will be difficult to force the government to change its self-defeating approach to Gaza. Nonetheless, the Biden administration should try to persuade Israel to do more than merely manage the conflict by threatening to limit both military aid and diplomatic support. Given the fraught U.S. politics around Israel, however, it is difficult to imagine the Biden administration greatly increasing pressure on Israel. And even if it did, Netanyahu’s political weakness makes it unlikely he would agree to concessions that would risk his coalition.
For now, Netanyahu and Biden seem to be trying to wait each other out, hoping that the other will leave office and thus make his country more cooperative. The Biden administration’s decision to allow a cease-fire resolution to go through the UN is a good first step. Biden’s suggestion that further U.S. aid to Israel would be conditioned on a course correction in Gaza, a threat made during a tense phone call with Netanyahu, was also promising. Similar signaling is necessary—for example, more public statements from the president and other senior officials on the need for a cease-fire as part of a hostage exchange—as is continuing to press against the Rafah invasion.
The United States often has trouble influencing small allies when its vital interests are at stake. That is why in years past leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq often ignored U.S. requests even when the United States had thousands of troops helping secure peace in their countries. It is why today Ukraine often ignores U.S. military advice and why Taiwanese leaders at times flirt with declaring independence despite U.S. pressure not to do so. The same is true of Israel. The country sees itself as fighting an existential fight in Gaza, and its prime minister is locked in a struggle for political survival, so it is unlikely to accommodate itself to Washington.
But even though the United States’ influence is limited, it does exist. After half a year of nearly steadfast support, it’s time for the Biden administration to firmly push Israel in the direction it should go anyway. Honesty is what friends owe friends.
- DANIEL BYMAN is Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Foreign Affairs · by Daniel Byman · April 5, 2024
13. Countering China’s Influence in Myanmar
We could aid the resistance (Ethnic Armed Organizations and the National Unity Government – EAO and NUG). A handful of members of civil society are doing yeoman's work supporting the EAOs. IMagine if they were augmented with some support that could help the EAOs achieve decisive results.
But this article focused on the political aspects of the conflict and what must be done politically to set the conditions fro the future.
Excepts:
To start, Congress should appropriate more funds for Myanmar under the BURMA Act. The NUG told VOA that it sent the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee a request for $525 million, including $200 million in nonlethal aid. This is nearly four times the $136 million approved by Congress in the BURMA Act. Congress should work to expand the funding available and broaden the definition of aid to include non-lethal assistance. In addition to aid, the United States should also engage more robustly with the NUG and EAOs. Those partnerships will prove pivotal if the Tatmadaw is defeated. It would not only carry strategic logic for the United States but would also resonate with the over 300,000 Burmese currently residing in the U.S.
Despite all this, Myanmar’s history shows that rebel forces are not guaranteed to succeed in their campaign against the Tatmadaw. The United States must act now to capitalize on the momentum of the EAOs, taking immediate action to help shore up their efforts against the Junta. At the same time, the United States should develop a long-term post-conflict strategy for bringing political stability to Myanmar and create avenues for increased engagement. This can take the form of engaging Myanmar’s previously substantial garment sector. Further, the United States can work with regional partners, such as ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and Japan, to ensure stability in the country and promote long-term democratic resiliency while also seeking to establish military ties with a more favorable government.
Countering China’s Influence in Myanmar
While civil war is nothing new in Myanmar, this particular conflict’s trajectory has deviated from the traditional pattern in a way that could benefit the United States’ interests in the region.
February 1 marked the third anniversary of the Myanmar Military Junta (Tatmadaw) ’s 2021 coup that overthrew the civilian-led government. Since then, according to Amnesty International, nearly 3,000 people have been killed, 1.5 million internally displaced, and more than 13,000 detained in inhumane conditions. In addition to domestic strife, this conflict has created headaches for Myanmar’s neighbors, including China.
While civil war is nothing new in Myanmar, this particular conflict’s trajectory has deviated from the traditional pattern in a way that could benefit the United States’ interests in the region. A stable, friendly, and democratic Myanmar could be a geostrategically critical partner in an area where China has dramatically expanded its influence. To accomplish this goal, the United States should develop closer relations with the Ethnic Armed Organizations and the National Unity Government.
The international community first noticed a significant change when the Three Brotherhood Alliance, an ethnic armed organization (EAO), launched Operation 1027 in October 2023. The Alliance achieved substantial victories against Tatmadaw forces, capturing over 300 Tatmadaw bases and twenty towns across two states and three regions. This campaign started unprecedented victories for EAOs and the National Unity Government (NUG) forces.
Since then, there has been a surge in EAO military actions nationwide. In January alone, ethnic rebels took control of a critical regional command center in Laukkai, shot down multiple fighter jets, and captured a whole military battalion headquarters. Continued successes by the EAO and NUG forces and the lack of ability of the Tatmadaw to “divide and rule” the various ethnic forces may eventually lead the Junta to negotiate with the NUG and ethnic insurgent groups and even potentially to its demise.
Above all, China is concerned about its critical infrastructure projects in the country as part of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC). Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s meeting with Aang San Suu Kyi to advocate for prompt implementation of CMEC projects days before the coup underscores the significance of these projects to China. China aims for the CMEC to facilitate its Western provinces’ economic development and provide it access to the Indian Ocean.
In theory, CMEC would eventually provide China a way to circumvent the Malacca Strait—a strategic chokepoint that would be vulnerable in any conflict with the United States. Consequently, developing the Kyaukphyu deep sea water port is at the heart of the CMEC and a top priority for Beijing. One EAO, the Arakan Army (AA), claims it has taken control of townships surrounding Sittwe, the capital of the Rakhine state. This is particularly problematic for Beijing, as AA’s ability to seize Sittwe would grant them control over the port of Kyaukpyu.
In 2023, in a reversal of trends from the previous year, China redoubled its efforts to engage the Junta government. Moreover, senior Chinese officials—including Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weiding and Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong—have been seeking reassurances from Myanmar over border concerns. China’s concerns relate to border scams and fighting spilling over to harm Chinese citizens in Yunnan province. These scams predominantly transpire in Chinese-built casinos in Myanmar’s special economic zones, and many Chinese citizens operate them. The operation is now one of the “largest coordinated trafficking operations in history.” The scams also affect U.S. citizens; in 2022, Americans lost more than $2.6 billion.
China’s continued support for the Tatmadaw has not given them the necessary edge over EAO forces and has largely alienated the Burmese people. Instead, the Tatmadaw is at its weakest point since the coup in 2021, with increasing questions about whether it can maintain its grip on power. Although the Tatmadaw will likely attempt to wait out the EAO threat, the remarkable victories by rebel forces have led to an unprecedented opportunity in Burmese history. With the U.S. support—even tacitly—the offensives are more likely to succeed, which could lead to the destruction of the Tatmadaw or, if EAOs decide to negotiate, giving the ethnic groups that comprise the forces extraordinary leverage.
The return of a civilian-led democratic government would boost the United States’ influence in the country and diminish China’s, which has failed to facilitate a lasting negotiated ceasefire. So far, the only significant action from the United States to support the EAOs is the BURMA Act. Other than offering a statement of support for the Burmese peoples’ struggles, it authorizes the appropriation of funds from 2023 to 2027 for various assistance and tasks the State Department and USAID (United States Agency for International Development) with aiding Myanmar. Although this was a step in the right direction, the bill is outdated in light of recent rebel victories, necessitating further action.
To start, Congress should appropriate more funds for Myanmar under the BURMA Act. The NUG told VOA that it sent the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee a request for $525 million, including $200 million in nonlethal aid. This is nearly four times the $136 million approved by Congress in the BURMA Act. Congress should work to expand the funding available and broaden the definition of aid to include non-lethal assistance. In addition to aid, the United States should also engage more robustly with the NUG and EAOs. Those partnerships will prove pivotal if the Tatmadaw is defeated. It would not only carry strategic logic for the United States but would also resonate with the over 300,000 Burmese currently residing in the U.S.
Despite all this, Myanmar’s history shows that rebel forces are not guaranteed to succeed in their campaign against the Tatmadaw. The United States must act now to capitalize on the momentum of the EAOs, taking immediate action to help shore up their efforts against the Junta. At the same time, the United States should develop a long-term post-conflict strategy for bringing political stability to Myanmar and create avenues for increased engagement. This can take the form of engaging Myanmar’s previously substantial garment sector. Further, the United States can work with regional partners, such as ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and Japan, to ensure stability in the country and promote long-term democratic resiliency while also seeking to establish military ties with a more favorable government.
Nathaniel Schochet is the Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Intern for the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). His writing has appeared in The Diplomat, South China Morning Post, Forbes, and China-U.S. Focus. He is also a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Image: R. Bociaga / Shutterstock.com.
The National Interest · by Nathaniel Schochet · April 5, 2024The National Interest · by Nathaniel Schochet · April 5, 2024
14. Something rotten in the Israeli Defense Force? by Andrew Milburn
Something rotten in the Israeli Defense Force?
The recent strike on an aid convoy comes in the wake of a damning probe into the deaths of three hostages at the hands of the IDF.
https://amilburn.substack.com/p/something-rotten-in-the-israeli-defense
ANDREW MILBURN
APR 05, 2024
Below: Soldiers of the IDF’s Golani brigade in the Shejaiya area of Gaza city
On April 1st a group of aid workers left a warehouse in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. The vehicles in their three-car convoy were clearly marked with the frying-pan logo of World Central Kitchen (WCK), a charity that has worked closely with Israel. Their route along the coastal road had been cleared with the Israeli army. But these precautions didn’t save them. An Israeli drone loitering overhead fired three missiles in succession at the cars, killing all seven people inside.
As someone who has delivered food for the World Central Kitchen in another very bad place, I felt a natural affinity with the aid workers killed. And as a former infantry commander and fire support coordinator, who has planned and fought in urban operations, I was curious to find out how as sophisticated a force as the Israeli military might have become careless or negligent about protecting non combatant lives.
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) admits making a ‘serious mistake’ — but the initial probe suggests that it was not just one such mistake, but a series of inexplicable errors. Hopefully the investigation will uncover enough to hold those responsible accountable, and prevent this from happening again. But the odds don’t look good.
This latest incident was a reminder of another tragedy caused by ‘friendly fire’ earlier in the campaign. On 10 December, reconnaissance troops of the IDF’s Golani Brigade entered a half rubbled building in the Shejaiya area of Gaza city and were engaged by insurgents.
Resistance to that point had been far less than expected: mostly small groups of Hamas fighters firing at them from buildings or tossing grenades out of top story windows. The occasional RPG – usually fired from beyond range – would slam into a building or fizzle overhead, but such activity was rare enough to provide a welcome interlude to the boredom. The slow pace was due to a result of the IDF’s modus operandi in Gaza – a painstaking advance preceded by massive amounts of fire power. Before conventional troops moved into an area, a special operations unit would first establish a lodgment for conventional troops to conduct clearing operations.
As the Golani Brigade advanced, drone footage showed what appeared to be Hamas fighters in a building near the next planned lodgment site and a reconnaissance troop was dispatched to deal with them. Their plan was to enter an adjacent house and then breach their way into the target building. As was their usual procedure, the soldiers sent into the building first a dog, equipped with Go-Pro camera. The dog searched the ground floor and was on its way up the stairs to the second floor when it was shot by Hamas fighters, but not before the camera had picked up clear recordings of Israeli hostages announcing their presence in Hebrew. The camera was not connected to a live feed — and no one checked it until days later.
A helicopter gunship fired rockets into the building along with a massive amount of fire power from the troops on the ground. A drone was sent in to confirm that the Hamas gunmen were dead and then the reconnaissance troops entered and searched the building — finding only the bodies of the gunmen and their own dog. The building was reported as being clear and left unattended - despite the fact that only one of its two levels had been searched, and despite several of the reconnaissance soldiers reporting that they had heard voices in Hebrew from the upstairs. The three hostages were on the second floor — which was never cleared because of the ‘threat from booby traps’. The shouts in Hebrew were assumed to be attempts to draw the soldiers into an ambush — but no attempt was made to verify this assumption.
Realizing that the gunmen were dead, the three hostages fled, and spent the next 5 days searching for help. They wrote in Hebrew on the outside walls of the buildings where they stayed — graffiti that was spotted but disregarded as being another invitation to a trap. The IDF found a hand written note saying ‘Save us’ in Hebrew by a tunnel entrance in an adjacent building. It is now thought that this note was written by one of the hostages as they were moved from the tunnel to a building above ground. At the time, however, the note was assumed to be a ploy. No one checked the tunnel or surrounding area for hostages. The subsequent IDF investigation found that there were no reported incidents of Israeli troops being lured into an ambush by any of the methods described.
On 14 December, Day 4, an IDF drone filmed two signs near the building where the firefight had taken place, both in Hebrew - one reading “Save us, hostages’ and one reading ‘SOS.
By the next day, their fifth on the run, the hostages approach an IDF position. They have taken their shirts off and are carrying a large white flag on a pole. They call to the soldiers in Hebrew from 40 meters away. One of the soldiers then shoots and kills two of the hostages. The third hostage flees into a building, wounded but alive. At this point the IDF battalion commander calls for a cease fire and personally goes forward to talk the last hostage, Yotam Haim, into coming out of the building. Haim, was a drummer for one of the bands playing at the Nova Festival when he was taken hostage. Now, terrified and upset he is shouting ‘Help me’ loud enough for the soldiers outside to hear. It takes 15 minutes of talking by the battalion commander for Haim to agree to come out. The word goes out on all nets to hold fire — that the man is a hostage. ‘Come out towards me,’ the battalion commander calls to Haim. He does and two of his soldiers shoot him dead.
Only eight days after that battle, and three days after the hostages were killed, did anyone review the footage from the dog's camera. In the audio from it, the hostages can be heard shouting, "Save us, we're hostages," "Alon, Yotam, Samer," "We're on the stairs" and "We're near the stairs."
Below, Israeli hostages: Samal Talalka, Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz
Incidents of friendly fire are common to all armies engaged in ground combat. But what is baffling about this incident is that a series of very basic but tragically serious mistakes were made not by reservists rushed to active duty, but by elite soldiers of the Golani and Paratrooper Brigades.
Both these killings — of aid workers and hostages — were covered by the media because they involved Israeli citizens or foreigners. Aside from that the one thing they have in common is a series of events that can only be explained in terms of a wider problem.
The IDF investigation into the killing of the three hostages found that the soldiers involved had violated procedures, but no disciplinary action was taken. The soldiers in turn argued that they were following procedures — albeit unofficial - established at the battalion level, and observed by all. Procedures such as ‘free fire zones’, and shoot on sight orders for military age males whether armed or not. Other procedures — such as firing into all buildings as the IDF approaches, a practice known in US doctrine as reconnaissance by fire, are openly endorsed though likely to lead to civilian casualties.
In this week’s podcast we discuss whether recent incidents are indicators of a fundamental shift in IDF culture - a shift that is shaping the war in Gaza and perhaps the future of Israel.
We also discuss the recent strike in Damascus that killed three of the four most senior officers in Quds force, one of whom, General Mohammed Reiz Zahedi, was rumored to be next in line for the top position: chief commander.
Some Israeli intelligence experts argue that the killing of even these senior officers does not break the rules of the game — the unwritten understanding of limitations by which both sides seek to avoid escalation - because it occurred in Syria, not on Iranian soil. Unfortunately, it is clear that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei thinks otherwise and has told the world — an action which may end up forcing his hand. Meanwhile, despite public appeals for calm, the Israeli defense establishment is on high alert.
Below, General Mohammed Reiz Zahedi (red rectangle) inspecting damage from an Israeli airstrike. In the foreground is General Esmail Quani, Chief Commander, IGRC Quds Force, the man he was slated to succeed.
If an attack does takes place, it will most likely include one or more of the following scenarios: a direct drone and cruise missile attack launched from Iran itself and aimed at Israeli infrastructure sites; an intense barrage of rockets and missiles fired by Hezbollah against critical infrastructure and densely populated urban areas; or an attempt to strike an Israeli embassy overseas. Long shots might include a ground launched missile attack against an El Al airliner or an attack on Israeli community centers and synagogues overseas. The IDF has already bolstered its Air Defense Command to deal with possible missile or drone attack from the Islamic Republic.
But how likely is such an attack — how far is Iran prepared to go to further its interests, and what can be done to prevent escalation? All topics discussed — but unfortunately not solved — in this week’s podcast. I hope that you enjoy it.
15. The curiously quiet reaction to Oppenheimer in Japan
The curiously quiet reaction to Oppenheimer in Japan
The Spectator · by Philip Patrick · April 6, 2024
Finally, eight months after its US premiere and a month after it triumphed at the Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has opened here in Japan. The film had been mysteriously delayed and there were rumours it would never be screened in the only country to suffer the consequences of a nuclear bomb.
No definitive explanation was ever given for the lengthy hold up, but it was almost certainly due to concerns about the subject matter, especially since Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is a native of Hiroshima and lost relatives in the blast. Timing may also have been a factor, as the buildup to the worldwide release coincided with Kishida’s hosting of the G7 summit in his hometown. One theme was global peace and nuclear disarmament and the Oppenheimer premiere might have proved awkward.
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In the end, the film has opened like any other Hollywood blockbuster. There were no organised protests, no boycotts and not even much overt criticism. All this despite the well-aired controversies of the absence of any depiction of the A-bomb blasts and not a single Japanese actor featuring in the film. It could be that the long delay was effective in taking the heat out of the debate.
A supplementary benefit of the lag was that it prevented the chalk and cheese pairing of the film with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (thus ‘Barbenheimer’). Oppenheimer posters in Japan hang next to those for Wim Wender’s Perfect Days a contemplative and poetic study of one man’s inner life. It’s a less provoking juxtaposition.
There has been criticism, but it has been measured and constructive. A positive commentary by the lawyer Hiroyuki Shinju, published by the Tokyo Bar Association noted that the film ‘can serve as the starting point for addressing the legitimacy of the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as humanity’s, and Japan’s, reflections on nuclear weapons and war.’
That could well lead to a new Japanese version of the bomb story with Takashi Yamazaki, director of Godzilla Minus One, which won the Oscar for visual effects and is also a powerful statement on nuclear catastrophe, tipped as the potential director.
Yamazaki took part in an online dialogue with Christopher Nolan and said: ‘I feel there needs to be an answer from Japan to ‘Oppenheimer.’ Someday, I would like to make that movie.’ Nolan described this as a ‘perfect suggestion’. He might need to be quick though, such a film may already be in production. Screenwriter Elizabeth Bentley is apparently adapting a 230-page memoir of a Hiroshima survivor Kiyoshi Tanimoto for a film to be titled What Divides Us.
The once powerful anti-nuclear lobby, whose marches through Tokyo attracted sizeable numbers, is no longer the force it once was. The movement received a second wind after the Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011, but that has dissipated. There are few now who can talk about the bomb with the searing vividness of Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who recalled in his memoir: ‘The whole city was covered in dark clouds and conflagrations were breaking out in various directions … I was terribly afraid. It was then that black drops of rain, as big as raspberries, began to fall.’
The Spectator · by Philip Patrick · April 6, 2024
16. What you need to know about cancer in the special operations community
What you need to know about cancer in the special operations community
For post-911 servicemembers, whether they deployed or not, 1 in 7 veterans will be diagnosed with cancer.
BY JOSHUA SKOVLUND | PUBLISHED APR 5, 2024 3:33 PM EDT
taskandpurpose.com · by Joshua Skovlund · April 5, 2024
More than two decades since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans of the War on Terror are coming to terms with the physical consequences of their service. Chief among them? Cancer.
Unfortunately, there is still much to learn about the deadly disease and its impact on the military population.
The U.S. Special Operations Command recently published a memo calling for all special operations forces (SOF) service members and veterans to report any cancer screenings and diagnoses so their records are up to date for ongoing research on the prevalence of cancer within SOF.
A part of that memo encouraged people to seek out cancer screenings because early detection can be the difference between life and death. However, resources are limited, and most military members don’t meet the national cancer criteria required to get a cancer screening, while other types of cancer don’t have a standard cancer screening process.
Chelsea Simoni, co-founder of the HunterSeven Foundation, said the memo comes from a good place, but more involvement is needed.
“There needs to be a conversation at a table with SOCOM, whoever the VA liaison is for SOCOM, and these benevolent organizations that truly make a difference in health care and community,” Simoni said. “That must be a serious conversation, and we all must be on the same page.”
Is cancer more prevalent in special operations?
The SOCOM memo has brought up the topic of cancer being more prevalent in SOF compared to conventional military units. But, it’s not merely serving in a special operations unit that correlates to the likelihood of developing cancer. For post-911 servicemembers, whether they deployed or not, 1 in 7 veterans will be diagnosed with cancer based on HunterSeven’s research.
“I think there’s confusion over SOF being more likely to be diagnosed with cancer. What we’ve seen in preliminary studies is that those who have an extended time in service are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer,” Simoni said.
The Air Force has the highest rates of cancer, and that’s not specific to the Air Force Special Operations Command. According to HunterSeven’s research, the U.S. Marine Corps has the lowest rates of cancer. The difference is that more Marines serve their initial enlistment and get out, whereas many in the Air Force make a career out of it.
Simoni gave an example of a Green Beret and an Air Force pilot. They are more likely to serve an entire career because of the time and work they dedicate to earning their positions. So it’s long-term exposure to toxins and the stressors of service that correlate to cancer, not so much what unit you serve in.
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More important differentiators for service members are whether they have a family history of cancer, where they were located for extended periods, job hazards, and environmental factors they were exposed to. As an example, Navy SEALs stationed on the East Coast have a high chance of developing brain cancer, while Green Berets who spend ample time in Africa have a high risk of developing gastrointestinal cancers.
Lack of sleep, poor diet, and chronic stress are common in military service, especially with SOF units who often work through the night. Environmental stressors contribute to an increase in inflammation within the body, which weakens the immune system and places personnel at higher risk of developing cancer.
Toxin exposure is a significant concern. Most conventional units fire approximately one thousand rounds a year or less, whereas a special operations unit will fire hundreds of thousands of rounds in a six-month training cycle, which significantly ramps up the risk of cancer, said Geoffrey Dardia, the director of the Task Force Dagger Special Operations Foundation’s Health Initiates Program.
“The basic infantry rifleman, right? They do a qualification range a couple of times a year,” Dardia said. “Other than that, they are shooting blanks unless they’re in combat. So, in training, they’re not shooting shit.”
Simoni said the biggest takeaway from their research is that time in service, and a family history of cancer are the two most significant correlating factors for service members developing cancer.
“Preliminary studies show that there’s not a more likely risk associated with special operations than with any other military occupation,” Simoni said. “In terms of SOF being diagnosed at a higher rate compared to all post-911 service members and veterans, I don’t believe that that’s an adequate assumption.”
Cancer screening and exams for veterans
Cancer screenings are not typically easy to get for anyone under the age of 50. Active duty special operations members have a more clear route to getting a cancer screening compared to veterans, though.
“Overall, active duty care is really good. The difficult things we see are after service, like veteran status, getting them squared away,” Simoni said. “Like the VA, that’s not happening. It’s very unfortunate. We’ll often have to pay for outside care for them to get screened like colonoscopies, second opinions, routine care, and follow-up appointments”
Simoni recalled a veteran that her team helped where traditional criteria would have barred him from cancer screenings. Through HunterSeven, the 40-year-old U.S. Navy Aviator was screened because his aviation unit has a high prevalence of colon cancer.
“So the average age for colon cancer screening is 50, with a family history, potentially 45,” Simoni said. “So we did this MRI and found that he has a 23-centimeter mass on his colon, which was nearly blocking it,” Simoni said. “So it took us about a month to get him in for a colonoscopy because of the wait times and lack of providers available. We see higher rates of cancers in end-stage, more deaths in veteran status, due to waiting times, inadequate services, and due to demographics.”
He was diagnosed with cancer in January 2024 but only recently underwent surgery to remove the cancerous mass. They are optimistic, but the delay in the removal was due to understaffing.
If a veteran knows something is off, they need to advocate for the resources they need to get a cancer screening. HunterSeven is one of many non-profits that work to provide resources at no cost to the veteran.
How veterans can reduce the odds of developing cancer
Service members often develop a mindset of ‘I’d rather not know’ or are concerned about being removed from the fight. It’s a deadly game to play when it comes to cancer.
“If you’re not above the age of 50, you are not a priority for cancer screening,” Simoni said. “If we identify some of these most deadly cancers in early stages, the chance of survival is greatly impacted. So, that’s 77%, compared to 2%. Like, this is why early cancer screening is so important.”
It’s important that veterans be aware of their risk factors and advocate for the proper exams or screenings needed to catch cancers early. However, service members can take other actions to decrease their chances of toxic exposure-related cancers.
For example, don’t load ammunition into a magazine and then throw a dip in with your unwashed hands. Wear the proper gloves while building explosive charges. Wash your hands before you eat.
The toxic exposures can lead to heavy metal poisoning, which mimics specific vitamins, leading to a drop in proper levels and turning your bones into sponges. Toxic exposures can lead to chronically low calcium, Vitamin D, magnesium, and B-12 levels.
If you know you’ll be exposed to known carcinogens, understand that the body gets rid of toxins through breath, urine, stool, and sweat. So it’s essential to get restorative sleep, remain fully hydrated, and have your micro-nutrients at optimal levels through diet. Helpful diet staples include roughage like onions, leeks, garlic, shallots, cabbage, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower.
Dardia pointed out that many special operations personnel train hard and then blow off steam by drinking. However, alcohol is a group one carcinogen. Instead of alcohol, Dardia recommends taking the supplement Glutathione, which helps the body excrete toxins, biotransforming them from fat-soluble to water-soluble.
“So you’re soaking in carcinogens all day, and then at night, you’re drinking carcinogens to get to sleep,” Dardia said. “So you’re literally adding gasoline to a fire.”
Just the environment veterans find themselves in can cause disruptions in the body.
“Your sympathetic nervous system, think of it as a gas pedal in a car. You’re accelerating your nervous system. Literally, you get stuck there. Then you don’t do that whole rest, digest, feed, and breed thing,” Dardia said. “You don’t think or analyze things. You’re literally responding to everything. So that’s what you do, respond to threats in your environment, and that’s what we’re trained to do.”
But, because of the way people are trained, they often don’t realize how bad their health is becoming. Spouses, close friends, and family should advocate for their veterans to detoxify, eat healthy, get good sleep, and seek cancer screenings where appropriate.
Simoni said she knows plenty of spouses who remind their veterans to get their labs checked, get cancer screenings if warranted, and do many other things that help with early detection.
But, a veteran knows themself better than anyone else. Examples of symptoms to watch out for include a new onset of heavy fatigue, chronic acid reflux, constant headaches, and chronic diarrhea. These are easy to explain away as being dehydrated or not having enough sleep or caffeine. Remember: early cancer detection can be the difference between life and death.
If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, the Lifeline network is available 24/7 across the United States. Reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling or texting 988 and you’ll be connected to trained counselors.
The latest on Task & Purpose
taskandpurpose.com · by Joshua Skovlund · April 5, 2024
17. Myanmar's military-ruled capital attacked by drones
Myanmar's military-ruled capital attacked by drones
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68730993?
2 days ago
By Jonathan Head & BBC Burmese,
in Bangkok
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Myanmar's military took over the country in a coup in 2021
The opposition in Myanmar has claimed a rare mass drone attack on the country's embattled junta government in the heavily guarded capital, Nay Pyi Taw.
The National Unity Government (NUG) - which calls itself the government in exile - said it deployed 29 drones armed with explosives to the airport, air force base and army headquarters.
The junta said it had intercepted the drones, shooting down seven, including one which exploded on a runway.
There were no casualties, they said,
The NUG represents the elected civilian government previously led by Aung San Suu Kyi, which was toppled in a coup in 2021.
Since then it and other opposition groups have been fighting the junta regime, which has begun losing control of large areas of the country.
The country's three-year civil war has killed thousands and displaced about 2.6 million people according to the UN.
Thursday morning's attack on the capital marks another bold, and rare incursion by the resistance groups who are mounting an increasingly effective opposition to the junta.
Nay Pyi Taw is the centre of power for the military regime which named it the capital, replacing Yangon, after it came to rule. Heavily guarded, it has been shielded from much of the fighting that has raged elsewhere across the country.
Last week, the junta even staged its annual Armed Forces Day parade in the city - but the event which showcased tanks, armoured vehicles and thousands of soldiers took place at night.
On Thursday, representatives from the NUG told BBC Burmese they had planned and strategised with several defence groups to conduct the drone attacks.
"The synchronised drone operations were simultaneously executed against Nay Pyi Taw targeting both the military headquarters… and Alar air base," NUG's deputy secretary Mg Mg Swe said.
The military reported shooting down four drones at the airport in the capital and three drones which it said approached Zayarthiri township. Officials made no reference to the other drones reported by the opposition.
The NUG earlier this year said more than 60% of the country's territory is now under the control of resistance forces.
Before Thursday's attack, the regime was seen to have suffered its most serious setback last October.
An alliance of ethnic insurgents overran dozens of military outposts along the border with India and China. The junta has also lost large areas of territory to insurgents along the Bangladesh and Indian borders.
The fierce fighting has pushed the junta to enforce mandatory conscription. In February - where men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 - would be forced to enlist.
Observers have said the enforcement of the law reveals the junta's diminishing grip on the country, and the high toll in fighting. There have also been reports of high defection rates.
The Tatmadaw, as the military is known, has not publicly declared the size of its fighting force in recent years.
However the junta still retain significantly more weapons and more advanced firepower than the resistance fighter groups.
As such, opposition groups have pivoted to using commercial drones carrying bombs to target military holds, researchers say. There have been several such "drop bomb" attacks in recent months.
Myanmar coup
Myanmar
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18. Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack?
He deserves a medal.
Excerpts:
His name is Andres Freund. He’s a 38-year-old software engineer who lives in San Francisco and works at Microsoft. His job involves developing a piece of open-source database software known as PostgreSQL, whose details would probably bore you to tears if I could explain them correctly, which I can’t.
Recently, while doing some routine maintenance, Mr. Freund inadvertently found a backdoor hidden in a piece of software that is part of the Linux operating system. The backdoor was a possible prelude to a major cyberattack that experts say could have caused enormous damage, if it had succeeded.
Now, in a twist fit for Hollywood, tech leaders and cybersecurity researchers are hailing Mr. Freund as a hero. Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, praised his “curiosity and craftsmanship.” An admirer called him “the silverback gorilla of nerds.” Engineers have been circulating an old, famous-among-programmers web comic about how all modern digital infrastructure rests on a project maintained by some random guy in Nebraska. (In their telling, Mr. Freund is the random guy from Nebraska.)
In an interview this week, Mr. Freund — who is actually a soft-spoken, German-born coder who declined to have his photo taken for this story — said that becoming an internet folk hero had been disorienting.
Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack?
A Microsoft engineer noticed something was off on a piece of software he worked on. He soon discovered someone was probably trying to gain access to computers all over the world.
By Kevin Roose The New York Times5 min
April 3, 2024
View Original
The internet, as anyone who works deep in its trenches will tell you, is not a smooth, well-oiled machine.
It’s a messy patchwork that has been assembled over decades, and is held together with the digital equivalent of Scotch tape and bubble gum. Much of it relies on open-source software that is thanklessly maintained by a small army of volunteer programmers who fix the bugs, patch the holes and ensure the whole rickety contraption, which is responsible for trillions of dollars in global G.D.P., keeps chugging along.
Last week, one of those programmers may have saved the internet from huge trouble.
His name is Andres Freund. He’s a 38-year-old software engineer who lives in San Francisco and works at Microsoft. His job involves developing a piece of open-source database software known as PostgreSQL, whose details would probably bore you to tears if I could explain them correctly, which I can’t.
Recently, while doing some routine maintenance, Mr. Freund inadvertently found a backdoor hidden in a piece of software that is part of the Linux operating system. The backdoor was a possible prelude to a major cyberattack that experts say could have caused enormous damage, if it had succeeded.
Now, in a twist fit for Hollywood, tech leaders and cybersecurity researchers are hailing Mr. Freund as a hero. Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, praised his “curiosity and craftsmanship.” An admirer called him “the silverback gorilla of nerds.” Engineers have been circulating an old, famous-among-programmers web comic about how all modern digital infrastructure rests on a project maintained by some random guy in Nebraska. (In their telling, Mr. Freund is the random guy from Nebraska.)
In an interview this week, Mr. Freund — who is actually a soft-spoken, German-born coder who declined to have his photo taken for this story — said that becoming an internet folk hero had been disorienting.
“I find it very odd,” he said. “I’m a fairly private person who just sits in front of the computer and hacks on code.”
The saga began earlier this year, when Mr. Freund was flying back from a visit to his parents in Germany. While reviewing a log of automated tests, he noticed a few error messages he didn’t recognize. He was jet-lagged, and the messages didn’t seem urgent, so he filed them away in his memory.
But a few weeks later, while running some more tests at home, he noticed that an application called SSH, which is used to log into computers remotely, was using more processing power than normal. He traced the issue to a set of data compression tools called xz Utils, and wondered if it was related to the earlier errors he’d seen.
(Don’t worry if these names are Greek to you. All you really need to know is that these are all small pieces of the Linux operating system, which is probably the most important piece of open-source software in the world. The vast majority of the world’s servers — including those used by banks, hospitals, governments and Fortune 500 companies — run on Linux, which makes its security a matter of global importance.)
Like other popular open-source software, Linux gets updated all the time, and most bugs are the result of innocent mistakes. But when Mr. Freund looked closely at the source code for xz Utils, he saw clues that it had been intentionally tampered with.
In particular, he found that someone had planted malicious code in the latest versions of xz Utils. The code, known as a backdoor, would allow its creator to hijack a user’s SSH connection and secretly run their own code on that user’s machine.
In the cybersecurity world, a database engineer inadvertently finding a backdoor in a core Linux feature is a little like a bakery worker who smells a freshly baked loaf of bread, senses something is off and correctly deduces that someone has tampered with the entire global yeast supply. It’s the kind of intuition that requires years of experience and obsessive attention to detail, plus a healthy dose of luck.
At first, Mr. Freund doubted his own findings. Had he really discovered a backdoor in one of the world’s most heavily scrutinized open-source programs?
“It felt surreal,” he said. “There were moments where I was like, I must have just had a bad night of sleep and had some fever dreams.”
But his digging kept turning up new evidence, and last week, Mr. Freund sent his findings to a group of open-source software developers. The news set the tech world on fire. Within hours, a fix was developed and some researchers were crediting him with preventing a potentially historic cyberattack.
“This could have been the most widespread and effective backdoor ever planted in any software product,” said Alex Stamos, the chief trust officer at SentinelOne, a cybersecurity research firm.
If it had gone undetected, Mr. Stamos said, the backdoor would have “given its creators a master key to any of the hundreds of millions of computers around the world that run SSH.” That key could have allowed them to steal private information, plant crippling malware, or cause major disruptions to infrastructure — all without being caught.
(The New York Times has sued Microsoft and its partner OpenAI on claims of copyright infringement involving artificial intelligence systems that generate text.)
Nobody knows who planted the backdoor. But the plot appears to have been so elaborate that some researchers believe only a nation with formidable hacking chops, such as Russia or China, could have attempted it.
According to some researchers who have gone back and looked at the evidence, the attacker appears to have used a pseudonym, “Jia Tan,” to suggest changes to xz Utils as far back as 2022. (Many open-source software projects are governed via hierarchy; developers suggest changes to a program’s code, then more experienced developers known as “maintainers” have to review and approve the changes.)
The attacker, using the Jia Tan name, appears to have spent several years slowly gaining the trust of other xz Utils developers and getting more control over the project, eventually becoming a maintainer, and finally inserting the code with the hidden backdoor earlier this year. (The new, compromised version of the code had been released, but was not yet in widespread use.)
Mr. Freund declined to guess who might have been behind the attack. But he said that whoever it was had been sophisticated enough to try to cover their tracks, including by adding code that made the backdoor harder to spot.
“It was very mysterious,” he said. “They clearly spent a lot of effort trying to hide what they were doing.”
Since his findings became public, Mr. Freund said, he had been helping the teams who are trying to reverse-engineer the attack and identify the culprit. But he’s been too busy to rest on his laurels. The next version of PostgreSQL, the database software he works on, is coming out later this year, and he’s trying to get some last-minute changes in before the deadline.
“I don’t really have time to go and have a celebratory drink,” he said.
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19. Starting from Beginning Part 2: Strengthening Foreign Partnerships by Utilizing Training, Education for Intercultural Exchanges
Part 1 can be accessed here: https://www.army.mil/article/274310/starting_from_beginning_strengthening_of_strategic_foreign_partnerships_from_initial_acquisition_training_education
This is part two of a three-part series elaborating on U.S. Special Operations Command’s line of effort to expand and reinforce generational relationships with allies and partners at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.
Starting from Beginning Part 2: Strengthening Foreign Partnerships by Utilizing Training, Education for Intercultural Exchanges
By Steve Morningstar, USAJFKSWCS Public AffairsApril 5, 2024
army.mil · April 5, 2024
1 / 4 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Brig. Gen. Guillaume "Will" Beaurpere, Commanding General, U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS), talks with Lt. Gen. Sik Son, Commander, Republic of Korea Special Warfare Command, during a visit to USAJFKSWCS at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina May 22, 2023. The purpose of the visit was to have a command level discussion on future realistic combined interoperability training opportunities and observe training at the U.S. Army's Special Operations Center of Excellence. (U.S. Army photo by K. Kassens) (Photo Credit: K. Kassens) VIEW ORIGINAL
2 / 4 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Soldiers and civilians from the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School's (USAJFKSWCS) Language, Regional Education and Culture program, participate in a Language and Culture Day event at Clay Hall on USAJFKSWCS's campus at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, May 4, 2023. The event featured various performances, exhibits, language demonstrations and food sampling from the eleven current languages taught at USAJFKSWCS. (U.S. Army photo by K. Kassens) (Photo Credit: K. Kassens) VIEW ORIGINAL
3 / 4 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Soldiers and civilians from the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School's (USAJFKSWCS) Language, Regional Education and Culture program, who are in the Spanish language course, participate in a Language and Culture Day event at Clay Hall on USAJFKSWCS's campus at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, May 4, 2023. The event featured various performances, exhibits, language demonstrations and food sampling from the eleven current languages taught at USAJFKSWCS. (U.S. Army photo by K. Kassens) (Photo Credit: K. Kassens) VIEW ORIGINAL
4 / 4 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Brig. Gen. Guillaume "Will" Beaurpere, Commanding General, U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS), talks with Lt. Gen. Sik Son, Commander, Republic of Korea Special Warfare Command, during a visit to USAJFKSWCS at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina May 22, 2023. The purpose of the visit was to have a command level discussion on future realistic combined interoperability training opportunities and observe training at the U.S. Army's Special Operations Center of Excellence. (U.S. Army photo by K. Kassens) (Photo Credit: K. Kassens) VIEW ORIGINAL
This is part two of a three-part series elaborating on U.S. Special Operations Command’s line of effort to expand and reinforce generational relationships with allies and partners at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.
It is critical for U.S. Army special operations Soldiers to continue "developing and strengthening the partner and ally piece that's a comparative and competitive advantage for this nation," Lt. Gen. Bryan Fenton, commanding general of the U.S. Special Operations Command, testified during his confirmation hearing for USSOCOM commander in July 2022.
The "placement, access, and influence" of U.S. special operations Soldiers in other countries to provide "training, advising, and assisting" has been shown to be "extremely powerful" in countering aggression, Fenton said.
At the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, fostering relationships with partners and allies is one of its priorities and aligns with SOCOM’s initiatives.
The SWCS contributions in developing initial interpersonal and professional relationships are represented in a snapshot of the larger global special operations forces network. It creates an opportunity for attendees to connect and further develop intercultural exchange. Relationships formed at SWCS become the bedrock from which many tactical, operational, and strategic partnerships develop.
A benefit of having international students enrolled at the various campuses and courses across Special Warfare Center and School is their experiences help build the foundation of interoperability and integration that are critical to special operations forces.
Illustrating Fenton’s comments is an international student who recently completed the Special Forces Qualification Course. The student’s name is not being released to the public as the student is a current foreign allied special operations service member.
“We’re building the relationship with each other,” the student said. “As partner nations, we might have to face the same enemy in the future, so we are now building the rapport and making our relationship stronger by doing so.”
The foreign partner student elaborated on his experiences training alongside U.S. Soldiers and other foreign students.
“I think it was a good experience for me to get the training with American and partners from other country because I could learn a lot from them,” the student said. “We are all military, but the way we train and how we think are different from each other. My country might have our own standard operating procedure to do anything. However, through the experience I got, I could come up with the better ways to adjust that. It could not only help me realize the things we were supposed to improve, but also found out the good aspects of other countries that we could learn from. But sometimes it is a struggle because we have different culture and languages. Overcoming these barriers is tough, and that’s also what we were supposed to do. By doing that, we could learn more how to work with others.”
These partnerships not only occur between U.S. Soldiers and allied partners, but new relationships form between allied partners, as well.
A foreign allied graduate student officer from Romania attending the Joint Special Operations Master of Arts Program commented on creating new relationships.
“One of the most enriching aspects of this program, apart from the academic content, has been the opportunity to interact with professionals from various countries and backgrounds the Romanian officer said. “I've established relationships with fellow students, instructors, and even visiting experts. “These interactions have given me a broader perspective, deepened my understanding of global challenges, and exposed me to different methodologies and strategies employed around the world.”
At the core of Army special operations forces is fostering relationships built on trust and understanding to strengthen capabilities. This creates a unique opportunity for an exchange of language training for both U.S. Soldiers and foreign allied students.
For example, a U.S. student in the Special Forces Qualification Course, who grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese at home had the opportunity to partner with a Taiwanese student through the qualification course. They made an agreement that when working together, the U.S. student would only speak Mandarin and the Taiwanese student would only speak English. They both improved their respective language markedly, and a strong relationship was formed. Because of this experience, they fostered a relationship and can provide a basis for immediate insertion and cooperation for future work with foreign allied partners.
Brig. Gen. Guillaume "Will" Beaurpere, commanding general of the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, emphasized the importance of foreign partnerships, “The strength to stand against our adversaries will never come alone, it will come together.”
To read the first part of the series, visit https://www.army.mil/article/274310/starting_from_beginning_strengthening_of_strategic_foreign_partnerships_from_initial_acquisition_training_education.
For more information about the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, visit www.swcs.mil.
army.mil · April 5, 2024
20. Korea’s Artificial Sun Just Shattered a Fusion Record
I hope this is the game changer we have been waiting for.
Korea’s Artificial Sun Just Shattered a Fusion Record
Popular Mechanics · April 4, 2024
- One of the hardest things in magnetic confinement fusion is containing plasma long enough to induce a fusion reaction.
- The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor successfully contained plasma for 48 second—18 seconds longer than its original record.
- This improvement in containment comes from improved materials (such as a new tungsten invertor), as well as optimization models that helped avoid common plasma instabilities.
As the world eagerly awaits the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)—the most ambitious nuclear project in human history—to achieve first plasma in late 2025, lots of tokamaks around the world are breaking fusion records like never before.
And one of those stars-in-a-bottle is the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor in Daejeon, South Korea. In September of 2022, the KSTAR team wow’d the world when they successfully contained 100 degrees Celsius plasma (which is seven times hotter than the sun) for 30 seconds—not enough to generate the bootstrapping fusion needed to create energy, but an impressive feat nonetheless. But between now and then, the KSTAR reactor received a major upgrade by getting its carbon divertor switched out for a tungsten one. Thanks to this improvement, along with additional advancements in heating and controlling the plasma, KSTAR just broke its old record by a full 18 seconds.
Related Story
“Despite being the first experiment run in the environment of the new tungsten divertors, thorough hardware testing and campaign preparation enabled us to achieve results surpassing those of previous KSTAR records in a short period,” Center Si-Woo Yoon, director of KSTAR Research, said in a press statement. “To achieve the ultimate goal of KSTAR operation, we plan to sequentially enhance the performance of heating and current drive devices and also secure the core technologies required for long-pulse high performance plasma operations.”
Divertors are incredibly important components in tokamaks—they’re a lot like a nuclear exhaust port that removes heat and helium ash from plasma. Because the divertor faces the ultra-hot plasma directly, it’s vital that it can withstand the heat flux of such a torturously hot environment. The previous carbon-based divertor worked well due to its high melting point, but tungsten’s larger atomic mass and high melting point means it’s much less likely for plasma particles to get stuck to its surface.
Because of this extra capability, tungsten will also be the material of choice for ITER. This will allow the KSTAR reactor will provide valuable data for both ITER and projects beyond, like the Demonstration Power Plant (DEMO)—ITER’s fusion successor.
Related Story
“This research is a green light for acquiring core technologies required for the fusion DEMO reactor,” Suk Jae Yoo, Korean Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) president, said in a press statement. “We will do our best to secure core technologies essential for the operation of ITER and the construction of future DEMO reactors.”
Of course, 48 seconds is only the beginning of KSTAR’s ambitions. Earlier this year, the research center set a goal of reaching sustained plasma containment for 300 seconds (10 times its original record) by 2026. That goal will likely be achieved with material advancements (such as the tungsten invertor), but also through error-field optimization models that improve stability both in the center and at the edges of plasma. KSTAR’s partner, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, successfully controlled for “tearing mode” instabilities in the DIII-D experimental fusion reactor in San Diego last month—a technique that appears to have proved successful in the KSTAR reactor as well.
For decades, fusion has been the technology of the future, but laboratories like KSTAR and eventually ITER are starting to show that the future is now.
Darren Orf
Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.
Popular Mechanics · April 4, 2024
21. Battelle Awarded $350M US SOCOM Contract
Battelle Awarded $350M US SOCOM Contract
Katie Helbling / Apr 4, 2024
https://news.clearancejobs.com/2024/04/04/battelle-awarded-350m-us-socom-contract/?utm
DEFENSE CONTRACTS
DEFENSE CONTRACTS VALUED AT $7 MILLION AND ABOVE
NAVY
AECOM-ASO JV, Los Angeles, California (N62742-24-D-3501); Amentum Services Inc., Chantilly, Virginia (N62742-24-D-3502); Fluor Intercontinental Inc., Greenville, South Carolina (N62742-24-D-3503); IAP-ECC LLC, Cape Canaveral, Florida (N62742-24-D-3504); KBR Services LLC, Houston, Texas (N62742-24-D-3505); and Vectrus Systems Corp., Colorado Springs, Colorado (N62742-24-D-3506), are awarded a combined $2,000,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with the capability to issue cost-plus-award-fee and firm-fixed-price task orders for the Global Contingency Services Multiple Award Contract III. This contract provides for the ability to quickly provide short-term facility support services in support of natural disasters, humanitarian efforts, the full range of military actions, incumbent contractor’s nonperformance or potential breaks in service. Work will be performed at various locations (including remote locations) throughout the world. The term of the contract is not to exceed 102 months and is expected to be completed by September 2032. The maximum dollar value, including the base period and seven option years with one six-month extension period, for all six contracts combined, is $2,000,000,000. Each awardee will be awarded $25,000 (minimum contract guarantee per awardee) at contract award. Fiscal 2024 supervision, inspection, and overhead funds in the amount of $150,000 will be obligated at time of award and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via the sam.gov website, with six offers received. These six contractors may compete for task orders under the terms and conditions of the awarded contract. The Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, Pacific, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is the contracting activity.
BAE Systems Land & Armaments LP, Sterling Heights, Michigan, is awarded a $79,213,757 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to previously awarded contract (M67854-16-C-0006) for Amphibious Combat Vehicles (ACV). The total cumulative face value of the contract is $2,838,414,624. This contract modification provides for the additional subcontract line-item numbers for the procurement of three production representative test vehicles for the ACV recovery variant and test support. Work will be performed in York, Pennsylvania (60%); Aiken, South Carolina (15%); San Jose, California (15%); Sterling Heights, Michigan (5%); and Stafford, Virginia (5%), with an expected completion date of July 2026. Fiscal 2024 research and development funds in the amount of $79,213,757 will be obligated at the time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Virginia, is the contracting activity (M67854-16-C-0006).
Prime Projects International LLC, Djibouti, Djibouti (N33191-24-D-0001); Cosmezz S.A.R.L., Djibouti, Djibouti (N33191-24-D-0002; Mapi Construction S.A.R.L., Djibouti, Djibouti (N33191-24-D-0003); SpendSmart Group LLC, Park Ridge, Illinois (N33191-24-D-0004); and Tremco LLC, Djibouti, Djibouti (N33191-24-D-0005), are awarded a combined $25,000,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, multiple award construction contract for construction, renovation, or repair of buildings. The work to be performed provides for renovation, demolition, or construction of administrative buildings, community buildings, recreational facilities, containerized living units, and other infrastructure. Work will be performed primarily in Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, the country of Djibouti, and possible locations in adjacent countries. The term of the contract is not to exceed 60 months and has a completion date of April 2029. Fiscal 2024 operation and maintenance, (Navy) funds in the amount of $506,760 are obligated on this award and will expire at the end of the fiscal year.
This contract was competitively procured via the SAM.gov website, with 13 offers received.
The Naval Facilities Engineering System Command, Europe Africa Central, Naples, Italy, is the contracting activity.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is awarded a not-to-exceed $11,470,144 undefinitized cost-plus-fixed-fee order (N0001924F2584) against a previously issued basic ordering agreement (N0001924G0010). This order provides for the redesign of the relay optical assembly on the F-35 Gen III Helmet Mounted Display System in support of the F-35 program for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and non-Department of Defense (DOD) participants. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas, and is expected to be completed in January 2025. Fiscal 2024 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $2,298,307; fiscal 2024 aircraft procurement (Air Force) funds in the amount of $2,298,307; and non-DOD participant funds in the amount of $1,023,756 will be obligated at the time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity.
U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND
Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio, is being awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (H9240324D0002) that has a maximum value of $350,000,000 (including all options) and a minimum ordering guarantee of $2,500. The first delivery order is being awarded concurrently with the contract and obligates $647,357 for program management support. Battelle Memorial Institute is a large, not-for-profit business, and the scope of the contract is for the acquisition of non-standard commercial vehicles (NSCV)-life cycle replacement and ancillary vehicle modifications based on U.S. Special Operations Command’s (USSOCOM) requirements. In addition, it supports lifecycle replacement of USSOCOM’s NSCV fleet and includes various armament, communications, and modification packages, as well as program management, test support, driver new equipment training, engineering changes, system technical services, parts, and shipping. This contract has a seven-year ordering period (five-year base ordering period with two one year option ordering periods) with a period of performance beginning April 4, 2024, and ending on April 3, 2031. U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity.
DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY
EnerSys Advanced Systems, Warrensburg, Missouri (SPE7LX-24-D-0049, $200,564,422); and FIAMM Energy Technology LLC, Waynesboro, Georgia (SPE7LX-24-D-0050, $17,6312,595), have each been awarded a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-quantity contract under solicitation SPE7LX-23-R-0108 for battery storage. This was a competitive acquisition with two responses received. These are three-year base contracts with two one-year option periods. The performance completion date is April 3, 2027. Using military services are Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2024 through 2027 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime, Columbus, Ohio.
McRae Industries,* Mt. Gilead, North Carolina, has been awarded a maximum $31,444,644 fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for hot weather boots. This was a competitive acquisition with two responses received. This is a four-year contract with no option periods. The ordering period end date is March 27, 2028. Using military service is Marine Corps. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2024 through 2028 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE1C1-24-D-0044).
AIR FORCE
General Dynamics Mission Systems Inc., Scottsdale, Arizona, was awarded a $17,214,761 cost-plus-fixed-fee task order for the U.S. Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation System trusted network environment cross domain solution – sustainment task order. This contract will provide services and associated supplies to the U.S. government for engineering, development, testing, assessment, deployment, and support for this task order. Work will be performed at various continental U.S. and outside the continental U.S. locations and is expected to be completed by March 31, 2025. This contract was a sole-source acquisition and fiscal 2024 operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $16,852,161 are being obligated at time of award. The Secretary of the Air Force, Concepts Development and Management Contracting Office, Fairfax, Virginia, is the contracting activity (FA7146-24-F-0014). (Awarded April 2, 2024)
Relativity Space, Long Beach, California, has been awarded a $8,765,978, fixed-price contract for real-time flaw detection in large format additive manufacturing. Work will be performed in Long Beach, California, and is expected to be complete by July 3, 2026. Fiscal year 2023 research and development funds in the amount of $8,765,978 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA2394-23-C-B012).
ARMY
Louis Berger Hawthorne Services Inc., Greenville, South Carolina, was awarded an $11,946,046 firm-fixed-price contract for petroleum facility recurring maintenance and minor repair services. Bids were solicited via the internet with five received. Work will be performed in Greenville, South Carolina, with an estimated completion date of May 7, 2029. Fiscal 2024 revolving funds in the amount of $11,946,046 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, Alabama, is the contracting activity (W912DY-24-F-0028).
Massman Construction Co., Overland Park, Kansas, was awarded an $8,261,139 firm-fixed-price contract for the Algiers Lock Riverside Dolphin Replacement project. Bids were solicited via the internet with four received. Work will be performed in New Orleans, Louisiana, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 31, 2025. Fiscal 2024 civil operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $8,261,139 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans, Louisiana, is the contracting activity (W912P8-24-C-0008).
*Small Business
23. The Biden-Kishida summit should set the stage for a unified U.S.-Japanese military command
They just announced a new 3 star to take command of USFJ. Will he be promoted to 4 star to assume this role? Will a combined command be established? What will be the actual command relationships among the forces? If anything I think the NORAD model might be better than the ROK/US CFC model if a combined command is going to be established. But what about the Japanese constitution? Or could this be away to circumvent the self (or MacArthur) imposed restrictions on offensive operations? When will the Japanese public and politicians begin to complain about sovereignty issues as some have done in Korea?
Excerpts:
The Biden administration is expected to announce that it will upgrade from three-stars to four-stars the command of U.S. forces in Japan. For his part, Kishida is planning to establish by 2025 a new Self-Defense Forces headquarters that would oversee all Japanese military operations. It too would be commanded by a four-star officer.
At a minimum, the American commander would be responsible only for joint exercises, training and information sharing with the new SDF headquarters. But there is a strong case for going further and creating a unified command that would incorporate both American and Japanese forces.
There is precedent for such a command. American and South Korean forces have been joined under the Combined Forces Command since 1978. The CFC has operational control over some 600,000 active-duty personnel from both countries, and currently would have wartime control over all South Korean forces and American units deployed to the country. The CFC, which is led by an American four-star general with a Korean four-star as deputy commander and has binational manning throughout the ranks, could serve as a model for a future U.S.-Japanese unified force.
The joint American-Canadian North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) offers another (though somewhat different) model of joint operations between America and one of its leading allies. NORAD focuses on operations related to but a single mission, the defense of American and Canadian air space. Moreover, unlike CFC, the NORAD top command consists of an American four-star general but a Canadian three-star.
The Biden-Kishida summit should set the stage for a unified U.S.-Japanese military command
BY DOV S. ZAKHEIM, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 04/05/24 9:00 AM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4575664-the-biden-kishida-summit-should-set-the-stage-for-a-unified-u-s-japanese-military-command/
President Joe Biden and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony for President Biden, at the Akasaka Palace state guest house in Tokyo, Japan, Monday May 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
President Biden will host Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Bongbong Marcos next week in a trilateral summit intended to further strengthen ties among the three allies. Biden will also meet separately with both leaders, with Kishida on April 10 and with Marcos the following day.
Both Asian countries have committed to increasing their defense spending. Manila plans to spend an addition $35 million over the next decade, while Japan has committed to expending nearly ten times as much — $300 billion — by 2027. Tokyo’s defense program will nearly double the 1 percent of GDP that it currently allocates to defense.
Few doubt that Japan will realize its ambitious defense buildup by 2027. On the other hand, it is not at all clear that the country can sustain its planned level of defense expenditure well beyond the end of this decade, due to a reduced tax base resulting from Japan’s population decline.
The drop in the country’s population is a product of both low birth rates and an aging cohort. Japan’s population, which stood at 123 million in 2022, shrank by nearly 1.3 million over the past two years. The number of babies born in the country fell for the eighth consecutive year in 2023, with no immediate prospect of an upturn. By 2030, Japan’s population is estimated to stand at around 117.5 million, with an increased proportion of the elderly; the number of citizens over 65 will rise from 28.5 million to 29.6 million. As Japan’s tax base declines, demands for greater social welfare spending on its aging population will increase.
Moreover, Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio currently stands at about 260 percent, second highest in the world after Venezuela. Although it is projected to drop somewhat in the next few years, that ratio will remain exceedingly high. All these developments will likely result in tremendous pressure on future governments to constrain the levels of defense spending to which the country is now committed.
Given likely future pressures on Japan’s defense budget, there is much to be said for increasing the synergies that could be realized from ever-closer cooperation with the United States, which faces its own long-term pressures on defense spending. Next week’s Biden-Kishida summit likely will outline a number of steps in that direction.
The Biden administration is expected to announce that it will upgrade from three-stars to four-stars the command of U.S. forces in Japan. For his part, Kishida is planning to establish by 2025 a new Self-Defense Forces headquarters that would oversee all Japanese military operations. It too would be commanded by a four-star officer.
At a minimum, the American commander would be responsible only for joint exercises, training and information sharing with the new SDF headquarters. But there is a strong case for going further and creating a unified command that would incorporate both American and Japanese forces.
There is precedent for such a command. American and South Korean forces have been joined under the Combined Forces Command since 1978. The CFC has operational control over some 600,000 active-duty personnel from both countries, and currently would have wartime control over all South Korean forces and American units deployed to the country. The CFC, which is led by an American four-star general with a Korean four-star as deputy commander and has binational manning throughout the ranks, could serve as a model for a future U.S.-Japanese unified force.
The joint American-Canadian North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) offers another (though somewhat different) model of joint operations between America and one of its leading allies. NORAD focuses on operations related to but a single mission, the defense of American and Canadian air space. Moreover, unlike CFC, the NORAD top command consists of an American four-star general but a Canadian three-star.
What both CFC and NORAD demonstrate in their different ways is that integrated operations between America and Japan are feasible and workable. Given their common perception of the growing Chinese threat and the budget pressures that both countries will face in coming years, Washington and Tokyo should not limit themselves to next week’s expected and welcome announcement of a new stage in their joint military efforts. Instead, they should begin to plan for the establishment of a unified command that would both strengthen their common defense and enhance the credibility of their joint deterrent against an increasingly hostile Beijing, which both countries view as a long-term threat to their national security.
Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.
23. What Liberals Get Wrong About ‘White Rural Rage’ — Almost Everything
A long read. Of course it should be read with an open mind. I am not submitting from a partisan perspective but from a sociological one to hopefully contribute to better understanding our society. But I know this will draw ire from some people.
I think these are the key excerpts:
I can imagine a politics that actually confronts rural resentment. True, it is much harder to imagine. Academic research is great at contextualizing and contextualizing the contextualization. It is not always forward-looking. But if rage leads us to conclude that Democrats — and democracy — should just abandon rural voters, then resentment, at the very least, points in the opposite direction.
First and foremost, understanding rural resentment would mean acknowledging the profound geographic inequities that exist in the U.S., and that those inequities are a powerful motivator of political behavior. They are not the same as rage, racism, xenophobia and nationalism. It is distinctive.
The assumption that rural whites are motivated primarily by racism is especially pernicious. A politics that learned the lessons of rural resentment would not deny that racial divisions are present throughout rural America, but would recognize that racial animus can exist alongside other motivations.
The fact is that racial resentment has long predicted support for conservative candidates in American elections no matter where voters live. Did racially resentful whites in 2012 vote for Obama? No. So what explains the massive shift among so many rural voters who cast ballots for Obama in 2012 but for Trump just four years later? Maybe he primed racial animus to a higher degree. Maybe he made it openly acceptable to say certain things. Or maybe he spoke to different motivations that expanded his constituency alongside other motivations, including white grievance, that were already fully cemented in the rural Republican coalition.
That is what the data show. The data do not show that rural America is devoid of racial resentment. The data do not show that urban America is either. Indeed, racial resentment is a powerful predictor of support for Trump throughout America, as I show in my book. But rural resentment — that sense of place, the anxieties felt about one’s community, the deeply engrained feeling that urban America would erase rural ways of living if given the chance — that is a predictor of Trump support only in rural America.
What Liberals Get Wrong About ‘White Rural Rage’ — Almost Everything
The ‘White Rural Rage’ narrative gets the research wrong. I know, because some of it is mine.
Politico · by DAVID FERRIS
Liberals who dump on rural America are getting the research wrong. I know, because some of it is mine.
Illustration by Benedetto Cristofani for POLITICO
By Nicholas F. Jacobs
04/05/2024 05:00 AM EDT
Nicholas Jacobs is a political scientist who teaches American politics and research methods at Colby College. He is co-author of the 2023 book The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America.
If you’ve been watching television or tracking trending topics over the last few weeks, you’ve probably seen or read something about “white rural rage.” This is owed to the publication of a new book, White Rural Rage, by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, whose thesis is that white rural Americans, despite representing just 16 percent of the American electorate, are a “threat to the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.”
In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Schaller gave this unvarnished assessment of the rage he sees overflowing in the heartland. Rural whites, he said, are “the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geo-demographic group in the country.” He called them, “the most conspiracist group,” “anti-democratic,” “white nationalist and white Christian nationalists.” On top of that, rural whites are also “most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”
This premise has triggered a backlash towards rural voters from some on the left. Amanda Marcotte, writing for Salon, said she’s tired of handling rural voters “with kid gloves,” and time has come to pop the “racist, homophobic, sexist bubble” they all live in. Daily Beast columnist Michael Cohen agreed, writing that “these aren’t hurtful, elitist stereotypes by Acela Corridor denizens and bubble-dwelling liberals… they’re facts.” David Corn, the D.C. bureau chief at Mother Jones, piled on, agreeing that “white rural voters [are] the slice of the public that endangers the constitutional future of the republic.”
This latest obsession with rural rage is nothing new. After 2016, when rural voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania put former President Donald Trump over the top, Democrats tried to figure out why they had gone so sour on the Democratic Party. Some liberal thinkers called out the left’s reflexive condescension and dismissal of rural voters that escalated during the George W. Bush administration and peaked with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and her dismissal of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” Some said the party should increase attention to rural issues and nearby rural communities.
But don’t be misled. The publication and widespread celebration of White Rural Rage among progressive circles is doing something different than those post-2016 post-mortems. It is not an attempt to understand the needs and concerns of rural America. Instead, it’s an outpouring of frustration with rural America that might feel cathartic for liberals, but will only serve to further marginalize and demonize a segment of the American population that already feels forgotten and dismissed by the experts and elites.
The people doing the work of protecting democracy in rural America recognized this immediately. The morning of the MSNBC interview, I woke up to a mountain of messages and threads from rural organizers, community activists and local officials from across the country. Each one was distressed over what they considered the authors’ harsh and hurtful accusations about the communities they cherish and strive to uplift.
What seemingly set apart this book is that the authors claimed to have data backing up their assertions. “We provide the receipts,” Schaller said in the interview. What is their data, my friends and colleagues asked, and why do they get it so wrong?
Imagine my surprise when I picked up the book and saw that some of that research was mine.
I’m an academic who studies rural Americans and lives in rural Maine. My job and passion is to pore over reams of data, including some of the largest surveys of rural voters ever conducted. Sitting on my computer are detailed responses from over 25,000 rural voters that I have conducted over the last decade and used to publish a range of peer-reviewed and widely cited research. And I’ve done it all largely to make sense of why rural voters are continually drawn to the Republican Party.
But the thing about rage — I’ve never found it.
The problem with this “rage” thesis is much larger than the fact that my research, and that of others, is being misinterpreted and misunderstood. What the authors are getting wrong about rural America is exactly what many Democrats have been getting wrong for decades — and appear to be doing so again in this critical presidential election year.
Beyond the weaknesses of this one book, and the prospects of another deeply divisive election, this new rage thesis worries me.
Academics can and do disagree on what is motivating non-college-educated whites to vote for Donald Trump. I don’t pretend that we have settled on a single answer. I do know that there is something particular about Trump’s appeal in rural America and that demographics alone do not explain it. In rural America, women are more likely to vote for Trump; so are young people; so are poor as well as rich. Place matters.
But ruralness is not reducible to rage. And to say so is to overlook the nuanced ways in which rural Americans engage in politics. They are driven by a sense of place, community and often, a desire for recognition and respect. This, as I have recently argued in a new book, is the defining aspect of the rural-urban divide — a sense of shared fate among rural voters, what academics call a “politics of place,” that is expressed as a belief in self-reliance, rooted in local community and concerned that rural ways of living will soon be forced to disappear.
In recent years, that rural political identity has morphed into resentment — a collective grievance against experts, bureaucrats, intellectuals and the political party that seeks to empower them, Democrats.
Yes, such resentment is a real phenomenon in rural areas. But words matter; rage and resentment are not interchangeable terms. Rage implies irrationality, anger that is unjustified and out of proportion. You can’t talk to someone who is enraged. Resentment is rational, a reaction based on some sort of negative experience. You may not agree that someone has been treated unfairly, but there is room to empathize.
Research both by me and by others has illuminated how resentment is driven by the complex rural identity that, while occasionally intersecting with national political currents, is rooted in the unique context of rural life. Rage, both as a soundbite and as presented in the book, oversimplifies and misrepresents these debates. And so does the assumption that all the holders of these views are white, and that this rage is motivated by racism. Racism exists in all parts of the country and is embedded in American politics. But what the research shows is that while there are deep and persistent racial resentments in rural communities, despite a slight correlation between the two, rural resentment is an attitude distinct from racial prejudice.
So far, Republicans are the political party that has figured out how to speak to that rural identity effectively.
I sympathize with the idea that, as Schaller and Waldman and many other commentators have pointed out, in terms of policies, Democrats arguably do more for rural areas and rural residents than Republicans do. After Democrats passed Obamacare, rural residents stood to gain the most in states that expanded Medicaid, but two-thirds of uninsured rural residents missed out because they lived in states that refused to expand coverage — and those states were almost exclusively governed by Republicans. Paul Krugman is often quick to point out that “ because rural America is poorer than urban America, it pays much less per person in federal taxes, so in practice major metropolitan areas hugely subsidize the countryside.” And it is true that the Biden administration is currently overseeing billions in new federal spending that is disproportionately going to rural communities across America.
So, the problem Democrats haven’t been able to solve isn’t policy; it’s politics. And Democrats who give in to the simplistic rage thesis are essentially letting themselves off the hook on the politics, suggesting that rural Americans are irrational and beyond any effort to engage them.
That would be a massive mistake, one that does truly threaten democracy. Democrats have an opportunity to do better in rural America. We need them to do better, not because Democrats’ policy fixes are always the solution, but because our political system only works when competitive elections hold officials accountable. One-party dominance throws the system off-center, misrepresents interests, sows distrust.
The first step for Democrats is to start thinking — and talking — about rural America right.
Reading White Rural Rage won’t help with that. The authors have no expertise in rural issues and conducted no original research for the book. They approached the topic as journalists and committed the same errors countless reporters have made when they share with the outside world what they saw from a few days traversing some small town in “ flyover country” — an occurrence all the more routine as local newspapers in rural America shutter.
The authors of White Rural Rage make two persistent types of error in analyzing the data on rural Americans.
First, they routinely fall victim to the logical fallacy of composition when they attribute group characteristics to individuals. For example, they suggest that since authoritarianism predicted support for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries, and rural residents support Trump, rural residents are the most likely to be authoritarian. (That’s like concluding that because Massachusetts tends to vote Democratic, and Massachusetts is a wealthy state, wealthy people must vote Democratic … but the opposite is true.)
As it happens, the opposite seems to be true in this case as well; leading authoritarian experts find no geographic dimension to growing authoritarianism in the U.S., and the study the authors cite early in the book to “prove” that rural residents are “more likely to favor violence over democratic deliberation” says nothing about violence, or deliberation or authoritarianism. Work by scholars they cite actually shows the opposite, too: Rural residents are less, not more, likely to support political violence.
This same logical fallacy comes into play when they weave together a string of facts about Christian nationalists: Because white evangelicals are most likely to support Christian nationalist beliefs, and because 43 percent of rural residents identify as evangelical, they assert that the hotbed of Christian nationalism is in rural communities. The same goes for their assertions about QAnon. Perhaps the worst guilt-by-association error is found right in the title; even in the reddest of rural counties, 20 to 30 percent of voters — still largely white — routinely support Democrats. One might ask why, given all the supposed rage, are some rural Americans still voting for Democrats, election after election? You wouldn’t know it from the title or press tour, but Schaller and Waldman must frequently hedge their bets in the text, acknowledging that just a minority of rural residents often believe the most headline-grabbing factoid.
The second persistent error is that they cite polling data with little attention to issues of quality, which less sloppy scholars would question to make sure their conclusions were valid. For instance, some of the most salacious data points on race and immigration are taken from polls with just a few dozen rural residents; anyone trained in statistics would recognize that is too small a sample size to consider the result representative or reliable. The “birther” claim they like to throw about — that rural residents are more likely to believe that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States — comes from a “study” by a polling firm called Public Policy Polling, a firm with dubious credentials that not only seems to exist primarily to lampoon conservative voters, but that also, in this case, drew results about “rural America” from just two states.
And I’m not cherry-picking examples. I’ve reviewed every publicly available survey and poll the authors use, have published my concerns on each one here, and have concluded that only two surveys in the entire book conform to basic standards of survey research and even attempt to try and present an accurate picture of rural America.
Some examples in the book do not even have bad data to rely upon. For instance, the authors assert that there is support in white rural America for so-called constitutional sheriffs — local law officials who make brazen claims about their authority to violate state and national laws in defense of the Constitution. Although several pages are devoted to describing a handful of these officials, not a single study of public opinion is cited in that section to show whether the sheriffs enjoy support outside of the counties where they were elected in (usually low-turnout) races.
What’s more, the rage thesis conflicts with findings from more rigorous research. As recently as January of this year, my colleague Dan Shea and I searched for exactly these types of attitudes. Interested in whether President Joe Biden’s campaign message about democracy being on the line would resonate with rural voters, we tested the hypothesis, drawing on a representative sample of rural voters.
Bottom line: The “threats” to democracy just aren’t there. Our research found that just 27 percent of rural voters — including 23 percent of rural Trump voters — think that if the opposing candidate wins in November, “people will need to take drastic action in order to stop [Biden or Trump] from taking office.” That’s the exact same proportion — 27 percent — as voters in urban and suburban areas who hold the same view. Nor are rural voters more likely than urban voters to say that the opposing party is a “threat to the future of America;” while 38 percent of rural Trump voters strongly believe that about Democrats, 36 percent of nonrural Biden voters think that same thing about Republicans.
To be sure, 27 percent isn’t a negligible number of people in a country of 330 million. But the threats to democracy that lurk in America are not specific to rural areas. Importantly, and often overlooked by the rage peddlers, is the flip side of those numbers — that more than 60 percent of both sets of voters, a strong majority of Americans, both rural and urban, do not hold those attitudes.
This shoddy analysis and faux expertise does real damage. It is clear that the overwhelming portrayal of rural America as angry and irrational feeds into and amplifies the divisions between rural and urban Americans, overshadowing the shared challenges and aspirations that cut across these geographic lines.
Here’s some of what the research, properly understood, does tell us about rural America.
Rural communities, much like disadvantaged neighborhoods in urban areas, are more likely to suffer from chronic health conditions, a challenge compounded by the closure of local hospitals and a shortage of health care providers. Rural economies often struggle with limited employment opportunities and infrastructure deficits, issues that should resonate with many post-industrial urban areas facing similar challenges. Additionally, educational disparities persist across the U.S., with rural schools facing funding shortfalls and teacher shortages that parallel urban struggles to provide equitable educational opportunities.
And it is this divide I find particularly troubling — that so many rural and urban areas suffer from similar ailments but remain politically divided. It is not one solved by the new rage peddlers.
I can anticipate the frustrated Democratic response: “We tried to give them what they want, and they continue to vote against their interests.” Waldman said as much in 2022: “One thing you absolutely cannot say is that Democrats don’t try to help rural America. In fact, they probably work harder at it than Republicans do.”
I agree, to a point. Rural voters do not give Democrats credit for much good. And rural voters may indeed support policies and politicians that seem, from an outside perspective, to undermine their own economic interests.
However, that is exactly what a focus on resentment helps us to understand. This is not rage against the people trying to help. Nor is it an excuse. Resentment, instead, asks us to consider how rural voters’ choices are frequently rooted in values and place-based identities that place a strong emphasis on self-reliance, local control and a profound sense of injustice regarding the lack of recognition for rural contributions to society.
There is no “mystery” to it. Rural Americans often prioritize their way of life over immediate economic gains that are often promised (and not always delivered) by policy solutions. My research suggests that their perceived resistance to certain policies, and especially a political party that advocates for a multitude of governmental correctives, is a complex reaction stemming from years of economic transition, dislocation and yes, harm from policies they were told would help.
Sure, “Hollywood didn’t kill the family farm and send jobs overseas. ... College professors didn’t pour mountains of opioids in rural communities,” as Schaller and Waldman write. But rural people do know that federal agriculture and trade policies pushed by Democrats and Republicans did destroy many rural economies. Rural people do know that liberal elites stood by as rural students became one of the least likely groups to attend college, and one of the most likely to drop out. So they benefit from Obamacare and vote against it; can rural people contain multitudes, too?
Taken as a whole, rural voters are not merely reacting against change — be it demographic or economic. They are actively seeking to preserve a sense of agency over their future and a continuity of their community’s values and social structures. Some might call this conservatism, but I think it is the same thing motivating fears of gentrification in urban areas, or the desire to “keep Portland weird.” Place matters for a whole bunch of people — but especially for rural folks.
Consider the fact, as I discuss in my book, that rural Americans are the most likely to say that if given the chance, they would never want to leave their community, while at the same time they are the most likely to say that children growing up in their specific community will have to leave in order to live productive lives. Could any single policy solve that dilemma?
Instead of a politics that seeks to understand and represent these contradictions, the left wants to simplify ruralness into something it’s not. In the immediate aftermath of 2016, blaming rural people was a way to make sense of the surprise of Trump’s election. This latest obsession with rage is the next chapter, a kind of collective cry of frustration from tired progressives: “We give up!” There is a general tendency among the readers of the New York Times and viewers of MSNBC to think about politics in purely transactional terms: We give you these benefits, you give us your votes. And rural voters, as Waldman is right to note, aren’t living up to that supposed bargain.
But this flies in the face of what research on resentment actually tells us. For many rural residents, the solutions they seek may not always come neatly packaged as government policies, white papers or policy briefs pumped out of a campaign war room. I’ve found that resentments exist because self-reliance and local problem-solving is intrinsic to rural identity, and self-reliance is something by nature resistant to government policies emanating from Washington, D.C.
What rural communities may desire are empowering strategies that allow them to shape their own future — support that bolsters local leadership, encourages community-driven initiatives and provides the tools and resources necessary for them to address their specific challenges in a manner consistent with their values. That isn’t rage, nor is it a threat to democracy.
I sometimes hope that progressives will realize that this fits in with their commitment to multiculturalism and local diversity. But the eagerness with which “white rural rage” has been seized upon by some segments of the chattering classes shows a readiness to simply write off white rural America; notably, Schaller’s previous book similarly argued that the Democratic Party should simply give up on competing in the South. (So long, Georgia!)
There is no better way to make the case for giving up on rural areas than to say that this segment of America represents a threat to the country’s very existence.
After portraying white rural America as an obstacle to democracy (and the Democratic Party), Schaller and Waldman call for a “ real rural movement” to “use the power they have, and start demanding something more concrete.”
What they miss is that a real rural movement is already here. It is the rural movement towards the Republican Party that has been building since the 1980s. It existed before Trump and will exist after Trump leaves politics. And it is baffling why these new, self-proclaimed saviors of rural America cannot see that their gross mischaracterization of rural life feeds into the resentments driving that movement.
I can imagine a politics that actually confronts rural resentment. True, it is much harder to imagine. Academic research is great at contextualizing and contextualizing the contextualization. It is not always forward-looking. But if rage leads us to conclude that Democrats — and democracy — should just abandon rural voters, then resentment, at the very least, points in the opposite direction.
First and foremost, understanding rural resentment would mean acknowledging the profound geographic inequities that exist in the U.S., and that those inequities are a powerful motivator of political behavior. They are not the same as rage, racism, xenophobia and nationalism. It is distinctive.
The assumption that rural whites are motivated primarily by racism is especially pernicious. A politics that learned the lessons of rural resentment would not deny that racial divisions are present throughout rural America, but would recognize that racial animus can exist alongside other motivations.
The fact is that racial resentment has long predicted support for conservative candidates in American elections no matter where voters live. Did racially resentful whites in 2012 vote for Obama? No. So what explains the massive shift among so many rural voters who cast ballots for Obama in 2012 but for Trump just four years later? Maybe he primed racial animus to a higher degree. Maybe he made it openly acceptable to say certain things. Or maybe he spoke to different motivations that expanded his constituency alongside other motivations, including white grievance, that were already fully cemented in the rural Republican coalition.
That is what the data show. The data do not show that rural America is devoid of racial resentment. The data do not show that urban America is either. Indeed, racial resentment is a powerful predictor of support for Trump throughout America, as I show in my book. But rural resentment — that sense of place, the anxieties felt about one’s community, the deeply engrained feeling that urban America would erase rural ways of living if given the chance — that is a predictor of Trump support only in rural America.
Moreover, these motivations are found among both white and nonwhite rural voters. To be sure, this area of research remains difficult. About 20 percent of rural America is made up of racial and ethnic minorities, and it is complicated and expensive to gather enough data on this minority of an already small minority of rural residents.
I’ve put time and money into the question, and have collected survey data with sample sizes sufficiently large enough to say something about racial politics in rural communities. Absolutely, a divide exists, and rural whites are more likely than urban whites to hold stereotypes about racial and ethnic minorities. But nonwhite Americans living in rural communities also seem to share these geography-based grievances with their white neighbors — something we have not yet found in urban America. Many are also motivated by a sense of place — a motivation that may also be driving many to leave the Democratic Party this November. According to the 2020 Cooperative Election Study out of Harvard, which collected nearly 2,000 nonwhite rural responses, nearly 30 percent of nonwhite voters in rural communities voted for Donald Trump last election; data I collected this past February containing 1,500 nonwhite rural voters also show a shift towards Trump that mirrors what other polls have found. And while more nonwhite voters are saying they will cast a ballot for Trump, in rural communities, the shift is even more dramatic.
At this point, the onus falls on Democratic officials and candidates to do something different because they are the ones losing rural voters election after election. They’ll need to acknowledge that a laundry list of policy “solutions” is likely to fall on deaf ears. I’m sympathetic to the policy argument. Democrats are currently providing financial support and federal investments in rural communities that may make a difference. Broadband and bridges matter. Why shouldn’t Biden take credit for this massive influx of cash that could contradict the idea that these communities are “left behind?”
But it is often not enough given the historic underinvestments that plague many rural areas; and Democratic “solutions” have yet to solve the health care crisis, the jobs crisis, the growing number of teacher shortages. Celebrate, sure. Acknowledge the long road ahead, too.
It is also true that federal involvement has a tendency to irreparably change the character of many communities. The scars of federal tinkering — from land use policy to free trade agreements to dead-end retraining programs — are still very visible. And so, the dilemma for Democrats is that getting the policies right won’t be enough. They will need new messaging to address the emotions that fuel the rising tide of resentment in rural communities. That is the political problem.
I wish there was a trick to solving that political problem. I’m not a political strategist or a communications expert. But I believe that the first place to start is acknowledging that the divisions between rural and urban America are more than material ones. Look at Democratic candidates who are successful in rural communities — Jared Golden, Tim Ryan, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. They do not just talk about rural deprivation and rural impoverishment, as real as it often is in their states. They celebrate rural communities’ resiliency; they acknowledge the pride of place that is present throughout rural America; they see different values that are not reflected in opinion polls and snappy campaign slogans, but rather speak to different ways of living that draw some people to the countryside, problems and all. It helps that they are authentically rural and do not pretend to be something they are not. Candidates still matter, even in a highly nationalized campaign environment.
On specific issues, this politics would acknowledge that rural and nonrural Trump voters see issues through different lenses, even if, come Election Day, they are voting the same way; you have to talk to them differently. On immigration, it would mean accepting the fact that, in some communities, particularly those with financial challenges, concerns about the social burden of immigration is not always an expression of hate. It would look at a data point on distrust in media and seek out a reason — perhaps a self-critical one — for why rural people are the most likely to feel like news does not portray their communities accurately. It would speak directly to the challenge posed by artificial intelligence and technological progress that, once again, will likely concentrate benefits among those who have already benefited and leave rural communities behind. It will see the moral costs as well as the economic costs of those developments — the end to heritage industries, the pollution of the land, the erasure of rural dignity — and recognize how demoralizing it is to be told that they should just learn to code “ for God’s sake.”
And it would give agency back to the 1 in 5 Americans who call rural areas home, not through a lengthy list of policy correctives but through a politics of empathy and shared authorship and civic engagement. Is that really so hard?
POLITICO
Politico · by DAVID FERRIS
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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