Quotes of the Day:

“It's infinitely easier to be against something than to be for something. It takes bravery to be for something, because then you have to defend your position. Be brave.” 

– Heather Cox Richardson.

“The world is full of people who are very clever at seeming much smarter than they really are.”

– Kurt Vonnegut

"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the Progressive movement is making life a little easier for all our people; a movement to try to take the burdens off the men and especially the women and children of this country. I am absorbed in the success of that movement." 

– Theodore Roosevelt

1. The Putin Propaganda Chief Who the U.S. Says Is Now After American Minds

2. Reagan Didn’t Win the Cold War by Max Boot

3. Planning for a Post-American NATO

4. Russia pulls 60,000 troops to counter Kursk incursion, Zelensky claims

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 5, 2024

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, September 5, 2024

7. Mongolia refuses to arrest Putin during visit, choosing economic ties over international law

8. The Russian Propaganda Attack on America

9. Ukraine’s top commander defends Kursk offensive

10. The Future of Warfare Is Electronic

11. U.S. Maritime Policy Needs an Overhaul

12. Antony Blinken Dragged US Diplomacy Into the 21st Century. Even He’s Surprised by the Results

13. A ramp-up in nuclear weapons is not always a bad thing

14.  SOF 2050: How Robotics, AI, and Human Augmentation Will Redefine Special Operations of the Future

15. Green Berets are integrating cyber warfare into their training. Here is why it matters

16. Ex-Green Beret Behind Failed Venezuela Raid Released Pending Trial

17. Malaysia says it won't bow to China's demands to halt oil exploration in the South China Sea

18. Indonesia continues ‘rowing between 2 reefs’ amid US-China rivalry, security expert says

19. Ukrainian AK-74-Equipped FPV Drone Engages Russian Forces for the First Time

20. Russia dismisses charges of election meddling; Putin claims he backs Harris

21. Accelerated Training in the Spotlight After Ukrainian F-16 Crash

22. Exclusive: US sees increasing risk of Russian ‘sabotage’ of key undersea cables by secretive military unit

23. US military draws up plans for collapse of Gaza ceasefire talks

24. Demographic Diversity Is Not Our Strength

25. What’s behind conservative opposition to DEI? Take a look at this study

26. Deepfakes deepfail: Russian propagandists turn away from generative AI

27. MC-130J Crews Earn Award for Supporting Longest US Army Helicopter Mission Relying on Aerial Refueling

1. The Putin Propaganda Chief Who the U.S. Says Is Now After American Minds

As an aside, who is the US propaganda, information warfare, psychological warfare, psychological operations and public diplomacy Czar? I only say this with half sarcasm. Who is responsible for leading the information for the US? And I am not talking about covert influence. Let that reside where it resides. I am talking about OVERT influence. Is the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy synchronizing and orchestrating all our information and influence activities (less covert influence)?

The Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs leads Department efforts to expand and strengthen the relationships between the people of the United States and citizens of other countries. The bureaus and offices reporting to the Under Secretary advance national interests by seeking to engage, inform, and understand the perspectives of foreign audiences.

https://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/under-secretary-for-public-diplomacy-and-public-affairs/

Also, do we need to re-establish an organization like the Active Measures Working Group like we had during the Reagan administration to counter Soviet propaganda?

The Putin Propaganda Chief Who the U.S. Says Is Now After American Minds

The Justice Department has named Sergei Kiriyenko as the curator of some 30 internet domains aimed at misleading U.S. voters

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-aide-russia-propaganda-us-election-3b3ef3d2?mod=latest_headlines

By Ann M. SimmonsFollow

 and Thomas GroveFollow

Sept. 6, 2024 5:30 am ET

Since arriving at the Kremlin, Sergei Kiriyenko’s job has been to make sure the Russian people see only what Vladimir Putin wants them to see. Now U.S. prosecutors say he is trying to do the same for Americans.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department named Kiriyenko as the curator of some 30 internet domains that were being used by the Russian government to spread false information. The domains appeared to be U.S. news sites but were, in fact, filled with Russian propaganda intended to erode international support for Ukraine and manipulate American voters ahead of the November presidential election, U.S. officials said. Russia denied any wrongdoing.

Kiriyenko, a veteran technocrat and one of President Putin’s most trusted lieutenants, has seen his portfolio expand in recent years, tasked with everything from organizing disputed elections to leading the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts on the war in Ukraine and overseeing Russia’s occupied territories there.

“He is the perfect technocrat in the worst sense,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, who added that the U.S. allegations serve as a further indication his star is on the rise.

“If there are marching orders to kill freedom of expression, he will do that in the most efficient way possible,” he said.

Billboards showed the faces of Russian soldiers, with a slogan reading, ‘Glory to the heroes of Russia,’ in Moscow in 2022. Photo: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images

A few months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kiriyenko sought to rally public-relations officials from government bodies and ministries for a fight on the home front, telling them that “the main war that is taking place right now is the war over people’s minds,” according to an audio recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “All of us in this room are the special forces fighting this war,” he added.

Once regarded as a supporter of Western-oriented ideas, Kiriyenko has used increasingly nationalistic rhetoric. In recent years, he has railed about the importance of indoctrinating schoolchildren against the West by educating Russian youth in a patriotic way and promoting military service among schoolchildren.

“Today, patriotic education is coming to the forefront,” Kiriyenko told an educational session for future instructors at centers for military-sports training and the patriotic education of youth that Putin established in May 2023. “The key challenge for the country is what we will pass on to the future generation, what they will believe in,” he said.

Kiriyenko was appointed prime minister under Boris Yeltsin in 1998 at the age of 35—the youngest ever to hold the position in post-Soviet Russia, earning him the nickname “Kinder Surprise.”

That year, Kiriyenko introduced Putin when he was appointed as head of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, Russia’s principal security service.

“The choice of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is not coincidental,” Kiriyenko said at the ceremony. “He is a professional across the spectrum of problems that are now facing the Federal Security Service.”

Kiriyenko was appointed prime minister under Boris Yeltsin at the age of 35. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

As prime minister, the goal was for him to breathe new life into Russia’s flailing economy and turbocharge Yeltsin’s efforts to overhaul the Soviet system. But Kiriyenko was handed the reins of government when Moscow could no longer pay its debts to foreign creditors. The country fell into a financial crisis, and he was fired within five months of taking the role. 

Still, Putin saw in Kiriyenko a capable—and most important—loyal protégé whom he could mold, Kremlin watchers said. When he became president in 2000, Putin appointed Kiriyenko as his envoy to the Volga region, which hosts the Russian Federal Nuclear Center. Five years later, Kiriyenko was tapped to head Russia’s state atomic-energy company, Rosatom.

Kiriyenko entered the presidential administration after years of mass protests that started in 2011, as Moscow sought greater control over Russians’ personal freedoms. The Kremlin had become convinced that sites such as Facebook and Twitter were essentially arms of the U.S. government trying to foment revolution abroad. Kiriyenko was put in charge of reining in speech online.

As he took charge, Kiriyenko sought to clamp down on online messaging in the same way Russia had controlled traditional media. A succession of laws were passed that did everything from increasing fines for antigovernment posts to pushing internet traffic entering the country through state-controlled filtering stations.

Kiriyenko’s office was in charge of keeping tabs on Russian tech companies such as VK, Russia’s version of Facebook, as well as monitoring the companies’ willingness to give into officials’ demands.

As Russia clamped down, the number of requests seeking data from Russian tech grew exponentially, said a person who worked at a tech company. The person said Russia’s security agencies often reached out informally and sometimes Kiriyenko would contact the companies directly.

“He would speak softly, respectably, but you knew what kind of power he held,” said the person, who met with Kiriyenko on several occasions.

Sergei Kiriyenko, wearing glasses, stood next to then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a nuclear power plant in Tver, Russia, in 2011. Photo: Alexey Nikolsky/RIA Novosti/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. sanctioned Kiriyenko in 2022 for his role in establishing Russian governance in Ukrainian territories that Moscow had illegally occupied.

Kiriyenko’s political star has continued to rise and some Kremlin observers have pegged him as a possible successor to Putin.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled Russian dissident and former oil magnate, pointed out in a video posted on YouTube in July 2022 that Kiriyenko had begun to appear much more often in the press and on television. He was giving speeches on military topics, visiting the front, opening monuments.

“This is clearly a bid for the status of Putin’s successor,” Khodorkovsky said. “And Putin seems to be reacting quite positively, since it was Kiriyenko who was assigned to become the curator of the annexed Ukrainian territories.”

Nonetheless, Putin doesn’t appear to have plans to leave the stage soon. He won re-election in March after overseeing changes to the country’s constitution in 2020 that allow him to potentially remain in office until 2036.

Benoit Faucon contributed to this article.

Write to Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com and Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com

2. Reagan Didn’t Win the Cold War by Max Boot

This article should be useful in War College seminars as well as at the Foreign Service Institute. So much to discuss.

You can access all of President Reagan's National Security Decision Directives here: https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/nsdd/index.html

​It is really worth reading NSDD 32 National Security Strategy. It was a TS classified 8 page document with only 36 copies produced. (as an aside I just used it as a model for a proposed "national security directive" for US government support to the ROK 8.15 Unification Doctrine.

NSDD 32 US National Security Strategy: https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-32.pdf

​NSDD 75 US Relations with the USSR: https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-75.pdf

​Sure the documents themselves did not win the Cold War. It is how they were used and what decisions were made based on them as well as decisions made based on updated assessments of conditions and assumptions. Strategy is iterative and not static. This is why we used to say when I was at the National War College that we have to "do strategy" and not simply write a strategy and hope someone follows it. What is missing from Max's discussion here is the decision making discussions among the President and his NSC (the principles) who were only among those who had access to the 36 copies of NSDD 32. There were only a small number of people who had direct access to NSDD 32. What would be an interesting research project would be to track what documents were developed and disseminated through the national security apparatus at lower classifications that provided more policy makers, strategists, and action officers access to the guidance emanating from NSDD 32. 

​Excerpts:

There is little evidence that pressure on the Soviet Union in Reagan’s first term made the Soviets more willing to negotiate, but there is a good deal of evidence that his pivot toward cooperation with Gorbachev in his second term allowed the new Soviet leader to transform his country and end the Cold War. Yet many conservatives conflate Reagan’s second-term success with his first-term failures, applying the wrong policy lessons to relations with communist China today.

Ramping up confrontation with Beijing regardless of the consequences risks a repeat of the war scares that brought the world to the brink of catastrophe in 1983, and such a strategy has even less of a chance of success today. Even if it was not on the verge of bankruptcy, the Soviet Union’s economy was weak in the 1980s, thanks to communist central planning and a fall in world oil prices. China, on the other hand, has successfully combined free-market economics and political repression to become the world’s second largest economy. As Fareed Zakaria has noted, the Soviet economy accounted for roughly 7.5 percent of global GDP at its peak; China today makes up about 20 percent of global GDP. There are no policies that the United States can plausibly implement that will “defeat” China—it is hard to know what “defeating China” even means. It is easy, however, to imagine that unrelentingly hard-line policies from both the United States and China could raise the risk of a nuclear war.

The United States should continue to contain and deter Chinese aggression, limit the export of sensitive technology, and support human rights in China while still engaging in dialogue with Chinese leaders to lessen the risk of war. This was the prudent approach to the Soviet Union that U.S. presidents of both parties adopted during the Cold War. But Washington should not imagine that it can transform China. Only the Chinese people can do that. Today’s confrontation with China can only end if Chinese leader Xi Jinping is succeeded by a true reformer in the Gorbachev mold. Unless that long-shot scenario comes to pass, pursuing a one-sided caricature of Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union is likely to make the world a more dangerous place.

Reagan Didn’t Win the Cold War

How a Myth About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Leads Republicans Astray on China

By Max Boot

September 6, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Max Boot · September 6, 2024

When Republicans strategize about how to deal with China today, many of them point to President Ronald Reagan’s confrontational approach toward the Soviet Union as a model to emulate. H. R. McMaster, who served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump, argued: “Reagan had a clear strategy for victory in the global contest with the Soviet Union. Reagan’s approach—applying intensive economic and military pressure to a superpower adversary—became foundational to American strategic thinking. It hastened the end of Soviet power and promoted a peaceful conclusion to the multi-decade Cold War.” A trio of conservative foreign policy experts—Randy Schriver, Dan Blumenthal, and Josh Young—made the case that the next president “should draw upon the example of former President Ronald Reagan in taking hold of China policy,” citing “the intent to win the Cold War against the Soviet Union” that “permeated” Reagan-era national security documents. And in Foreign Affairs, Trump’s former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger and the former Republican representative Mike Gallagher cited Reagan to argue that “the United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it.”

I would have been more sympathetic to these prescriptions before I spent a decade researching Reagan’s life and legacy—uncovering a historical record that is sharply at odds with the legends that have come to surround the 40th president. One of the biggest such myths is that Reagan had a plan to bring down the “evil empire” and that it was his pressure that led to U.S. victory in the Cold War. In reality, the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union were primarily the work of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev—two consequences of his radically reformist policies (the former intended, the latter unintended). Reagan deserves tremendous credit for understanding that Gorbachev was a different kind of communist leader, someone he could do business with and thereby negotiate a peaceful end to a 40-year conflict. But Reagan did not bring about Gorbachev’s reforms, much less force the collapse of the Soviet Union. To imagine otherwise is to create dangerous and unrealistic expectations for what U.S. policy toward China can achieve today.

WHAT REAGAN REALLY DID

To be sure, there is a superficial allure to the thesis that Reagan brought down the Soviet Union and won the Cold War, because Reagan sometimes spoke of doing just that. Richard V. Allen, Reagan’s first national security adviser, recounted to me a conversation that he had with the former governor in 1977 as he was preparing for his 1980 presidential campaign. “Do you mind if I tell you my theory of the Cold War?” Reagan said. “My theory is that we win, they lose. What do you think about that?”

Once in office, Reagan raised defense spending—he undertook the largest peacetime military buildup in U.S. history—and launched the Strategic Defense Initiative to create a “space shield” against nuclear missiles. He also provided arms to anticommunist insurgents in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua, along with secret, nonlethal assistance to the Solidarity movement in Poland. Reagan often talked tough about the Soviet Union and forthrightly called out its egregious human rights abuses. In 1982, he prophesied that “the march of freedom and democracy” would “leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history.” In a 1983 speech, he labeled the Soviet Union “the focus of evil in the modern world.”

The most compelling evidence to suggest that Reagan had a strategy to defeat the Soviet Union—cited by advocates of a get-tough approach to China today—is a pair of now-declassified national security decision directives issued in 1982 and 1983 by Reagan’s national security adviser, William Clark. NSDD 32 called on the United States to “discourage Soviet adventurism” by “forcing the USSR to bear the brunt of its economic shortcomings, and to encourage long-term liberalizing and nationalist tendencies within the Soviet Union and allied countries.” NSDD 75 further elaborated on the need “to promote, within the narrow limits available to us, the process of change in the Soviet Union toward a more pluralistic political and economic system in which the power of the privileged ruling elite is gradually reduced.”

It is easy to draw a direct connection between the policies enunciated in NSDDs 32 and 75 and the epochal events that followed just a few years later and culminated in the end of the Cold War. Indeed, Clark’s admiring biographers, Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner, called the policies “the directives that won the Cold War.”

THE CONFLICT WITHIN

Reality, however, is a lot messier than this simplistic story line. “It’s tempting to go back and say, ‘You know, we had this great strategy and we had all these things figured out,’ but I don’t think that’s accurate,” Reagan’s secretary of state George Shultz told me. “What is accurate was that there was a general ‘peace through strength’ attitude.”

Indeed, accounts that focus only on Reagan’s get-tough approach to the Soviet Union during his first term miss a big part of the picture. Reagan’s approach toward the Soviet Union was neither consistently tough nor consistently conciliatory. Instead, his foreign policy was an often-baffling combination of hawkish and dovish approaches based on his own conflicting instincts and the clashing advice he received from hard-line aides such as Clark, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and CIA Director William Casey and more pragmatic advisers such as Shultz and national security advisers Robert McFarlane, Frank Carlucci, and Colin Powell.

In dealing with the Soviets, Reagan was constantly torn between two opposing images. On the one hand, there was the human suffering behind the Iron Curtain: after an emotional Oval Office meeting on May 28, 1981, with Yosef Mendelevich, a recently released political prisoner, and Avital Sharansky, the wife of the imprisoned Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, Reagan wrote in his diary: “D—n those inhuman monsters. [Sharansky] is said to be down to 100 lbs. & very ill. I promised I’d do everything I could to obtain his release & I will.” On the other hand, there was the specter of nuclear destruction if the U.S.-Soviet confrontation spun out of control. This danger was brought home to Reagan by a nuclear war game, code-named Ivy League, on March 1, 1982. While Reagan watched from the White House Situation Room, the entire map of the United States turned red to simulate the impact of Soviet nuclear strikes. “He looked on in stunned disbelief,” the National Security Council staffer Tom Reed noted. “In less than an hour President Reagan had seen the United States of America disappear. . . . It was a sobering experience.” Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union was thus far less consistent than most of his admirers would admit. Although his meetings with Soviet dissidents pushed him toward confrontation, his knowledge of what a nuclear war would entail tempered him toward cooperation.

Reagan did not bring about Gorbachev’s reforms, much less force the collapse of the Soviet Union.

While many Reagan fans have suggested that NSDD 32 and 75 amounted to a declaration of economic warfare against the Soviet Union, Reagan repeatedly acted to reduce economic pressure on Moscow. In early 1981, he lifted the grain embargo that President Jimmy Carter had imposed the previous year in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When a Soviet-backed regime declared martial law in Poland in December 1981, Reagan imposed tough sanctions on the construction of a Siberian gas pipeline to Western Europe before lifting them the following November in response to opposition from European allies. Hawks were frustrated by the president’s willingness to renounce one of the United States’ most powerful economic instruments without getting any concessions in return. Writing in The New York Times in May 1982, the editor of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz, aired these frustrations under the headline “The Neo-Conservative Anguish Over Reagan’s Foreign Policy.” Podhoretz complained that Reagan’s reaction to the imposition of martial law in Poland was even weaker than Carter’s reaction to the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan: “One remembers easily enough that Carter instituted a grain embargo and a boycott of the Moscow Olympics, but one is hard-pressed even to remember what the Reagan sanctions were.”

Conservatives would have been even more horrified if they had known that Reagan was secretly reaching out to the Kremlin at the time. In April 1981, Reagan sent a sentimental handwritten note to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev professing his desire for “meaningful and constructive dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling our joint obligation to find lasting peace,” and in March 1983, two days after calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” the president privately told Shultz to maintain lines of dialogue with the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin. Indeed, Reagan hoped to meet with a Soviet leader from the start of his presidency and lamented during his first term that Soviet leaders “keep dying on me.”

Many admirers now give Reagan credit for a calculated strategy that combined pressure and conciliation, but this approach bore little fruit in his first term, instead baffling Soviet leaders: “In his mind such incompatibilities could coexist in perfect harmony, but Moscow regarded such behavior at that time as a sign of deliberate duplicity and hostility,” Dobrynin wrote in his 1995 memoir.

In 1983, a series of escalating crises—including the Soviet shootdown of a Korean civilian airliner, a false Soviet alert of a U.S. missile launch, and a NATO war game (codenamed Able Archer) that some Soviet officials saw as a cover for a preemptive U.S. attack—raised the fears of nuclear war to their highest levels since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Realizing that the risk of Armageddon was very real, Reagan consciously dialed back his hawkishness. In January 1984, he delivered a conciliatory speech in which he spoke of how much the typical Soviet citizens “Ivan and Anya” had in common with the typical Americans “Jim and Sally” and promised to work with the Kremlin to “strengthen peace” and “reduce the level of arms.”

The problem was that Reagan had no partner for peace at the time: during his first term, the Soviet Union was successively led by the elderly hard-liners Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko. Only when Chernenko died in March 1985 did Reagan finally find a Soviet leader he could work with in Gorbachev, a true “black swan” who rose to the top of a totalitarian system only to dismantle it.

THE UNEXPECTED COLLAPSE

Those who argue that Ronald Reagan brought down the “evil empire” usually focus on Gorbachev’s ascension as the turning point, crediting the U.S. president and his defense buildup with the selection of a reformer as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. The problem with this theory is that no one in early 1985—not even Gorbachev himself—knew how radical a reformer he would turn out to be. If his colleagues on the Politburo had known, they likely would not have selected him. They had no desire for the Soviet empire, or their own power and privileges, to end.

Gorbachev did not want to reform the Soviet system in order to compete more effectively with the Reagan defense buildup. In fact, it was the opposite. He genuinely worried about the dangers of nuclear war, and he was appalled by how much money the Soviet Union was spending on its military-industrial complex: an estimated 20 percent of GDP and 40 percent of the state budget.

This was not a reflection of a Reagan-induced crisis that threatened the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union but rather a product of Gorbachev’s own humane instincts. As the historian Chris Miller has argued, “When Gorbachev became general secretary in 1985, the Soviet economy was wasteful and poorly managed, but it was not in crisis.” The Soviet regime, having survived Stalinist terror, famine, and industrialization, as well as World War II and de-Stalinization, could have survived the stagnation of the mid-1980s as other, poorer communist regimes such as China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam did.

There was nothing inevitable about the Soviet collapse, and it was not the product of Reagan’s efforts to spend more on the military and to curb Soviet expansionism abroad. It was the unanticipated and unintended consequence of the increasingly radical reforms implemented by Gorbachev, namely glasnost and perestroika, over the objections of more conservative comrades who finally tried to overthrow him in 1991. The Soviet Union broke up not because it was economically bankrupt but because Gorbachev recognized that it was morally bankrupt and he refused to hold it together by force. If any other member of the Politburo had taken power in 1985, the Soviet Union might still exist and the Berlin Wall might still stand, just as the demilitarized zone still divides North Korea from South Korea. Although he did not induce Gorbachev’s reforms, Reagan deserves credit for working with the Soviet leader at a time when most conservatives warned that the president was being hoodwinked by a wily communist.

Reagan and Gorbachev hardly saw eye to eye on everything. They clashed over human rights in the Soviet Union and Reagan’s beloved Strategic Defense Initiative. But despite temporary setbacks, the two leaders signed the first arms control accord to abolish an entire class of nuclear weapons, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, in Washington in 1987, and in 1988 the Reagans traveled to Moscow. During the visit, as the two leaders strolled through Red Square, Sam Donaldson of ABC News asked Reagan, “Do you still think you’re in an evil empire, Mr. President?” “No,” Reagan replied. “I was talking about another time and another era.”

PRESSURE DOESN’T MAKE PEACE

There is little evidence that pressure on the Soviet Union in Reagan’s first term made the Soviets more willing to negotiate, but there is a good deal of evidence that his pivot toward cooperation with Gorbachev in his second term allowed the new Soviet leader to transform his country and end the Cold War. Yet many conservatives conflate Reagan’s second-term success with his first-term failures, applying the wrong policy lessons to relations with communist China today.

Ramping up confrontation with Beijing regardless of the consequences risks a repeat of the war scares that brought the world to the brink of catastrophe in 1983, and such a strategy has even less of a chance of success today. Even if it was not on the verge of bankruptcy, the Soviet Union’s economy was weak in the 1980s, thanks to communist central planning and a fall in world oil prices. China, on the other hand, has successfully combined free-market economics and political repression to become the world’s second largest economy. As Fareed Zakaria has noted, the Soviet economy accounted for roughly 7.5 percent of global GDP at its peak; China today makes up about 20 percent of global GDP. There are no policies that the United States can plausibly implement that will “defeat” China—it is hard to know what “defeating China” even means. It is easy, however, to imagine that unrelentingly hard-line policies from both the United States and China could raise the risk of a nuclear war.

The United States should continue to contain and deter Chinese aggression, limit the export of sensitive technology, and support human rights in China while still engaging in dialogue with Chinese leaders to lessen the risk of war. This was the prudent approach to the Soviet Union that U.S. presidents of both parties adopted during the Cold War. But Washington should not imagine that it can transform China. Only the Chinese people can do that. Today’s confrontation with China can only end if Chinese leader Xi Jinping is succeeded by a true reformer in the Gorbachev mold. Unless that long-shot scenario comes to pass, pursuing a one-sided caricature of Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union is likely to make the world a more dangerous place.

• MAX BOOT is Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Reagan: His Life and Legend.

Foreign Affairs · by Max Boot · September 6, 2024

3. Planning for a Post-American NATO

Regarding time, the Chinese adage applies: "When is the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. WHen is the next best time? Right now." What are we going to do now to be ready for 20 years (or 10 or 5) years in the future?

Excerpt:

Time is a precious commodity in war. And today, with a war on its doorstep and the United States threatening to push European security to its most precarious point in decades, the continent is wasting it. European countries should have started planning for the possibility of a Trump return at least a year ago, when the high chance of such an outcome became apparent, giving themselves more time to make preparations. Instead, European governments stuck their heads in the sand. If Trump is elected, such denial will have to end. European NATO states will be forced into action to secure the continent and protect the freedom of its people. It is far better they approach that weighty task as rationally and with as much foresight as possible than in a haphazard rush.

Planning for a Post-American NATO

Europe Must Prepare for a Second Trump Term

By Phillips P. O’Brien and Edward Stringer

September 6, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Phillips P. O’Brien and Edward Stringer · September 6, 2024

Europe may soon find itself in a tight spot. By the end of January 2025, the continent’s most important partner, the United States, could be led by former President Donald Trump, who has said that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell it wanted” to European countries that did not do what he wanted: spend more on defense. The previous Trump administration strained the transatlantic relationship, and the next iteration would almost certainly be worse. Freed from the influence of the traditional Atlanticist Republicans who staffed his cabinet in his first term, a second-term Trump would face fewer obstacles to making good on his threats.

The U.S. election is far from decided, but the magnitude of the change that a Trump victory could bring is far too great for Europe to sit by and hope that the former president loses at the ballot box. Trump has warned that he would immediately cut all U.S. aid to Kyiv and demand a quick end to the war, which would likely require Ukraine to cede a significant part of its territory to Russia. And that could just be the start. Trump has long questioned the value of NATO, so it is not inconceivable that he would strip back the U.S. commitment to defend Europe. He could enact the analyst Sumantra Maitra’s widely circulated “dormant NATO” proposal, in which the U.S. military would provide logistics support as a last resort but leave all other NATO defense responsibilities to Europe, or follow in the footsteps of French President Charles de Gaulle, who removed France from NATO’s military command (but not the alliance itself) in 1966. Assurances that Washington would not disappear from Europe entirely do not make the proposals in Trump’s orbit any less dangerous. NATO is held together by the confidence and resolve of its members; their belief in the alliance would be mortally undermined were Trump to push even an incomplete U.S. withdrawal.

There is no reason Trump could not act quickly. As commander in chief, he could vow never to order U.S. troops to fight for Europe and take steps to withdraw the United States from NATO’s military command. Europe, as a result, would be forced to confront a security crisis on a scale it has not faced since World War II. Without the United States to provide military leadership and capability, European capitals could quickly turn against one another over Ukraine. Countries in central and eastern Europe, for instance, may double down on their commitment to the survival of a strong Ukraine, fearing that a Russian victory would give Moscow the opportunity to rebuild, rearm, and then, with the help of a compliant Belarus and Ukraine, issue new threats across the border. Many western European countries, meanwhile, might decide that, with the United States out of the picture, the best option would be to force Ukraine to make extensive concessions to Russia. A European security alliance could collapse under the weight of such incompatible outlooks.

To avoid the worst-case scenario, European countries and institutions must start planning now. They must be ready for a Trump presidency that could result in a U.S. withdrawal from Europe, which might go so far as to leave the continent unprotected, save for U.S. naval and air forces that could easily be redeployed elsewhere. As they face the dangers of such an eventuality, the continent’s leaders will need to grapple with many hard questions. The most urgent among them fall into three categories: how to structure European security, who should lead the effort, and what capabilities Europe must acquire. From this starting point, Europe can begin to prepare for the potential loss of the continent’s strongest defender by far.

STRUCTURAL CHANGE

The question of a post-American security structure may be the easiest to answer. If the United States were to truly disengage from Europe, European countries could maintain their security alliances through one of several institutions that Washington would leave behind. Setting aside the potential complication of Canada—which, if it were to remain in NATO even after a U.S. withdrawal, the alliance would be obligated to defend—the most straightforward and best solution would be for Europe to assume control of the North Atlantic Council, the decision-making authority within NATO. The NAC would have to reorient quickly upon a U.S. withdrawal—for obvious reasons, this body itself cannot plan for the United States’ exit while the United States is still a member—but it has the benefits of being familiar to all NATO countries in Europe and having an established secretariat. It also counts Norway and the United Kingdom, significant non-EU security powers, as members. Both have been strong supporters of Ukraine and would be vital players in a future war against Russia. British air and maritime forces in particular protect much of NATO’s northwest flank. Going forward, Europe will need those capacities, as well as London’s nuclear deterrent. Working together through the NAC may be the best possible way to solidify this relationship.

If European countries were to take over the NAC, they could also repurpose NATO facilities, such as the NATO Defense College, that are scattered across the continent. The new NAC could draw upon other European institutions for support, too. The EU, for example, could help coordinate the national legislative change and bloc-wide financial planning that will be necessary to prepare European societies for a potential conflict. Finland and Sweden, the most recent entrants to NATO, would have much to contribute to this effort. Decades of neutrality pushed them to develop plans to mobilize in wartime and to build resilient economies and polities, whereas most of their neighbors relied on NATO membership to cover their security concerns. And although the NAC would remain the primary decision-making body for NATO members, the European Political Community, which was established after Russia’s 2022 invasion and counts several non-NATO countries among its members, would play an important role as a forum for discussing security matters that affect the region as a whole.

WHO LEADS EUROPE?

European countries have essentially outsourced geopolitical leadership to the United States for the last 75 years or so. Deciding who could take Washington’s place within a European security structure is thus a challenging proposition. No European country has experience with that job, and there is no natural leader for the rest to converge upon.

Germany might seem a likely candidate, given that it has Europe’s largest economy and population. But Berlin, crippled by political indecision, has failed to display leadership so far in the war in Ukraine. Having cozied up to Russia before the 2022 invasion, and joining the United States in limiting aid to Ukraine after, Germany has lost the trust of many of the central and eastern European countries that fear ending up on a new frontline. Olaf Scholz’s government frequently sends mixed messages, with the chancellor’s own Social Democratic Party advocating one policy and its coalition partner, the Greens, promoting another. The openly pro-Russian positions espoused by the far-right Alternative for Germany and far-left Reason and Justice parties, both of which made strong showings in last weekend’s regional elections, raise additional concerns.

France could be a better option. As one of Europe’s two nuclear powers, France would necessarily play an important and immediate role in European security if the United States were to withdraw. The French have a competent military, and President Emmanuel Macron has tried to stake out a leadership position in Europe amid the war in Ukraine by ratcheting up his calls for stronger support for Ukraine and even suggesting that European forces might be deployed there if necessary. Yet Paris, like Berlin, carries serious liabilities. In the early months of the invasion, Macron favored reaching some kind of arrangement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and today, politicians on France’s increasingly empowered far right and far left, as in Germany, seriously discuss cutting aid to Ukraine. Frontline countries may consider France no more reliable than Germany when it comes to sustaining Europe’s defense.

It is not inconceivable that Trump would strip back the U.S. commitment to defend Europe.

The United Kingdom, Europe’s other nuclear power, would bring many positive attributes to the leadership role. The new British government can stay in place for the next five years, making the country more politically stable than many others in Europe. London, as a consistent supporter of Ukraine, is aligned with Europe’s frontline countries. The United Kingdom also has long-standing defense ties with fellow members of the Joint Expeditionary Force, a military grouping of ten Baltic, Scandinavian, and other northern European nations. If the country had remained in the EU, it could have had the strongest claim to the security leadership of Europe. But after its 2016 decision to leave, it is almost impossible to see EU countries agreeing to British strategic command.

With the continent’s three security heavyweights each hobbled by political weaknesses, Europe could seize the opportunity to make a less conventional choice for its security leadership. Poland has emerged as a strong candidate. It is a large country with a growing economy, and it took defense seriously even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Over the past few years, Warsaw has undertaken the most substantial military buildup on the continent, increasing both the fraction of its GDP spent on defense and the forces deployed to its borders with Belarus and the Russian enclave Kaliningrad, and its defense budget target of five percent of GDP for 2025 outpaces the rest of Europe. Already seen as a leader in central and eastern Europe, Poland understands frontline countries’ concerns about Russia in a way that a western European government cannot.

Given that Poland shares a border with Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, its military would be critical in a larger war with Russia. Warsaw, aware of this, is now expending significant resources to upgrade its army and air force. Before the war in Ukraine, a land-centric military such as Poland’s would not have been considered capable of leading European forces. But NATO’s traditional emphasis on air and sea domains was largely a function of the centrality of the United States, which relied on long-range air and sea capabilities to project power across the Atlantic. Without Washington, the picture changes. If Europe is defending itself, its land power, supported by tactical airpower, becomes its bulwark. Thus, once Poland expands its air force—it is now amassing one of Europe’s largest fleets of F-35 and F-16 fighter jets—the country will have a striking case for security leadership.

The key post to fill in a European NATO in the event of a U.S. exit would be supreme allied commander Europe, the role that oversees all NATO military operations and that has always been held by an American. If the need arises, a Polish officer could be selected as the first supreme allied commander for a European NATO. This choice would make political and strategic sense to show both frontline states and Russia that Europe is serious about protecting its eastern flank. A strong signal of this kind is sorely needed; the appointed successor to Jens Stoltenberg as NATO secretary-general, Mark Rutte, most recently served as prime minister of the Netherlands, a country that has consistently failed to meet the NATO defense spending target of two percent of GDP. Elevating a Polish commander would also smooth the way for a civilian leader from western Europe, ensuring the political balance that would be crucial to European unity in the early stages of post-American security planning.

BUILDING CAPACITY

In addition to leadership, Europe has outsourced many essential defense capabilities to the United States. European governments have often thrown their limited funds into building a small number of flashy and exorbitantly expensive pieces of equipment, such as the British Ajax land vehicle. Europe’s country-by-country weapons production is also wildly inefficient. Across the ten main categories of major weapons systems—such as fighter aircraft or destroyers—the United States maintains 33 types of systems. Europe maintains 174. This has limited European militaries’ interoperability and created a logistic nightmare. Meanwhile, the continent has neglected to develop the basic capabilities it would need if the United States were to draw down.

Perhaps the most glaring among them is a system for intelligence sharing among European states. For decades, Europe has relied on the Five Eyes—the intelligence network that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States—to conduct much of its intelligence work. All members of this group make valuable contributions, but the United States does the bulk of the data collection. Washington’s retreat from Europe would thus disrupt the flow of information.

If Europe were to lose access to the United States’ high-end, space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems before it can build up an intelligence structure of its own, European countries would have to rely on local sources for data collection and analysis. Although making the transition would be difficult, it may have upsides for Europe. Despite its vast intelligence-collection ability, the United States has done a poor job of understanding Russian power, evident in its gross overestimation of Russian military capabilities before February 24, 2022. Reams of data, it turns out, do not always produce good intelligence or insight. Some of the best intelligence work on Russia over the past few years has in fact come from smaller countries with more specialized knowledge. The Baltic states and the Nordic states, for instance, have consistently provided useful information about Russian capabilities and intentions. Ukraine, too, has done a credible job analyzing Russian strengths and weaknesses, and Kyiv’s intelligence capacity has enabled operations such as a strategic air campaign against Russian oil production. Despite the individual capabilities of European states, however, quickly agreeing on and setting up the architecture to share intelligence among European NATO members will be a challenge in the absence of U.S. leadership.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a meeting of the European Political Community in Woodstock, United Kingdom, July 2024

Kin Cheung / Pool / Reuters

Decades of peace and Europe’s concentration on boutique capabilities have also left the continent with insufficient weapons arsenals. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that success in battle depends on each side’s ability to sustain munitions production and supply from factory to foxhole. Whether it is guns, planes, or ships, equipment does not last long once war starts. Both Russia and Ukraine have already lost the combined number of tanks in storage in France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom many times over. Ammunition runs out quickly, too; artillery fire at the volume seen in Ukraine would have depleted Europe’s pre–February 2022 stockpiles in short order. Kyiv and Moscow have also been drawn into an intense battle to manufacture drones, which have become indispensable in this war and which neither side began the conflict with significant capacity to produce.

Europe must recognize that stocking its peacetime equipment locker will be essential to give its combined militaries time to mobilize when a conflict erupts. At the moment, a European NATO is not a going concern as a war-fighting economy. European countries have not moved as quickly as the United States to address their production capacity shortfalls—a problem they will need to rectify in order to plan for an end to or a drastic reduction in U.S. material support for Ukraine.

Beyond ramping up production, a European security body will have to assume responsibility for its own research and development—a task that has largely been farmed out to the United States. Here, at least, Europe has a head start. NATO’s London-based Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic, which became operational last year, has begun to extract lessons from the war in Ukraine, especially regarding dual-use technologies that originate in the civilian sphere. If they were to lose the United States, European countries could repurpose and expand this model to fill the resulting gap. To preempt individual countries’ protectionist impulses to bring investments home—which would replicate the inefficiencies of Europe’s small-scale, national weapons production—the European Political Community should negotiate a framework for joint research and development.

Logistically, Europe would have to confront issues around deployability. Without U.S. capabilities, European militaries could not maintain any kind of global presence; they do not have the capacity for long-distance air deployments of fighting units on their own. This problem is not yet urgent. The war in Ukraine is localized, and European countries can ship most weaponry by road or by rail. But Europe will need to use this breathing space to invest in areas where it now falls short, such as land power and the full breadth of tactical airpower, while it integrates the capacities of European militaries.

As long as Russia maintains its vast nuclear arsenal, Europe will need to protect itself.

Finally, a European NATO might have to confront life without the U.S. nuclear deterrent. This problem could be the single biggest one it faces. Some of the proposals on the table in pro-Trump policy circles suggest that the United States would maintain its nuclear umbrella over Europe even as its conventional forces withdrew, but the logic of such a plan is questionable at best. A United States with little military presence on the continent—and with an administration that looks rather benignly at Putin—could not credibly warn Europe’s enemies that it would put its nuclear weapons in play in the event of an attack. This is not to say Europe should reject a slimmed-down U.S. deterrent if a Trump administration were to offer. But it would also need to build up a credible European nuclear deterrent, separate from the United States.

In the short term, the job would fall to France and the United Kingdom, which both have small nuclear arsenals. Together they must be able to present Russia with a sufficiently compelling nuclear threat that Moscow will not risk using nuclear weapons on Ukraine or other states in central or eastern Europe. The immediate challenge will be coordinating the deployment and refitting of the British and French nuclear arsenals to ensure that, at any given time, they maintain enough workable forces to be a credible deterrent. Furthermore, London and Paris must begin to expand their deterrents to the rest of the continent. They could, for example, allow other European countries—especially those on the frontline—some influence over British and French nuclear command, which would help assure those countries that they are well and truly covered.

In the long term, the nuclear deterrent would have to be fully Europeanized. In addition to involving the entire continent in the command structure, Europe would have to manufacture a nuclear delivery system. At present, European states have the ability to produce nuclear warheads on their own. But they have outsourced the means to deliver those warheads—the United Kingdom today shares a nuclear missile fleet with the United States. If Washington were to withdraw, Europe’s nuclear capacity would need to be fully independent. As long as Russia maintains its vast nuclear arsenal, Europe will need to protect itself from Russian nuclear blackmail.

TIME TO ACT

Time is a precious commodity in war. And today, with a war on its doorstep and the United States threatening to push European security to its most precarious point in decades, the continent is wasting it. European countries should have started planning for the possibility of a Trump return at least a year ago, when the high chance of such an outcome became apparent, giving themselves more time to make preparations. Instead, European governments stuck their heads in the sand. If Trump is elected, such denial will have to end. European NATO states will be forced into action to secure the continent and protect the freedom of its people. It is far better they approach that weighty task as rationally and with as much foresight as possible than in a haphazard rush.

• PHILLIPS P. O’BRIEN is Head of the School of International Relations and Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews.
• EDWARD STRINGER is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange, a retired RAF Air Marshal, and former Director General of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.

Foreign Affairs · by Phillips P. O’Brien and Edward Stringer · September 6, 2024

4. Russia pulls 60,000 troops to counter Kursk incursion, Zelensky claims

If accurate this is quite an effect.

Russia pulls 60,000 troops to counter Kursk incursion, Zelensky claims

by Martin FornusekSeptember 5, 2024 2:35 PM3 min read

kyivindependent.com · by Martin Fornusek · September 5, 2024

Russia has pulled over 60,000 troops to Kursk Oblast to face Ukraine's ongoing incursion as of early September, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with NBC News published on Sept. 3.

"The idea and one of the goals of the Kursk Oblast (operation) was diverting Russian troops... to their territory," Zelensky said.

"Today, I can say that they pulled over 60,000 troops there." This is a considerable growth from a figure previously presented by Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, who said in late August that Russia diverted 30,000 troops to the area.

The Kyiv Independent could not verify the claims.

Ukraine launched its cross-border incursion almost a month ago, allegedly seizing around a hundred Russian settlements and almost 1,300 square kilometers (500 square miles) of territory. The pace of advance seems to have slowed down in comparison to the operation's early days.

"As of today, we are holding exactly the part (of the territory) we planned," Zelensky said. Ukrainian soldiers have also taken over 600 Russian captives, he added.

The president reiterated earlier statements by other officials that one of the motivations behind the incursion were the restrictions on the use of long-range arms on Russian territory. Kyiv has complained these limits prevent the country from defending itself effectively against Russian strikes.

Ukraine launched Kursk incursion without West’s guidance, and ‘look how well it worked,’ says ex-NATO commander in Europe

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for clarity. Even as Ukraine’s daring incursion into Russian territory brought the full-scale war back to the headlines around the world, Moscow’s forces keep grinding on the eastern front, with dire implications for the entire Donbas region. Though Ky…

The Kyiv IndependentMartin Fornusek

Another goal was to create a buffer zone on Russian territory and prevent Moscow from creating it in Ukraine, the president added.

Zelensky also confirmed that the U.S. had not been informed about the plan in advance and explained the incursion as one step of a victory plan he plans to present to U.S. President Joe Biden and his two potential successors, Vice President Kamala Harris and ex-President Donald Trump.

"For our part, we definitely want the war to end. Absolutely. And the victory plan is mine, it is aimed purely at forcing Russia to end the war," Zelensky said.

"To make them understand that what they are doing is nonsense. To force them to accept the U.N. Charter, to accept the world's rules."

Earlier the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine's plan to divert Russian troops from Donbas to Kursk Oblast had failed.

Despite the ongoing incursion on Russian soil, battle-hardened Russian forces continue pushing toward Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in Donetsk Oblast.

Zelensky acknowledged that the situation near Pokrovsk remains difficult but claimed that thanks to the incursion, Russia's advantage in firepower in the sector is now "only" three to one, compared to an earlier situation when it was 12 to one.

The president also said that Russia was forced to divert troops from other sectors, for example, from Zaporizhzhia or Kherson oblasts.

Restrictions on long-range strikes inside Russia reveal West’s unclear goals, ex-US commander says

“This terrible policy which actually protects Russian airfields better than it protects Ukrainian civilians is a manifestation of the fact that we don’t have a clearly defined objective,” retired U.S. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges said.

The Kyiv IndependentKateryna Denisova

kyivindependent.com · by Martin Fornusek · September 5, 2024

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 5, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 5, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-5-2024

Russian forces have recently intensified their longstanding offensive effort to eliminate the broad Ukrainian salient west and southwest of Donetsk City and advance up to and along the H-15 (Donetsk City-Zaporizhzhia City) highway. Apparently coordinated Russian offensive operations from the southern flank of the Pokrovsk direction to the western flank of the Ukrainian defense around Vuhledar likely aim to increase pressure on Ukrainian forces defending in western Donetsk Oblast and set conditions for further gains in Russia's prioritized offensive effort in the Pokrovsk direction. Russian forces have recently significantly intensified their offensive operations near Vuhledar as of September 1 (southwest of Donetsk City) and have so far made marginal tactical gains in the area. Geolocated footage published on September 5 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced into central Prechystivka (west of Vuhledar) during a roughly company-sized mechanized assault. Additional geolocated footage published on September 5 shows reported elements of the Russian 40th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet, Eastern Military District [EMD]) raising a Russian flag in northwestern Prechystivka, indicating that Russian forces have likely seized the settlement. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from Zolota Nyva (immediately west of Prechystivka) and that Russian forces are continuing to advance in the area. Geolocated footage published on September 5 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced immediately east of Vuhledar near the Pivdennodonbaska Mine No. 1. A Ukrainian open-source account published additional footage showing Russian forces conducting several platoon-sized mechanized assaults near Makarivka (south of Velyka Novosilka and west of Vuhledar) and Prechystivka in recent days. The Ukrainian account stated that elements of the Russian 60th Motorized Rifle Brigade (5th Combined Arms Army [CAA], EMD), 394th Motorized Rifle Regiment (127th Motorized Rifle Division, 5th CAA, EMD), and 218th Tank Regiment (127th Motorized Rifle Division, 5th CAA, EMD) attacked near Makarivka and that elements of the 40th Naval Infantry Brigade, 5th Tank Brigade (36th CAA, EMD), 37th Motorized Rifle Brigade (36th CAA, EMD), and 430th Motorized Rifle Regiment (likely a mobilized unit) are attacking near Prechystivka. Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged the intensified Russian offensive operations in the area during a speech at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Primorsky Krai on September 5, claiming that the Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces (responsible for the front roughly from Vuhledar to Hulyaipole) seized "a triangle" of territory five to seven kilometers deep on September 3.

Russian forces are conducting relatively intensified offensive operations elsewhere southwest and west of Donetsk City, and the intensification of Russian offensive operations near Vuhledar likely does not presage decreased Russian offensive tempo elsewhere in western Donetsk Oblast in the near-term. A Ukrainian airborne brigade operating southwest of Donetsk City published footage on September 4 of Ukrainian forces repelling a reinforced company-sized Russian mechanized assault comprised of four tanks and 17 armored combat vehicles near Kostyantynivka. Russian forces intensified both the regularity and size of mechanized assaults west and southwest of Donetsk City in late July 2024 and have since routinely conducted relatively large mechanized assaults in the area — although these assaults have only resulted in marginal tactical gains. Russian forces appeared to initially intensify offensive operations southwest of Donetsk City in late July in order to achieve their longstanding tactical objective of cutting the 0-0532 (Kostyantynivka-Vuhledar) highway, but have since continued large mechanized assaults in the area after achieving this objective. Intensified Russian efforts to exploit gains in the Pokrovsk direction and Russian redeployments in response to the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast have yet to disrupt the Russian offensive tempo west and southwest of Donetsk City, however. Continued large and costly Russian mechanized assaults suggest that the Russian military command has tasked elements of both the Eastern and Southern Grouping of Forces in the area with a wider operational objective.

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces have recently intensified their longstanding offensive effort to eliminate the broad Ukrainian salient west and southwest of Donetsk City and advance up to and along the H-15 (Donetsk City-Zaporizhzhia City) highway.

• Apparently coordinated Russian offensive operations from the southern flank of the Pokrovsk direction to the western flank of the Ukrainian defense around Vuhledar likely aim to increase pressure on Ukrainian forces defending in western Donetsk Oblast and set conditions for further gains in Russia's prioritized offensive effort in the Pokrovsk direction.

• Russian forces are conducting relatively intensified offensive operations elsewhere southwest and west of Donetsk City, and the intensification of Russian offensive operations near Vuhledar likely does not presage decreased Russian offensive tempo elsewhere in western Donetsk Oblast in the near-term.

• Russian forces intensified offensive operations near Vuhledar shortly after starting to widen the southern flank of the Pokrovsk salient, suggesting that Russian forces intend to conduct mutually reinforcing offensive operations along the southern flank of the Pokrovsk direction, immediately west of Donetsk City, along the 0-0532 highway, and near Vuhledar.

• The Russian military command likely aims for the intended seizure of Kurakhove and Vuhledar to allow Russian forces to make more rapid tactical gains up to and along the H-15 highway, although Russian forces will likely face challenges in leveraging the envisioned seizure of these settlements to eliminate the broad Ukrainian salient in western Donetsk Oblast.

• The Russian military command continues to prioritize the offensive effort on Pokrovsk and will likely treat the intensified effort in western Donetsk Oblast as a secondary effort. The Russian military command likely intends for this secondary effort, regardless of its success, to fix Ukrainian forces in western Donetsk Oblast and prevent Ukrainian redeployments to reinforce the defense of Pokrovsk.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to downplay the theater-wide operational impacts of the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast and continues efforts to convince the Russian people that the Kremlin's delayed and disorganized response to the Kursk incursion is an acceptable price to pay for further Russian advances in Donetsk Oblast.

• The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast has had theater-wide impacts and these impacts will likely continue to affect Russian offensive and defensive capabilities beyond the culmination of the Pokrovsk offensive.

• Putin's informational efforts are likely intended to convince the Russian public that an ongoing Ukrainian presence in Kursk Oblast is tolerable in exchange for the Russian seizure of Pokrovsk.

• Russian offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast do not portend the imminent collapse of the frontline throughout Ukraine, despite Putin's efforts to portray the advances in Donetsk Oblast as dramatic.

• Russian forces recently advanced near Chasiv Yar, southeast of Kupyansk, and in the Kherson direction and Ukrainian forces recently regained positions north of Kharkiv City.

• Russian forces continue to forcibly redeploy mobilized Russian military personnel from occupied Ukraine to frontline positions to bolster Russia's crypto-mobilization efforts.

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, September 5, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, September 5, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-september-5-2024

The Biden administration is reportedly reevaluating its approach to ceasefire-hostage negotiations after Hamas killed six hostages, according to unspecified US officials cited by Axios on September 5. US officials reported that the Biden administration is considering applying pressure and implementing unspecified accountability measures against Hamas instead of pushing Israel to agree to a ceasefire-hostage deal that would give the group additional concessions. Hamas’ decision to increase the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released in a ceasefire-hostage deal has lowered the administration’s confidence that Hamas is willing to reach a deal. Officials are concerned that if the United States pressures Israel to withdraw its forces from the Philadelphi Corridor, as Hamas has demanded, that Hamas will reject a different part of the proposal.

Hamas is using its execution of the six hostages to conduct a series of information operations that are designed to degrade Israeli will and force Israel to end the war on terms favorable to Hamas, which would ultimately lead to an Israeli defeat. Hamas released a fourth video September 4 depicting two of the six recently killed hostages. This video—like the others—featured scripted statements calling for a ceasefire-hostage agreement. The two hostages in the September 4 video, who were under duress, accused the Israeli government of failing to rescue the hostages from the Gaza Strip and failing to reach a ceasefire-hostage proposal that would bring hostages home alive. Both hostages called on Israeli civilians to protest in favor of a ceasefire-hostage deal. Hamas is intentionally releasing these videos at this time to capitalize on Israeli outrage towards Netanyahu and to coerce the Israeli state into softening its demands. The softening of the current Israeli demands—which include a presence on the Philadelphi Corridor and the exile of many Palestinian prisoners released under any deal—would threaten to cause an Israeli defeat by enabling Hamas to rebuild itself. Hamas would very likely reconstruct smuggling tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor if it regained control over that area. Those tunnels would enable Hamas to rebuild its military wing with new weapons and supplies, including concrete to repair tunnels. Returning Palestinian prisoners—if they are allowed to return to the Palestinian territories—could serve as key commanders, replacing commanders Israel has killed in the ongoing war. Hamas has previously released hostage propaganda during periods of unrest and during ceasefire negotiations.

Key Takeaways:



• Iran: Senior Iranian military officials have continued messaging that they will retaliate for Israel killing Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

• Ceasefire Negotiations: The Biden administration is reportedly reevaluating its approach to ceasefire-hostage negotiations after Hamas killed six hostages, according to an unspecified US officials cited by Axios on September 5. Hamas is using its execution of the six hostages to conduct a series of information operations that are designed to degrade Israeli will and force Israel end the war on terms favorable to Hamas, which would ultimately lead to an Israeli defeat.



• Caucasus: Iranian and Russian officials met to discuss the Caucasus amid growing differences between Moscow and Tehran.

7. Mongolia refuses to arrest Putin during visit, choosing economic ties over international law

What will be the second and third order and long term effects on Mongolia? I think Mongolia made a huge strategic miscalculation. On the other hand, while we have Mexico and Canada as our only border nations, Mongolia only has Russia and China as its border nations. Where you stand depends on where you sit.

Mongolia refuses to arrest Putin during visit, choosing economic ties over international law

kyivindependent.com · by Nate Ostiller · September 4, 2024

Mongolia laid out the red carpet — literally — for Russian President Vladimir Putin when he arrived in the country on Sept. 2. But as the country is a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s Rome Statute, the visit should have meant Putin’s arrest.

Putin was issued an arrest warrant by the ICC in March 2023 for the forcible transfer of children from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. Adherents of the statute are required to arrest individuals wanted by the court upon arrival in their country.

Ahead of the visit, both Ukraine and the West urged Mongolia to fulfill its obligations and arrest the Russian leader, but citing economic ties with its neighbor, refused to do so.

For Putin, the trip was likely more strategic than a chance to snub the ICC. While not officially listed as part of the official visit, Putin is widely believed to have used it as a chance to discuss the construction of pipelines to carry gas from Russia to China through Mongolia.

After the visit, the two countries announced they had signed several agreements to cooperate on energy projects, the supply of Russian aviation fuel, rail connections, and an environmental study on how a proposed Mongolian hydroelectric plant could pollute Russia’s Lake Baikal.

Ukrainian lawmakers, for their part, in an open letter called for Putin’s arrest, telling the Kyiv Independent before the trip the visit was “a well-planned provocation” aimed at showing the “weakness of the ICC and international law.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed during the visit it had nothing to do with sending “any signals to the West” but was instead focused on further developing bilateral relations.

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a signing ceremony with Mongolia's President following their talks in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on Sep. 3, 2024. (Sofia Sandurskaya /Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

At the same time, Peskov also said the following day that “the whole story with the ICC…cannot and will not be a limitation in the development of Russia's relations with partner states that are interested in developing bilateral relations and covering international contacts.”

The notion that it was a trip based on economic partnership was dismissed by some Western analysts.

“The overriding reason for this trip will have been to show that Putin can travel right now,” said Sam Greene, the director of democratic resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Mongolia in a bind

A country of only 3.4 million in a massive landmass of more than 600,000 square miles wedged between two much larger powers — Russia and China — Mongolia has tread lightly in the thirty years since the fall of the Soviet Union.

While the country is one of the few democracies in the region and has sought to increase its ties to the West, its larger neighbors limit how far that can go — and how much Mongolia can truly spurn Russia.

In a defense of its inaction, a Mongolian government spokesperson told Politico on Sep. 3 that its hands were essentially tied in not arresting Putin.

“Mongolia imports 95% of its petroleum products and over 20% of electricity from our immediate neighborhood (Russia), which has previously suffered interruption for technical reasons. This supply is critical to ensure our existence and that of our people," the spokesperson said.

Mongolia has not actively supported Russia’s full-scale war but also abstained from a U.N. vote to condemn it.

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Vladimir Putin and Mongolia's President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh walk past honor guards during an official welcoming ceremony in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on Sep. 3, 2024. (Sofia Sandurskaya /Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

On Mongolian social media, some users criticized the statement from Heorhii Tykhyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, who said that the country should face “consequences” for refusing to arrest Putin.

Many wrote that despite personal feelings of support for Ukraine, the government had no choice.

Arresting Putin would have been “committing suicide” for Mongolia, one user wrote.

Other commentators acknowledged that the visit — initiated by an invitation from President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh — was a diplomatic faux pas that at the very least could have been avoided.

Mongolia’s gas bridge to China

The trip was most likely “about pursuing national interests, which in this case was in the sphere of energy,” according to Pavel Havlicek, a research fellow at the Association for International Affairs.

“The fact that he wasn’t captured and transferred to The Hague comes only as an added benefit,” said Havlicek. As Europe has sought to wean itself from Russian energy, Moscow has found new customers, primarily India and China.

"The fact that he wasn’t captured and transferred to The Hague comes only as an added benefit."

Russia has significantly boosted its export of oil and gas to India since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as a more modest increase to China, but its pipeline infrastructure pales in comparison to what Russia previously constructed to connect it to Europe.

The 3,968-kilometer (2,466 mi) Power of Siberia pipeline, which came online in 2019, connects natural gas fields in eastern Siberia with China. It is expected to reach its full capacity of 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2025.

Russia and the state-owned energy giant Gazprom have also planned another project, the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, to further increase the flow of gas to China.

The proposed 3,550-kilometer (2,205 miles) pipeline, which has been planned since 2013, would bring gas from Russia’s Yamal peninsula in the Arctic through existing pipelines, down through western Siberia, across Mongolia, and into China.

The Yamal fields are the source of gas that used to primarily flow to Europe.

The construction, which includes 950 kilometers of new pipeline through Mongolian territory, was originally set to begin in 2024. Gazprom said in a 2020 feasibility study that the pipeline should be operational by 2030.

Photo for illustration purposes: A Gazprom compression station, the starting point of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, in Ust-Luga, Russia, Jan. 28, 2021. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

But Mongolian Prime Minister Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene said in January 2024 that China and Russia have yet to agree on some key parts of the project.

"The Chinese and Russian sides are still doing the calculations and estimations and they are working on the economic benefits," Oyun-Erdene said.

Some analysts have speculated that the delays are likely because China knows that it has the upper hand over Russia, which has shrunk its pool of export partners due to its military aggression against Ukraine.

As a result, China may be trying to negotiate a better deal.

Speaking to reporters on Sept. 3, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that talks on the pipeline are ongoing and that their conclusion is not tied “to a certain date, a certain visit.”

In an interview with the Mongolian newspaper Onodar ahead of the trip, Putin said that Mongolia could potentially use some of the gas in transit through its territory.

Even if the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline wasn’t on the official agenda, that does not mean the pipeline was not discussed.

“There are things that are officially mentioned, and there are things you don’t want to speak about,” said Havlicek.

Opinion: Mongolia should arrest Putin or face consequences

Indicted war criminal Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Mongolia today. As a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued an arrest warrant for Putin back in March 2023 for the deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine, Mongolia is legally obligated to arrest him.…

The Kyiv IndependentDaniil Ukhorskiy

kyivindependent.com · by Nate Ostiller · September 4, 2024

8. The Russian Propaganda Attack on America

Sigh....here it is again:

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

Access NSS HERE

The Russian Propaganda Attack on America

Sometimes money is more effective than weapons.

By Tom Nichols

The Atlantic · by Tom Nichols · September 5, 2024

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

When people think of the world of espionage, they probably imagine glamorous foreign capitals, suave undercover operators, and cool gadgets. The reality is far more pedestrian: Yesterday, the Justice Department revealed an alleged Russian scheme to pay laundered money to American right-wing social-media trolls that seems more like a bad sitcom pitch than a top-notch intelligence operation.

According to a federal indictment unsealed yesterday, two Russian citizens, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, worked with a Tennessee company not named in the indictment but identified in the press as likely to be Tenet Media, owned by the conservative entrepreneurs Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan. The Russians work for RT, a Kremlin-controlled propaganda outlet; they are accused of laundering nearly $10 million and directing the money to the company.

Chen and Donovan then allegedly used most of that money to pay for content from right-wing social-media influencers including Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, and Benny Johnson. Unless you’ve spent time sloshing around in some of the dumber wading pools of the internet, you may not have heard of these people, but they have several million followers among them.

So far, Pool, Rubin, and Johnson claim that they had no idea what was going on, and have even asserted that they’re the real victims here. On one level, it’s not hard to believe that someone like Pool was clueless about who he was working for, especially if you’ve seen any of his content; these people are not exactly brimming with nuanced insights. (As the legal commentator Ken White dryly observed in a post on Bluesky: “Saying Tim Pool did something unwittingly is a tautology.”) And even without this money, some of them were likely to make the same divisive, pro-Russian bilge that they would have made anyway—as long as they could find someone to pay for their microphones and cameras.

On the other hand, you might think a person at all concerned about due diligence would ask a few questions about the amount of cash being dumped on their head. An op-ed in a newspaper or a magazine usually nets the writer a few hundred bucks. Well-known podcasters and the biggest writers on Substack—and there are only a few—can make $1 million or more a year, but most people on those platforms never get near that kind of income. According to the indictment, however, the unnamed company agreed to pay one contributor $400,000 each month for hosting four weekly videos, and offered another a contract to make occasional videos at $100,000 a pop.

Now, maybe I’m not well versed in the high-flying world of Tennessee media companies, but that seems like an awful lot of cabbage.

What’s really going on here is that the Russians have identified two major weaknesses in their American adversaries. The first is that a big slice of the American public, especially since the ascent of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, has an almost limitless appetite for stories that jack up their adrenaline: They will embrace wild conspiracies and “news” meant to generate social conflict so long as the stories are exciting, validate their preexisting worldviews, and give them some escape from life’s daily doldrums.

The other is that more than a few Americans have the combination of immense greed and ego-driven grievances that make them easy targets either for recruitment or to be used as clueless dupes. The Russians, along with every other intelligence service in the world, count on finding such people and exploiting their avarice and insecurity. This is not new. (The United States does it too. Money is almost always the easiest inducement to treason.) But the widespread influence of social media has opened a new front in the intelligence battle.

Professional secret agents no longer need to find highly placed Americans who have access to secrets or who might influence policy discussions. Instead of the painstaking work that usually takes months or even years to suborn foreign citizens, the Kremlin can just dragoon a couple of its own people to pose as business sharps with money to burn, spread cash around like manure in a field full of half-wits, and see what blossoms.

The shenanigans described in the DOJ document were not exactly a SPECTRE-level op. In this case, Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva apparently developed and maintained a fake persona named “Eduard Grigoriann” who, for some reason, was just itching to plop a ton of money down on a venture in Tennessee. (Grigorian is a common name from the Caucasus region, but it is almost never transliterated with a double n at the end, which was a possible tell that it was a fake.) Even more amusing, Grigoriann apparently missed a meeting with his American partners because he was on Moscow time when he was supposed to be in Paris. According to the DOJ indictment, when Grigoriann realized he was too early for the meeting, he then performed a Google search for “time in Paris.”

Oops. Remember, junior spies, always be aware of your time zone.

As idiotic as this business was, Americans should not be complacent. Yes, people such as Johnson and Pool are execrable trolls, and yes, Chen has been fired from Blaze Media, a major conservative media outlet. But to the Russians, cooperative foreigners are interchangeable and replaceable. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is playing a very smart game here. For a relative pittance—$10 million is probably the loose change in the bottom drawer of Vladimir Putin’s desk—they gain a potentially huge amount of social discord, which in turn can translate directly into the electoral outcome the Russians so fervently desire: Trump’s return to the Oval Office.

Today, Putin even trolled America by saying—“ironically,” according to the Russian press service TASS—that he would prefer that Kamala Harris win the election. She “laughs so emphatically and infectiously,” he said, that perhaps she wouldn’t impose more sanctions on Russia. That’s a lovely mixture of condescension and sexism, of course. Putin added that Trump had been very hard on Russia and imposed more sanctions than any other president; this is false, but it allowed Putin to affirm an oft-deployed Trump lie.

The Justice Department finally seems to be going on the offense and fighting back against these Russian attacks on America. But this indictment is probably only the tip of the iceberg: Unfortunately, the Russians have scads of money, and plenty of Americans are despicable enough to take their cash.

9. Ukraine’s top commander defends Kursk offensive

Ukraine’s top commander defends Kursk offensive

by Brad Dress - 09/05/24 5:12 PM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4864286-ukraine-kursk-offensive-russia-donetsk/?utm

The commander in chief of the Ukrainian military, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Thursday that the Kursk offensive has been effective and the “strategy is working” to block Russian forces from taking more territory in eastern Ukraine.

Syrskyi told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the Kursk operation “reduced the threat of an enemy offensive” and prevented a Russian attack, saying Moscow had amassed tens of thousands of troops in the region, including experienced airborne ones.

He also said that Ukrainian forces have stalled the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine, including around the strategic railroad town of Pokrovsk.

“Over the last six days the enemy hasn’t advanced a single meter in the Pokrovsk direction. In other words, our strategy is working,” he said. “We’ve taken away their ability to maneuver and to deploy their reinforcement forces from other directions … and this weakening has definitely been felt in other areas.”

Syrskyi’s comments come as Ukrainian forces face a massive Russian attack in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, with troops closing in on not only Pokrovsk but also the cities of Chasiv Yar and Toretsk, both of which could help Russia advance further if captured.

Ukraine made a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region on Aug. 6, a move that caught Moscow off guard and was initially hailed as a brilliant counteroffensive that demonstrated the Kremlin had weak borders.

But nearly a month since the incursion, Ukraine has not achieved one of its main objectives — diverting a sufficient number of Russian troops from the front lines to Kursk to ease up pressure there — leading to criticism of whether the gamble worked.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that some 60,000 Russian troops were diverted from Ukraine, but there has not been a noticeable impact on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has showed more optimism and has hailed his forces for their advances in Donetsk.

Ukraine has taken some 100 settlements and around 500 square miles of territory, while capturing hundreds of Russian prisoners.

It has also destroyed Russian military assets and is protecting the northeastern Kharkiv and Sumy regions while in Kursk, from which Russia has yet to expel Ukrainian forces.

Syrskyi said since Russia has outmanned and outgunned Ukraine, his troops must resort to “means with maximum use of terrain features, engineering structures and also, to use technical superiority.”

“We cannot fight in the same way as they do,” he told CNN.

10. The Future of Warfare Is Electronic

We have to get this right and be the one making the advances in this "domain:" the electromagnetic spectrum.

The Future of Warfare Is Electronic

An audacious Ukrainian incursion into Russia shows why. Is the Pentagon paying enough attention?

By Porter Smith and Nathan Mintz

Sept. 4, 2024 12:35 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-future-of-warfare-is-electronic-ukraine-invasion-russia-is-the-pentagon-watching-73079a68?fbclid=

The Ukrainian army has launched a stunning offensive into Kursk, Russia, under a shield of advanced electronic weapons. The war in Ukraine is demonstrating that 21st-century conflicts will be won or lost in the arena of electronic warfare.

Think of electronic warfare as casting spells on an invisible battlefield. Combatants strive to preserve their own signals, while disrupting those of the enemy. In Kursk, the Ukrainians took advantage of their technical knowledge to achieve a leap in battlefield tactics. Using a variety of electronic sensing systems, they managed to figure out the key Russian radio frequencies along the invasion route. They jammed these frequencies, creating a series of electronic bubbles that kept enemy drones away from Ukrainian forces, allowing reconnaissance units, tanks and mechanized infantry to breach the Russian border mostly undetected. This is the chaotic way of modern combat: a choreography of lightweight, unmanned systems driven by a spiderweb of electronic signals.

During visits to Ukraine over the past year, we observed the convergence of unmanned systems and electronic warfare, increasingly conducted by front-line troops. An island in the Dnipro River delta south of Mykolaiv is held by a contingent of Ukrainian special forces. These units would normally be supported by heavy artillery, attack aviation, and air-defense missiles, and resupplied by traditional maritime assets. Today, short on conventional resources but buoyed by Ukrainian tech entrepreneurs, they are pioneering the development and use of quadcopters and drone boats for resupply, reconnaissance, evacuation and amphibious assaults.

The Russians have so far been unable to dislodge these innovators but have begun using their own jammers to counter the waves of Ukrainian drone fleets supporting them, effectively creating a classic blockade. With the local electronic environment scrambled, Ukrainian drones have difficulty operating. If the Russians succeed, they could isolate the Ukrainian forces on the island. As these struggles reveal, the ultimate prize in modern warfare is spectrum dominance: ensuring one’s own control of drone networks while detecting and denying the adversary’s.

Connectivity has become as important to war as supply lines. Three decades of innovation have transformed cell phones from a luxury to some 15 billion internet-linked devices today. War zones are jam-packed with electronic brains. Unlike Cold War jets, tanks and ships, each system is primarily controlled by software and relies on the same connectivity found in doorbell security cameras, electric vehicles and consumer mobile apps. The value of a smartphone isn’t necessarily the aluminum rectangle in your hand, but the software it contains and the network to which it’s connected. This is also now true of military devices.

America has a reputation as a global innovator, yet it trails in the dark arts of electronic warfare. Improvised jamming systems and dozens of counter-drone systems have created a spectral environment that the U.S. military isn’t yet prepared to navigate. American drones and munitions frequently can’t overcome the jamming of their guidance systems. Yet we send them to Ukraine, where the Russians often scramble them before they reach their targets.

Our core jamming platforms, such as the EA-18G Growler and antiradiation missiles, are effective but expensive and difficult to build at speed and scale. Using a $1 million missile to destroy a $10,000 jammer and clear the way for a $1,000 drone is absurd. With our current platforms, it will be the norm.

The Ukrainians outside Mykolaiv solved their electronic-warfare woes, however temporarily, without seven-figure munitions. Their marines dangled direction-finding antennas inside PVC piping from a first-person view drone for rough triangulations of Russian jammers using tested, decades-old signals techniques, before using artillery to strike the locations. When we asked why a marine unit, which doesn’t typically specialize in electronic warfare, was running improvised hunter-killer missions on jamming sites, the Ukrainians reacted with surprise. Their electronic intelligence expert explained, “You can’t do anything in this war without first figuring out the jamming.”

A military that can’t build a dynamic electronic shield around its own forces will likewise be unable to maneuver in the coming drone wars. Modern electronic-warfare systems mounted on low-cost drones are now as necessary as munitions. New companies are in the early stages of building the right weapons but need the Pentagon to recognize the same future—and spend accordingly.

We aren’t the only ones watching Ukraine. China moves at the speed of war, while the U.S. moves at the speed of bureaucracy. If we retool our approach to electronic warfare, America will tip the scales in favor of deterrence and, if necessary, victory. If not, we will be subject to the harsh lessons inevitably faced by those who fight the last war.

Mr. Smith is a former U.S. Army attack aviator and officer of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Mr. Mintz, an aerospace engineer, was founding CEO of the defense startups Epirus, Spartan Radar and now CX2.

11. U.S. Maritime Policy Needs an Overhaul

Excerpts:

These proposals do not constitute an exhaustive list of those worthy of examination. Other items, such as reforming overzealous environmental laws that hamper shipyard development and establishing a Merchant Marine Reserve to address concerns over mariner numbers and reliability, also merit strategizing. But these should be adjuncts to reform instead of their centerpieces. Redesigning the main pillars of U.S. maritime policy to comport with modern realities should be at the forefront of modernization.

True maritime reform advocacy is not for the faint of heart. The protections and policies highlighted for reform have accreted a collection of powerful special interest groups willing to dedicate considerable resources to their preservation. But confronting them is what’s required to craft a maritime policy that meets American economic and national security needs. The simplest approach would be to continue with the policies that have led to the abysmal status quo — or worse yet, further strengthen them — but that road’s destitute destination is already known. The country’s maritime future depends on a decisive break with its failed legacy approach.

U.S. Maritime Policy Needs an Overhaul - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Colin Grabow · September 6, 2024

U.S. maritime policy is a grievous failure. Whether evaluated in terms of effectively meeting national security requirements or bolstering the country’s economy, America can point to few successes. Inefficient commercial shipbuilding barely registers as a rounding error in global output while costly U.S.-flagged shipping is typically only employed when other options are exhausted. A shocking lack of competitiveness has led to both considerable economic harm and the withering of these maritime industries into shells of their former selves. Such are the fruits of a maritime approach rooted far more in status quo bias and the guiding hand of entrenched special interests than 21st-century needs and realities.

Belatedly, the scale of dysfunction has begun to register in Washington and a long overdue conversation has begun over how to reverse matters. Most of the solutions put forth, however, are tepid and unequal to the task before them.

Tinkering at the margins will not do. To unlock the country’s maritime potential and address its glaring national security deficiencies, policymakers should resolutely advocate for measures that place them at odds with powerful groups seeking to perpetuate the status quo. In particular, they should focus on reforming outdated protectionist laws that impede the use of allied resources and replacing indirect assistance to the maritime industry with targeted aid whose costs and benefits are transparent. Absent such action, maritime decay will continue apace and the United States will persist in ceding the oceans to a world that refuses to stand in its own way.

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The Costs of a Failed Approach

Although numerous metrics demonstrate the maritime industry’s descent into mediocrity, few capture it more starkly than the state of commercial shipbuilding. Despite American manufacturing and technological prowess, U.S. shipyards’ output in recent years has ranked just 15th in the world. So gross is the industry’s lack of competitiveness — building ships for four or more times the average world price — and so paltry is the demand for its offerings that the sector’s collective output amounts to just a fraction of one percent of the global total.

Not only a far cry from the dominant shipbuilding triumvirate of China, Japan, and South Korea, U.S. numbers also trail the likes of much smaller players such as Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway.

A requirement that vessels used in intra-U.S. waterborne commerce be domestically constructed — mandated by the 1920 Jones Act — means that this shipbuilding inefficiency poisons American shipping. Burdened by excess capital costs, the competitiveness of water transport is such that despite numerous geographical factors tilting in its favor — including a vast coastline home to 40 percent of the U.S. population, expansive inland waterways, the Great Lakes, and shipping-dependent non-contiguous states and territories — the mode accounted for less than 4 percent of freight moved last year. Water transport has deteriorated into almost niche status and what should be a key asset providing efficient transportation across the country’s vast expanse goes woefully underutilized.

This has consequences for the broader U.S. economy, including some of the country’s most strategic industries. Thanks to pricey (or in some cases, non-existent) shipping, U.S. refineries purchase oil from abroad instead of the Gulf Coast, Puerto Rico meets its bulk liquefied gas needs from distant Nigeria and other sources instead of the U.S. mainland, and steel is imported instead of purchased domestically. The competitiveness of American firms is undermined and the viability of domestic supply chains is shattered.

Frustratingly, these are but a small sampling of the costs incurred.

National Security Needs Unmet

Beyond sapping the country’s economic vitality — the sine qua non of U.S. power — these maritime shortcomings also have implications for the country’s defense. Americans have become alarmed to learn over the past year, for example, that China’s shipbuilding capacity exceeds that of the United States by a factor of 232 (although its capacity to produce complex naval vessels is almost certainly less) and that a single Chinese shipyard has more capacity than all U.S. yards combined.

Perhaps more important than this relative disparity is the country’s inability to build new Navy ships and maintain existing ones. Decades of uncompetitive shipbuilding have degraded the industrial base to the point where there isn’t sufficient shipyard capacity to meet U.S. national security needs.

Shipbuilding’s travails, meanwhile, are matched if not exceeded by those of the U.S.-flagged oceangoing fleet. Currently comprised of approximately 185 large cargo ships — fewer than 170 of which are deemed militarily useful — its numbers have more than halved over the last 40 years. The dwindling fleet corresponds with dwindling crews, and a 2017 government report found the United States would face a deficit of at least 1,838 mariners in the event of a sustained sealift operation. Understandably, questions have been raised over the fleet’s ability to meet U.S. sealift requirements.

The decline in oceangoing ships partially reflects the domestic fleet’s devolution into one increasingly centered on tugboats and barges. Whereas self-propelled ships accounted for over 75 percent of coastwise cargo carried as recently as 1980 (and 90 percent in 1960) with the remainder carried by barge, by 2022 that number had slipped to 51 percent.

Much of this barge cargo is moved by articulated tug barges, a vessel type superficially similar to self-propelled ships but that lacks their efficiency in moving cargo over long distances. According to the Congressional Research Service, the vessels’ usage is attributable to the high cost of building and crewing Jones Act-compliant ships. That roughly two-thirds of all the world’s tugboats used in articulated tug barges are found in the United States further suggests their employment reflects uniquely costly conditions created by the Jones Act. Rather than use self-propelled ships, Americans frequently make do with a simulacrum (one whose mariners do not require the necessary licenses to crew sealift ships).

But the maritime rot goes deeper still. The high cost of U.S.-built ships also means that existing vessels in the Jones Act fleet are kept in service far longer — sometimes decades longer — than their international counterparts. These elderly ships, in turn, frequently rely on state-owned Chinese shipyards to meet their considerable maintenance and repair needs. Incredibly, U.S. policy’s deterrence of fleet modernization is generating business for the shipyards of arguably its main geopolitical rival.

Ancient ships are similarly abundant in the grey-hulled sealift fleet, with the ships of the Ready Reserve Force averaging 44 years of age. While the purchase of some used foreign-built vessels for defense needs has been permitted as a stop-gap measure to renew the fleet, protectionist laws stymie the Department of Defense’s ability to procure new vessels or repair existing ones in allied countries. Related measures have forced the Coast Guard to turn an inexperienced domestic shipbuilder to attempt construction of its Polar Security Cutter — a program now delayed by at least 5 years and billions over budget — instead of expert allied shipyards.

And on it goes.

Underwhelming Solutions on Offer

U.S. maritime dysfunction has reached such a scale that alarm bells have begun ringing on Capitol Hill. In January, 19 members of Congress co-signed a letter highlighting the U.S. shipping and shipbuilding industries’ alarming downward trajectory, while Rep. Mike Gallagher fired off a similar letter prior to his April departure from Congress. More recently, four members of Congress, including Sen. Mark Kelly and Rep. Mike Waltz, released a report outlining objectives and principles for a national maritime strategy to address glaring deficiencies. While attention is welcome and overdue, many of the proposed policy changes are not commensurate to the challenge at hand.

One of the Kelly-Waltz report’s few specific calls to action, for example, is to leverage “tools such as tax incentives, enhanced cargo preference, operational subsidization, and federal financing” — all of which are already in use in some form — to expand the U.S.-flagged fleet. Similarly, a recent congressional roundtable on U.S. shipping and shipbuilding saw industry and labor representatives proffer ideas that went little beyond tax incentives and new requirements that shippers utilize U.S.-flagged vessels.

On the shipbuilding front, meanwhile, a July appearance by Kelly and Waltz on the War on the Rocks podcast saw talk of unspecified federal spending, “opportunity zones” for shipyards, and reforms around permitting and environmental regulation to rejuvenate the domestic industry. While some of these ideas might be worthwhile, such policy tweaks appear unlikely to reverse the fortunes of an industry whose lack of international competitiveness stretches back at least 150 years. In other words, the vast preponderance of contemporary proposed solutions either double down on existing programs and paradigms or offer only minor improvements.

Righting the policy ship, however, requires bold new thinking. Marginal changes to status quo policy will only produce marginal changes to status quo outcomes. Given the present dire state of affairs, all options should be on the table. Measures currently under consideration will not suffice if the United States is to break free from its maritime torpor.

Towards a New Maritime Vision

Bold thinking means a willingness to re-examine all elements of U.S. maritime policy, including some regarded as sacred. Given the depth and magnitude of current problems, nothing should be considered off the table. It is in that spirit that the following suggestions are offered for consideration.

Update the Jones Act

Widely regarded as the foundation of U.S. maritime policy, many of the most deep-seated problems with the U.S. maritime industry are due to the provisions of this outdated law. Passed in 1920 but little changed from its early 19th-century antecedents, the Jones Act is almost wholly unsuited to 21st-century maritime realities.

Particularly out of step is the law’s requirement that vessels used in intra-U.S. trade be constructed in domestic shipyards — a requirement that no other country imposes. Never mind its harmful economic effects, the U.S.-build mandate utterly fails from a purely national security perspective. Commercial shipbuilding output borders on negligible, with years sometimes passing without a single large oceangoing merchant ship being delivered.

In exchange for this meager output, the domestic fleet is rendered smaller, older, and less capable than would otherwise be the case due to crushing capital costs unrivaled in the world. It’s a bargain that makes little sense, particularly given U.S. shipyards’ heavy reliance on imported parts and components — frequently from China — for the few large ships built domestically. Any notion that the Jones Act’s high costs grant the country a shipbuilding capability free of foreign reliance is illusory.

In addition to its build requirement, the Jones Act’s restriction on foreign mariners — limited to permanent alien residents that comprise no more than 25 percent of a vessel’s unlicensed crew — is also ripe for reassessment (an idea already broached by some in the domestic maritime industry), particularly during a time of crew shortages. The law’s limit on foreign ownership also demands a second look given its deterrent effect on investment and practical enforcement difficulties.

The Jones Act is a law rooted not in immutable truths but in the conditions of a long-bygone era. Properly understood, many of its prohibitions amount to a self-imposed embargo that benefits U.S. adversaries by severing the country from allied capabilities and know-how.

Although some voices, including Kelly and Waltz, maintain that the Jones Act should not be revisited because it ensures access to ships in case of war or national emergency (a claim perhaps rooted more in theory than reality), this is entirely the wrong framing. The question should not be whether the Jones Act provides some de minimis levels of shipping (and shipbuilding), but rather whether it creates these resources efficiently and in sufficient quantities. The answer is a resounding “no.” If maritime policy was written from scratch today, few would arrive at the Jones Act as an optimal means of addressing U.S. national security needs.

Eliminate Cargo Preference Laws

Due to their high operating costs (approximately $7 million higher per year than those of equivalent internationally flagged vessels) and ensuing lack of competitiveness, U.S.-flagged ships depend heavily on laws mandating their use for government-impelled cargo. This is a deeply flawed approach to promoting a U.S.-flagged fleet.

The harm inflicted by cargo preference is at least two-fold. First, requiring the use of these ships imposes high costs on the military — which has expressed past concerns about the financial burden of U.S.-flagged shipping — and civilian government agencies subject to cargo preference laws. Second, access to mandated cargo disincentivizes cost control, thus undermining the competitiveness that ought to undergird commercial U.S.-flagged shipping.

Targeted maritime subsidy programs should be direct and transparent, with clear dollar amounts that enable the cost-benefit analyses essential to good public policy. As has long been recognized, cargo preference is the opposite of this.

Reform (and Possibly Expand) Subsidy Programs

A superior method to indirect subsidies is more direct aids such as the Maritime Security Program and Tanker Security Program. Each program provides an annual stipend to participating vessels in exchange for the Defense Department’s assured access to them during armed conflicts or national emergencies. The costs and benefits are visible and easily measurable.

While the concept is sound, such programs should be reformed by establishing a bidding system to ensure the stipend — currently set by statute — matches market conditions and incentivizes cost control. In addition, funding for these programs and determinations over their size — reflecting perceived sealift requirements — should come from the Department of Defense.

If defense officials determine current shipping to be inadequate, the number of participating vessels could be expanded (ideally funded with savings from the discontinuation of cargo preference).

Establish a Second Ship Registry

Commercial vessels registering under the U.S. flag are internationally uncompetitive largely due to numerous accompanying requirements, including the employment of U.S. citizen mariners, payment of U.S. taxes (e.g., payroll taxes and a 50 percent tariff on vessel repairs performed abroad), and subjection to U.S. laws (including the ability to file lawsuits over personal injuries, which raises vessel insurance costs). A straightforward means of expanding the size of the U.S.-flagged fleet would be to establish a second ship registry akin to those operated by Denmark, Germany, Norway, and others that feature less onerous conditions. This new registry could distinguish itself from the legacy U.S. registry by offering a competitive tonnage tax and relaxing the U.S. citizen mariner requirement (which could be applied only to senior officer positions, or removed and replaced with a generous tax credit for those companies that hire U.S. citizen mariners).

Although availing themselves of many of the privileges of U.S. flagging, such as U.S. Navy protection, such vessels would be ineligible for coastwise commerce or participation in U.S. subsidy programs linked to sealift needs.

Update Restrictions on Military Use of Foreign Shipyards

While there is value in preserving a U.S.-controlled shipbuilding industrial base to construct Navy and Coast Guard vessels, such considerations should be weighed against the benefits of constructing and repairing vessels on time and cost-effectively. Meeting military shipbuilding needs requires that the balance between these two considerations — almost currently entirely tipped toward the former via protectionist statutes — be more evenly struck.

Fortunately, there is growing recognition, including from members of Congress and the secretary of the Navy, of the necessity for the United States to avail itself of abundant and competitive allied shipbuilding and repair capabilities. Indeed, the Commission on the National Defense Strategy recently called for the expanded use of such shipyards to address maintenance and shipbuilding needs.

This is not advocacy for wholesale outsourcing but to recognize that for some vessels in some circumstances, the cost and time savings of allied construction and maintenance are of such magnitude that they outweigh other considerations. Among the candidates for such treatment are the disastrous Polar Security Cutter acquisition as well as non-combatant support and sealift vessels whose overseas construction offers higher quality, faster timelines, and dramatic cost-savings — no small matter in an era of record budget deficits.

The Path Ahead

These proposals do not constitute an exhaustive list of those worthy of examination. Other items, such as reforming overzealous environmental laws that hamper shipyard development and establishing a Merchant Marine Reserve to address concerns over mariner numbers and reliability, also merit strategizing. But these should be adjuncts to reform instead of their centerpieces. Redesigning the main pillars of U.S. maritime policy to comport with modern realities should be at the forefront of modernization.

True maritime reform advocacy is not for the faint of heart. The protections and policies highlighted for reform have accreted a collection of powerful special interest groups willing to dedicate considerable resources to their preservation. But confronting them is what’s required to craft a maritime policy that meets American economic and national security needs. The simplest approach would be to continue with the policies that have led to the abysmal status quo — or worse yet, further strengthen them — but that road’s destitute destination is already known. The country’s maritime future depends on a decisive break with its failed legacy approach.

Become a Member

Colin Grabow is the associate director of the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Steifel Center for Trade Policy Studies. He can be found discussing maritime topics on X at @cpgrabow.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Colin Grabow · September 6, 2024

12. Antony Blinken Dragged US Diplomacy Into the 21st Century. Even He’s Surprised by the Results

Excerpts:

Garrett Graff: On your first day, you promised that you were going to leave behind a department that was ready for the 21st century. I want to ask you about the digital work that the department has done. In June 2023, of course, the State Department discovered the Chinese intrusion of Microsoft systems. For those of us who cover cybersecurity, it was shocking that the State Department would be the originator of discovering an event like that.

Antony Blinken: It was a little surprising for me too—both a pleasant surprise, because I was very proud of the fact that we have remarkable people in place who are able to do that—but of course, when you have any kind of cyber intrusion, it’s a deep and ongoing concern. It’s exactly why we’ve tried to make this department, among other things, fit for purpose when it comes to cybersecurity.

One of the things you’ve done is create this new cybersecurity bureau with Ambassador Nate Fick. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the effort.

Look, what I’ve seen since coming back to the State Department three and a half years ago is that everything happening in the technological world and in cyberspace is increasingly central to our foreign policy.

...

When you leave this office, whenever that is, who are the world leaders you’re going to invite on your world band tour?

It’s a great question, and one that I could probably answer when I’m out of this job, at the risk of creating a diplomatic incident while I’m still in it.

I can reel off the names of a lot of people who I have genuine friendships with that will continue after we’re out of our respective positions. But there’s something else: I get to meet people from all walks of life doing incredible things—innovating, solving problems, dealing with adversity.

It reinforces something that I believed coming into this and now I feel even more strongly: Any challenge we face, I’m convinced that somewhere in our great country—or maybe somewhere around the world—someone has probably figured out the answer, at least the beginnings of an answer.

If you can’t connect, if you can’t share that knowledge, share that information, share that experience, then everyone’s going to have to reinvent the wheel in trying to solve the same problem.

You’ve spent 30 years in Washington and have now achieved every foreign policy staffer’s terminal dream. Whenever you leave this job, what’s next for you—what’s your next ambition?

It’s really hard to think about what comes next when you’re in the midst of what we’re doing now, because it’s all-consuming. I’m also blessed with two young children at a relatively advanced age. For me, the single most important thing, like for any parent, is them and their future, and watching them grow up, participating in them growing up.

When you leave office, are we going to be seeing more posted on your Spotify, “Ablinken”?

I thought at a young age that maybe I wanted to try music as a career, and then I realized I was missing one thing: talent. I’m not sure I want to inflict any more music on the world. I actually hope—talk about what comes next—to get to attend a few concerts. That’d be great.

Antony Blinken Dragged US Diplomacy Into the 21st Century. Even He’s Surprised by the Results

Two major wars. A rising China. Hackers everywhere. He’s the US secretary of state, and he says he’s here to help.

Wired · by Garrett M. Graff · September 4, 2024

Here’s a flash of Antony J. Blinken’s turn as US secretary of state: In his first year, he navigated America’s messy exit from Afghanistan. In his second, he tried to rally the world to Ukraine’s side following Russia’s invasion in February 2022. His third and, now fourth, have been defined by the Israel-Hamas conflict. In between, he has tried to box in rising Chinese aggression in Asia and slow Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon, even as the Islamic republic has (repeatedly) plotted to assassinate his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, for his role in killing Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani. Don’t forget either about the normal mix of crises, coups, summits, treaties, global elections—more humans will vote in 2024 than in any year in world history—and, this summer, the biggest prisoner swap with Russia since the end of the Cold War.

Blinken, 62, once thought he might become a musician—or maybe, even less lucratively, a journalist. Instead he has spent virtually his entire career in the Washington foreign policy establishment, which is something of a family business: Both his father and uncle were ambassadors during the Clinton administration. In the 2000s, Blinken was the Democratic staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he cemented his partnership with then chair Joe Biden. During the Obama administration, Blinken was Biden’s national security adviser, a role that delivered him a cameo in that presidency’s most famous picture: Look carefully at the 2011 snapshot of Obama and top officials monitoring the killing of Osama bin Laden from the White House Situation Room and there is Blinken, peeking over the shoulder of White House chief of staff Bill Daley.

Blinken spent the final two years of Obama’s presidency as deputy secretary of state. So it was hardly a surprise that he was one of Biden’s first cabinet hires in 2021. At his confirmation hearing, Blinken shared that his stepfather had been the sole student—among 900 children at his Polish school—to survive the Holocaust. The job is personal and all-consuming, and it’s not even one he can escape for a few hours at home: Protesters spent months this spring and summer camped outside his house, with the hope of pressuring him to end the humanitarian crisis that has grown out of Israel’s attacks in the Gaza Strip. At times they’ve poured fake blood on the road as the family—his wife, White House cabinet secretary Evan Ryan, and their 4- and 5-year-old kids—drive in and out.

He has visited roughly 90 countries in the past three and a half years, including 15 trips to Israel. During one of his seven trips to Ukraine, Blinken found a moment to rock out and play guitar at a club in Kiev, a viral clip meant to highlight how Ukraine has survived more than two years of punishing war.

In many of those trips and meetings, technology has been top of mind. In 2022 Blinken created a Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy to lead the nation’s overseas efforts on cybersecurity and the vital intersection of economic security and technology. And this May he flew to San Francisco to give a keynote at the RSA conference, a security industry event, where he joked, “‘Move fast and break things’ is literally the exact opposite of what we try to do at the State Department.” (His team is also trying to modernize the famously outdated tech used by the State Department’s 77,000 employees across some 300 embassies, consulates, and US offices.)

In early August—after Blinken returned from a trip through Laos, Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Mongolia, a journey one Chinese official labeled his “encirclement tour” —I sat down with the secretary in his personal office at State’s Foggy Bottom headquarters, a small, cozy, wood-paneled room just steps (and a few very armored doors) away from the building’s more ornate and lavish diplomatic spaces. At that moment, headlines were warning of an escalating attack on Israel by Hezbollah and Iran, and Ukraine had just invaded Russia’s Kursk region. Time was, of course, tight—his daily schedule is measured to the minute—so we dove right in, and Blinken talked as casually as the nation’s top diplomat ever does.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity, combining on-camera and off-camera portions. Check out WIRED’s YouTube channel for the video.

Garrett Graff: On your first day, you promised that you were going to leave behind a department that was ready for the 21st century. I want to ask you about the digital work that the department has done. In June 2023, of course, the State Department discovered the Chinese intrusion of Microsoft systems. For those of us who cover cybersecurity, it was shocking that the State Department would be the originator of discovering an event like that.

Antony Blinken: It was a little surprising for me too—both a pleasant surprise, because I was very proud of the fact that we have remarkable people in place who are able to do that—but of course, when you have any kind of cyber intrusion, it’s a deep and ongoing concern. It’s exactly why we’ve tried to make this department, among other things, fit for purpose when it comes to cybersecurity.

One of the things you’ve done is create this new cybersecurity bureau with Ambassador Nate Fick. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the effort.

Look, what I’ve seen since coming back to the State Department three and a half years ago is that everything happening in the technological world and in cyberspace is increasingly central to our foreign policy.

There’s almost a perfect storm that’s come together over the last few years, several major developments that have really brought this to the forefront of what we’re doing and what we need to do. First, we have a new generation of foundational technologies that are literally changing the world all at the same time—whether it’s AI, quantum, microelectronics, biotech, telecommunications. They’re having a profound impact, and increasingly they’re converging and feeding off of each other.

Second, we’re seeing that the line between the digital and physical worlds is evaporating, erasing. We have cars, ports, hospitals that are, in effect, huge data centers. They’re big vulnerabilities. At the same time, we have increasingly rare materials that are critical to technology and fragile supply chains. In each of these areas, the State Department is taking action.

We have to look at everything in terms of “stacks”—the hardware, the software, the talent, and the norms, the rules, the standards by which this technology is used.

Besides setting up an entire new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy—and the bureaus are really the building blocks in our department—we’ve now trained more than 200 cybersecurity and digital officers, people who are genuinely expert. Every one of our embassies around the world will have at least one person who is truly fluent in tech and digital policy. My goal is to make sure that across the entire department we have basic literacy—ideally fluency—and even, eventually, mastery. All of this to make sure that, as I said, this department is fit for purpose across the entire information and digital space.

Your tenure here at Foggy Bottom has coincided with what feels like the fracturing of the dream of a global internet. We’ve begun to see this splintering into separate realms—a European regulatory web, and authoritarian regimes using the internet as a surveillance tool. Of course, we’ve seen this play out in US policy on Huawei and TikTok.

Ideally we don’t have that fracturing, and certainly that would be the preference. We’ve done a number of things actually to try to move in another direction—to try to build broad consensus on the way technology is used. Let me give you an example on AI. We had incredible work done by the White House to develop basic principles with the foundational companies. The voluntary commitments that they made, the State Department has worked to internationalize those commitments. We have a G7 code of conduct—the leading democratic economies in the world—all agreeing to basic principles with a focus on safety.

We managed to get the very first resolution ever on artificial intelligence through the United Nations General Assembly—192 countries also signing up to basic principles on safety and a focus on using AI to advance sustainable development goals on things like health, education, climate. We also have more than 50 countries that have signed on to basic principles on the responsible military use of AI.

“When I’m raising concerns about the direction of another country’s democracy, I am able to say that when we have problems here in our country, we don’t sweep them under the rug.”

The goal here is not to have a world that is bifurcated in any way. It’s to try to bring everyone together. Having said that, you’re right—there are areas where, of course, we’re in intense competition with other countries. If we can’t come together on rules that make sure that we’re elevating the good and minimizing the bad, we have to make sure we’re protecting our values and protecting our interests.

For example, when it comes to the highest-end technology—say the highest-end chips—we want to make sure that a country like China is not able to acquire those and then feed them directly into its military program. They’re engaged right now in an extensive expansion of their nuclear program—very opaque—and it’s not in our interest for them to have the highest-end technology.

Also, technology is unfortunately used to repress people, for surveillance and to repress their human rights. We want to make sure our technology is not used for that. We want to make sure that we’re protecting—as opposed to promoting—technology in a way that has the smallest possible yard, along with the highest possible fence.

Broadly speaking, we see technology profoundly as a source for good, for progress. But for discrete parts of the ecosystem, we have to make sure we’re protecting. We have to have supply chains that are not only resilient but diversified, so we’re not dependent on any one place for any critical input. We went through Covid—we saw where that can lead. We don’t want to see the same thing on critical technology.

Let me ask you also about Russia and ransomware, another issue that has defined your tenure and the administration’s national security agenda over the past couple of years. Is there more that the United States and the Western Alliance could be doing to push Russia to be a better actor, or is this an intractable problem?

Look, it is an ongoing challenge. President Biden engaged President Putin on this early in his term—this was before the invasion of Ukraine—and we were making some progress on getting Russia to act in a more responsible way when it came to ransomware. Then the invasion of Ukraine happened. It’s obviously made the entire relationship much more difficult than it already was. I think, unfortunately, there are probably limits to what we can achieve. Having said that, we’re also working increasingly collaboratively—not only with the private sector, but also with other countries—to develop common strategies, to build solidarity, because so many companies and countries are afflicted with the scourge of ransomware.

Photograph: Matt Eich

Your predecessor, Mike Pompeo, came to this job with “swagger.” The word characterized his tenure and approach to the world. It feels like there’s been a different tempo in world events in the past few years, as if your tenure has been more defined by the limits of American power—Afghanistan, Ukraine, the Middle East, China.

I actually question the premise. I don’t see the experience that we’ve had highlighting the limits of our power. On the contrary, I see in many ways a rejuvenation of American power.

When President Biden came in, the first thing he said was, “I want you to go out and reinvigorate, reengage, and, if necessary, reimagine our partnerships and our alliances around the world.” He did that for a very clear reason. As we saw the world and America’s place in it, we had two basic conclusions: One is that when the United States is not engaged, when we’re not leading, either you’re going to get someone else who is—and probably not in a way that advances our interests and values—or maybe, just as bad, you get no one, and then you have a vacuum filled by bad things. American engagement and leadership was one side of the coin, but the flip side is finding ways to cooperate, to collaborate, to communicate with all sorts of actors who have an increasingly powerful role in shaping the direction of the world. The fact is that for all of the power that we have—which remains extraordinary over virtually every domain—we’re simply not as effective in getting solutions and solving problems alone as we are when we’re doing it with others.

Where have you seen those alliances and partnerships come into play?

We see it with Ukraine, where we’ve brought together more than 50 countries in defense of Ukraine—not just in Europe, but halfway around the world, in Asia—and taking steps to support Ukraine, to penalize Russia, to strengthen our own alliance at NATO that are genuinely historic. That’s a product of our leadership.

We see tremendous convergence on the approach to China and the challenges that it poses—both in the transatlantic community and also with critical allies and partners in Asia. In the time that I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen greater convergence on how to think about the challenges and then what to do about them.

We built alliances on everything from global health, dealing effectively with Covid and getting vaccines out there, to maybe the biggest affliction that the United States faces—fentanyl. This is the number one killer of Americans aged 18 to 45—not guns, not car accidents, not cancer. Fentanyl. Not only have we used our diplomacy to get greater cooperation from China in starting to limit the flow of the chemical precursors—the ingredients that go into making fentanyl—we built an alliance, now more than 150 countries, that is working together to curb the diversion of these precursors around the world.

When we engage, when we lead, when we do it in a way that brings others along, this has actually been a manifestation of American power.

What do you feel like you’ve learned about the world in this job that you didn’t know coming into it?

I had obviously some ideas built up over more than 30 years of doing this. But like anything, you’ve got plans, you’ve got ideas, and then you’ve got first contact—and you have to adjust.

Two things have … I’m not sure if they surprised me, but they’ve clearly been spotlighted in ways that were even sharper than I might have imagined. One is that there is a greater multiplicity, greater complexity, and greater interconnectedness of the challenges we face than at any time since I’ve been doing this. That’s really stood out. I knew that intuitively, but you don’t really know it until you’re dealing with it. We always have rose-tinted glasses about the past to some extent.

The second thing is, in the time that I’ve been working in government, the single biggest change for me has been in the information environment. When I started out at the beginning of the Clinton administration, basically everyone did the same two things—you got up in the morning, you opened the front door of your house or apartment, and you picked up a hard copy of The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal. Then if you had a TV in your office, at 6:30 pm you turned it on and watched the network news, CBS, NBC, ABC. Those were your basic sources of information. They defined your day. Now, of course, we’re at an intravenous speed where every millisecond we’re getting some new jolt of information. The pressure to respond, to react, is so much more intense. This has driven home the need to have as much discipline as possible in taking a breath—not simply reacting and responding, but to take the time to collect your thoughts, to get together with all the other stakeholders on a given problem, and to spend some time thinking it through. The pressure in the other direction is more intense than it’s ever been.

You’ve been part of a big arc in how Washington has thought about China over the past 30 years.

There was a Washington consensus for many, many years that China’s integration—particularly economic integration—would have an effect on its political system and the way it engaged around the world. We’ve seen that consensus in recent years evaporate, because we do see a China that, from their perspective for maybe understandable reasons, does seek to be the preeminent actor in the world—militarily, diplomatically, politically, economically. Now, if they had the same basic value set that we do, if they had the same basic interests, that would be one thing, but they don’t. They have a different worldview. So this represents for us an intense competition, because we’re at the dawn of a new era. We’re past the post–Cold War era, and there’s an intense competition to shape what comes next. We’re competing with China to do that.

What have you learned about China here, in this job?

You can’t simply define the relationship on a bumper sticker. If I had to pick one word, it’s “competition.” For Americans, there’s nothing wrong with competition—on the contrary, competition, as long as it’s fair, as long as it’s on a level playing field, usually brings out the best in us. But we also want to make sure that it’s competition that doesn’t generate conflict.

There are other aspects to the relationship that are important too, and this is why the bumper sticker would have to be a pretty long one. As arguably the two most important players in the world, there are places where it’s going to be in the interests of the American people and the Chinese people—and those of people around the world—to cooperate, to effectively communicate, so we minimize the chances of conflict even as we’re competing. We restored military-to-military communications—it’s critical to avoid any misunderstandings—and that’s happening at all levels. That’s good.

Photograph: Matt Eich

Elon Musk is an American citizen with an enormous amount of geopolitical power. We’ve seen it in Ukraine with Starlink. We’ve seen it with X and the Venezuelan elections. How worried are you about Elon Musk’s role in the world, and the divergence between US tech platforms and US foreign policy?

I’m not going to focus on any one individual. We of course see the extraordinary power—the extraordinary impact—that platforms have, just as we do with companies that have developed foundational technologies, including generative AI. We want to see platforms, companies, and innovators act responsibly, and that involves a number of things.

First, it involves—hopefully—collaboration between the federal government and these companies. We’ve done that intensely and extensively. I’ve met many times with the leaders of different critical companies to talk through how they’re seeing the world, how we’re seeing it. How “We’re from the federal government, we’re here to help,” how we can do that.

A big part of this is making sure that we’re helping to establish the rules, norms, and standards by which technology is used. In an ideal world, companies and platforms will do a lot of that themselves. In many ways that would be preferable—sometimes when government comes in, it does things with a two-by-four instead of with a scalpel.

How do you use tech in your life—do you have a burner account on Instagram that you scroll in the evening? TikTok? What websites do you visit during the day?

I’ve got a lot of go-to places that I start my day with on my iPhone, but I shouldn’t be doing brand advertising, so I’ll probably stay away from that. The big thread in my life is music. It’s the thing I come back to again and again. Tech makes my ability to connect to and to consume music much, much easier. It’s really opened whole new worlds.

Has being a dad changed the way that you look at tech?

Like any parent with young kids, it’s both exhilarating and a little bit frightening. You see the extraordinary facility children have with technology, and you see technology designed so brilliantly and intuitively. When my son was maybe 3, he wanted to watch some Sesame Street videos on my iPhone—we, of course, limit the amount of time that they spend on TV, but they see some of it. I couldn’t believe watching him as a 3-year-old, and then my daughter, intuitively scroll and swipe. But when I saw my son go on a site to get to a video of Sesame Street and hit “Skip Ad,” that was an eye opener.

What are the stakes of this election? Is it challenging to go around the world and talk about the glories of democracy as our democracy has struggled so at home?

In a funny way, no, to the latter part of your question. When I’m going around the world and raising concerns that we may have about the direction of another country’s democracy, what I am able to say is that when we have problems here in our country, we don’t pretend they don’t exist. We don’t sweep them under the rug. We actually confront them. We do it transparently, we argue about it, we shout about it, but we confront it. Sometimes it’s incredibly painful, sometimes it’s incredibly ugly, but we do it. Throughout our history, when we’ve had periods of real challenge internally, precisely because we confront the challenges openly, directly, we’ve always come out better and stronger. At the very least, what I’m able to say to countries is, “OK, we’re not saying do exactly what we do or model yourselves exactly after us—we’re not about that—but at least acknowledge, confront, deal with your challenges.”

Do you think in this moment that’s true too—that we’ll come out the other side of this political moment stronger?

I have to believe—want to believe—based on my own knowledge and understanding of our history that the answer is yes. But, of course, in my job I don’t do politics—I’m focused on policies. I’m focused on how we can best advance our interests and values around the world in ways that will have a positive impact on Americans, make all of us a little bit more secure, a little bit more prosperous, a little bit healthier.

When you leave this office, whenever that is, who are the world leaders you’re going to invite on your world band tour?

It’s a great question, and one that I could probably answer when I’m out of this job, at the risk of creating a diplomatic incident while I’m still in it.

I can reel off the names of a lot of people who I have genuine friendships with that will continue after we’re out of our respective positions. But there’s something else: I get to meet people from all walks of life doing incredible things—innovating, solving problems, dealing with adversity.

It reinforces something that I believed coming into this and now I feel even more strongly: Any challenge we face, I’m convinced that somewhere in our great country—or maybe somewhere around the world—someone has probably figured out the answer, at least the beginnings of an answer.

If you can’t connect, if you can’t share that knowledge, share that information, share that experience, then everyone’s going to have to reinvent the wheel in trying to solve the same problem.

You’ve spent 30 years in Washington and have now achieved every foreign policy staffer’s terminal dream. Whenever you leave this job, what’s next for you—what’s your next ambition?

It’s really hard to think about what comes next when you’re in the midst of what we’re doing now, because it’s all-consuming. I’m also blessed with two young children at a relatively advanced age. For me, the single most important thing, like for any parent, is them and their future, and watching them grow up, participating in them growing up.

When you leave office, are we going to be seeing more posted on your Spotify, “Ablinken”?

I thought at a young age that maybe I wanted to try music as a career, and then I realized I was missing one thing: talent. I’m not sure I want to inflict any more music on the world. I actually hope—talk about what comes next—to get to attend a few concerts. That’d be great.

Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at

Wired · by Garrett M. Graff · September 4, 2024

13. A ramp-up in nuclear weapons is not always a bad thing

Excerpts:

It is best to start with the simplest option. When 2026 rolls around, it would be easiest for Moscow and Washington to continue to abide by the limits of the expiring treaty. The two sides should also negotiate to resume on-site inspections — Vladimir Putin himself will have to be convinced that it is in Russia’s national security interest to do so. Perhaps the strengthening of the US nuclear industrial complex can be brought to his attention in a way that makes Russia’s interest in implementing the treaty abundantly clear.

As for the Chinese, if they reach 1,500 warheads by 2035 and continually refuse to talk then the US and its allies must consider a build-up.

Wide-ranging anxiety that we are reaching the end of the road for nuclear arms control is well-founded. Nevertheless, there is time to work the problem through and a responsibility to do so.

The worst-case scenario is that Russia and China are hell-bent on increasing their nuclear holdings at the cost of global stability. If that occurs, the US will be ready and able to respond.

A ramp-up in nuclear weapons is not always a bad thing

US expansion could play an important role in bringing China and Russia back to the negotiating table

Rose Gottemoeller

https://www.ft.com/content/3ad88a65-cada-4f8a-a28a-70ad80f037e6

Financial Times · by Rose Gottemoeller · September 5, 2024

The writer is a lecturer at Stanford University and former deputy secretary-general of Nato

The People’s Republic of China is currently on a nuclear tear, building up its arsenal from roughly 500 warheads today to as many as 1,500 by 2035. It is also building up its ability to launch nuclear weapons, with 300 new ballistic missile silos to the north and west of Beijing and new submarines and bombers in the offing. All of these systems will be pointed at the US and its allies.

At the same time, Russia is embroiled in a war of aggression against Ukraine in which it has rattled the nuclear sabre yet again. It is refusing to allow inspections and other implementation measures agreed under the US/Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty New Start, saying that the US and Nato must cease assisting Ukraine before it will consider negotiating. The Kremlin has vowed to stay within the limits of the treaty — 1,550 warheads and 700 missiles and bombers — but it is due to go out of force in 2026.

Both China and Russia are refusing to talk to the US about new controls on strategic nuclear weapons. It is as if the near-apocalyptic experience of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union and US brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, has disappeared from collective memory.

Pranay Vaddi, special assistant to President Biden for disarmament matters, described these dire circumstances in a speech to the US Arms Control Association in June: “At least in the near term,” he said, “the prospects for strategic arms control are dim . . . Russia and the PRC are failing to meet their international obligations . . . They are forcing the United States and our close allies and partners to prepare for a world where nuclear competition occurs without numerical constraints.” Vaddi wrapped up his speech with the important point that if the president must build up US nuclear forces, she or he will.

Rejuvenating US nuclear capabilities could play a profound role in bringing China and Russia back to the negotiating table. Certainly such moves have had that effect in the past.

The most famous example of this phenomenon is the 1979 “dual-track” decision taken by the US and its Nato allies to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe in order to convey that any nuclear threat from Moscow would be answered. By 1987, a treaty to ban ground-launched intermediate-range missiles had been agreed.

Although this treaty was later abandoned following Russian violations, the example is still trenchant. Sometimes strong action is required so that nuclear competitors know they cannot offer threats without a forceful response.

The US is building up the ability to mount such a response in its current nuclear modernisation programme. It is replacing ageing nuclear missiles, submarines and bombers, some of which had been in deployment since the 1970s — or, in the case of the B-52 bomber, since the 1950s.

Started in 2016, this ‘Program of Record’ is designed to keep US nuclear weapons safe, secure and effective but not to build up the arsenal. Under the current circumstances, however, modernisation does something more: it creates the industrial backbone that will enable the US to increase its nuclear forces if the need arises.

The schedule for replacing each leg of the nuclear triad — land-based missiles, submarines and bombers — is tight. It must be allowed to continue unburdened by new requirements until its completion in the 2035-2045 time period.

Meanwhile, Washington has a window of opportunity to bring Beijing and Moscow to the negotiating table.

It is best to start with the simplest option. When 2026 rolls around, it would be easiest for Moscow and Washington to continue to abide by the limits of the expiring treaty. The two sides should also negotiate to resume on-site inspections — Vladimir Putin himself will have to be convinced that it is in Russia’s national security interest to do so. Perhaps the strengthening of the US nuclear industrial complex can be brought to his attention in a way that makes Russia’s interest in implementing the treaty abundantly clear.

As for the Chinese, if they reach 1,500 warheads by 2035 and continually refuse to talk then the US and its allies must consider a build-up.

Wide-ranging anxiety that we are reaching the end of the road for nuclear arms control is well-founded. Nevertheless, there is time to work the problem through and a responsibility to do so.

The worst-case scenario is that Russia and China are hell-bent on increasing their nuclear holdings at the cost of global stability. If that occurs, the US will be ready and able to respond.

Financial Times · by Rose Gottemoeller · September 5, 2024

14. SOF 2050: How Robotics, AI, and Human Augmentation Will Redefine Special Operations of the Future

Excerpts:

The "So What" for SOF

The integration of robotics, AI, and human augmentation into SOF operations represents a paradigm shift in military capabilities. These technologies promise to enhance operational effectiveness, improve decision-making, and augment human performance. However, as SOF embraces these advancements, it must also navigate the ethical and operational challenges they present.

The ongoing combat operations in Ukraine and Israel serve as a stark reminder of the rapidly changing character of conflict. The successful integration of these technologies will ultimately determine the effectiveness and resilience of SOF in an increasingly complex and unpredictable world. As we approach 2050, the SOF community must prepare for a landscape where human-machine collaboration is the norm, ensuring that the human element remains central to the mission. The future of warfare will not only be defined by technological superiority but also by the ability to integrate these innovations responsibly and ethically into military operations.

SOF 2050: How Robotics, AI, and Human Augmentation Will Redefine Special Operations of the Future

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/sof-2050-how-robotics-ai-and-human-augmentation-will-redefine-special-operations-of-the-future?cid=c

As the landscape of warfare evolves, Special Operations Forces (SOF) are at the forefront of integrating cutting-edge technologies to enhance their operational capabilities. The convergence of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and human augmentation is set to redefine how SOF conducts missions, making them more efficient, effective, and adaptable. This article explores current trends, anticipated developments by 2050, and the implications of these advancements for SOF, with a particular emphasis on the ongoing combat operations in Ukraine and Israel.

Current Trends in Robotics and AI in Combat Operations

The ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Israel have highlighted the critical role of robotics and AI in modern warfare. In Ukraine, the use of drones for reconnaissance, surveillance, and targeted strikes has become a game-changer. Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have deployed UAVs extensively, demonstrating their effectiveness in gathering intelligence and executing precision strikes while minimizing risks to personnel. The conflict has accelerated the development and deployment of drone technology, showcasing how unmanned systems can alter the dynamics of battlefield engagements.

Cape Cod Space Force Station received an unmanned ground vehicle in the form of a semi-autonomous "dog" meant to enhance their base security protocols on Feb. 24, 2023. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:230224-Z-GG582-1031_(2003170514).jpg

Similarly, in Israel, the integration of AI and robotics into military operations has been evident in the ongoing conflict with Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have utilized advanced drone systems for intelligence gathering and targeted operations, employing AI algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data from various sources. This capability allows for rapid decision-making and enhances situational awareness, enabling the IDF to respond swiftly to emerging threats. These current combat operations underscore the importance of integrating robotics and AI into SOF strategies. The ability to leverage unmanned systems for ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) and combat operations is becoming increasingly vital in high-stakes environments.

Anticipated Developments by 2050

Looking ahead to 2050, we can expect significant advancements in the capabilities of robotic systems. UAVs will likely achieve higher levels of autonomy, enabling them to perform complex missions without direct human control. Enhanced AI algorithms will allow these drones to analyze data in real-time, making them invaluable assets for SOF in dynamic operational environments.

Ground robots will evolve to take on a broader range of tasks, including supply transport, reconnaissance, and combat engagement. The collaboration between human operators and robotic systems will be essential, necessitating the development of new skills among SOF personnel. Training programs will need to adapt, emphasizing teamwork between humans and machines to ensure that human judgment remains central to decision-making.

AI is poised to revolutionize decision-making processes within SOF. By 2050, AI systems will be capable of analyzing vast amounts of data from diverse sources—intelligence reports, sensor feeds, and social media—to provide actionable insights in real-time. This capability will enable SOF to make informed decisions quickly, a critical advantage in fast-paced operational environments. Moreover, AI algorithms will be able to predict potential threats and identify patterns in enemy behavior, allowing SOF to anticipate and counter adversarial actions effectively. Machine learning techniques will ensure that these systems continuously improve their predictive capabilities based on new data, keeping SOF one step ahead of its adversaries.

AI will also enhance mission planning and execution. Advanced simulation tools powered by AI will allow SOF to model various scenarios and assess the potential outcomes of different strategies. This capability will enable commanders to make data-driven decisions, optimizing resource allocation and minimizing risks. Additionally, AI-driven logistics systems will streamline supply chain management, ensuring that SOF units have the necessary resources at the right time and place. However, the integration of AI into military operations raises ethical and operational challenges. The reliance on AI for decision-making necessitates careful consideration of accountability and transparency. Ensuring that human operators remain in control of critical decisions is essential to prevent unintended consequences and maintain ethical standards in warfare.

Human augmentation represents another frontier in the evolution of SOF capabilities. Advances in biotechnology, neurotechnology, and wearable devices will enable the enhancement of physical and cognitive abilities, allowing SOF personnel to perform at unprecedented levels. By 2050, we can expect significant developments in this area, fundamentally changing the nature of the soldier.

Travis Partnership springs Air Force forward with new Aerial Porter Exoskeleton; https://www.dvidshub.net/image/6648981/travis-partnership-springs-air-force-forward-with-new-aerial-porter-exoskeleton

Exoskeletons and powered suits will enhance physical strength and endurance, enabling SOF operators to carry heavier loads and operate effectively in challenging environments. These technologies will reduce the physical strain on soldiers, allowing them to maintain peak performance over extended periods. Augmented reality (AR) systems will provide real-time information overlays, enhancing situational awareness and decision-making on the battlefield. Cognitive enhancements, including brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), may allow operators to process information more rapidly and communicate seamlessly with their teams. This capability could facilitate real-time data sharing and improve coordination during complex operations.

The ethical implications of human augmentation must be carefully considered. The potential for creating disparities between augmented and non-augmented soldiers raises questions about equity and fairness within military ranks. Additionally, the long-term effects of cognitive enhancements on mental health and well-being will require thorough investigation to ensure that operators are not adversely affected by these technologies.

The "So What" for SOF

The integration of robotics, AI, and human augmentation into SOF operations represents a paradigm shift in military capabilities. These technologies promise to enhance operational effectiveness, improve decision-making, and augment human performance. However, as SOF embraces these advancements, it must also navigate the ethical and operational challenges they present.

The ongoing combat operations in Ukraine and Israel serve as a stark reminder of the rapidly changing character of conflict. The successful integration of these technologies will ultimately determine the effectiveness and resilience of SOF in an increasingly complex and unpredictable world. As we approach 2050, the SOF community must prepare for a landscape where human-machine collaboration is the norm, ensuring that the human element remains central to the mission. The future of warfare will not only be defined by technological superiority but also by the ability to integrate these innovations responsibly and ethically into military operations.

15. Green Berets are integrating cyber warfare into their training. Here is why it matters

I hope we do keep some tricks to ourselves.

Excerpts:

Indeed, it appears that Special Forces is keeping a few tricks of the trade to themselves for the time being.

"This capability is something that we need to train on, and keep current with," an anonymous ODA team member who specialized in cyber said in the Army press release. "Because it’s evolving so rapidly, the devices we use today could be obsolete next year. It’s been five years since I first went to school for this - it’s changed so much in that time, I feel like it’s a whole new world."

Green Berets are integrating cyber warfare into their training. Here is why it matters

audacy.com · by Jack Murphy · September 3, 2024

During this year's Swift Response exercise near Skillingaryd, Sweden two U.S. Special Forces teams (called Operational Detachment Alpha, or ODAs) trained to integrate cyber warfare capabilities into their traditional Special Forces mission.

As a part of the exercise, one ODA identified a target building and, "used a remote access device (RAD) to identify the networks coming from the facility. They were able to crack the WiFi password, enumerate the network, and run exploits on the target computer inside the building. This enabled the team to manipulate security cameras, door locks, and other security systems in the building," an Army press release describes.

With this complete, a second ODA conducted a military free fall jump and then moved seven miles with their equipment, accomplishing a clandestine infiltration. They were then able to strike the target building, which had its security significantly weakened by their partner team's cyber intrusion. The Army itself points out that cyber warfare and Special Forces direct action missions are nothing new, but the blending of these capabilities is.

"This was executed as essentially a standard Red Team operation encapsulated in a military exercise. A lot of the steps in the outline of the exercise speak directly to what standard Red Teams can do in the Cyber industry, which is a good direction for the military to be tracking towards," Matthew Mullins who is currently a supply chain firmware consultant at Eclypsium and has also worked as a Red Team director explained. "Specifically, the blending of Cyber-Physical systems such as Physical Access Control Systems, Industrial Internet of Things, Industrial Control Systems, Wireless Local Area Networking, as an attack surface and how a group with no, or minimal, access can quickly dominate a space and leverage it for an operational objective."

A Green Beret participating in the exercise used a Remote Access Device to monitor the target structure. Photo credit Sgt. 1st Class Tim Beery

Mullins pointed out that the exercise described sounded to him like a test bed more than a realistic target, noting that there is unlikely to be a WiFi attack surface when hitting a peer or near-peer military target.

"This might be a space where the military and its supporting agencies, contractors, etc, have access to superior 'firepower' but cracking weak hashes [passwords] could be an exaggeration of weakness in a real-world conflict," Mullins told Connecting Vets. "Because of these aspects, it would definitely appear this was a training exercise to build up the muscles, per se," for more complex scenarios in the future.

The Army press release also mentions that the ODA at the target building left signal jamming devices there to conceal the attack's electronic signature as they exfiltrated from the area. Mullins found that a bit perplexing.

"The signal jamming seems to be a bit of theatrics due to the compromise already occurring. Why would you want to emit another signal, which could be detected, after you have complete domination of the space in a cyber capacity? This is a great way to get caught," he said. "For modern civilian Red Teams, operators will maintain access and quietly exit and disconnect knowing that there is less of a signature to capture from a clean break versus a large disruption. There could be stuff I am missing here as the civilian sector operates differently, however," he points out.

Indeed, it appears that Special Forces is keeping a few tricks of the trade to themselves for the time being.

"This capability is something that we need to train on, and keep current with," an anonymous ODA team member who specialized in cyber said in the Army press release. "Because it’s evolving so rapidly, the devices we use today could be obsolete next year. It’s been five years since I first went to school for this - it’s changed so much in that time, I feel like it’s a whole new world."

audacy.com · by Jack Murphy · September 3, 2024

16. Ex-Green Beret Behind Failed Venezuela Raid Released Pending Trial

We should be careful about trying to employ our unconventional warfare training after retirement.

Ex-Green Beret Behind Failed Venezuela Raid Released Pending Trial

By Joshua Goodman

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/09/06/ex-green_beret_behind_failed_venezuela_raid_released_pending_trial_1056579.html?mc_cid=a464453458&mc_eid=70bf478f36

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge ordered the release Wednesday of a former U.S. Green Beret indicted in connection with a failed 2020 coup attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, rejecting arguments he would flee while awaiting trial on weapons smuggling charges.

Jordan Goudreau was arrested in July after a four-year investigation into the amphibious raid that ended with several combatants killed by Venezuelan security forces and two of his U.S. Special Forces buddies locked away in a Maduro government prison.

The plot, exposed by The Associated Press two days before the incursion, was carried out by a ragtag group of Venezuelan army deserters whom Goudreau allegedly helped arm and train in neighboring Colombia.

Goudreau immediately claimed responsibility for Operation Gideon — or Bay of Piglets as the bloody fiasco came to be known — but said he was acting in concert with Venezuela’s opposition to protect democracy.

“If I were put in his shoes, I would’ve gotten out of Dodge way before an indictment,” Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington said in ordering Goudreau’s release pending the scheduled start of his trial next month.

Goudreau, shackled at the legs in orange prison garb, responded “negative” several times when asked in court whether he had ever been diagnosed with mental illnesses that would make him a risk to himself and others upon release.

Although the 48-year-old has no criminal record and was a three-time Bronze Star recipient in Iraq and Afghanistan, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cherie Krigsman argued that Goudreau was a flight risk with a track record for manipulating witnesses who knowingly violated U.S. laws.

Krigsman said Goudreau fled to Mexico, where he stayed about a year, within days of learning he was under investigation. Prior to departing the U.S., he ran a series of Google searches that allegedly included “how to run and stay hidden from the feds” and “how to be a successful fugitive.”

Krigsman cited excerpts from a conversation Goudreau had with a confidential source in which he allegedly coached the witness into lying to investigators about roughly 60 AR-15 rifles seized by police in Colombia en route to the clandestine camps where the would-be freedom fighters were being trained.

Two of the automatic rifles contain traces of Goudreau’s DNA, while silencers, night-vision goggles and other defense equipment bear serial numbers matching those purchased by Goudreau and his Melbourne, Florida-based security firm Silvercorp. All required an export license, which Goudreau never had. Some of the weapons never made it, prosecutors say, because a yacht sank in the middle of the Caribbean, forcing Goudreau and an associate to be rescued by a passing tanker.

“His meritorious service in the military represents a stunning fall from grace,” Krigsman told the judge, referring to Canadian-born Goudreau as a “ghost” who was trained by Special Forces to “remain invisible.”

Goudreau attorney Marissel Descalzo said her client was never in hiding and was at all times in contact with investigators through another lawyer representing him in lawsuit filed against a one-time adviser to Venezuela’s opposition leader he says hired him to explore the possibility of a mercenary raid.

Previewing an argument likely to be used at trial, she said classified evidence will show Goudreau was texting with “high levels of the government” in the runup to the raid, leading him to believe the U.S. was on board with his actions. While the administration of then-President Donald Trump made no secret of its desire to see Maduro gone, there is no evidence U.S. officials blessed the invasion or the export of weapons in violation of U.S. arms control laws.

Responded prosecutor Krigsman: “If he thought he was authorized by someone from the government, why would he do those searches about fleeing the law?”

A Manhattan magistrate judge initially ordered Goudreau’s release in July. But the order was stayed while the government appealed.

As a condition for his release, Goudreau, who has no residence or assets of his own other than a sailboat docked in Tampa, will have to wear an ankle monitor. He will also be confined to the northern Florida home of a former Special Forces colleague.

A $2 million bond securing his release is guaranteed by an apartment owned by Jen Gatien, a filmmaker behind the documentary “Men at War,” billed by its producers as an up-close look at Goudreau’s life “on the run” after mounting the failed coup.

If convicted, Goudreau faces between 10 and 20 years in prison.

17. Malaysia says it won't bow to China's demands to halt oil exploration in the South China Sea

Malaysia says it won't bow to China's demands to halt oil exploration in the South China Sea

AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · September 5, 2024

Malaysia says it won’t bow to China’s demands to halt oil exploration in the South China Sea

1 of 3 |Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim gestures while speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. (Kristina Kormilitsyna, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Thursday that Malaysia will not bow to demands by China to stop its oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea as the activities are within the country’s waters.

Anwar said Malaysia would continue to explain its stance following China’s accusations in a protest note in February to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing that Kuala Lumpur had infringed on its territory. Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it was investigating the leak of the diplomatic protest note that was published by a Filipino media outlet on Aug. 29.

“We have never intended in any way to be intentionally provocative, unnecessarily hostile. China is a great friend, but of course we have to operate in our waters and secure economic advantage, including drilling for oil in our territory,” Anwar said in a televised news conference from Russia, where he is on an official visit.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer published the diplomatic note in which Beijing reportedly demanded that Malaysia immediately halt all activities in an oil-rich maritime area off Sarawak state on Borneo island.

The report said China had accused Malaysia of encroaching on areas covered by its 10-dash line, Beijing’s controversial map showing its claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea. The diplomatic note also expressed Beijing’s displeasure over Malaysia’s oil and gas exploration activities near the Luconia Shoals, which is near to Sarawak, it said.

Anwar said it wasn’t the first time China had sent a protest note over the South China Sea dispute but stressed it shouldn’t mar a strong relationship. Anwar had called China a “true friend” during a visit to Malaysia by Chinese President Li Qiang in June to mark 50 years of diplomatic ties.

“We have said that we will not transgress other people’s borders,” Anwar said. “They know our position ... They have claimed that we are infringing on their territory. That is not the case. We say no, it is our territory. But if they continue with the dispute, then okay, we will have to listen, and they will have to listen.”

Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan all dispute Beijing’s claims to almost the entire South China Sea. Unlike the Philippines which has had public clashes with China in the disputed area, Malaysia’s government prefers diplomatic channels. It rarely criticizes Beijing publicly, even though Chinese coast guard ships have sailed near Malaysia’s waters. This is partly to protect economic ties as China has been Malaysia’s top trading partner since 2009.

AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · September 5, 2024

18. Indonesia continues ‘rowing between 2 reefs’ amid US-China rivalry, security expert says

Strategic competition.

Indonesia continues ‘rowing between 2 reefs’ amid US-China rivalry, security expert says

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · September 6, 2024

Members of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division assault a beach alongside Indonesian troops near Banongan, Indonesia, during the annual Super Garuda Shield exercise, Sept. 5, 2024. (Evangelos Wilson/U.S. Army)

Two weeks of military drills in Indonesia involving 5,500 troops from 10 nations wrapped up Friday as the Southeast Asian democracy balances security against a strong trading relationship with China.

Super Garuda Shield began Aug. 26 with participants from the United States, Indonesia, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. A dozen other countries sent observers.

The U.S. and Indonesia began Garuda Shield in 2007 as a bilateral exercise. China and more than 20 other nations were invited for the 2009 iteration, which focused on peacekeeping, according to the U.S. Army Pacific website that year.

The drills, which greatly expanded in 2022, now aim to build trust and strengthen military-to-military relations, according to a 25th Infantry Division news release Aug. 26.

China — Indonesia’s second largest investor after Singapore — is “conspicuous by its absence” from Super Garuda Shield, said Carlyle Thayer, an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and a lecturer at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Trade between Indonesia and China was worth $139.26 billion in 2023, he told Stars and Stripes by email Wednesday.

This year’s exercise was planned under the watch of Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, who was elected president in February and will take office next month, Thayer said.

“Prabowo is pursuing the well-trodden path of pursuing an ‘independent and active’ Indonesian foreign policy or ‘rowing between two reefs’ to avoid alignment with China or the United States,” he said.

Prabowo as president-elect visited China in April and reassured President Xi Jinping he would continue President Joko Widodo’s friendly policies toward China, Thayer said.

However, Indonesia recently signed defense agreements with the U.S. and Australia, and plans its largest exercise yet with Australia in November, Thayer said.

China is the most influential economic and political-strategic power in the region, significantly outpacing the U.S., according to the annual State of Southeast Asia survey published in April by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Studies Centre — Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

Just over half the poll’s 2,000 respondents prefer China if the region is forced to align itself in the ongoing U.S.-China rivalry. But many indicated an independent stance is preferable to embracing either power.

Indonesia has so far refrained from commenting on the escalating maritime clashes between Beijing and Manila in the South China Sea, Thayer said.

“The sub-text of Indonesia’s current defence cooperation with the United States and Australia is to build maritime capacity in order to hedge against China,” he said.

China’s coast guard continues to patrol north of the Natunas Islands, within Indonesia’s 200-nautical-mile economic zone but outside it’s 12-nautical-mile territorial waters, Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said by email Thursday.

“I don’t think Indonesia will accept [China’s] claims, but they may have decided to treat things more quietly given that they are on the cusp of their presidential transition,” he said.

The U.S. contingent at this year’s Super Garuda Shield was composed of 2,500 troops including members of the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, in Hawaii, and the 11th Airborne Division in Alaska.

Marines in the contingent came from the 1st Marine Division in California; the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit on Okinawa; and the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. The Navy dispatched the amphibious transport dock ship USS Green Bay from Sasebo Naval Base, Japan.

Most of the training took place in East Java and West Java but an airborne operation was held on Sumatra, Adan Cazarez, 25th ID spokesman in Indonesia, said by email Wednesday.

“We are treating this as a rehearsal for how we would operate together,” U.S. Army Col. Adisa King, commander of a combined ground task force during the exercise, said by phone from Indonesia that day.

The drills were to conclude with a multinational live-fire exercise involving troops from the U.S., Indonesia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom at Puslatpur on Java, he said.

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · September 6, 2024

19. Ukrainian AK-74-Equipped FPV Drone Engages Russian Forces for the First Time

How do you zero the sight on a drone mounted rifle? (note attempt at humor).

Ukrainian AK-74-Equipped FPV Drone Engages Russian Forces for the First Time

A Ukrainian aerial scout told Kyiv Post that while the technology shows promise, several challenges are still being addressed – such as accurate targeting, limited ammunition, and rapid reloading.

by Julia Struck | September 5, 2024, 4:24 pm

kyivpost.com · by Julia Struck · September 5, 2024

Drones Armed Forces of Ukraine Donetsk

A Ukrainian aerial scout told Kyiv Post that while the technology shows promise, several challenges are still being addressed – such as accurate targeting, limited ammunition, and rapid reloading.

by Julia Struck | September 5, 2024, 4:24 pm

A video showing a Ukrainian FPV drone, reportedly equipped for the first time with an AK-74 assault rifle, firing at Russian positions in the Donetsk region has been circulating on social media.

The footage was released by the “Wild Hornets” unit, a group of volunteers that manufactures FPV attack kamikaze drones for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on a volunteer basis.

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“Our military continues to develop the Hornet Queen [drone] equipped with automatic weapons. This time, the first combat deployment was carried out—targeting a position with Russian forces,” the unit stated in an accompanying message to the video.

“This test indicated the direction this project should move forward toward.”

While Kyiv Post could not independently verify the time and location of the video, it shows a small-arms weapon, likely an AK-74 assault rifle, mounted and controlled on a multi-action FPV drone.

“This is one of the initial steps in creating systems capable of destroying targets from the air. The technology has potential, but several factors affecting the effectiveness of such weapons need to be addressed,” a Ukrainian aerial scout told Kyiv Post on condition of anonymity.

“The main challenges include ensuring accurate targeting, which requires additional aiming equipment, as well as dealing with limited ammunition and ensuring quick reloading,” he added.

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According to the servicemember, inexpensive components for disposable FPV kamikaze drones and bomber drones—capable of delivering significant firepower—have proven to be much more effective.

“But shortly, this technology could develop to the point where drones can fly into trenches and storm tree lines,” the aerial scout said.

He also said that where ground-based rifle systems with advanced targeting and unlimited ammunition already exist, they are expensive, bulky, and not very mobile, and so have not gained widespread use.

What we know about the development of the Hornet Queen drone so far

In mid-July, “Wild Hornets” volunteers shared details about their new creation, the largest Ukrainian FPV drone, which is already being used on the battlefield. The drone, built on a 15-inch frame, is made using 65 percent Ukrainian components.

The drone was developed at the request of K-2 battalion commander Kyrylo Veres, who sought a relatively cheap and accessible FPV bomber.

“Three months of work, hundreds of tests, two dozen broken boards, and then the launch of a pre-series batch. This was followed by successful combat tests at the front and the start of serial production,” the volunteers reported.

As of mid-summer, over 100 Hornet Queen drones were operational on the frontlines.

With a payload capacity of 9.5 kg (20.9 pounds), the drone can function not only as a bomber but also as a logistics drone.

Additionally, the volunteers disclosed that the drone is capable of remote demining. It can also serve as a “drone carrier” or “queen bee,” increasing the range of FPV drones.

The drone can function as a communications repeater, with a communication range of up to 25 km (16 miles) when equipped with the proper gear.

The “Wild Hornets” revealed that they are already working on a new version of the drone, which will feature a new frame, improved communications, and twice the combat payload—around 18 kg (39.7 pounds).

Before this Forbes reported on a video shared by Ukraine’s 108th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade on social media, showing a drone flying along a tree line occupied by Russian forces, releasing a white-hot flame onto the area below. By the end of the footage, the trees and nearby fields are both ablaze.

The drone moves down the tree line, spraying fire before dropping a burning munition that continues to burn on the ground before exploding, setting the surrounding area on fire as it flies away.

This marks the first time an incendiary device has been seen used as a flamethrower in this manner. The burn duration suggests the involvement of a large “Baba Yaga” drone, one of the Steel Hornets’ products, though Forbes speculates the flame might come from a modified mixture designed to shoot fire.

The “Dragonfire” is unlikely to cause significant direct injuries unless personnel are hit by burning fragment. However, it can ignite flammable materials such as dry crops and trees.

Julia Struck

Julia Struck is a news writer and Kyiv Post correspondent who has previously worked as a parliamentary editor, journalist, and news editor. She has specialized in covering the work of Ukrainian parliament, government, and law enforcement agencies.

kyivpost.com · by Julia Struck · September 5, 2024

20. Russia dismisses charges of election meddling; Putin claims he backs Harris

Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter accusations. 

Russia dismisses charges of election meddling; Putin claims he backs Harris

Despite calling the U.S. charges of interference nonsense, Russian officials have publicly celebrated attempts to influence the American public.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/05/putin-russia-america-meddling/

Putin claims he backs Harris over Trump in election

1:04

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to support Vice President Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the election. (Video: Reuters)

By Robyn Dixon and Catherine Belton

Updated September 5, 2024 at 9:29 a.m. EDT|Published September 5, 2024 at 7:39 a.m. EDT

The Kremlin on Thursday denied attempts to influence the American election after the U.S. Justice Department indicted two employees of the state-owned RT network, alleging a covert operation to influence public opinion and sow social divisions through Russian propaganda.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned 10 Russians and two Russian entities over “malign” efforts to influence the November election, and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland described Russian and other foreign disinformation as “a bigger threat than it ever was before.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the indictments as “nonsense.”

He accused the United States of repressing journalists to quash a “truth” that it does not like. “This is not the first time that Russia has been blamed for interfering into America’s elections,” Peskov said in a message answering questions from The Washington Post. “Well of course it’s nonsense. We’re not interfering.”

“Our media are doing their job. They’re just reporting. They’re reporting the truth, but unfortunately Americans do not like uncomfortable truth for them, and should it appear, they immediately implement repressions against it. This is the reality.​"

Peskov’s statement comes against a backdrop of Russia’s own practice of jailing journalists, dissidents, activists and ordinary citizens posting about the war in Ukraine or criticizing the regime.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, on Thursday. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev/AP)

As Peskov denied election interference, President Vladimir Putin claimed to be supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race — despite the revelations from one of the indictments and a related set of charges that linked Russia’s efforts to supporting the Republican Party in the election.

“We had Biden as a favorite, but he was dropped from the race. He recommended that all his supporters should back Harris, so we will, too,” Putin said at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East.

Harris “has such an infectious laugh that it says she’s doing well,” Putin said, adding that as a result she might refrain from imposing sanctions on Russia.

The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed a 32-page federal indictment accusing the two RT employees, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, of conducting a money-laundering operation that spent nearly $10 million on efforts to covertly influence American public opinion, notably blaming Ukraine for the war with Russia.

In a separate legal action, U.S. prosecutors seized 32 Russian-controlled internet domains that they said were used in a state-controlled operation called “Doppelganger” to undermine international support for Ukraine and promote its preferred outcome in the U.S. presidential election.

The 277-page indictment over the Doppelganger campaign contains documents previously reported on by The Post. The documents show that Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko directed a network of political strategists to promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions to undermine support for Ukraine.

The indictment includes additional documents by the same political strategists clearly showing the Kremlin campaign aims to bolster support for Moscow’s preferred political party, redacted as “U.S. Political Party A.” The earlier documents reported on by The Post make clear that this is the Republican Party.

One, titled “The Good Old USA Project,” states that the goal is “to secure victory of U.S. Political Party A candidate (Candidate A or one of his current internal party opponents) at the US Presidential elections to be held in November of 2024.”

The Treasury and State departments on Wednesday also announced sanctions on Russian individuals and entities accused of “malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election.” Among them was one of the Kremlin’s most prominent propagandists, RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan.

Peskov said Russia would develop retaliatory measures in response to sanctions on Russian state media. He said that the measures could not be symmetrical but that decisions would be made soon regarding the spread of U.S. media news in Russia.

Russia’s foreign propaganda and disinformation operations play an increasingly important role in Putin’s efforts to rebuild Russia as a great global power, amplifying divisions in the West and winning support in the Global South, where pro-Kremlin narratives have gained significant traction. A key objective of the operations has been to weaken military support for Ukraine.

Another of the documents in the Doppelganger indictment lays out the Kremlin strategists’ plans to create a “U.S. Social Media Influencers Network” that would give explicit support for the Republican Party and some of its members’ stances questioning assistance for Ukraine.

“The U.S. Political Party A is currently advancing a relatively pro-Russian agenda. That could be exploited by posing as ardent U.S. Political Party A and relaying the part of their agenda that coincides with ours,” the document states. “One example would be the financial and military support to Ukraine.”

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials from Putin down have spoken openly of an “information war” being waged between Russia and the West, while denying interference in the politics of foreign countries.

But a 2019 report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found that Russia launched an information war that included interference in the 2016 elections to boost Trump’s candidacy, and efforts have continued to spread Kremlin propaganda narratives that sow doubt and disinformation in the West.

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In sanctioning Simonyan and others, the Treasury Department described her as “a central figure in Russian government malign influence efforts.”

When the news broke, Simonyan posted on Telegram: “Oh. They woke up!” She followed up with another post, “Great work, team.”

Despite Kremlin denials of interference, Simonyan has frequently boasted on state television about RT’s ongoing efforts to sow pro-Kremlin narratives in the United States. Peskov did not answer a question on the apparent contradiction between the Kremlin’s position and Simonyan’s statements.

In a March interview, Simonyan described how RT created hundreds of information outlets, opening new ones whenever U.S. authorities shuttered them, in what she called an “information war.”

“We create many sources of information that are not tied to us. While the CIA tries to figure out that they’re tied to us, they already have an enormous audience. Sometimes they find them and close them down,” she said.

“It happens with us that you wake up in the morning and 600 channels are gone, immediately. But while they’re closing them, we’ve already made new ones. This is how we chase each other. It’s even fun.”

“War is not fun, but with an information war you can have fun,” she added, laughing heartily.

In a January interview she said it was “too optimistic” to hope that the United States was on the edge of a civil war or social collapse, adding that Russia has to face the prospect of America leading the world “like an elephant in a china shop” for many years to come.

“We, without question, have seriously destabilized this china shop. I mean this ridiculous, illogical, egotistical and unjust world order that has existed since 1991 after the disintegration of the Soviet Union,” she said referring to Russia’s view of U.S. global hegemony.

David Nakamura contributed to this report.

correction

An earlier version of this article misquoted a post by RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan on Telegram. She said, “Oh. They woke up!” The article has been corrected.

21. Accelerated Training in the Spotlight After Ukrainian F-16 Crash

This is where the late Warlord Emeritus Colonel (RET) John Collins' SOF truths could be applied to fighter pilots (or other military applications).

​"Competent SOF (or fighter pilots) cannot be created after emergencies occur."  

Before he passed away he wrote in War on the Rocks that if we were rewriting the 5 SOF Truths he would have added the word "rapidly" to this one.

​"Competent SOF (or fighter pilots) cannot be RAPIDLY created after emergencies occur."  

Accelerated Training in the Spotlight After Ukrainian F-16 Crash

Officials say that pilots had far fewer flying hours in the American aircraft than their Western counterparts

https://www.wsj.com/world/accelerated-training-in-the-spotlight-after-ukrainian-f-16-crash-08cafb67?mod=world_lead_pos3

By Lara Seligman

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 and Nancy A. Youssef

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Sept. 5, 2024 3:56 pm ET

The fatal crash of a top Ukrainian pilot comes at a precarious moment in Ukraine’s war with Russia. Photo: Libkos/Getty Images

A fatal crash of a Ukrainian F-16 on the first day the jet fighters were used in combat last week has raised questions about the rush to train pilots and deploy them into combat only weeks after they had arrived in Ukraine, according to U.S. and Western officials. 

Ukraine’s air force still hasn’t determined the cause of the crash, which occurred during what Kyiv later described as the largest Russian missile and drone barrage of the war. U.S. officials say Ukraine has yet to find evidence the jet was shot down, either by friendly or enemy fire, or that a mechanical failure led to the crash. 

The incident, which killed a top Ukrainian pilot and destroyed one of Ukraine’s few F-16s, comes at a precarious moment in the conflict. Russia has stepped up drone and missile attacks across the country, and is closing in on the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk. Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky is shaking up his government, after firing the air force commander days after the barrage. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is scheduled on Friday to lead the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Germany, where Ukraine’s air defense capabilities are supposed to be among the leading topics among allies, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Flying a jet fighter in combat is a dangerous, complicated mission, and even some of the best U.S. pilots have crashed in F-16s. That includes Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown, who was forced to eject after his jet was struck by lightning over the Everglades in 1991, earning him the call sign “Swamp Thang,” and former Air Force chief of staff Gen. David Goldfein, who was hit by a surface-to-air missile while flying over Serbia in 1999. 

Flying a jet fighter in combat is a dangerous, complicated mission. Photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Western pilots, even after completing their training, often fly for many months with their units and in exercises before attempting complex missions in combat zones. The Ukrainian pilots, on the other hand, went quickly from training to the battlefield.

Now, Western officials are debating the wisdom of Ukraine’s decision to deploy the new jets in combat just weeks after they first arrived in the country, and sending up pilots who had limited flying hours on the advanced American jet. 

There aren’t plans yet to adjust the current training program for Ukrainian pilots, but “the crash shows what happens when you try to rush things,” said one senior defense official. 

The training of Ukrainian pilots was delayed by months while the Biden administration was considering whether to allow allies to transfer the jets. By the time the jets arrived, Ukraine was facing growing barrages of missiles and explosive drones that had knocked out several power stations and other energy infrastructure, forcing rolling blackouts across the country. 

A Russian missile exploded near the F-16 shortly before it disappeared off the radar, a U.S. official said, leading to one theory that the explosion either damaged the aircraft or led the pilot to maneuver too low to the ground, contributing to the crash, according to the U.S. official. While Ukraine is leading the investigation, U.S. advisers based in other parts of Europe are advising, defense officials said. 

Investigators are looking at satellite images, flight data recorders and other information to make a final determination, U.S. officials said. 

Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Maj. Gen Pat Ryder on Tuesday referred reporters to Ukraine for specific questions about the investigation, but said that “you’re always going to learn from various incidents or engagements that get applied back into lessons learned.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the air force commander days after the barrage. Photo: valentyn ogirenko/Reuters

The pilot who died, Oleksiy Mes, was one of a small group of Ukrainians to begin training on the F-16 in Denmark in August 2023. A few months later, another cadre started training under the U.S. Air National Guard pilots at Morris Air National Guard Base, Ariz. The first pilots to graduate from those programs finished up their training in Europe before arriving in Ukraine this summer along with the jets. 

Before the crash, representatives from the Danish government had expressed concern about the ability of some of the pilots to fly solo, the senior defense official said. 

The Ukrainian pilots had years of combat experience in their older Soviet jets, but some struggled to learn how to operate the advanced F-16—particularly because the training manuals were in English and not all of the pilots had sufficient English language skills. Some pilots who began the course in Denmark failed the program, a Western official said. 

Mes, known as Moonfish, wasn’t one of the pilots that sparked concern. He was among the small cadre of pilots who completed an accelerated training course at the Danish military air base in Skrydstrup that was tailored to the scenarios they would face on the battlefield. The pilots focused on air defense, rather than learning all of the missions the multirole aircraft is capable of performing, according to a senior U.S. official. 

Ukraine’s air force said Mes shot down three cruise missiles and one drone before he crashed.

“Oleksiy saved Ukrainians from deadly Russian missiles,” the air force said in a statement. “Sadly, at the cost of his own life.”

Typically, rookie F-16 pilots complete a more comprehensive course and then train with their unit for up to a year before they ever see combat. But the Ukrainian pilots, who had been flying the F-16 for a year at most, deployed straight into a dangerous, complex battlefield. 

F-16

Armament for Ukrainian F-16s: Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range, Small Diameter Bomb, AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile, Advanced medium-range air-to-air missile, AIM-9X short-range air-to-air missiles.

Speed: 1,500 mph (Mach 2 plus)

49.3 feet

Sources: Lockheed Martin (F-16); staff reports (F-16 armament)

“Cruise missiles, it’s a very challenging problem set to acquire them on radar, to get into the weapons engagement zone, to have the right weapon on your aircraft,” said one former U.S. fighter pilot.

Ukraine has long sought F-16s as part of its air defense, saying they help defend Ukraine from the onslaught of Russian missiles. It received its first F-16s this summer. 

“The initial role for this type of aircraft is conservative, focused on air and missile defense,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who has frequently visited Ukrainian front-line units “There was inevitably going to be growing pains as they adopt and learn to operate the aircraft.”

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly thanked the U.S. and its allies for deliveries of advanced weapons like the F-16. At the same time, they have become increasingly vocal in saying that deliveries have been too little, too late. 

Explained: How Ukraine Pulled Off Its Invasion of Russia

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Explained: How Ukraine Pulled Off Its Invasion of Russia

Play video: Explained: How Ukraine Pulled Off Its Invasion of Russia

Ukraine took control of hundreds of square miles of Russian territory, captured hundreds of prisoners and destroyed the Kremlin’s initial reinforcements. WSJ explains Kyiv’s biggest attack on Russian soil. Photo: Louisa Naks

Zelensky has said Ukraine has only a fraction of the air-defense systems it needs to defend its cities and troops. A Russian ballistic-missile strike that hit a military institute and surrounding buildings in the central city of Poltava on Tuesday killed 55 and injured more than 300. Seven died in a missile-and-drone attack on the western city of Lviv early Wednesday, including a mother and her three daughters.

Ukraine acknowledged publicly for the first time that it deployed F-16s on Aug. 27 against what it described as Russia’s largest bombardment of the war of 127 missiles and 109 drones.

Today, a small number of Ukrainian pilots are still going through the training programs in Arizona, Denmark and a newly opened facility in Romania. The Danish facility will shutter at the end of the year as the Danish Air Force transitions from the F-16 to the new F-35. 

Ukrainian and Western officials have declined to provide exact numbers, but they acknowledge that it will be months before Ukraine has enough trained pilots to fly a full squadron of F-16s. 

Ukraine may have rushed its F-16s and their pilots through the training program and into combat, but Kyiv was forced into that decision by the war, the former pilot said. 

And that doesn’t mean Mes wasn’t ready for combat.

“These guys are former fighter pilots, it’s not like we accelerated a greenhorn—a lot of them had talent,” the person said. “I would hazard to say that the West hasn’t faced anything like what Moonfish was facing.” 

James Marson contributed to this article.

Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com and Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com

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

Appeared in the September 6, 2024, print edition as 'Training Is in the Spotlight After F-16 Crash in Ukraine'.

22. Exclusive: US sees increasing risk of Russian ‘sabotage’ of key undersea cables by secretive military unit

​When our email stops and our Google searches fail...

When we lose our communication capability....

Now we will know why.

Exclusive: US sees increasing risk of Russian ‘sabotage’ of key undersea cables by secretive military unit | CNN Politics

CNN · by Jim Sciutto · September 6, 2024

This 2017 photo shows a Russian Navy nuclear ballistic missile submarine in the Baltic Sea near Denmark.

Sarah Christine Noergaard/Scanpix Denmark/Reuters/File

CNN —

The US has detected increased Russian military activity around key undersea cables, and believes Russia may now be more likely to carry out potential sabotage operations aimed at disabling a critical piece of the world’s communications infrastructure, two US officials told CNN.

Russia has put increasing emphasis on building up a dedicated military unit, which deploys a formidable fleet of surface ships, submarines and naval drones, according to one of the officials. The unit, the “General Staff Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research,” is known by its Russian acronym GUGI.

“We are concerned about heightened Russian naval activity worldwide and that Russia’s decision calculus for damaging US and allied undersea critical infrastructure may be changing,” a US official told CNN. “Russia is continuing to develop naval capabilities for undersea sabotage mainly thru GUGI, a closely guarded unit that operates surface vessels, submarines and naval drones.”

The US regularly tracks Russian ships that patrol close to critical maritime infrastructure and undersea cables often far from Russian shores, the official said. US concern about the secretive Russian unit’s undersea operations has not been previously reported. CNN has requested comment from the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Undersea cables form a critical backbone of internet and telecommunications traffic around the world. Most communications and internet traffic travels across a vast network of high-speed fiber-optic cables installed along the ocean floor. A coordinated attack could significantly disrupt private, government and military communications along such cables as well as industries that rely on such communications, including financial markets and energy suppliers.

Undersea cables also carry vast amounts of electricity among several European countries.

See the moment Russian ships approach NATO task force while CNN aboard

03:09 - Source: CNN

The US and its allies closely monitor Russian naval activity over key undersea cables around the world. Commanders aboard a NATO patrol vessel in April 2023 told CNN they had witnessed an increase of such activity over undersea cables in the Baltic Sea in recent years.

The seas around Northern Europe are a focus of such Russian military surveillance and activity. Last year, a joint investigation by the public broadcasters of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland found that Russia has a fleet of suspected spy ships operating in northern European waters for potential sabotage of both undersea cables and wind farms.

Using data analysis, intercepted radio communications and intelligence sources, the broadcasters tracked over several years some fifty ships operating in the area, using underwater surveillance to map sites for potential attacks.

Taiwanese and US forces have seen similar activity by the Chinese Navy in waters around Taiwan, as I reported in “The Return of Great Powers” in March. “The activity looks like targeted harassment by Beijing – or an exercise in preparation for cutting off the whole of Taiwan,” Elisabeth Braw wrote in Foreign Policy magazine in February 2023.

Russia’s threatening activity has not been disrupted by its ongoing war against Ukraine. The Russian leadership places great value on GUGI, a US official told CNN, continuing to fund the unit even while waging war in Ukraine.

A US official told CNN the US would consider any such sabotage of undersea infrastructure as a significant escalation in Russian aggression outside of Ukraine.

“Any activities that damaged seabed infrastructure including undersea cables especially during periods of heightened tensions risks misunderstandings and misperceptions that could lead to unintended escalation,” the US official told CNN. “The US would be especially concerned about damage to our or our allies’ critical undersea infrastructure.”

CNN · by Jim Sciutto · September 6, 2024

23. US military draws up plans for collapse of Gaza ceasefire talks

US military draws up plans for collapse of Gaza ceasefire talks

Financial Times · by Felicia Schwartz · September 6, 2024

The US military is preparing for the possible collapse of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas amid fears that their breakdown could spark a broader regional conflict.

General CQ Brown, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, on Thursday told the Financial Times: “[I] think about . . .[if] the talks stall or completely stop, how that impacts the tension in the region and the things we need to do to be prepared should that change.”

Speaking while travelling to a meeting of the Ukraine contact group in Germany, Brown said he was weighing how regional actors would respond to the failure of the talks, “and whether they increase any type of their activity, which potentially goes down a path of miscalculation and causes . . . the conflict to broaden”.

“I’m focused on how do we not broaden the conflict, but also how do we protect our forces,” he said.

The Joe Biden administration sees the ceasefire talks as key to lowering tensions across the Middle East and avoiding an all-out regional war.

Brown’s comments come as the negotiations remain deadlocked. Israel and Hamas are at odds over details surrounding the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and over Israel’s insistence that it retain troops on a strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt known as the Philadelphi corridor.

Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, on Thursday suggested that the US would “in the coming days” share with Israel and Hamas “our thoughts on exactly how to resolve the remaining outstanding questions”. He added it would then be “up to the parties to decide yes or no”.

While the US has tried to remain upbeat about the talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly played down their progress and on Thursday told Fox News that a deal was “not close”.

Senior US officials have described the talks as 90 per cent complete but admit difficult points remain unsolved. They have rebuffed criticism that they have been overly optimistic about the process.

“We have faced setbacks and setbacks and more setbacks,” US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday. “Without question, we here in the administration are frustrated that we still haven’t been able to conclude this deal.”

Earlier this week Biden expressed frustration with Netanyahu’s role in the negotiations. When asked whether he thought the Israeli prime minister was doing enough to enable a deal, he replied “no”. Washington has nonetheless largely put the onus on Hamas to agree to a deal and in recent days has publicly blamed the militant group for the stalled talks.

A senior US official said the deaths of six Israeli hostages in Hamas custody last week has “brought a sense of urgency to the [negotiating] process”, but has also “called into question Hamas’s readiness to do a deal of any kind”.

Financial Times · by Felicia Schwartz · September 6, 2024

24. Demographic Diversity Is Not Our Strength

Excerpts:

The Navy asserts that its DEI Programs create a positive return on readiness, and through that, on successful mission accomplishment. Beyond earlier criticisms of the assumptions, methods, and conclusions of the TF1N Final Report, a substantial and growing body of scholarship demonstrates that the references that the Navy relies on for that assertion are not replicable and should not be relied on to underpin investment decisions about DEI programs. Separately, prize winning research shows that cultivating and celebrating Demographic Diversity destroys social cohesion and social capital in communities akin to Navy commands. It also shows the success of prior civil and military practices to foster the assimilation and common identity formation so critical to military mission success. The DEI Enterprise pointedly ignores the evidence concerning its program underpinning, rejects proven approaches to building effective organizations, diverts resources away from high priority tasks that directly affect combat effectiveness, and doubles down on replacing equal opportunity and merit with a return to racialism.

Demographic Diversity is NOT our strength in the U. S. Navy. It is well past time to dismantle the counterproductive DEI Enterprise and reorient the Navy to basic precepts. Navy leadership must embrace the American ideal of “…one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” They must lead morally to assure color-blind meritocracy, the law of the land, and reject demographic discrimination in every aspect of military service. They owe no less to the sons and daughters of America they send in harm’s way than the most capable wardrooms, chiefs’ quarters, and shipmates they can field. All hands must rededicate the Naval service to mission success through the hierarchy of Ship, Shipmate, Self… in that order.

Demographic Diversity Is Not Our Strength

By Phillip Keuhlen

September 06, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/09/06/demographic_diversity_is_not_our_strength_1056514.html?mc_cid=a464453458&mc_eid=70bf478f36

There is an old saw in leadership circles, “You get what you inspect.” It recognizes that what you choose to measure and what you ignore conveys to your team what aspects of any situation are important to you. Nowhere is this more evident than in Navy Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs. As reflected in those programs’ origin document, the Task Force One Navy Final Report (TF1N) of January 2021, U.S. Navy DEI programs focus exclusively on demographic diversity of race, ethnicity, and gender. Likewise, the lopsidedly one-sided bias of reference material recommended to Naval Academy educators on the topic of “diversity” clearly conveys that the Navy’s Diversity enterprise does not value diversity of thought with respect to its indoctrination.

One of the earliest critiques of TF1N and its underpinning references identified four critical flaws that compromise the intellectual integrity of the study and its conclusions. 

The first critical flaw was that it was an inquiry that started with its conclusion dictated by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). Its Chartered purpose was to, “analyze and evaluate factors in our society and military that detract from Navy readiness, such as racism, sexism and other structural and interpersonal biases.” The CNO continued, “TF One Navy will seek to promptly address the full spectrum of systemic racism, advocate for the needs of underserved communities, and work to dismantle barriers and equalize professional development frameworks and opportunities within our Navy.” Any Officer assigned to execute the CNO tasking could only understand it as directing a final report that portrayed the Navy as systemically racist and sexist.

The second critical flaw identified in the Task Force One Navy effort was its assumption that demographic diversity is an organizational strength. TF1N cited two references to assert a basis for benefits to the U.S. Navy by cultivating demographic diversity:

• McKinsey & Co, report “Diversity Matters” 2015, and
• PNAS article “Ethnic diversity deflates price bubbles” 2014.

This assumption was flawed because:

• TF1N provided no basis for claiming an analog between commercial financial performance in the studies and military readiness or mission effectiveness.
• The data was extrapolated far outside its range.
• TF1N misrepresented one study’s conclusions regarding gender and ignored its explicit warning about the fallacy of equating correlation with causation.
• TF1N ignored the warning in the other study that scholarship on diversity benefits was mixed, as well as its conclusion that performance gains in their study were due to distrust caused by ethnic differences between participants, a factor that ought to be of concern for an effective military organization.

The third critical flaw in TF1N was its decision to evaluate the diversity of the Navy against the demographic makeup of the nation. When the Navy is compared against the demographic distribution of the population eligible by law to serve (considering age and educational attainment), the TF1N conclusions about demographic inequities evaporate.

The fourth critical flaw of the Task Force One Navy effort was its blatant ideological bias. The TF1N parent precursor, Executive Order 13583 of August 18, 2011 established a “Coordinated Government-Wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce,” discussed the importance of equal opportunity and merit in implementation of the order, and required the “order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law,” explicitly citing 5 U.S.C. 2301 that requires “selection and advancement should be determined solely on the basis of relative ability, knowledge, and skills, after fair and open competition which assures that all receive equal opportunity.”

In the TF1N Final Report, merit and equal opportunity were jettisoned. Its ideological frame of reference and agenda are evident in the language and terminology used throughout. The words ‘diverse’ and ‘diversity’ appear frequently, on average more than twice per page throughout the TF1N Charter and TF1N Final Report. Themes central to Critical Race Theory (CRT) a movement that questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law, find an active voice in the TF1N Charter and Final Report.

• CRT’s key theme is under-representation of minorities in the distribution of social goods, benefits, privilege, and status. The term ‘under-represented’ occurs more than 40 times in the TF1N Final Report.
• TF1N is laden with the jargon of CRT including “lived experience,” “intersectional experience,” “systemic inequities and racism,” “structural and interpersonal biases,” “equity,” “unconscious bias,” and “identity.”

This language cannot be an accident: it does not appear in the source Executive Order. It confirms a philosophy and political agenda on the part of those who wrote the Task Force One Navy Charter and steered the enterprise. It also answers why data was manipulated in support of the TF1N systemic inequity narrative: without the mathematical sleight of hand to create the false impression of under-representation, the entire effort collapses.

That initial critique of TF1N was published in the same year as the Navy report. Since that time, a growing body of scholarly literature challenges treating McKinsey’s assertions as ‘uncontested truth.’ Multiple studies argue that the evidence of business benefits of demographic diversity that underpin the Navy DEI Enterprise is weak or non-existent. [Wang & Clift (2009), Klein (2017), Edmans (2018), Ely & Thomas (2020), Levitt (2021), Green & Hand (2021].

Beyond that, more recent analysis (Gardner, 2023) states that McKinsey’s research has several fundamental flaws and should not be cited as a robust assessment of financial benefit of more diverse organizational leadership. Even more recent analysis (Green & Hand 2024) concludes that McKinsey’s studies neither conceptually (in terms of the direction of causality) nor empirically (in terms of their set of large US public firms) support the argument that large US public firms can expect improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives.

More fundamentally, for a military establishment, DEI Programs ignore compelling, award winning, US-based, internationally recognized research (Putnam, 2007) on the adverse effects of multiculturalism on social solidarity and social capital (discretionary effort) in communities of all sizes.

Putnam notes that without creating cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities (a broader sense of ‘we’), racially and ethnically diverse communities are fragmented by racial/ethnic differences in the short to medium term.

• Trust is lower, altruism, and cooperation rarer overall, not just along in-group/out-group divisions.
• Members expect the worst from the community and its leaders.
• Members volunteer less and work less on community projects.
• Members have less faith that they can make a difference and withdraw from collective life, both attitudinally and behaviorally.

U.S. Navy ships and aircraft squadrons perform all the functions of the communities that Putnam studied. Given the nature of Navy personnel rotations they typically turn over about one third of the organization every year. Thus, Navy commands are perpetually in the short/medium term where the adverse effects of demographic diversity on cohesion, morale, and combat effectiveness are most pronounced. Programs like DEI and various “Pride Months” accentuate and celebrate differences rather than building common identity, command cohesion, and through it, combat effectiveness.

The Armed Forces spend several hundred million dollars directly on DEI programs and divert at least ten times that cost in servicemembers time from high priority maintenance and other readiness activities to receive DEI indoctrination. Perhaps most alarming, at least one major Navy mishap was partially attributable to the lack of trust and unit cohesion attributed by Putnam to unmitigated adverse effects of community diversity. A January 14, 2019, Navy Times article on the USS Fitzgerald collision investigation stated, “The probe exposes how personal distrust led the officer of the deck, LTJG _______, to avoid communicating with the destroyer’s electronic nerve center — the combat information center, or CIC — while the Fitzgerald tried to cross a shipping superhighway.” This collision cost the lives of seven sailors, severely injured another three, and took a frontline unit offline at a cost of 3 years and over half a billion dollars.

Like the Founding Fathers, who foresaw the challenges to the nation and strongly emphasized the melting pot model of assimilation of American newcomers, Putnam highlights the achievement of the US Army in the last quarter of the 20^th Century, well before DEI programs, in constructing a common identity with increased solidarity in the presence of ethnic/racial diversity by emphasizing shared identity and common purpose across racial lines. Putnam also considers the broader lessons of how the massive wave of immigration to America was absorbed in the first quarter of the 20^th Century. It is an account of centrifugal forces on civic cohesion successfully mitigated. Putnam concluded:

• That assimilation via public schools, civic programs to embrace American ideals, naturalization processes, and language requirements resulted in the transformation of ethnic nationalism to civic nationalism.
• That this was not a preordained inevitable path, yet over several generations ethnic and racial differences became muted in America and assimilation became the master trend of the 20th Century.
• That by 1990 ethnic silos had largely evaporated and only 20% of white Americans were married to someone of the same ethnic background.
• That as of 2022, 19% of married opposite-sex couples in the United States were interracial, according to the Census Bureau, a significant increase from 1967, when only 3% of newlyweds were intermarried. 

The Navy asserts that its DEI Programs create a positive return on readiness, and through that, on successful mission accomplishment. Beyond earlier criticisms of the assumptions, methods, and conclusions of the TF1N Final Report, a substantial and growing body of scholarship demonstrates that the references that the Navy relies on for that assertion are not replicable and should not be relied on to underpin investment decisions about DEI programs. Separately, prize winning research shows that cultivating and celebrating Demographic Diversity destroys social cohesion and social capital in communities akin to Navy commands. It also shows the success of prior civil and military practices to foster the assimilation and common identity formation so critical to military mission success. The DEI Enterprise pointedly ignores the evidence concerning its program underpinning, rejects proven approaches to building effective organizations, diverts resources away from high priority tasks that directly affect combat effectiveness, and doubles down on replacing equal opportunity and merit with a return to racialism.

Demographic Diversity is NOT our strength in the U. S. Navy. It is well past time to dismantle the counterproductive DEI Enterprise and reorient the Navy to basic precepts. Navy leadership must embrace the American ideal of “…one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” They must lead morally to assure color-blind meritocracy, the law of the land, and reject demographic discrimination in every aspect of military service. They owe no less to the sons and daughters of America they send in harm’s way than the most capable wardrooms, chiefs’ quarters, and shipmates they can field. All hands must rededicate the Naval service to mission success through the hierarchy of Ship, Shipmate, Self… in that order.

Phillip Keuhlen is a retired nuclear submarine Commanding Officer and nuclear industry senior manager. He writes on topics related to governance and national security. His work has appeared at American Greatness, Real Clear Defense, The Patriot Post, and the Brownstone Institute.

25. What’s behind conservative opposition to DEI? Take a look at this study

What’s behind conservative opposition to DEI? Take a look at this study

Recent research suggests that conservative critiques of DEI often boil down to one thing: anti-Black racism.

Fast Company · by The Conversation · September 5, 2024

Critics of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, commonly referred to by the acronym DEI, are increasingly using boycotts and bans to fight against their use. People often argue that this anti-DEI backlash is motivated by race-neutral concerns — for example, that DEI practices are irrelevant to work performance or are too political.

But our recent research, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, suggests that conservative critiques of DEI often boil down to one thing: anti-Black racism.

As psychology researchers, we wanted to understand why people react to DEI the way they do. So, we recruited more than 1,000 people to take part in three related studies.

For each study, we measured participants’ conservatism on a seven-point scale ranging from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. Single-item measures such as this are often used by researchers.

We also measured participants’ anti-Black racism using the symbolic racism scale, which is a well-validated and commonly used measure of anti-Black racism. Research suggests that as overt racism has become less acceptable, people tend to direct racism toward symbols of racial equality, like DEI. That meant the symbolic racism scale was an ideal measure of anti-Black racism for our purposes.

How we did our work

In the first study, we asked participants to read a job advertisement from either a company that emphasizes DEI or a company that emphasized teamwork and good professional relationships. Then, participants rated their interest in the job and how fair they thought the company was. In later studies, they also indicated how well they thought they’d fit in.

We found that participants who scored higher on our measure of conservatism expressed significantly less interest in pursuing a job at the company promoting DEI, and viewed it as less fair compared with the company promoting teamwork.

Fast Company · by The Conversation · September 5, 2024

26. Deepfakes deepfail: Russian propagandists turn away from generative AI

Or perhaps that is what they want us to think.

Deepfakes deepfail: Russian propagandists turn away from generative AI - Breaking Defense

With Large Language Models, “you can make more of everything — misinformation, disinformation — but it doesn't mean it'll be very good,” said Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center.

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

on September 05, 2024 at 9:21 AM

breakingdefense.com · by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. · September 5, 2024

Artificial intelligence AI research of robot and cyborg development for future of people living. Digital data mining and machine learning technology design for computer brain communication. (Getty images)

WASHINGTON — Despite dire predictions that generative AI like ChatGPT and Sora could flood the internet with disinformation and deepfake videos, the new AI tools have been a disappointment for propagandists to this point. That’s the latest word from the general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC), Clint Watts, a former Army officer and FBI agent who’s advised US Central and Special Operations Commands.

In fact, Watts told the Billington Cybersecurity Summit on Wednesday, Russian propagandists have largely abandoned their early experiments with genAI and fallen back on tried-and-true techniques that rely on humans to generate the deceptions, with AI mostly assisting on the margins.

MTAC focuses on nation-state actors, who are much more likely than individual hackers or hacktivist collectives to have access to the immense computing power required to run generative AI. With the US election campaigns gearing up, “it’s the busy season,” Watts said. “We’ve been tracking every time we see a nation state uses AI in some form for internet activity, [and] over the last 14 months, we’ve logged hundreds of instances.”

The lesson so far: AI quantity is no substitute for human quality. With genAI, “you can make more of everything — misinformation, disinformation — but it doesn’t mean it’ll be very good,” Watts told the conference. “The Russians have gone back the other way and just go with their greatest hits” — labor-intensive propaganda techniques honed over decades — “and it works.”

“The Russian actors that we’ve seen, all of them, have tried deepfakes and they moved back to bread and butter, small video manipulations,” Watts told the Billington conference.

By contrast, recent MCAT reports emphasize Chinese disinformation campaigns have made much heavier use of deepfakes, albeit not very successful ones. That includes profoundly uncanny AI “news anchors” delivering anti-Taiwan-independence messages ahead of the island’s democratic elections, and faked audio of a Taiwanese political leader endorsing a rival candidate, which was quickly detected and taken down. As one MCAT report notes, China doubling down on deepfake video and audio “is where it diverges from Russia.”

Part of the difference is that China has both a much stronger homegrown AI industry and a much smaller supply of well-traveled operatives who’ve personally visited the West, can speak its languages, and understand its pop-cultural nuances.

“For China, they always struggle with cultural context,” Watts said. “They’re just constantly confused. “They don’t have as much experience overseas as the Russians do” — but they have more AI tools available to try to compensate.

That said, he went on, the most effective AI tech is often the most modest. “The most overlooked and valuable piece of Large Language Models is just producing more content in a foreign language,” he said. That content is usually text, he added, or less often AI-generated voiceovers: “Video is tough.”

“Everyone has tried video to some degree but it doesn’t work exactly, because the cultural context part that you get from [AI] text hasn’t made it into [AI] video yet,” he said. Indeed, entirely AI-generated facial expressions and body language often look not just wrong for a given culture, but altogether inhuman, a phenomenon known as the

Even with the latest video-generation AI such as Sora, “the technology is mostly not quite there,” Watts said. “It’s much easier to do an enhancement to a video than to make a whole AI-generated video. So it’s small fakes that tend to work better, and they are also cost-efficient.”

“Small” can really mean small, here. One recent MTAC report gave examples such as superimposing a real news agency’s logo over a propaganda video to add an air of authenticity. More ambitious efforts tend to rely on AI-generated voices, which are easier to fake than video, such as a Russian genAI imitation of Tom Cruise narrating a propaganda “documentary” that denounced the Paris Olympics for banning Russian athletes. Even so, the Russian campaign failed to derail the massive event.

“We jump to the doomsday science fiction — you know, ‘this is deepfakes, it’s going to destroy everyone’s heads and the world will collapse’ and that sort of thing,” said Watts. To date, however, “audiences have been remarkably brilliant about detecting deep fakes,” he said, especially of well-known public figures. “The more you watch somebody, the more you realize a fake isn’t quite right,” he said, “whether it’s Putin or Zelensky or any of the candidates in the election.”

GenAI’s shortcomings go beyond video, however. “Creativity is the weakness of the LLM from a messaging standpoint,” Watts told the conference. “The narratives that still stick, or the most brilliant things that you’ll see a perpetrator come up with. … I’ve never seen an AI come up with one yet.”

27. MC-130J Crews Earn Award for Supporting Longest US Army Helicopter Mission Relying on Aerial Refueling

It takes a joint SOF team. This is one of the great capabilities that were born out of the failure at Desert One in Operation Eagle Claw in Iran in 1980.

MC-130J Crews Earn Award for Supporting Longest US Army Helicopter Mission Relying on Aerial Refueling

The Aviationist · by David Cenciotti · September 5, 2024

An aircrew from the 9th Special Operations Squadron conducts low-level operations in an MC-130J Commando II during Emerald Warrior/Trident at Naval Air Station North Island, Calif., January 21, 2019. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Erin Piazza)

MC-130J Commando II Crews Honored for Historic Aerial Refueling Mission During Contingency Operation.

Two MC-130J Commando II crews from the 9th Special Operations Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, have been awarded the prestigious 2023 Brig. Gen. Ross G. Hoyt Award for their exceptional service during a high-stakes contingency operation directed by the President of the U.S. This honor, established in 1994 by the Air and Space Forces Association, recognizes the top aerial refueling crew from the entire Air Force, including the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard.

According to an official statement, the awarded crews played a pivotal role in supporting the longest U.S. Army helicopter mission that depended solely on aerial refueling. This historic mission involved helicopter crews flying for over 10 consecutive hours without the possibility of ground refueling, relying entirely on the two MC-130J Commando IIs to deliver fuel in-flight. The complexity and duration of this operation underscored the critical importance of aerial refueling in modern military missions, particularly those involving extended range and limited logistical support.

No additional detail about the helicopter operation supported by the MC-130J has been disclosed however, in 2023, the U.S. military carried out several helicopter raids in Syria and Iraq, the last one of those, in the northern part of Syria, on Sept. 23, 2023, to capture Abu Halil al-Fad’ani, an ISIS Syria Operational and Facilitation official.

Aircrew with the 9th Special Operations Squadron participate in a bilateral training exercise in central Tennessee, July 10, 2017. Five U.S. Army helicopters performed air-to-air refueling with the Commando II to increase consistency in tactics and procedures to ensure global readiness. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Joseph Pick)

U.S. Air Force Capt. Alec Benoit, Chief of Standards and Evaluation for the 9th SOS, expressed pride in the accomplishment, stating, “The 9th SOS, these crews and myself included, were honored to be part of such a historic mission. Having the feat of this air-refueling mission and its crews acknowledged is really awesome.”

During the mission, the 9th SOS crews overcame multiple challenges, including mechanical and communication equipment failures, while also navigating through hostile air defense environments. Despite these obstacles, they successfully delivered over 20,000 pounds of fuel, ensuring the helicopters could complete their mission without interruption. The crews remained airborne for the entirety of the mission, traversing over a thousand miles to support a critical evacuation effort.

A U.S. Air Force MC-130J Commando II passes over Malemute Drop Zone during airborne operations at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, April 9, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Alejandro Peña)

“Their professionalism and their capability to perform under pressure in high-stakes environments sets Air Commandos apart from the average person,” said Capt. Benoit, praising his team’s resilience and skill. “These crews did an amazing job.”

The achievement of the 9th SOS crews highlights the rigorous training and readiness of AFSOC units, which are known for their ability to respond rapidly and effectively to unconventional missions. This high level of agility is fostered through comprehensive training programs that ensure aircrews are prepared to tackle complex challenges and generate innovative solutions. U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. John Strube, Commander of the 9th SOS, emphasized the commitment of his squadron, stating, “Our crews train extremely hard every day so when the call comes we’re ready to execute flawlessly. I am extremely honored to lead such fine men and women who are ready at a moment’s notice to ensure American lives are safe. These two crews are a testament to how great the Night Wings truly are.”

According to the U.S. Air Force, recognition with the Hoyt Award underscores the ethos of the Air Commandos: always prepared to respond to the nation’s call. AFSOC’s empowered aircrews represent a competitive advantage, enabling the command to deliver unconventional airpower support to the joint force whenever and wherever needed. The professionalism and dedication of the 9th SOS crews exemplify the commitment of AFSOC to maintaining the highest standards of operational readiness and excellence, the official release explains.

The historic nature of the mission, combined with the challenges faced and overcome by the crews, serves as a powerful reminder of the crucial role aerial refueling plays in extending the reach and effectiveness of U.S. military operations. As Air Force special operations continue to evolve, the ability to conduct complex refueling missions under adverse conditions will remain a vital component of U.S. airpower, ensuring that America’s forces can operate effectively in any environment.

The MC-130J Commando II

The MC-130J Commando II, is a modern special operations variant of the Hercules aircraft. Its main missions include helicopter air-to-air refueling (HAAR) for special operations forces (SOF) helicopters and tilt-rotor aircraft, as well as the infiltration, exfiltration, and resupply of SOF via airdrop or landings on remote airfields. Additionally, it supports Forward Air Refueling Point (FARP) operations, allowing for covert nighttime refueling at locations without accessible fueling stations or where air-to-air refueling is impractical.

Primarily operating at low altitudes and under the cover of darkness, the MC-130J is designed for clandestine missions, reducing the chances of detection and interception by enemy forces.

Equipped with advanced avionics and systems, the MC-130J features a two-pilot flight station with integrated digital displays, an enhanced cargo handling system, and robust defensive measures. It includes 13 multifunctional displays, advanced navigation systems, integrated defensive systems, and sophisticated communication capabilities such as dual SATCOM for voice and data. The aircraft’s powerful turboprop engines with six-bladed composite propellers, improved autopilot, and enhanced fuel and environmental systems increase its operational efficiency and versatility.

Moreover, the MC-130J is fitted with specialized equipment such as the Universal Air Refueling Receptacle Slipway Installation (UARRSI), air refueling pods, an Electro Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) system, and provisions for Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures (LAIRCM), making it a highly capable platform for complex special operations missions.

A U.S. Air Force MC-130J Commando II, stationed out of RAF Mildenhall, England, takes off from Amari Airfield, Estonia during Operation Rapid Forge, July 23, 2019. (U.S. Army by Sgt. Alexis Washburn-Jasinski)

About David Cenciotti

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David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

The Aviationist · by David Cenciotti · September 5, 2024

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