"We have lost and lost and lost in the Cold War for one primary reason: We have been amateurs fighting abasing professionals. So long as we remain amateurs in the critical field of political warfare, the billions of dollars we annually spend on defense and foreign aid will provide us with a diminishing measure of protection." 
- Senator Thomas Dodd, 1961

"Although this nation was then building up its defenses, training an enormous army, there were no preparations being made for psychological warfare." 
- Robert E Sherwood 
- timeless, evergreen... from before 1946 about the fall of 1941.
- Shared by Matt Armstrong 

1. Congress fixes - just a bit - the unpopular, 'unfair' rule that stopped injured service members from suing for damages
2. U.S. agency that handles Trump's secure communication suffered data breach
3. China's Swarms Of Rocket Drones Could Be A Big Problem For The U.S. Military
4. Trump will pick new Space Force headquarters location later this year
5. Gen. Hyten On The New American Way of War: All-Domain Operations
6. Sophisticated Soviet spy radio discovered buried in former forest in Germany
7. Americans aren't as eager to retreat from the Middle East as politicians seem to think
8. America's Russia nightmare is back
9. China's Communist Party makes the Chinese - and the world - sick
10. Artificial intelligence helps Voice of America translate broadcasts worldwide
11. Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump


1. Congress fixes - just a bit - the unpopular, 'unfair' rule that stopped injured service members from suing for damages
Excerpts:
The new law does not cover everyone. A lawsuit like the original Feres case, by the survivors of someone who perished in a barracks fire, would still not be allowed. That's because the legislation only allows claims by those who allege to have been victims of medical malpractice by military health care providers.
And claims cannot be brought in federal court, as is normally the case under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Rather, they must be pursued through a Defense Department administrative procedure under regulations that the Department of Defense is required to draft.
While Rep. Speier still thinks that military claimants "deserve their day in federal court," this would not be the first time a legislature provided a remedy for personal injury through an administrative process outside the courts. Workers' compensation and the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund are examples of the use of administrative processes to determine compensation for injury.
Research suggests that most claimants don't care whether their cases are decided through a court, an administrative procedure or even mediation. Rather, they care about having a respectful hearing in which a third party has carefully considered their views, concerns and evidence.

Congress fixes - just a bit - the unpopular, 'unfair' rule that stopped injured service members from suing for damages

theconversation.com · by Robert M. Ackerman
Members of the military who have long been barred by law from collecting damages from the federal government for injuries off the battlefield will finally be able to do so after Congress stepped in to amend the law.
The legislation represents progress for injured service members - but still limits who among them may press for damages.
Up until the end of World War II, the U.S. government enjoyed "sovereign immunity," a vestige of British rule when "the king could do no wrong" and the government could not be sued.
But in 1946, faced with the prospect of World War II veterans returning from the front only to be hit and killed in an accident on base, Congress enacted the  Federal Tort Claims Act. Congress felt that it was only fair to allow people to recover damages for personal injury from the government when the government was negligent or irresponsible about caring for people's safety.
There were exceptions. Certainly Congress could not allow a soldier - or his family - to sue the government if, due to the orders of a superior officer, he were wounded or killed in battle. So the Federal Tort Claims Act prohibited suits by soldiers or sailors injured due to wartime  combatant activities.
The Supreme Court had long limited service members from getting paid damages for personal injuries due to the government's negligence or irresponsibility.  Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images
But later rulings limited servicemembers' rights even more, in ways not suggested by the language of the act.
The first of these was a case filed by the surviving family members of a soldier. Lt. Rudolph  Feres was a decorated World War II veteran who had parachuted into Normandy on D-Day. He survived that battle and others through the end of the war only to return to the U.S. and die in a barracks fire caused, according to his wife, by the explosion of a boiler known to be faulty.
Feres' widow also claimed that no fire guard had been posted on the fateful night. Joined to the case were two soldiers who claimed malpractice by army surgeons.
The court decided that the existing benefits scheme for military deaths and injuries was ample and denied the claims. To the further chagrin of the Feres family, the controversial ruling took on the name the "Feres Doctrine."
Cases sustaining Feres expressed the concern that allowing civilian courts to intervene in cases of this type would interfere with military discipline. Thus, the court declared that soldiers could not sue the government for damages for negligently caused injuries "incident to service," even if they did not involve combat.
Later suits building on Feres limited soldiers' rights even more - barring claims by  a soldier allegedly raped by her drill sergeant and by members of the military harmed by their exposure to nuclear testing and the  defoliant chemical Agent Orange.

Questionable doctrine survives

All of these rulings meant that anyone who had the misfortune of getting hurt while on active duty, even if it wasn't in combat, could never sue for damages - while if the same person had gotten hurt on the job as a civilian, they would have had that right.
This disfavored treatment for servicemen was underscored in the aftermath of the space shuttle  Challenger explosion, during which families of civilian crew members were able to file lawsuits against the government, but the family of the pilot who was a Navy captain on active duty  could not.
Justice Clarence Thomas said the Feres case 'heartily deserves the widespread, almost universal criticism it has received.'  Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
The Feres Doctrine were therefore seen by many as unfair. Others, like the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, criticized Feres because of its departure from the plain language of the Federal Tort Claims Act, which limits the exclusion to wartime "combatant activities." Still others believe that Feres fails to hold the military accountable for the kind of mistakes for which others are required to pay damages.
The Feres Doctrine nevertheless has continued to hold sway, with the Supreme Court refusing to reconsider the doctrine as recently as May 2019. Justice Clarence Thomas, in a dissent from the court's denial of certiorari in that case,  Daniel v. United States, paraphrased Justice Scalia in stating that "Feres was wrongly decided and heartily deserves the widespread, almost universal criticism it has received."
In 1950, speaking for the Supreme Court in the Feres case, Justice Robert Jackson admitted, "If we misinterpret the Act, at least Congress possesses a ready remedy." That "ready remedy" finally came almost seventy years later, due to the persistence of a soldier suffering from terminal cancer.

Green Beret goes to Congress

Sergeant First Class  Richard Stayskal is a former Green Beret and wounded Iraq veteran whose military health providers missed a 3-centimeter mass in one of his lungs on a CT scan.
After military physicians repeatedly attributed his health problems to asthma or pneumonia, Sgt. Stayskal learned from a civilian pulmonologist that he actually had stage 4 lung cancer. Sgt. Stayskal continues to receive treatment for his cancer, although he says it is deemed  incurable.
But Sgt. Stayskal was barred by Feres from pursuing a malpractice case in court.
So Stayskal enlisted the support of California Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a Democrat, who introduced a  bill to allow current and former service personnel to bring medical malpractice claims against government health providers.
A compromise version of the bill was incorporated into the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2020. Adding the bill into a "must-pass" piece of defense legislation assured its passage. It was passed  by both houses of Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support.  President Trump signed the measure into law on Dec. 20, 2019.
Rep. Jackie Speier speaks about Sgt. Richard Stayskal on House floor.

Cup only half-full

The new law does not cover everyone. A lawsuit like the original Feres case, by the survivors of someone who perished in a barracks fire, would still not be allowed. That's because the legislation only allows claims by those who allege to have been victims of medical malpractice by military health care providers.
And claims cannot be brought in federal court, as is normally the case under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Rather, they must be pursued through a Defense Department administrative procedure under  regulations that the Department of Defense is required to draft.
While Rep. Speier still thinks that military claimants  "deserve their day in federal court," this would not be the first time a legislature provided a remedy for personal injury through an administrative process outside the courts.  Workers' compensation and the  September 11 Victim Compensation Fund are examples of the use of administrative processes to determine compensation for injury.
Research suggests that most claimants don't care whether their cases are decided through a court, an administrative procedure or even mediation. Rather, they care about having a  respectful hearing in which a third party has carefully considered their views, concerns and evidence.
Those who worked to pass this legislation will likely scrutinize the Defense Department's regulations and procedures to see whether such a forum has been provided.
[ Insight, in your inbox each day.  You can get it with The Conversation's email newsletter.]

2. U.S. agency that handles Trump's secure communication suffered data breach
Excerpts:
The DISA letters gave few further details. For example, they did not say what part of DISA's network had been breached, nor identify which individuals may have had their data compromised.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The term data breach can have many meanings, from hackers penetrating a network to a supposedly secure server being accidentally exposed to the internet.

U.S. agency that handles Trump's secure communication suffered data breach

Reuters · by Christopher Bing3 Min Read · February 20, 2020
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. defense agency that handles secure communications for President Donald Trump said Social Security numbers and other personal data in its network may have been compromised, according to letters seen by Reuters on Thursday that were sent to people possibly affected.
The letters, dated Feb. 11, 2020, say that between May and July 2019, personal data may have been compromised "in a data breach" of a system hosted by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
The agency provides direct telecommunications and IT support for the president, Vice President Mike Pence, their staff, the U.S. Secret Service, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior members of the armed forces, according to its website.
The DISA letters gave few further details. For example, they did not say what part of DISA's network had been breached, nor identify which individuals may have had their data compromised.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The term data breach can have many meanings, from hackers penetrating a network to a supposedly secure server being accidentally exposed to the internet.
The agency's letters said it had no evidence any personal data possibly taken was misused, but that it was required to notify individuals who may have had data taken.
Pentagon spokesman Chuck Prichard said individuals possibly affected were being offered "information about actions that can be taken to mitigate possible negative impacts" of the breach, as well as free credit monitoring.
DISA, headquartered at Fort Meade in Maryland, employs about 8,000 military and civilians, according to its website. Prichard did not say how many people could have been affected by the breach, saying only that DISA had investigated the incident "and taken appropriate measures to secure the network."
Aside from high-level communications, DISA was also drafted to help reform the government security clearance process following digital break-ins at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in 2014 and 2015 that resulted in the compromise of records belonging to more than 21 million current and former government employees.
Reporting by Christopher Bing; additional reporting by Raphael Satter and Idrees Ali in Washington. Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Howard Goller and Daniel Wallis
Reuters · by Christopher Bing3 Min Read · February 20, 2020

3. China's Swarms Of Rocket Drones Could Be A Big Problem For The U.S. Military
Quantity has a quality all its own, so said Stalin.  Sometimes there is a lot to be said for mass.
China has a history of overwhelming its enemies with sheer numbers of troops.
Now, China may have a modern iteration on that tactic: swarms of tiny rocket-armed helicopter drones that will swamp enemy forces like angry bees.
"China's domestically developed helicopter drones carrying proximity explosive mortar shells, grenade launchers and machine guns can now form swarms and engage in coordinated strikes," according to Chinese newspaper Global Times, citing a statement by the Guangdong-based Zhuhai Ziyan company, which makes unmanned aerial vehicles. The system was also displayed at a recent Turkish defense trade show.

China's Swarms Of Rocket Drones Could Be A Big Problem For The U.S. Military

The National Interest · by Michael Peck · February 21, 2020
Key point: What's particularly interesting about a Chinese drone swarm is China's predominance in drone production.
China has a history of overwhelming its enemies with sheer numbers of troops.
Now, China may have a modern iteration on that tactic: swarms of tiny rocket-armed helicopter drones that will swamp enemy forces like angry bees.
"China's domestically developed helicopter drones carrying proximity explosive mortar shells, grenade launchers and machine guns can now form swarms and engage in coordinated strikes," according to  Chinese newspaper Global Times, citing a statement by the Guangdong-based Zhuhai Ziyan company, which makes unmanned aerial vehicles. The system was also displayed at a recent Turkish defense trade show.
"With a single push of a button, the drones can autonomously take off, avoiding colliding in the air and finding their way to their designated target," Global Times said. "Once they receive an order to attack, they will engage the target autonomously in a coordinated manner. Upon finishing a mission, the system will lead the drones back to base and land automatically. The operator does not need to expose himself or herself in a dangerous frontline as the drones can easily be controlled remotely."
Up to ten heli-drones can be assembled into a swarm, with Artificial Intelligence guiding and coordinating the group. "The 10 drones can be a combination of different types, including those that can drop proximity explosive mortar shells, while others can carry grenade launchers, or make suicide attacks," said Global Times.
Zhuhai Ziyan offers multiple types of armed mini-drones. In 2018, it unveiled the Blowfish A2, which resembles a camel with a rotor stuck into its hump. The six-foot-long, two-foot-high drone has a speed of 130 kilometers (81 miles) per hour. It can be armed with 60-millimeter mortar shells and or a 40-millimeter grenade launcher.
"Other helicopter drones include the Infiltrator, which can launch rockets and missiles, and the Parus S1, which sacrifices itself to blow up the target," Global Times said. Zhuhai Ziyan is now working on the Blowfish A3, slightly larger than the A2 and armed with "multiple types of machine guns and features a different aerodynamic design allowing the gun to shoot at more angles mid-flight."
Zhuhai Ziyan claims to have had "numerous inquiries from multiple foreign companies," suggesting that the company is willing to sell or license its technology.
China is hardly the first nation to explore swarm attacks by small drones. America's DARPA research agency is working on  Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics, or OFFSET, which envisions humans as drone resource managers, using a video game-like virtual reality to control formations of hundreds of small unmanned aircraft during urban battles. A 2018 test of DARPA's Collaborative Operations in Denied Environments (CODE) demonstrated how a drone swarm, when communications with its human controllers were disrupted, could still find and strike targets simply by the AI following the intent of the mission plan.
Russia also has experience with drone swarms-but as a target. In 2018, a gaggle of small unmanned aircraft, armed with explosives,  were launched by Syrian rebels at a Russian airbase in Syria. Russia claimed to have shot down seven and hijacked their radio links to take control of another six.
What's particularly interesting about a Chinese drone swarm is China's predominance in drone production. Chinese manufacturer DJI makes nearly 80 percent of the drones used in the United States and Canada (U.S. authorities recently warned these robots could be stealing data from their users). Such a solid manufacturing base puts Beijing in a strong position to build large numbers of small attack drones.
Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on  Twitter  and  Facebook . This article first appeared last year.
Image: Reuters

4. Trump will pick new Space Force headquarters location later this year

Trump will pick new Space Force headquarters location later this year

foxbusiness.com · by James Leggate

Trump: Colorado being 'strongly considered' as home to Space Force

President Trump discusses employment rates and the U.S. Space Force while speaking at a 'Keep America Great' rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Now that the U.S. has a  Space Force, the new military branch needs a terrestrial home base.
Continue Reading Below
The location of that future base is still up in the air,  President Trump said during a  campaign rally in Colorado Springs Thursday night.
"I will be making a big decision for the Space Force as to where it's going to be located, and I know you [in Colorado] want it," Trump said. "We'll be making that decision toward the end of the year."
President Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado on Feb. 20, 2020.
The Space Force was born from the former Air Force Space Command, which was headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. The Space Command's bases also included Buckley and Peterson in Colorado, Los Angeles and Vandenberg in California and Patrick in Florida. Due to the nature of its work, many of its units were spread around the world.
Space Force leadership has continued to operate out of Peterson since the redesignation in December.
Peterson Air Force Base
But just because the Space Force is comprised of the former Space Command, that apparently doesn't mean it will occupy the same bases, Trump revealed Thursday.
A brand new headquarters will cost upwards of $72.4 million to create according to a  recent report in Defense News.
With more than 26,000 personnel part of the former Space Command, local economies could benefit from having Space Force units assigned to nearby bases. For example, a 2015 study by the  Department of Military and Veterans Affairs found that the military accounted for 170,000 jobs in Colorado, 5.2 percent of the state total. That included $11.6 billion in earnings.
Trump said that Colorado Gov. Jared Polis had met him at the airport Thursday to "lobby" for the Space Force headquarters.
"You're being considered very strongly for the Space Command," Trump told the Colorado audience.
The president also touted his administration's military spending during the speech, saying he replenished depleted U.S. armed forces with new equipment.
"When it comes to our military and our safety and our security, we don't worry about budgets," he said.

5. Gen. Hyten On The New American Way of War: All-Domain Operations
I missed the shift from Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) to All-Domain Operations (ADO). I still do not see the human domain explicitly described which in my mind is the most important of all domains.  Yes the deterrent domain is about influencing human behavior and of course cyber is about how those 1's and 0's can influence a multitude of human actions and outcomes.   I just do know why we have an aversion to formally recognizing the human domain.

I did not realize the importance of "ambitious" terminology. 

Excerpts:
All-Domain Operations, he went on, combines "space, cyber, deterrent, transportation, electromagnetic spectrum operations, missile defense - all of these global capabilities together ... to compete with a global competitor and at all levels of conflict."
That will require not only new technologies but new concepts.Breaking Defense readers have seen these ideas evolve rapidly over the last few years, with even the terminology becoming ever more ambitious, from Multi-Domain Battle to Multi-Domain Operations to All-Domain Operations.

Gen. Hyten On The New American Way of War: All-Domain Operations

breakingdefense.com · by Colin Clark
This is the first in a series of in-depth stories and interviews with senior defense officials about the future of the American way of war and a concept now known as All-Domain Operations. It's a vision of a computer-coordinated fight across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, with forces from satellites to foot soldiers to submarines sharing battle data at machine-to-machine speed . We hope this series will help educate Capitol Hill, the public, our allies, and much of the US military itself on an idea that's increasingly important but is still poorly understood. Why do so many of the Pentagon's most senior leaders  care so much about this? Read on - The Editor.
PENTAGON: No one who knows  Gen. John Hyten would expect him to resort to hyperbole or bombast. Sitting beside me in his E-Ring office, the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is, as always, focused and careful in his words. So when he told me that All-Domain Operations is "the biggest key to the future of the entire budget," I had to ask him to repeat what he said. He explained its importance this way.
"Because if we figure that out, we'll have a significant advantage over everybody in the world for a long time, because it's the ability to integrate and effectively command and control all domains in a conflict or in a crisis seamlessly - and we don't know how to do that," Hyten told me. " Nobody knows how to do that."
All-Domain Operations, he went on, combines "space, cyber, deterrent, transportation, electromagnetic spectrum operations, missile defense - all of these global capabilities together ... to compete with a global competitor and at all levels of conflict."
That will require not only new technologies but new concepts. Breaking Defense readers have seen these ideas evolve rapidly over the last few years, with even the terminology becoming ever more ambitious, from  Multi-Domain Battle to Multi-Domain  Operations to  All-Domain Operations.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper is directly involved, having ordered the four services and the Joint Staff last fall to create a new Joint Warfighting Concept for All-Domain Operations by December. "That Joint Warfighting Concept will describe the capabilities and attributes necessary to operate in this future all-domain world," Hyten explained.
"This concept is air, land, sea space, cyber, spectrum, everything that we need to operate in the future," Hyten said. "The biggest difference, honestly, is the addition of space and cyber, because space and cyber have two different commanders who will be operating in those two domains in any crisis or conflict" - that is,  the chiefs of Space Command and Cyber Command, whose global responsibilities overlap those of the theater Combatant Commanders who traditionally coordinate air, sea, and land operations in specific regions.
This thinking is all "deeply rooted" in  the National Defense Strategy, released in 2018, Hyten emphasized. "The last chairman" - Gen. Joe Dunford - "embraced this as a concept," he said. "General Milley now has expanded that."
Dunford began with the idea of  global force management, a new perspective that looked across traditional jurisdictional divisions between theater commands. He soon added the idea of  global fires, weapons both physical (missiles) and non-physical (cyber attacks) that could be launched from  outside a theater of war to have effects within it.
Gen. Milley added four new elements:  global plans, not just traditional deliberate planning for set scenarios but rapid crisis response;  global operations short of fires, that is, everything the military can do in the so-called "grey zone" between peace and open war;  global integration of messaging, the deliberate use of both words and actions to reassure allies and deter adversaries; and  global integration of deterrence, the use of all means, not just nuclear, to make potential enemies think twice about attacking.
"Believe it or not, we've learned a lot about global force management, but in the other areas, we're still in the learning phase," Hyten said. "One of the reasons we're in a learning phase is because we don't have an ability to do all-domain command and control yet."
Hence the crucial importance of a key effort launched last year by the senior leadership, coordinated by the Joint Staff, and led by the Air Force:  Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). Breaking D readers know more about this because we've covered as much of its evolution as possible. It is a concrete effort to build sensors, communications systems, and data fusion engines designed to make it possible for, say, a submarine, a Marine Corps infantry squad, an F-35, an Apache gunship, a P-8 patrol plane, an orbiting satellite or a Navy ship to feed targeting data to any other weapon to ensure the most efficient and lethal response to a threat.
It's a bold approach, one that takes what the US military calls jointness to a new level. Before, each service trained, equipped and provided troops, who then worked together in battle. Organizations such as the Joint Staff and regional combatant commanders tied them together to ensure that troops and their communications and weapons systems could work together and were, at least, compatible - in theory..
Hyten notes that the US has "figured out how to do integration of air, land and sea. We figured that out really well." All-Domain Operations builds on that foundation, and to some degree it can be conducted even by existing organizations. It's really "just an expansion of the combined arms problem to air, land and sea, plus space and cyber," he said.
The National Space Defense Center (formerly the JICSpOC) at Schriever Air Force Base
"Now, we treat space and cyber differently," the vice-chairman continued. But they have their own rules of engagement, their own forms of maneuver, their own ways of having an effect on the conflict, just like any other form of military power. "Space and cyber is a little bit different," he admits, "but nonetheless, if you just look at the practical issues of what you're trying to do, it's just a combined arms command and control problem."
To figure out how to do this much expanded combined arms approach, the US has done two major wargames, called Global Integration Exercises, modeling wars with Russia and China. (It wasn't clear whether there was a single scenario involving both countries or two separate scenarios, one involving Russia by itself and the other China by itself).
"We've done two globally integrated exercises now, both built on top of [existing] combat and commander exercises, One in one part of the world, one in another part of the world, Hyten said. Which areas? "All you've got to do is read the NDS and you can figure that out," he said. "These are global conflicts, [focused] around a certain part of the world, [but] involving all commands and all domains,
"As we look at those and we play it out, we find where the holes are, and oh my gosh, the holes are obvious and we don't have the ability to [fill] them" - not with our current way of war, he said. "So the two globally integrated exercises that we've done so far and the one that we're going to do this fall really, really do show the importance of this (All-Domain Operations) in the future."
"These Global Integrated Exercises are enormously difficult to do, enormously expensive," he said. "When you do it and you're not fully successful [in the simulated conflict] - nobody that wears the uniform likes to show up at work and not do well. So it's very powerful."
After the interview, the Joint Staff told me that the Global Integration Exercise program was started in 2018 during Gen. Dunford's tenure as CJCS.
"The intent is for GIE exercises to be a recurring opportunity for senior DoD leaders, COCOMs and the U.S. government interagency to exercise transregional, all-domain scenarios at the strategic level in support of the National Defense Strategy," a statement from Hyten's office explains. "Ultimately, these exercises enable the DoD to test and refine new concepts, reduce uncertainty, and increase readiness."
"Planners tailor exercise scenarios to be intentionally transregional and all-domain, with the secretary, the chairman and the combatant commanders all participating," the statement continues. The exercises also include the National Security Council, State Department, Intelligence Community and other elements of the federal government.
"The next one we're going to do," Hyten noted during our interview, "is actually going to be purpose-built from the beginning to involve everybody. That will be the most effective one."
No other details were provided in the statement: "For operational security reasons, we will not discuss the details of specific GIE scenarios or exercise timelines."
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6. Sophisticated Soviet spy radio discovered buried in former forest in Germany
Compare the Cold War operations of DET-A in Berlin.

Sophisticated Soviet spy radio discovered buried in former forest in Germany

Live Science: Scientific News, Articles and Current Events · by Tom Metcalfe - Live Science Contributor · February 18, 2020
Archaeologists digging for the remains of a Roman villa near the German city of Cologne have found a sophisticated  Soviet spy radio that was buried there shortly before the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The spy radio was buried inside a large metal box that was hermetically sealed with a rubber ring and metal screws. Although the radio's batteries had run down after almost 30 years in the ground, the box hissed with inrushing air when it was opened.
"Everything in the box was carefully encased in wrapping paper - it is a factory-fresh radio," said archaeologist Erich Classen from the Rhineland Regional Association (LVR).
The buried box and the hidden radio were found in August 2019 by a team of archaeologists digging near what was once a path through the Hambach Forest, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) west of Cologne, in an area earmarked for an open-cast lignite mine and now cleared of trees.
They expected to find fragments from a Roman-age settlement thought to have been built in the area, and so they were surprised when they instead unearthed a pit and the metal box.
"We think the radio will work if a new battery is available, but we didn't try," Classen said. "Restoration work was not necessary."

Iron Curtain

The radio has been identified as a model R-394KM transmitter and receiver - code-named "Strizh," meaning "Swift" - that was manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1987. It was carried by agents into Western Europe shortly after that, and only a few years before the fall between 1989 and 1991 of the "Iron Curtain" of  communism that divided Eastern and Western Europe.
The scientists suspect agents would have used the spy radio to send secret reports back to the Soviet Union about observation of the Jülich Nuclear Research Centre, about 6 miles (10 km) west of where it was found; or of the military air base at Nörvenich, about the same distance to the southeast, where U.S. Pershing nuclear missiles were based until 1995.
It's possible that "Stasi," or State Security Service agents from the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic in the east of the country buried the spy radio in West Germany for future use, Classen said.
It may also have been a back-up in case a spy's other radios were damaged or seized.
The high-frequency or  shortwave radio was capable of transmitting and receiving messages as far as 750 miles (1,200 km) - far enough to reach Warsaw in Poland, which was then part of the Soviet bloc.
But the pristine condition of the buried radio suggests that it was never used, and it was probably forgotten and left in the ground soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Classen said.

Spy secrets

Some features of the Soviet spy radio hint at who might have used it.
Unlike most other radios of the same model, which are labeled in Russian using the Cyrillic alphabet, the controls of the radio found in the Hambach Forest area are labeled in English and the Roman alphabet.
That suggests it was designed to be used by a German or an English speaker, rather than a Russian; but it may also have been a form of camouflage, to hide the true origins of the radio in the Soviet Union.
The paper wrapped around the radio, however, had sequences of numbers in Russian handwriting, giving positions of the dials on the radio that could be used - similar number sequences have been found on Soviet checklists, Classen said.
It's unlikely that further details of the mystery of the Hambach Forest spy radio will be found, given that it's been so long since it was buried. But the spy radio itself is now part of the LVR's collection, and it is on display at the LVR-Landes Museum in Bonn until March 29, Classen said.
Some of the ancient artifacts from the same dig are also on display in the museum, but archaeologists haven't yet determined exactly how old they are, he said.
Originally published on  Live Science .
Want more science? Get a subscription of our sister publication  "How It Works" magazine , for the latest amazing science news.  (Image credit: Future plc)


7. Americans aren't as eager to retreat from the Middle East as politicians seem to think
Excerpts:
But the reality is that Americans are not as eager to bring the troops home as they are often portrayed. Majorities of Americans say that maintaining U.S. military superiority (69 percent), participating in military alliances (74 percent), and stationing troops in allied countries (51 percent) make the United States safer. The fact that far fewer say that intervening militarily (27 percent) makes the United States more safe indicates that they see the U.S. military presence in the region as a way to prevent threats primarily through deterrence rather than through combat.
In addition, Americans support using force if they sense a direct threat to the United States or allies.
Majorities across party lines support committing U.S. troops to fight against violent Islamic extremist groups in Iraq and Syria (57 percent when last asked in 2018), to defend South Korea from a North Korean invasion (58 percent in 2019) and to defend Baltic NATO allies from a Russian invasion (54 percent in 2019). If anything, support for the use of U.S. troops across a variety of scenarios has risen in recent years.
It is true that American public opinion is highly critical of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with two-thirds now saying these wars were not worth the cost. But the experiences from these two wars do not seem to be the deciding factor in shaping many Americans' decisions on whether the U.S. military should stay in the Middle East. The idea that most Americans are ready to pull up stakes and bring soldiers home at a moment's notice remains particularly stubborn and wrong.

Americans aren't as eager to retreat from the Middle East as politicians seem to think

The Hill · by Dina Smeltz and John Cookson, opinion contributors · February 20, 2020
More and more politicians on both sides of the aisle appear convinced that U.S. adventurism in the Middle East has been a disaster and that it is time to bring U.S. troops home. President  Donald Trump could not have been clearer in his most recent State of the Union address, declaring that "we are working to end America's wars in the Middle East." His words echoed last year's address when he said that "great nations do not fight endless wars."
Democrats, too, are talking about packing up the U.S. presence in the Middle East. Former South Bend, Ind., mayor and U.S. Navy veteran  Pete Buttigieg  said during a debate, "We have got to put an end to endless war," while Sen.  Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) explained in the  Atlantic that "America should end its military involvement in conflicts in the Middle East and bring our troops home from these endless wars in smart, responsible ways." Even former vice president  Joe Biden, a staunch foreign policy activist, nonetheless has felt obligated to  highlight his role in reducing U.S. troops in Iraq during the Obama administration.
But candidates and the president are overstating Americans' desire for a full-scale retreat from the Middle East, according to a January 2020 poll by the  Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Conducted just after the U.S. strike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, the polls show that a majority of Americans support maintaining (45 percent) or increasing (29 percent) the U.S. military presence in the Middle East; fewer than a quarter (24 percent) say reduce. This is fairly stable with opinion in 2018. Support for specific long-term military bases in the region has also grown since last asked in 2014, with majorities now saying the U.S. should have bases in Iraq (55 percent, up from 41 percent in 2014) and Kuwait (57 percent, up from 47 percent in 2014). Nearly as many Americans back keeping bases in Afghanistan (48 percent, up from 43 percent in 2014), with support in each instance cutting across partisan lines.
Americans' reasoning here is clear. Asked which region is most important to the security interests of the United States, 61 percent of Americans name the Middle East, up from a plurality of 50 percent in 2018. No other region comes close, including Europe (15 percent), Asia (12 percent), Latin American (7 percent), and Africa (1 percent).
Recent conflict with Iran accounts for some, but not all, of these results.  More Americans say that the killing of Soleimani makes the United States less safe (47 percent) than more safe (28 percent), and the percentage who say that Iran is the country that poses the greatest threat to the United States has increased three-fold since February 2019 (from 10 percent to 34 percent). But the percentage of Americans who say that Iran's nuclear program is a critical threat to the United States has just barely increased from 2019 (61 percent vs. 57 percent in 2019), and fewer are now concerned about Iran's regional influence (50 percent).
The public no doubt worries about terrorism in the region. Since 1998 when the Chicago Council first started asking about the threat from international terrorism, it has ranked as one of the highest threats.  Sixty-nine percent of Americans called international terrorism a critical threat in 2019, making the fear second only to concern about cyberattacks.
But the reality is that Americans are not as eager to bring the troops home as they are often portrayed.  Majorities of Americans say that maintaining U.S. military superiority (69 percent), participating in military alliances (74 percent), and stationing troops in allied countries (51 percent) make the United States safer. The fact that far fewer say that intervening militarily (27 percent) makes the United States more safe indicates that they see the U.S. military presence in the region as a way to prevent threats primarily through deterrence rather than through combat.
In addition, Americans support using force if they sense a direct threat to the United States or allies.
Majorities across party lines support committing U.S. troops to fight against violent Islamic extremist groups in Iraq and Syria (57 percent when last asked in 2018), to defend South Korea from a North Korean invasion (58 percent in 2019) and to defend Baltic NATO allies from a Russian invasion (54 percent in 2019). If anything, support for the use of U.S. troops across a variety of scenarios has risen in recent years.
It is true that American public opinion is highly critical of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with two-thirds now saying these wars were not worth the cost. But the experiences from these two wars do not seem to be the deciding factor in shaping many Americans' decisions on whether the U.S. military should stay in the Middle East. The idea that most Americans are ready to pull up stakes and bring soldiers home at a moment's notice remains particularly stubborn and wrong.
Dina Smeltz is a senior fellow in public opinion and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Follow her on Twitter  @RoguePollster .
John Cookson is research content officer at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
The Hill · by Dina Smeltz and John Cookson, opinion contributors · February 20, 2020

8. America's Russia nightmare is back
The reactions I am observing across the US political spectrum are exactly what I think the Russians want.  They want to undermine our democratic processes.  If we do not accept that and are not willing to defend our democratic institutions then they will crumble under our apathy, neglect, and negligence.

America's Russia nightmare is back

CNN · by Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Washington (CNN)It's happening again.
America is blundering into a  new Russia election-meddling hall of mirrors that's already doing Moscow's work: tearing fresh political divides and threatening to again tarnish democracy's most sacred moment,  a national election.
Revelations Thursday about intelligence assessments that Russia has launched a new interference effort to help reelect  Donald Trump -- and the President's furious reaction -- mark the return of a recurring nightmare for the country just nine months before the presidential election.
The uproar over Russia's disinformation drive to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Trump four years ago cast a cloud that the current President has never been able to escape. The President's defensive response to a new Russia interference drama, colored by his belief that all such revelations as a "Deep State" assault on his own legitimacy, already appears to be exacerbating the damage caused by Moscow's meddling.
Trump's preoccupation with suggestions that  he only won in 2016 because of Russia sparked destabilizing and willful presidential behavior, including the firing of FBI Director James Comey that led to a  years-long special counsel probe.
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If his reelection bid is tainted in the same way, his conduct could become even more erratic at a time when he is already mounting an assault on US institutions like the Justice Department and acting with unbridled power following his acquittal in an impeachment trial.
And the new revelations about Russia are certain to further damage the tenuous relationship between a President who denies election meddling ever happened, and an intelligence community that is charged with detecting such threats and countering them -- but is ultimately under Trump's control and susceptible to his political pressure.

Russia fulfilling its goals once more


Russia is looking to help Trump win in 2020, election security official told lawmakers
Partisan uproar over the new claims, meanwhile, suggests that the alleged operation is again delivering for Russia on its intended goals: sowing distrust in the US system and turning Americans against themselves in a way that weakens national unity.
Signs of Russian hacking, social media meddling and attacks on US infrastructure and the resulting confusion and controversy in Washington raise a sobering possibility: the second US election in a row risks being besmirched in the eyes of millions of voters at an already corrosive moment for US democracy.
Sources told CNN that the President was irate that intelligence community briefers told House lawmakers about Russia's new threat in a meeting last week. Trump was especially frustrated that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, who led impeachment hearings against him, was given the information.
Schiff was quick to respond to the public reports,  first published by The New York Times, about last week's classified briefing.
"We count on the intelligence community to inform Congress of any threat of foreign interference in our elections," Schiff tweeted. "If reports are true and the President is interfering with that, he is again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling. Exactly as we warned he would do."
The partisan divide that hampered efforts to respond to Russian election meddling in 2016 is already reemerging.
Republicans in the hearing reportedly pushed back against the revelations of new Russian election meddling, in a sign of how intelligence -- that can only be effective and useful if its regarded as nonpartisan -- is being politically tainted.
In the normal course of events, a President would be expected to defend the American system from an outside security threat, and to rise above the politics of the moment.
But the accounts being described by sources suggest that Trump was more interested in suppressing the information for his own political gain. And the drama raises the question of whether his replacement of the acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire  with a political acolyte, Richard Grenell, this week is an attempt to appoint an ally to ensure such politically damaging information doesn't get out.
There has been no public reaction so far from Trump to the latest Russia controversy.
But he's likely at some point to go on a prolonged tear over the new revelations since he's never really gotten over the 2016 election's Russia storm. He frequently blasts the idea that Russia interfered as a "hoax" made up by Democrats to discredit him.
In one stunning appearance with  Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, he publicly took the Russian President's word over that of his own intelligence agencies on the question of election meddling.

The political impact of the new Russia intrigue


Trump names staunch loyalist and current US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as acting intelligence chief
Descriptions of Trump's reactions to the new interference operation are likely to further embitter an already negative and nasty 2020 election campaign. Trump's opponents will be extremely skeptical about his motives and willingness to defend the US system -- and may fulfill his fears that they will use the information against him to present him again as Putin's patsy.
There is also precedent for the President being open to outside political influence.
After all, the  Ukraine saga that caused  his impeachment showed a President keen to solicit foreign interference in the election.
The Mueller report showed how Trump's 2016 campaign expected to benefit from Russian election meddling even if it did not establish coordination between his team and Moscow.
And the trial of  Roger Stone -- who was sentenced to 40 months in jail on Thursday -- showed how the Trump campaign was eager to hear about how WikiLeaks would handle Democratic Party emails stolen by Russia in 2016 in a bid to damage Clinton.
The way that the news of the latest Russian meddling allegations emerged also raises new doubts about Trump's sincerity to defend the election or to put his own political interests to one side.
"The really disturbing part of this is that it is so important for us as lawmakers who are privy to this information, this intelligence, to get it openly and honestly, then figure out what to do about it," Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-New York, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
"The fact that this President, time and again puts his own personal and political future ahead of not just every other American but also our national security is just so outrageous. What is there to say?" she asked.
US intelligence officials have repeatedly warned that Russia did not stop its efforts to interfere in US elections after 2016.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that Moscow was continuing to "engage in malign foreign influence" online with the goal of sowing division and discord, "and to generate controversy, to generate distrust in our democratic institutions in our electoral process."
A national security official in the Trump administration told CNN that election security official Shelby Pierson, who conducted last week's briefing, may have mischaracterized the intelligence that Russia has developed a preference for Trump.
"A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, it's a step short of that. It's more that they understand the President is someone they can work with, he's a dealmaker. But not that they prefer him over (Bernie) Sanders or (Pete) Buttigieg or anyone else," the official said.
Trump supporters push back at claims he's been soft on Russia, noting that he sold lethal weapons to Ukraine -- a step the Obama administration refused to take -- and kicked out Russian diplomats after Moscow tried to assassinate a former intelligence defector on US soil.
But many of Trump's foreign policy moves have seemed to play into Russia's goals, including his withdrawal from Syria, his claim that Ukraine, not Moscow, interfered in the 2016 election and his frequent attacks on NATO and Western unity.
So it is not hard to see why Russia -- which pursues a foreign policy largely designed to splinter US influence and undermine the West -- might favor four more years of Trump if its goal is indeed to see him returned to the Oval Office.
CNN · by Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
9. China's Communist Party makes the Chinese - and the world - sick
I do not think Joe Bosco will be getting any future invitations to China.  He will not be on the CCP's Christmas list.  But on a serious note he makes a number of critical points, whether you agree with his China approach for not.

Excerpts:
China's stubborn exclusion of Taiwan from the World Health Organization is inexcusable and counterproductive, especially given Taiwan's far superior record of competence and public responsibility.
As for China's "century of humiliation" at the hands of the West, that debt has been more than repaid. If anything, the Chinese people have reason to resent the new 70 years of shame visited upon them by their own government. From Tiananmen to Hong Kong, thousands of citizen protests each year, and the current revulsion over this latest epidemic outrage, they have demonstrated clearly that it is time for a change.
The West, led by the U.S., should openly state its intention to support internal reform in China. Beijing's expected charge of interference in China's domestic affairs, already a routine complaint by now, should be revealed for the hypocrisy it is, given the subversive advantage China takes in its access to Western media and institutions.
The West's open efforts to encourage political reform in China need be nothing more sophisticated or sinister than an expanded information campaign of radio broadcasting and digital communications. It should inform the population in all Chinese-ruled regions of what is happening elsewhere in the world - including in North Korea, China's client dictatorship - and in China itself. Armed with the truth, it will be up to the Chinese people to take it from there and determine their fate.
For their welfare, and in the West's own interests, the effort is long overdue.

China's Communist Party makes the Chinese - and the world - sick

The Hill · by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributor · February 20, 2020
China's coronavirus, after wreaking vast human suffering and a mounting death toll in Wuhan Province and elsewhere in China, has spread to other countries, disrupting travel and commerce and spurring well-founded fears of a global pandemic.
It is hard to imagine that anything good could come out of this public health disaster. Yet, if the international community can muster the vision and courage, coordinated national policies could make it a historically transformative event. Since the totalitarian  incompetence and callous  dishonesty of the Chinese Communist Party brought about the public health catastrophe, it would be the ultimate justice if it proved to be the cause of its political demise. Western governments can make it happen.
There long have been more than sufficient moral and security reasons to press for major political reform in China. After all, that was the original motivating principle underlying Richard Nixon's opening to China in 1972. He had  written in his campaign that "The world cannot be safe until China changes." He said it could not be left isolated to "nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors." To drain off Mao Zedong's "poison," he warned, "the world must open to China and China must open to the world."
In the 1980s,  Deng Xiaoping said "reform is China's second revolution," and did undertake some opening up of China's economy. But hopes that political reform would follow were brutally dispelled by the Tiananmen Square  massacre. As for China's relations with the outside world, Deng cautioned communist colleagues to "hide your capabilities, bide your time."
In 1995 and 1996, Jiang Zemin added some meaning to Deng's cryptic admonition by demonstrating that the use of force was still very much in play under Mao's teaching that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." China  fired missiles toward Taiwan to protest its resolute progress to democracy and, when the U.S. moved aircraft carriers to the region, a Chinese military official warned, "You care more about Los Angeles than Taiwan." A few years later, another Chinese general talked of obliterating "hundreds of American cities."
By 2000, 30 years after Nixon's opening was supposed to have started the process of Communist China's liberalization, Washington once again tried coaxing it into reform. But, perversely, the Clinton administration did so by abandoning the annual human rights review that undergirded Permanent Trade Relations with China.
President Clinton totally disentangled human rights considerations from trade privileges, as if they were unrelated, to allow Communist China into the World Trade Organization. When I  testified against China's admission, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jesse Helms asked if its inclusion would finally succeed in "changing China." I stated my fear that it was more likely to change us.
Once China entered the WTO, predictably, it was given great leeway and available enforcement mechanisms often were ignored. While integration into the world economy was supposed to bring long-anticipated political reform, the West could not even get China to adhere to the trade rules it ostensibly had accepted.
Given that record of Western accommodation, Xi Jinping ascended to power finding it no longer necessary to follow Deng's hide-and-bide strategy. China openly flaunted its capabilities and laid bare its aggressive intentions in the East China Sea, the South China Sea and, again, toward Taiwan. Beijing also turned the screws on the "one China, two systems" model that was intended to guide Beijing's dealings with Hong Kong and Taiwan.
As for the conquered peoples of Tibet and East Turkestan/Xinjiang, Xi launched widening crackdowns, culminating in a network of  concentration camps where a million or more Uighurs are subjected to gulag-like cruelty and brainwashing.
Within China proper, all religious groups endure deepening oppression. The Falun Gong spiritual movement has been targeted for a special crime against humanity: industrial scale, live  organ harvesting that exceeds even the murderous efficiency of the Nazis.
Now with the Wuhan coronavirus, after previous China-centric epidemics - SARS and avian flu - and the opioid crisis, the world should be, quite literally, sick of what the Chinese Communist Party has inflicted in return for its generosity and indulgence.
China's stubborn exclusion of Taiwan from the World Health Organization is inexcusable and counterproductive, especially given Taiwan's far superior record of competence and public responsibility.
As for China's "century of humiliation" at the hands of the West, that debt has been more than repaid. If anything, the Chinese people have reason to resent the new 70 years of shame visited upon them by their own government. From Tiananmen to  Hong Kong, thousands of citizen protests each year, and the current revulsion over this latest epidemic outrage, they have demonstrated clearly that it is time for a change.
The West, led by the U.S., should openly state its intention to support internal reform in China. Beijing's expected charge of interference in China's domestic affairs, already a routine complaint by now, should be revealed for the hypocrisy it is, given the subversive advantage China takes in its access to Western media and institutions.
The West's open efforts to encourage political reform in China need be nothing more sophisticated or sinister than an expanded information campaign of radio broadcasting and digital communications. It should inform the population in all Chinese-ruled regions of what is happening elsewhere in the world - including in North Korea, China's client dictatorship - and in China itself. Armed with the truth, it will be up to the Chinese people to take it from there and determine their fate.
For their welfare, and in the West's own interests, the effort is long overdue.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute, and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC).
The Hill · by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributor · February 20, 2020


10. Artificial intelligence helps Voice of America translate broadcasts worldwide
I am a great believer in the work of VOA and RFA (and RFE/RL , et el).  But this capability may have application for State, the IC, and DOD.

Artificial intelligence helps Voice of America translate broadcasts worldwide | Federal News Network

federalnewsnetwork.com · February 18, 2020
February 18, 2020 1:01 pm
3 min read
Intelligent Automation Month - Feb. 18, 2020
For an audience of more than 275 million people in 100-plus countries, speaking 47 different languages, Voice of America has serious need of transcription and translation services. In response, the broadcaster built IPSUM, an artificial intelligence tool to do just that for nearly 1,800 hours of radio and television each week to reach.
Jim Tunnessen, VOA chief information officer and chief digital officer, said they found that machine learning could help aide in this process, but dialects, speech patterns and language behaviors are more random than consistent. But with machine learning, the more the technology is used the better it becomes, he said.
"The motivation behind this was time to be honest," Tunnessen said on  Federal Monthly Insights - Intelligent Automation. "We're such a large service and we have 47 different languages, we have transcribers and translators in the services that are doing this on a daily basis. And we had some tech-savvy journalists themselves who would reach out and in order to expedite the process, they would subscribe to engines ... outside of the building and to subscription services, and run transcription translations through there."
To build IPSUM, Tunnessen told Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller that upon reviewing those third-party transcription services, they tested the top five products against native language speakers.
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"And then we looked for how we would tie this into the organization. And we need a user-friendly front end to drive these engines and to provide it for video and audio transcription and also translation," Tunnessen said on  Federal Drive with Tom Temin. "And so we built this, we mocked up an MVP, or minimum viable product, which we developed within about a three month timeframe, and tied the engines to the back end."
VOA started with Russian, Persian, Spanish, English and Mandarin services, tested IPSUM, and added languages throughout the building process. The program is now up to more than 20 transcription languages and more than 40 translation languages. Tunnessen said that is due to the effectiveness of the AI on the back end. VOA came up with the idea of aggregating everything together but built the front end, with commercial engines on the backend. Using just one commercial engine would not have worked, due to the complexity of all of the different languages needed for translation and transcription, Tunnessen said.
"Within the system itself you can adjust and change the correctness of the vocabulary, of the script as ... it's translated through its translation or its transcription. We made it a side by side editable field so that when you did - for instance - a translation, you would see Russian on one side, you would see English on the other side and that way you could easily read and make sure that the context was correct. And then you edit in that fashion and submit it back into the engines," he said.

Read more Automation news

VOA also feeds IPSUM's engines with common terms. But the broadcaster still needs quality control and a human involved for the AI to work effectively. He said that while some feared their job would be replaced by AI, in fact this new tool could make their workflow easier.
"They were much happier with the release of the system," he said. "With that, we saw major time savings as well as financial savings."
Copyright © 2020 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
Amelia Brust
Amelia Brust is a digital editor at Federal News Network.  Follow @abrustWFED


11. Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump
This is pretty amazing.  Are we going to crumble from within?  Are we going to give Russia what it wants? - The undermining of the US electoral process and credibility of US institutions. POGO - we have met the enemy....

Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump

The New York Times · by Adam Goldman · February 20, 2020

A classified briefing to House members is said to have angered the president, who complained that Democrats would "weaponize" the disclosure.
American intelligence agencies concluded that Russia, on the orders of President Vladimir V. Putin, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
WASHINGTON - Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.
The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.
During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump's allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.
Some intelligence officials viewed the briefing as a tactical error, saying the conclusions could have been delivered in a less pointed manner or left out entirely to avoid angering Republicans. The intelligence official who delivered the briefing, Shelby Pierson, is an aide to Mr. Maguire and has a reputation for speaking bluntly.
Though intelligence officials have previously told lawmakers that Russia's interference campaign was continuing, last week's briefing included what appeared to be new information: that Russia intended to interfere with the 2020 Democratic primaries as well as the general election.
On Wednesday, the president announced that he was  replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and an aggressively vocal Trump supporter. And though some current and former officials speculated that the briefing might have played a role in that move, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr. Maguire.
Spokeswomen for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and its election security office declined to comment. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A Democratic House Intelligence Committee official called the Feb. 13 briefing an important update about "the integrity of our upcoming elections" and said that members of both parties attended, including Representative Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the committee.
In a  tweet on Thursday evening, Mr. Schiff said that it appeared that Mr. Trump was "again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling" with his objections to the briefing.
Mr. Trump has long accused the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's 2016 interference as the work of a "deep state" conspiracy intent on undermining the validity of his election. Intelligence officials feel burned by their experience after the last election, when their work became a subject of intense political debate and is now a focus of a Justice Department investigation.
Part of the president's anger stemmed from the administration's reluctance to provide delicate information to Mr. Schiff. He has been a leading critic of Mr. Trump since 2016, doggedly investigating Russian election interference and later leading the impeachment inquiry into the president's dealings with Ukraine.
Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Schiff would "weaponize" the intelligence about Russia's support for him, according to a person familiar with the briefing. And he was angry that he was not told right away about the briefing, the person said.
Mr. Trump has fixated on Mr. Schiff since the impeachment saga began, pummeling him publicly with insults and unfounded accusations of corruption. In October, Mr. Trump refused to invite lawmakers from the congressional intelligence committees to a White House briefing on Syria because he did not want Mr. Schiff there, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The president did not erupt at Mr. Maguire, and instead just asked pointed questions, according to the person. But the message was unmistakable: He was not happy.
Ms. Pierson, officials said, was delivering the conclusion of multiple intelligence agencies, not her own opinion. The Washington Post  first reported the Oval Office confrontation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Maguire, but not the substance of the disagreement.
The intelligence community issued an assessment in early 2017 that President Vladimir V. Putin  personally ordered a campaign of influence in the previous year's election and developed "a clear preference for President-elect Trump." But Republicans have long argued that Moscow's campaign was intended to sow chaos, not aid Mr. Trump specifically.
Some Republicans have accused the intelligence agencies of opposing Mr. Trump, but intelligence officials reject those accusations. They fiercely guard their work as nonpartisan, saying it is the only way to ensure its validity.
At the House briefing, Representative Chris Stewart, Republican of Utah, who has been considered for the director's post, was among the Republicans who challenged the conclusion about Russia's support for Mr. Trump. Mr. Stewart insisted that the president had aggressively confronted Moscow, providing anti-tank weapons to Ukraine for its war against Russia-backed separatists and strengthening the NATO alliance with new resources, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
Mr. Stewart declined to discuss the briefing but said that Moscow had no reason to support Mr. Trump. He pointed to the president's work to confront Iran, a Russian ally, and encourage European energy independence from Moscow. "I'd challenge anyone to give me a real-world argument where Putin would rather have President Trump and not Bernie Sanders," Mr. Stewart said in an interview, referring to the nominal Democratic primary race front-runner.
Under Mr. Putin, Russian intelligence has long sought to stir turmoil among around the world. The United States and key allies on Thursday accused Russian military intelligence, the group responsible for much of the 2016 election interference in the United States, of a  cyberattack on neighboring Georgia that took out websites and television broadcasts.
The Russians have  been preparing - and experimenting - for the 2020 election, undeterred by American efforts to thwart them but aware that they needed a new playbook of as-yet-undetectable methods, United States officials said.
They have made more creative use of Facebook and other social media. Rather than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are working to get Americans to repeat disinformation, the officials said. That strategy gets around social media companies' rules that prohibit "inauthentic speech."
And the Russians are working from servers in the United States, rather than abroad, knowing that American intelligence agencies are prohibited from operating inside the country. (The F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security are allowed to do so with aid from the intelligence agencies.)
Russian hackers have also infiltrated Iran's cyberwarfare unit, perhaps with the intent of launching attacks that would look like they were coming from Tehran, the National Security Agency has warned.
Some officials believe that foreign powers, possibly including Russia, could use ransomware attacks, like those that have debilitated some local governments, to damage or interfere with voting systems or registration databases.
Still, much of the Russian aim is similar to its 2016 interference, officials said: search for issues that stir controversy in the United States and use various methods to stoke division.
One of Moscow's main goals is to undermine confidence in American election systems, intelligence officials have told lawmakers, seeking to sow doubts over close elections and recounts. American officials have said they want to maintain confidence in the country's voting systems, so confronting those Russian efforts is difficult.
Both Republicans and Democrats asked the intelligence agencies to hand over the underlying material that prompted their conclusion that Russia again is favoring Mr. Trump's election.
Although the intelligence conclusion that Russia is trying to interfere in the 2020 Democratic primaries is new, in the 2019 report of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, there is a reference to Russian desires to help Mr. Sanders in his presidential primary campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016. The report quoted internal documents from the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory sponsored by Russian intelligence, in an order to its operatives: "Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest except for Sanders and Trump - we support them."
How soon the House committee might get that information is not clear. Since the impeachment inquiry, tensions have risen between the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the committee. As officials navigate the disputes, the intelligence agencies have slowed the amount of material they provide to the House, officials said. The agencies are required by law to regularly brief Congress on threats.
While Republicans have long been critical of the Obama administration for not doing enough to track and deter Russian interference in 2016, current and former intelligence officials said the party is at risk of making a similar mistake now. Mr. Trump has been reluctant to even hear about election interference, and Republicans dislike discussing it publicly.
The aftermath of last week's briefing prompted some intelligence officials to voice concerns that the White House will dismantle a key election security effort by Dan Coats, the former director of national intelligence:  the establishment of an election interference czar. Ms. Pierson has held the post since last summer.
And some current and former intelligence officials expressed fears that Mr. Grenell may have been put in place explicitly to slow the pace of information on election interference to Congress. The revelations about Mr. Trump's confrontation with Mr. Maguire raised new concerns about Mr. Grenell's appointment, said the Democratic House committee official, who added that the upcoming election could be more vulnerable to foreign interference.
Mr. Trump, former officials have said, is typically uninterested in election interference briefings, and Mr. Grenell might see it as unwise to emphasize such intelligence with the president.
"The biggest concern I would have is if the intelligence community was not forthcoming and not providing the analysis in the run-up to the next election," said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former intelligence official now with the Center for a New American Security. "It is really concerning that this is happening in the run-up to an election."
Mr. Grenell's unbridled loyalty is clearly important to Mr. Trump but may not be ideally suited for an intelligence chief making difficult decisions about what to brief to the president and Congress, Ms. Kendall-Taylor said.
"Trump is trying to whitewash or rewrite the narrative about Russia's involvement in the election," she said. "Grenell's appointment suggests he is really serious about that."
The acting deputy to Mr. Maguire, Andrew P. Hallman, will step down on Friday, officials said, paving the way for Mr. Grenell to put in place his own management team. Mr. Hallman was the intelligence office's principal executive, but since the resignation in August of the previous deputy, Sue Gordon, he has been performing the duties of that post.
Mr. Maguire is planning to leave government, according to an American official.
Adam Goldman, Julian E. Barnes and Nicholas Fandos reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York. Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Personal Email: d[email protected]
Phone: 202-573-8647
Web Site:  www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
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FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.


If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

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