"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. Should The U.S. Have a Secretary For Influence Operations?
2. Fort Bragg units played major role in significant World War II battles
3. Cyber Command Seeks $106M For Unfunded Priorities Worldwide
4. Italy imposes draconian rules to stop spread of coronavirus
5. Don't buy China's story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab
6. US: Russia disinformation campaign fuelling Covid-19 alarm
7. Does the UN Want Us to Forget That the New Coronavirus Is From China?
8. Millions of Chinese Firms Face Collapse If Banks Don't Act Fast
9. Inside The Wall Street Journal, Tensions Rise Over 'Sick Man' China Headline
10. Sorority girl reveals how she became an CIA counterterrorism operative
11. Column: Trump and the Taliban have one goal in common: getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan
12. Schumer raises security concerns on TSA's use of TikTok app
13. Digital Edits, a Paid Army: Bloomberg Is 'Destroying Norms' on Social Media
14. AI discovers antibiotic that kills even highly resistant bacteria
15. TWE Remembers: George Kennan and the Long Telegram
16. A New Postmodern Condition": Why Disinformation Has Become So Effective
17. Analysis/Commentary: Pentagon Announces Army 1st SFAB Deployment to Counter Surge in Violent Extremism and Russian/Chinese Competition
1. Should The U.S. Have a Secretary For Influence Operations?
A short but very important article. So much to discuss about this. A Secretary for Influence Operations? I think we need something more. Perhaps at Department of Political Warfare. I know that it is impolitic to call for such a department and everyone's initial response is that politics=the US political process or that warfare is not something we want to call politics and there is an aversion to calling "everything" warfare. We should remember that our adversaries view politics as war by other means.
We should consider the two definitions of Political Warfare from George Kennan (1948) and Paul Smith (1989) and ask if our adversaries are employing these techniques. We should also ask what should we be doing to counter their strategies which I believe rely heavily on aspects of these concepts?
George F. Kennan defined political warfare as "the logical application of Clausewitz's doctrine in time of peace." [politics is war by other means] While stopping short of the direct kinetic confrontation between two countries' armed forces, "political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation's command... to achieve its national objectives." A country embracing Political Warfare conducts "both overt and covert" operations in the absence of declared war or overt force-on-force hostilities. Efforts "range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures..., and 'white' propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of 'friendly' foreign elements, 'black' psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states." See George Kennan, "Policy Planning Memorandum." May 4, 1948.
Political warfare is the use of political means to compel an opponent to do one's will, based on hostile intent. The term political describes the calculated interaction between a government and a target audience to include another state's government, military, and/or general population. Governments use a variety of techniques to coerce certain actions, thereby gaining relative advantage over an opponent. The techniques include propaganda and psychological operations (PSYOP), which service national and military objectives respectively. Propaganda has many aspects and a hostile and coercive political purpose. Psychological operations are for strategic and tactical military objectives and may be intended for hostile military and civilian populations. Smith, Paul A., On Political War (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1989)
For all the Sanders supporters and Trump supporters who are arguing about Russian interference to influence the primary and election outcomes one way or the other I have some news for you. It is not about you and it is not about Sanders or Trump. It is about sowing dissent and discord in the American electoral and political system. It is about undermining the legitimacy of our democracy in the minds of the American electorate. (and yes we are a republic but we are also a democracy as evidence by the direct elections of our legislature while the concept of our republic ensure checks and balance and separation of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches - this is what makes our system of government a federal democratic republic. but I digress). At the very heart of the problem is it sis subversion. But the way both Sanders and Trump supporters are acting they are playing right into the hands of our adversaries' (Russia, China, Iran, north Korea and violent extremist organizations) subversion strategies.
Subversion: The undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution.
As in: "the ruthless subversion of democracy"
We should consider the words of Congressman Mac Thornbery in 2015 (and this is what lead him to insert Sec 1097 - DOD strategy to Counter Unconventional Warfare - in the 2016 NDAA):
"Another difficult topic I think we need to explore is, what are Russia, China, others doing in the way of
unconventional warfare?" Thornberry said Tuesday.
"Not troops in uniforms marching in formation across borders, but the subversion and other sorts of influence attempts."
Influence is critically important. Countering influence is critically important. But there needs to be a holistic, whole of government and dare i say a whole of society effort that goes beyond influence to political warfare. We need national level leadership from the legislative and executive branches to be able to protect our democracy and our interests and effectively "compete" in this modern international environment.
We need to adopt an American Way of Political Warfare. We have many of the tools and capabilities, we have the knowledge and historical precedence, and we have many capable experts and leaders. But we need leadership at the very top to take this on. I would re3commend considering this short report. "An American Way of Political Warfare: A Proposal" By Charles T. Cleveland, Ryan C. Crocker, Daniel Egel, Andrew Liepman, David Maxwell. https://
www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE300/PE304/RAND_PE304.pdf
I would ask all Americans to consider this excerpt from our National Security Strategy.
"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."
Whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent, if we cannot unite around this statement then there is little hope for us. We have a responsibility as American citizens to defend ourselves against our adversaries irregular warfare, unconventional warfare, and political warfare.
Lastly, while our NSS and NDS talk about competition and competing in the gray zone we should realize that this is not simply about being able to compete in the way we have always viewed competition. We should discard competition and embrace reality - we are in the midst of political warfare and we are on a 360 degrees firing range.
Should The U.S. Have a Secretary For Influence Operations?
Two former top special operations officials say their job was too junior and the Pentagon isn't taking information warfare seriously enough.
Despite shifting military budgets to better keep up with competitors, there's one area where countries like China, Russia, and even Iran are proving nimble and frustrating for the Department of Defense: influence operations.
In this new age of information warfare, the military art of influence ops - otherwise sometimes called psychological ops, information ops, or most-recently, military information support ops - lacks the senior level leadership it deserves, say two former Pentagon officials who were in charge of special operations policies. According to them, the position they once held is too junior for the seriousness of the threat and mission, and influence ops is spread so wide, that nobody is sure who is really in charge.
Today, there is no one individual that's directly in command of all "influence operations" across the Department of Defense. But there is some structure. On the uniformed side, at the top, the Joint Staff's J3 directorate manages information operations across the combatant commands, which make decisions about content and messaging in their respective areas. Below that, the infrastructure for those operations is led by
U.S. Special Operations Command's new Joint
MISO WebOps Center. That center was created last year to "address the opportunities and risks of the global information space," said former
SOCOM commander Gen. Tony Thomas, in testimony
last February. But it's the regional combatant commanders who determine the missions and messaging content of influence operations in their geographic theaters.
The top civilian post at the Pentagon in charge of influence ops policy is the assistant secretary of defense for special operations/low-intensity conflict, or
SO/
LIC. Now two former officials who held that post argue that elevating the position to an undersecretary role would give the
U.S. military more focus and ability to conduct influence warfare.
Michael Lumpkin, who held the job from 2013 until the start of the Trump administration, said that elevating his former position would give the military, "the ability to deconflict, integrate, and have mutually supporting information operations" across the service branches. In other words, information operations "would look different... as a nation, we would get more bang for our buck. And I think, as a nation, we would have better operational effectiveness across the board" he said, at a Global
SOF Foundation event this month in Washington.
Mark Mitchell, who held the job prior to Lumpkin, said, "I've been a huge critic, both inside and outside, of the department's approach to operations in the information environment, information operations, [and] influence operations. The Department of Defense has a tremendous amount of capabilities, information-related capabilities, but they're all stovepiped cylinders of excellence and they're not integrated across the department to realize strategic messaging."
Mitchell argued that outward messaging and influence is too important, especially considering Russia's aggressiveness, and how much money China has put into its own influence capabilities. The United States, he said, is missing out in key opportunities to shape global public opinion in places where it's locked in competition.
"We've all watched the protests in Hong Kong over the last year, if the Chinese had decided to use [military] force in the manner of Tienaman square, it would have been a huge strategic messaging opportunity for the United States of America," he said.
For all its power, the Pentagon is too risk averse to take on messaging proactively, Mitchell said. "Typically when [an opportunity for influence messaging] happens, in the Department of Defense... They call a deputies committee [meeting], which then [spends] the next four to six weeks arguing with deputies and maybe principals about what our message is going to be? And then it's too late in this information environment. You have to plan and think and be ready to seize those opportunities in the Department of Defense."
Right now, the assistant secretary for
SO/
LIC has an information operations policy group of seven people, according to a former senior defense official. It operates under the deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and counter terrorism, currently held by Chris Miller. "It is under-resourced to handle the policy issues and far too small to actually conduct or manage day-today information operations," said official. "Whoever is in charge of [information operations] must be able to plan and respond immediately to developing situations, not have to write a policy paper that will take 4-6 weeks to get to a decision maker."
It's not the first time that the issue of elevating the job has come up. The National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 included
a provision requiring that the Defense Department review the position of to determine if it was adequate to meet current and future needs. But the result of the review was never made public.
When Luke Hartig was senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 2014 to 2016, he was aware of proposals to elevate the position to an under secretary role. He was - and remains - skeptical but not closed off to the idea.
"Certainly elevating the importance of civilian oversight of [special operations forces] is a good thing. But before I say whether it's a good idea to create a new under secretary, I would want to know what problem we're solving for - operational oversight, resources and capabilities, or posture. And I would want to know how it would interact with the Under Secretaries for Policy and Intelligence," he said.
There's competeition between the service branches for control over influence operations, as well. In March, the Army
announced that it would transform Army Cyber Command into a new Information Warfare Command.
On Wednesday, Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville discussed why the Army was making the change. It wasn't to seize the sorts of opportunities that Mitchell envisioned, influencing the broader worldview of populations in places where the United States is trying to compete with China and Russia. McConville identified
a need to counter disinformation on the ground in places where
U.S. forces are already doing business.
"The truth really matters. When you're in Afghanistan and we have a team operating there, you know...the adversary will put out information that's just completely wrong," he said. "We don't have it all figured out yet. We just know our competitors are using those systems to their advantage...so how do you get out and say 'this village just said we killed a whole bunch of their folks. That's not the truth.' How do you get that out?... The future of information operations is how do you get to the truth."
McConville said Army Cyber Command is an ideal spot for future military influence operations because it's in a position to extract potentially relevant digital information, surveying the digital landscape of the target operation, and delivering cyber effects But the Army is still very much in the beginning phases of determining how to manage the transformation and practice future information operations in military exercises, he said.
In the Army, psychological operations is historically the job of
U.S. Special Forces. One member, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said that he was glad to see the move to as it was in line with how China, Russia, and the United States are expected to attack each other in the future.
"Personally, I'm glad," he said, because the change keeps up with newer doctrine, that recognizes that adversaries like Russia and China will always be working against
U.S. interestss, even if there isn't shooting going on."We now (officially, in National Strategy documents) recognize that our adversaries never 'rest' in peace and stability. Russians use
'gray-zone' strategies, China's
'three-warfares' and other state actors will always compete against our interests in lieu of major combat," he said.
Mitchell, the former assistant secretary, said the Army isn't the best place to house all influence operations or match up against Russia, China, and other adversaries. The United States should instead elevate influence operations within
SOCOM. "With all due respect to our colleagues at Cyber Command, they just don't have those skill sets there that you find in [U.S.] Special Operations Command, particularly our psyops teams and, I think, you have to look at information operations much more broadly than simply cyber," he said.
"Cyber is a medium. It is not the message in itself," he said. "Information can be conveyed and conducted in a whole lot of ways, whether it's face to face, print media, broadcast media, it's not all about cyber... Doing influence operations requires an in-depth understanding of the psychology and the history of your target audience and what they're trying to accomplish."
That in-depth understanding, he said, resides in
SOCOM.
"Bureaucracy is stifling when it comes to information operations," he said. "It takes four to six weeks to staff stuff within the Pentagon. There is a lack of integration across all the information related capabilities, from the special access programs, the most highly-classified technical capabilities, all the way to public diplomacy. There is no one who is integrating all of that horizontally to ensure consistent messaging and enforcing it.".
What's worse, he argued, the Department of Defense "looks at information as an afterthought... The risk aversion, the idea that, we send that message we might get into a war, we might get into a conflict, it's wildly out of proportion."
From a cultural perspective, Mitchell argued, the Defense Department is too inward facing and isn't attuned to the information space around the globe.
"When you walk around the Pentagon, what's on the TVs?
CNN, Fox News,
CBS. What nobody in the Pentagon is watching is Russia Today," he said. "As a department, we don't take it seriously enough."
2. Fort Bragg units played major role in significant World War II battles
If I could call ignoring history a crime I would say this article is criminal act. To not acknowledge the Special Forces, Psychological Operations, and Civil Affairs history and linkage to the OSS operations around the world is simply astounding. The 1st Special Service Force was a great organization but unique and very limited in scope and operation. To not acknowledge the heritage and lineage of SOF to the OSS is deeply disturbing. It pains me that a US Army Special Operations Command historian would not acknowledge the important and decisive role the OSS has played in SOF history. Yes I know the US Army does not officially recognize the OSS in the lineage and honors of the US Army Special Operations and US Army Special Forces because it was not an Army unit, it was an ad hoc, and it was a multi-service organization. But that is simply the incredibly dumb bureaucracy that fails to acknowledge the reality and the real history.
We should not forget the OSS played a major supporting and enabling role in the Normandy operation and beyond.
When World War II started, Fort Bragg was home to neither airborne nor special operations forces, but both played a major role in the war and later became permanent residents at the post.
The airborne and the forerunner of Special Forces had less than promising beginnings during the war, but later demonstrated their effectiveness against enemy troops over and over.
Best of the Week: http://myprofile.fayobserver.com/?_ga=2.88716883.975414332.1565695384-2017682533.1562678522 ">A roundup of our best work and most popular stories of the week.
Paratroopers and special operations troops
Airborne units trained at Fort Bragg during the war. Paratroopers played major roles in numerous battles, earning a reputation for being hard-nosed fighters who struck fear into enemy troops.
Ralph Alvarez, a museum technician at the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum at Fort Bragg, said paratroopers often fought with few resources during the war.
"The drive and determination of the paratroopers were instrumental in the 82nd accomplishing its missions," he said. "That drive and determination is still seen in paratroopers today."
Special operations forces were not associated with Fort Bragg during the war, but made the post their home less than a decade after the fighting ended. The 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg traces its lineage to the First Special Service Force, a unique group of American and Canadian soldiers who excelled at intense, close combat.
Fort Bragg units that support special operations forces also trace their lineage to units that played roles in major WWII campaigns.
Troy J. Sacquety, a historian at U.S. Army Special Operations Command, said combat operations in World War II created the need for units trained in special operations.
"Early in the war, the U.S. Army selected, screened and trained soldiers in the skills needed to perform special combat tasks that supported the large-scale ground combat operations taking place around the globe," he said. "Today's Army special operations units draw their lineage and inspiration from those pioneer units created in WWII."
Combat jumps
Alvarez said the 82nd made its first combat jump onto the Italian island of Sicily in July 1943. High winds threw some planes off course, dropping paratroopers from the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment far from their drop zones.
The soldiers improvised, forming small groups and fighting over a wide area, Alvarez said. German troops found it difficult to move around because the paratroopers were in numerous places, he said.
"They were able to create all kinds of havoc," he said.
Some U.S. commanders, including Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, wanted to do away with airborne troops, but Gen. George S. Patton successfully argued for their continued use, Alvarez said.
The 82nd would make three other combat jumps during the war, including one during the pivotal D-Day invasion. After the invasion, the 18th Airborne Corps was formed to oversee American airborne operations.
Alvarez said that after a jump in Salerno, Italy, the tenacious fighting of soldiers from the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment so frustrated a German officer that he called them "devils in baggy pants."
The 82nd fought with little winter gear in "wicked cold" conditions during the Battle of the Bulge, Alvarez said.
Paratroopers faced challenges during war, but developed an airborne mantra that said, "We're here to kick butt and take names," Alvarez said.
A special mission
The First Special Service Force, the predecessor of today's Special Forces, was initially formed for a special mission in Norway, according to an article in the history section of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command's website. The unit was going to destroy 14 hydroelectric dams that were vital to the German war effort, it says.
When the Norway mission was scrapped, the unit's existence was at risk of being disbanded, according to the article. Its commander saved the unit by volunteering it to lead an amphibious assault against Japanese troops on the Aleutian Islands, it said.
The first planned combat for the force ended with no fighting because the Japanese had abandoned the island being invaded. The unit was then moved to Italy, where it gained a reputation of being an elite fighting force in a bloody campaign to break the German line south of Rome, according to another article on the website.
The unit helped dislodge heavily fortified German defensive positions in the rough mountainous areas. At one point, the soldiers climbed a rocky cliff and surprised the enemy troops.
The unit would later make an amphibious assault during the invasion of southern France. It was helped by support units to which Fort Bragg's 528th Sustainment Brigade and 112th Special Operations Signal Battalion trace their lineage.
The war ends
In March 1945, the 18th Airborne Corps, which is now based at Fort Bragg, launched the last major airborne offensive of World War II, according to the corps website. The 17th Airborne Division jumped near Wesel, Germany, as part of the assault, it said.
After the war, the 82nd would serve on occupation duty in Berlin, Alvarez said. While there, the division received the nickname, "America's Guard of Honor," according to the museum's website.
After the 82nd returned from Europe, it was permanently assigned to Fort Bragg. The 18th Airborne Corps, which had been inactivated in 1945, was reactivated at the post in 1951. The Psychological Warfare Center, which later became U.S. Army Special Operations Command, was established at Fort Bragg the following year.
Today, Fort Bragg is widely known as "the Home of the Airborne and Special Operations Forces."
3. Cyber Command Seeks $106M For Unfunded Priorities Worldwide
You would think with the importance of cyber operations and the size of the defense budget US CYBERCOM would no unfunded requirements.
Cyber Command Seeks $106M For Unfunded Priorities Worldwide
Soldiers from the 781st Military Intelligence Battalion, the Army's offensive cyber unit, in training
WASHINGTON: Alongside the detailed multi-billion-dollar wishlists released by other parts of the Pentagon, there's a single-page unclassified summary of US Cyber Command's Unfunded Priorities List with just three items, totaling $106 million.
"NOTE: Details provided separately at the appropriate level of classification," says a terse note at the bottom of the page.
Co-located with the notoriously secretive National Security Agency on Fort Meade, Maryland, and commanded by the same four-star officer, Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, CYBERCOM inhabits a world of digital cloak-and-dagger where the very act of revealing a capability exists makes it infinitely easier to defeat. Even a journalist committed to transparency can understand the need for strict classification.
But we can still offer our interpretation of the document, guided by public comments by Gen. Nakasone and others that sketch what CYBERCOM is doing.
The least controversial category is also the largest: "Secure the DoDIN." That stands for
Department of Defense Information Networks, a deceptively precise-seeming term for the vast agglomeration of different and often incompatible computer networks across the DoD, including leased commercial systems. Gen. Nakasone has a subordinate command,
Joint Force Headquarters - DoDIN - led by a three-star general who also runs the Defense Information Services Agency (DISA) - that is solely devoted to this mission. It's also undeniably defensive.
By contrast, the Pentagon is understandably leery of discussing
offensive cyber warfare. But the NSA jargon for hacking foreign networks to conduct espionage is
Tailored Access Operations. That strongly suggests CYBERCOM's $40 million request for blandly named "Access & Operations" is also oriented towards the offense. (Our colleagues at
Fifth Domain, who've covered this intimately, make the same assessment).
Also suggestive is the brief unclassified description: "Access and operations... provides the Cyber Mission Force increased abilities to access, operate, support, and train to meet increased operational demands and increase lethality."
Lethality is a Pentagon buzzword, favored by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, that gets used in all sorts of ways, including for completely non-lethal systems, but the common denominator is having some kind of direct effect on an adversary.
Finally, there's the $13.8 million request for "Hunt Forward," which sounds more ominous than it actually is. In recent years, Cyber Command has talked about "
defending forward," which includes establishing a presence in adversaries' networks to passively monitor their operations and, in at least some cases, to actively disrupt an attack before it begins. More recently, they'd added the concept of "
hunting forward," which specifically means getting friendly nation's permission to deploy US cyber experts on their territory and hunt for hostile activity on their networks. (Yes, this means "hunt forward" is actually more defensive than "defend forward." That's Pentagonese for you).
"In a hunt forward operation, we are able to work with partner nations and receive an invitation to execute operations in their country," Army Brig. Gen. William Hartman, head of CYBERCOM's National Mission Force,
said recently. "These are generally countries that are in the near abroad of adversaries that we're potentially concerned about."
"Near abroad," incidentally, is originally a
Russian term for the now-independent states of the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine, Georgia, and Estonia, which Moscow considers to be its natural sphere of influence.
The list includes 12 additional F-35s, and funding to speed development of the GPS anti-jam M-Code signal.
4. Italy imposes draconian rules to stop spread of coronavirus
I wonder if they are importing these draconian rules from the authoritarian totalitarian dictatorship countries such as China and north Korea who are the masters of draconian rule.
Italy imposes draconian rules to stop spread of coronavirus
The Guardian · by Angela Giuffrida · February 23, 2020
Play Video
Italy hit by largest coronavirus outbreak outside Asia - video
Italian authorities have implemented draconian measures to try to halt the coronavirus outbreak
in the north of the country, including imposing fines on anyone caught entering or leaving outbreak areas, as a third person was confirmed to have died on Sunday.
The number of cases of the virus in the country has risen to 152.
Police are patrolling 11 towns - mostly in the Lombardy region, where the first locally transmitted case emerged - that have been in lockdown since Friday night. The latest victim died in the Lombardy town of Cremona.
"The woman had been admitted to oncology, so was in a very compromised situation and also had coronavirus," said Giulio Gallera, the Lombardy health and welfare minister.
Measures were stepped up after a 78-year-old Italian man infected with the virus died in the Veneto region on Friday. A postmortem performed on a 77-year-old woman in Lombardy on Saturday confirmed that she was also infected, but it is unclear if the virus caused her death. The woman is reported to have been recovering from pneumonia and had visited the emergency unit of a hospital in Codogno, near Lodi, a few hours after the first man confirmed to have contracted the disease, a 38-year-old, had passed through.
Angelo Borelli, the head of Italy's civil protection service, said so far 152 cases of the virus have been confirmed in the country, including the three people who have died, an Italian man who recovered, and a Chinese couple being treated for the illness in Rome.
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About 50,000 residents in the towns under lockdown have been told to stay home and avoid social contact, while schools, shops and businesses - apart from chemists - have been closed and festivities and sporting events
including Serie A football matches and the final two days of the Venice carnival have been cancelled.
Schools and universities will also be closed for at least a week in Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont, while similar measures have been taken in Liguria and Alto Adige.
Milan fashion week has also been affected by the outbreak. Giorgio Armani, whose show was scheduled for 4pm on Sunday afternoon, announced on Saturday night that guests should not come to the venue. Instead, the collection would be shown to an empty room.
"The decision was taken to safeguard the wellbeing of all his [Armani's] invited guests by not having them attend crowded spaces," said a press release. Models still presented the clothes, with the show streamed on the brand's website, as well as on Instagram and Facebook.
The Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said: "We have adopted a decree to protect the health of Italians, which is our priority and which ranks first in the list of constitutional values." He urged people to "have faith in the political and scientific institutions, which are doing everything possible".
Locals wearing face masks were already lined up outside a supermarket in the town of Casalpusterlengo, a 10-minute drive from Codogno, on Sunday morning. Shoppers were made to wait, then allowed to enter in groups of 40 inside the store to stock up on provisions.
Although one woman in the crowd downplayed the virus, telling other shoppers it was not fatal if properly treated, others were less sanguine. "It's inhuman," one man who gave his name as Sante told AFP. "Fighting over four sandwiches is just disgusting."
Hundreds of colleagues who worked with the first infected man, a researcher at Unilever, were being tested but it was still unclear whom he had contracted the illness from. The man, who was in intensive care, was initially thought to have caught the virus after meeting a colleague who had recently returned from China, but the colleague tested negative.
"Unfortunately, the person who was considered to be 'patient zero' was not," said Attilio Fontana, the president of Lombardy. "We need to look elsewhere. We are following two hypotheses, and we will try to understand if one of the two is correct."
The 38-year-old recently took part in a number of races. His pregnant wife is also infected, as is a person who went running with him. Three other cases in Lombardy are elderly people who frequented a bar in Codogno owned by the father of the man who went running with the 38-year-old.
The man who died in Veneto was diagnosed with pneumonia a few weeks ago but had not travelled to China nor come into contact with anyone who had.
"Unfortunately, we haven't managed to limit the spread of the virus," said Roberto Burioni, a professor of microbiology and virology at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, which has also closed.
"And we need to face the fact that it is spreading quickly. At first, we thought that the virus was only abroad, but now it is also in
Italy. People should try not to panic but limiting the spread is, in part, down to our behaviour. Those who have been in contact with someone infected must isolate themselves. Crowded places should also be avoided: sacrifices need to be made to try to overcome the virus."
The first two cases of the virus in Italy were those of a Chinese couple from Wuhan who arrived in the country on 23 January. They were being treated at Spallanzani hospital for infectious diseases in Rome. A group they were travelling with were released from hospital this month after being quarantined for 14 days. A third case in Rome was that of an Italian man who had caught the virus in China.
Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of Milan, where fashion week wraps up on Monday, asked for all schools to be closed for a week. "It's a prudent measure, then we'll see if a week is sufficient. There are so many events in the city. I don't imagine everything shutting down and being cancelled, but events that are not obligatory and which can be postponed, should be."
5. Don't buy China's story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab
I am sure this will be branded a conspiracy theory. But what does the science show?
Don't buy China's story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab
At an emergency meeting in Beijing held last Friday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke about the need to contain the coronavirus and set up a system to prevent similar epidemics in the future.
A national system to control biosecurity risks must be put in place "to protect the people's health," Xi said, because lab safety is a "national security" issue.
Xi didn't actually admit that the coronavirus now devastating large swathes of China had escaped from one of the country's bioresearch labs. But the very next day, evidence emerged suggesting that this is exactly what happened, as the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive entitled: "Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus."
Read that again. It sure sounds like China has a problem keeping dangerous pathogens in test tubes where they belong, doesn't it? And just how many "microbiology labs" are there in China that handle "advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus"?
It turns out that in all of China there is only one. And this one is located in the Chinese city of Wuhan that just happens to be . . . the epicenter of the epidemic.
That's right. China's only Level 4 microbiology lab that is equipped to handle deadly coronaviruses, called the National Biosafety Laboratory, is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
What's more, the People's Liberation Army's top expert in biological warfare, a Maj. Gen. Chen Wei, was dispatched to Wuhan at the end of January to help with the effort to contain the outbreak.
According to the PLA Daily, Gen. Chen has been researching coronaviruses since the SARS outbreak of 2003, as well as Ebola and anthrax. This would not be her first trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology either, since it is one of only two bioweapons research labs in all of China.
Does that suggest to you that the novel coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, may have escaped from that very lab, and that Gen. Chen's job is to try and put the genie back in the bottle, as it were? It does to me.
Add to this China's history of similar incidents. Even the deadly SARS virus has escaped - twice - from the Beijing lab where it was - and probably is - being used in experiments. Both "man-made" epidemics were quickly contained, but neither would have happened at all if proper safety precautions had been taken.
And then there is this little-known fact: Some Chinese researchers are in the habit of selling their laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them.
You heard me right.
Instead of properly disposing of infected animals by cremation, as the law requires, they sell them on the side to make a little extra cash. Or, in some cases, a lot of extra cash. One Beijing researcher, now in jail, made a million dollars selling his monkeys and rats on the live animal market, where they eventually wound up in someone's stomach.
Also fueling suspicions about SARS-CoV-2's origins is the series of increasingly lame excuses offered by the Chinese authorities as people began to sicken and die.
They first blamed a seafood market not far from the Institute of Virology, even though the first documented cases of Covid-19 (the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2) involved people who had never set foot there. Then they pointed to snakes, bats and even a cute little scaly anteater called a pangolin as the source of the virus.
I don't buy any of this. It turns out that snakes don't carry coronaviruses and that bats aren't sold at a seafood market. Neither are pangolins, for that matter, an endangered species valued for their scales as much as for their meat.
The evidence points to SARS-CoV-2 research being carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The virus may have been carried out of the lab by an infected worker or crossed over into humans when they unknowingly dined on a lab animal. Whatever the vector, Beijing authorities are now clearly scrambling to correct the serious problems with the way their labs handle deadly pathogens.
China has unleashed a plague on its own people. It's too early to say how many in China and other countries will ultimately die for the failures of their country's state-run microbiology labs, but the human cost will be high.
But not to worry. Xi has assured us that he is controlling biosecurity risks "to protect the people's health." PLA bioweapons experts are in charge.
I doubt the Chinese people will find that very reassuring. Neither should we.
Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute and the author of "Bully of Asia: Why China's 'Dream' is the New Threat to World Order."
WASHINGTON: Thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts have launched a coordinated effort to spread alarm about the Covid-19 coronavirus, disrupting global efforts to fight the epidemic, US officials say.
The disinformation campaign promotes unfounded conspiracy theories that the United States is behind the Covid-19 outbreak, in an apparent bid to damage the US's image around the world by seizing on health concerns.
State Department officials tasked with combating Russian disinformation told AFP that false personas are being used on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to advance Russian talking points in multiple languages.
"Russia's intent is to sow discord and undermine US institutions and alliances from within, including through covert and coercive malign influence campaigns," said Philip Reeker, the acting Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia.
"By spreading disinformation about coronavirus, Russian malign actors are once again choosing to threaten public safety by distracting from the global health response," he said.
The claims that have been circulating online in recent weeks include allegations that the virus is a US effort to "wage economic war on China," that it is a biological weapon manufactured by the CIA or part of a Western-led effort "to push anti-China messages."
US individuals including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, a philanthropist who has spent billions on global health programmes, have also been falsely accused of involvement in the virus.
Russia on Saturday denied the accusations, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova telling the TASS state news agency: "This is a deliberately false story."
The disinformation campaign was identified by US monitors in mid-January after Chinese officials announced a third death from the new coronavirus in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.
More than 2,340 people have since died, mostly in China. The number of cases exceeds 76,000 and the virus has reached more than 25 countries, with deaths in Italy, Iran and South Korea, forcing public officials to close schools and impose restrictions.
Disinformation and false theories about the novel coronavirus are considered a serious threat.
Several thousand online accounts - previously identified for airing Russian-backed messages on major events such as the war in Syria, the Yellow Vest protests in France and Chile's mass demonstrations - are posting "almost near identical" messages about the epidemic, according to a report prepared for the State Department's Global Engagement Center and seen by AFP.
The accounts - run by humans, not bots - post at similar times in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French and can be linked back to Russian proxies, or carry similar messages to Russian-backed outlets such as RT and Sputnik, it said.
Russian state-funded media started pushing anti-Western messages about the cause of the virus on Jan 20, with operators of the social media accounts beginning to post globally the following day, US officials say.
"In this case, we were able to see their full disinformation ecosystem in effect, including state TV, proxy web sites and thousands of false social media personas all pushing the same themes," said Special Envoy Lea Gabrielle, head of the Global Engagement Center, which is tasked with tracking and exposing propaganda and disinformation.
During many past news events, the accounts would post actively for up to 72 hours. But messages about the new coronavirus have been uploaded every day over the past month - a sign, US officials said, of Russia's investment in a story unlikely to disappear soon from the headlines.
"In the Russian doctrine of information confrontation, this is classic," said another official from the Global Engagement Center.
"The number of coronavirus cases globally hasn't reached its apex, so the Russian strategy is to very cheaply but very effectively take advantage of the information environment to sow discord between us and China, or for economic purposes."
Experts believe there are parallels with previous conspiracy theories traced to Moscow, including a KGB disinformation campaign in the 1980s that convinced many around the world that US scientists created the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
US intelligence has also said that Russia interfered through social media manipulation in the 2016 election and seeks to do so again in 2020. The Kremlin has denied the charges and President Donald Trump has scoffed at suggestions of Russian help.
Scientists believe the Covid-19 illness originated in late December in Wuhan at a market selling exotic animals for human consumption.
Bats are known carriers of this strain of the coronavirus, whose official name is SARS-CoV-2, but scientists think it spread to humans via another mammal species, possibly pangolins.
The United States believes the latest Russian disinformation campaign is making it harder to respond to the epidemic, with the public becoming suspicious of the Western response.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that if countries do not quickly mobilise to fight the reach of the virus, "this outbreak could go in any direction"
A State Department official said that Russian operatives appeared to have been given "carte blanche" to spread disinformation.
"Whether or not a particular theme is being directed at the highest levels doesn't matter. It's the fact that they have freelance ability to operate in this space to do whatever damage they can, which could have seismic implications." - AFP
7. Does the UN Want Us to Forget That the New Coronavirus Is From China?
China certainly wants the UN to make us forget. What is China's influence on the WHO?
Excerpt:
By naming this Chinese-born disease COVID-19 we may eventually forget that it came from China, but until China improves its practices and politics we must not forget that the next major pandemic may well come from there.
Does the UN Want Us to Forget That the New Coronavirus Is From China?
Naming diseases is important because mistakes among professionals and the public about what something is called can lead to bad outcomes. If someone misspells Ebola, say Eboma, it's unlikely that a mistake will be made, but mis-numbering H1N1, for example, might lead to the wrong treatment.
Popular names are important because they are not likely to be misinterpreted. But these can apparently lead to resentment. I think it's silly. After all does one feel hostile to the Congo because Ebola is named after one of its rivers, or Germany because Marburg virus is named after one of its towns, or Uganda because Zika is named after a forest there? And then there's Spanish flu.
In April 2009 an Israeli Minister of Health wanted to name swine flu, which was apparently offensive to both its Muslim and Jewish population, as "Mexican flu", where it might have originated. The Mexican Ambassador to Israel was upset and complained and the Israeli's relented, and it eventually became known as H1N1. Swine flu led governments to slaughter millions of pigs, many probably pointlessly, and for people to be irrational about eating pork, but at least the name was memorable.
COVID-19 is the name given the coronavirus, as a contraction of coronavirus disease-2019. The WHO
announced this last month at a press conference, but before the presser was even over "the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses released a paper proposing a name for the virus itself: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Two, or SARS-CoV-2 for short. This reflects research that suggests it is a close relative of the SARS virus. ... The WHO won't be using this virus name, in case the word 'SARS' causes extra panic."
Names can cause panic and can mislead, but is it so bad that the only thing anyone knows about your town is that it's associated with a disease? Do we think badly of Huntington or Hodgkin for the diseases baring their names?
To my mind, the real concern and the focus of anger should be the causes and denials which allow new diseases and newly drug-resistant strains to thrive. China's wet markets, lack of transparency and political decision-making is the world's largest problem in this regard.
By naming this Chinese-born disease COVID-19 we may eventually forget that it came from China, but until China improves its practices and politics we must not forget that the next major pandemic may well come from there.
This article by Roger Bate first appeared at AEIdeas.
Image: Hong Kong passengers are seen inside a bus as they leave the coronavirus-hit cruise ship Diamond Princess at Daikoku Pier Cruise Terminal in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, Japan February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
8. Millions of Chinese Firms Face Collapse If Banks Don't Act Fast
Can China counter this? Is this an economic time bomb about to go off?
Excerpts:
Despite accounting for 60% of the world's second-largest economy and 80% of jobs in China, private businesses have long struggled to tap funding to help them expand during good times and survive crises.
Support from China's banking giants in response to the outbreak has so far been piecemeal, mostly earmarked for directly combating the virus. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the nation's largest lender, has offered relief to 14,000 small businesses, or about 5% of its small business clients.
In an emailed response to questions from Bloomberg News, ICBC said it has allocated 5.4 billion yuan ($770 million) to help companies fight the virus. "We approve qualified small businesses' loan applications as soon as they arrive," the bank said.
As a group, Chinese banks had offered about 254 billion yuan in loans related to the containment effort as of Feb. 9, according to the banking industry association, with foreign lenders such as Citigroup Inc. also lowering rates. To put that into perspective, China's small businesses typically face interest payments on about 36.9 trillion yuan of loans typically every quarter.
Millions of Chinese Firms Face Collapse If Banks Don't Act Fast
A pedestrian wearing a protective mask walks along an overpass in Shanghai.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Brigita, a director at one of China's largest car dealers, is running out of options. Her firm's 100 outlets have been closed for about a month because of the coronavirus, cash reserves are dwindling and banks are reluctant to extend deadlines on billions of yuan in debt coming due over the next few months. There are also other creditors to think about.
"If we can't pay back the bonds, it will be very, very bad," said Brigita, whose company has 10,000 employees and sells mid- to high-end car brands such as BMWs. She asked that only her first name be used and that her firm not be identified because she isn't authorized to speak to the press.
With much of China's economy still idled as authorities try to contain an epidemic that has infected more than 75,000 people, millions of companies across the country are in a race against the clock to stay afloat.
A survey of small- and medium-sized Chinese companies conducted this month showed that a third of respondents only had enough cash to cover fixed expenses for a month, with another third running out within two months.
While China's government has cut interest rates, ordered banks to boost lending and loosened criteria for companies to restart operations, many of the nation's millions of private businesses say they've been unable to access the funding they need to meet upcoming deadlines for debt and salary payments. Without more financial support or a sudden rebound in China's economy, some may have to shut for good.
"If China fails to contain the virus in the first quarter, I expect a vast number of small businesses would go under," said Lv Changshun, an analyst at Beijing Zhonghe Yingtai Management Consultant Co.
Fighting for Survival
Most small- and medium-sized firms say they will run out of cash in months
Chinese Association of Small and Medium Enterprises
Survey is based on responses from 6,422 firms as of Feb. 14
Despite accounting for 60% of the world's second-largest economy and 80% of jobs in China, private businesses have long struggled to tap funding to help them expand during good times and survive crises.
Support from China's banking giants in response to the outbreak has so far been piecemeal, mostly earmarked for directly combating the virus. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the nation's largest lender, has offered relief to 14,000 small businesses, or about 5% of its small business clients.
In an emailed response to questions from Bloomberg News, ICBC said it has allocated 5.4 billion yuan (
$770 million) to help companies fight the virus. "We approve qualified small businesses' loan applications as soon as they arrive," the bank said.
As a group, Chinese banks had offered about 254 billion yuan in loans related to the containment effort as of Feb. 9, according to the banking industry association, with foreign lenders such as Citigroup Inc. also lowering rates. To put that into perspective, China's small businesses typically face interest payments on about 36.9 trillion yuan of loans typically every quarter.
Stringent requirements and shortlists restrict who can access special loans earmarked by the central bank for virus-related businesses, while local governments and banks have imposed caps on the amounts, according to people familiar with the matter. A debt banker at one of China's largest brokerages said his firm opened a fast lane to ease debt sales by businesses involved in the containment effort, with borrowers required to prove they will use at least 10% of the proceeds to fight the disease.
That's of little help to a car dealership. Brigita, whose firm owes money to dozens of banks, said she has so far only reached an agreement with a handful to extend payment deadlines by two months. For now, the company is still paying salaries.
Liquidity Squeeze
China's private sector bond issuance falls below maturities in February
Source: China Lianhe Credit Rating Co
Note: Data are as of Feb. 18.
Many of China's businesses were already grasping for lifelines before the virus hit, pummeled by a trade war and lending crackdown that sent economic growth to a three-decade low last year.
At most risk are the labor-intensive catering and restaurant industries, travel agencies, airlines, hotels and shopping malls, according to Lianhe Rating.
Yang, a property manager of a seven-story mall in Shanghai, says a tenant who runs a 150-room hotel that's usually busy has called asking for a month's rent waiver after business dried up. She expects the massage parlor that rents space in the mall is also struggling and is open to extending some help.
A deputy financing director at a small developer in central Anhui province said his firm is even being denied loans under existing credit lines. A drop in sales has hurt the company's credit profile and a dearth of new projects means there's no collateral to put up. Without access to credit, the business can survive for about four months, or maybe longer if some payments can be delayed, he said.
Banks are hardly any better off themselves. Many are under-capitalized and on the ropes after two years of record debt defaults. Rating firm S&P Global has estimated that a prolonged emergency could cause the banking system's bad loan ratio to more than triple to about 6.3%, amounting to an increase of 5.6 trillion yuan.
Wu Hai, owner of Mei KTV, a chain of 100 Karaoke bars across China, took to the nation's premier outlet of discontent, social media platform WeChat, to voice his despair.
KTV's bars have been closed by the government because of the virus, choking off its cash flow. The special loans from the authorities will be of little help and no bank will provide a loan without enough collateral and cash flow, he said on his official WeChat account earlier this month.
Wu couldn't be reached for a direct comment, but on WeChat he gave himself two months before he has to shutter his business.
- With assistance by Evelyn Yu, Ken Wang, Zheng Li, Xize Kang, Jun Luo, Emma Dong, and Yinan Zhao
9. Inside The Wall Street Journal, Tensions Rise Over 'Sick Man' China Headline
This is a fundamental issue with China. It cannot take criticism. It must be considered a threat to the Chinese Communist Party. Is that how a global power should operate? To paraphrase that great national security practitioner, Spiderman: "With great power, comes great criticism." If you want to play with the big boys you better be able to handle the public and political attacks. Perhaps the CCP cannot play in this environment. Of course one of the things we could do is to "flood the zone" with articles in multiple media outlets taking about the "sick man" and using other derogatory comments about the CCP. We can imagine the response from the party but I wonder what would be the response from the Chinese people?
But we (and especially our 4th Estate) should not kowtow to Chinese demands that we not criticize it.
Inside The Wall Street Journal, Tensions Rise Over 'Sick Man' China Headline
After China announced the expulsion of three of the paper's journalists, 53 reporters and editors at The Journal asked top executives to consider changing the headline and apologizing.
An internal debate over an op-ed headline resurfaced tensions between The Wall Street Journal's news and opinion sides.Credit...John Wisniewski
More than four dozen journalists at The Wall Street Journal challenged their bosses and criticized the newspaper's opinion side in a letter that was sent to top executives on Thursday, the day after China announced that it would expel three Journal staff members in retaliation for a headline that offended the country's leaders.
In all, 53 reporters and editors signed the letter. They criticized the newspaper's response to the fallout from the headline,
"China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia," that went with a Feb. 3 opinion essay by Walter Russell Mead, a Journal columnist, on economic repercussions of the coronavirus outbreak.
The letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times, urged the newspaper's leaders "to consider correcting the headline and apologizing to our readers, sources, colleagues and anyone else who was offended by it."
Describing the headline as "derogatory," the letter was sent on Thursday from the email account of the China bureau chief, Jonathan Cheng, to William Lewis, the chief executive of Dow Jones and the newspaper's publisher, and Robert Thomson, the chief executive of News Corp, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled parent company of Dow Jones.
Mr. Cheng, who did not sign the letter, wrote in a separate note that he was passing the letter along to the two executives, adding that he believed their "proper handling of this matter is essential to the future of our presence in China."
The in-house criticism brought to the surface longstanding tensions at The Journal between the reporters and editors who cover the news and the opinion journalists who work under the longtime editorial page editor, Paul A. Gigot. As at other major newspapers, including The Times and The Washington Post, the news side and the opinion department are run separately.
Mr. Gigot oversees the unsigned editorials that represent the newspaper's institutional voice, the op-ed columns like the one by Mr. Mead and the criticism in the arts and culture sections. He also hosts a program on Mr. Murdoch's network, the Fox News Channel.
Foreign news media organizations in China tread a difficult path. The nation's growing economic and political clout make it an essential story. Chinese officials covet attention from the global stage, and images of foreign reporters jotting down their comments at news conferences are a staple of state-controlled evening news shows.
The Chinese government uses visas for foreign journalists as leverage, doling out and retracting credentials as a way to influence news outlets. Foreign news media organizations face pressure to steer clear of sensitive topics like the wealth and political pull of the families of the country's leaders.
Like many other international news organizations, The Times among them, The Journal is blocked online in China, and the "Sick Man" headline was brought to wide attention there by state-controlled media.
The Coronavirus Outbreak
What do you need to know? Start here.
Updated Feb. 10, 2020
What is a Coronavirus? It is a novel virus named for the crown-like spikes that protrude from its surface. The coronavirus can infect both animals and people, and can cause a range of respiratory illnesses from the common cold to more dangerous conditions like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.
How contagious is the virus? According to preliminary research, it seems moderately infectious, similar to SARS, and is possibly transmitted through the air. Scientists have estimated that each infected person could spread it to somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 people without effective containment measures.
Where has the virus spread? The virus originated in Wuhan, China, and has sickened tens of thousands of people in China and at least two dozen other countries.
How worried should I be? While the virus is a serious public health concern, the risk to most people outside China remains very low, and seasonal flu is a more immediate threat.
Who is working to contain the virus? World Health Organization officials have praised China's aggressive response to the virus by closing transportation, schools and markets. This week, a team of experts from the W.H.O. arrived in Beijing to offer assistance.
What if I'm traveling? The United States and Australia are temporarily denying entry to noncitizens who recently traveled to China and several airlines have canceled flights.
How do I keep myself and others safe? Washing your hands frequently is the most important thing you can do, along with staying at home when you're sick.
China was sometimes described as the "sick man of Asia" at the end of the 1800s, in "the depths of what we now call China's 'Century of Humiliation,'" said Stephen R. Platt, a historian of modern China at the University of Massachusetts. The empire had then lost a series of wars and had feared being divvied up by imperial powers.
"Nobody in their right mind would confuse China today with China at the end of the 19th century," Mr. Platt said. "I think that's where the insult lies, this hearkening back to this terrible period and somehow implying that it's all the same."
On Wednesday, Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a transcript provided by the Chinese government that Chinese officials "demanded that The Wall Street Journal recognize the seriousness of the error, openly and formally apologize, and investigate and punish those responsible, while retaining the need to take further measures against the newspaper."
The statement added that "the Chinese people do not welcome media that publish racist statements and smear China with malicious attacks."
The Journal has not made a formal apology. The closest it came was when Mr. Lewis, the publisher, said in a statement on Wednesday that the headline "clearly caused upset and concern amongst the Chinese people, which we regret."
Susan L. Shirk, the chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego, said that there was reason for the newspaper to refrain from making an apology now that the Chinese government had demanded one.
"The Chinese government has been coercive in its demands for apologies from all sorts of international groups on issues that are essentially domestic political issues," Ms. Shirk, a deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, said. "This has the effect of interfering in freedom of expression in our own countries."
The majority of the reporters and editors who signed the letter are based in the newspaper's China and Hong Kong bureaus.
They included the three journalists whom China ordered to leave the country on Wednesday: Josh Chin, the deputy bureau chief in Beijing and an American citizen; Chao Deng, a reporter, who is also an American; and Philip Wen, a correspondent and Australian citizen who
reported on an Australian investigation of a cousin of President Xi Jinping of China as part of an inquiry into organized crime. The Chinese government gave the journalists until Monday to leave the country.
The letter argued that "the public outrage" over the headline in China "was genuine" and said the "Sick Man" headline should be changed online.
"We are deeply concerned that failure to take such action within the next few days will not only inflict further damage on our China bureau's operations and morale in the short term," the letter said, "but also cause lasting damage to our brand and ability to sustain our unrivaled coverage of one of the world's most important stories."
The letter also noted that people at The Journal had raised concerns about the "Sick Man" headline before China announced that it would revoke the journalists' visas and order them out of the country. It also questioned whether the headline was "distasteful," given the coronavirus outbreak.
A Dow Jones spokeswoman confirmed that the executives had received the letter and said in a statement, "We understand the extreme challenges our employees and their families are facing in China." The company added that it "will continue to push" to have the visas of its three journalists reinstated.
Mr. Cheng, the China bureau chief, and more than a dozen others who signed the letter did not respond to requests for comment.
In addition to criticizing the headline, the letter took issue with an unsigned editorial published by the newspaper on Wednesday, after China's announcement that the journalists would be expelled.
In the punchy style the editorial page is known for, it got right to the point: "President Xi Jinping says China deserves to be treated as a great power, but on Wednesday his country expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters over a headline. Yes, a headline. Or at least that was the official justification." The editorial went on to argue that the Chinese government had revoked the reporters' credentials to divert attention from its "management of the coronavirus scourge."
The editorial acknowledged criticism of the headline. "Many people - including some of our own staff and their relatives - view it as racist," it said. But it defended the phrasing, saying it echoed a description familiar to American readers that cast the late Ottoman Empire as the "sick old man of Europe."
Mr. Mead, the writer of the op-ed, suggested in a Twitter post on Feb. 8 that he was opposed to the headline, writing, "Argue with the writer about the article content, with the editors about the headlines." He declined to comment for this article.
In defense of the headline, The Journal and its supporters have pointed to the right to free speech and the newspaper's separation of its news and opinion departments. The writers of the letter said the main issue was "the mistaken choice of a headline that was deeply offensive to many people, not just in China."
The Washington Post first reported on the internal debate at The Journal.
China's announcement that it would expel the three journalists occurred one day after the
Trump administration designated five major Chinese news organizations
as foreign government functionaries, rather than journalistic entities, a move that drew the ire of the Chinese government.
The expulsions, the first since 1998, according to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, were condemned by the United States secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.
Journal leaders met with newsroom employees to discuss the headline before China condemned it. In one meeting, Matt Murray, the editor in chief, seemed to agree with the complaints, but said there was not much he could do about the headline because of the strict separation of the news and opinion sides. In a second meeting, journalists pushed Mr. Lewis, the publisher, to change the headline, to no avail.
The letter offered several examples of Journal reporters who said they were impeded while trying to do their jobs. A researcher interviewing people on the streets of Beijing was surrounded by a crowd and called "traitor," the letter said; and a "senior doctor" in the Wuhan Province, where coronavirus seems to have originated, retracted an interview with the newspaper and told others not to speak with its reporters.
One of the journalists who signed the letter was Chun Han Wong, a Journal correspondent whose press credentials were not renewed by the Chinese government last year. Mr. Wong shared a byline with Mr. Wen on the article that described the legal scrutiny of the Chinese president's cousin.
10. Sorority girl reveals how she became an CIA counterterrorism operative
Daily Mail · by Lauren Edmonds For Dailymail.com · February 23, 2020
A California sorority girl has revealed in a new book how she became a CIA agent, foiled al-Qaeda plots around the world after 9/11, and interviewed captured terrorists in the Middle East.
Tracy Walder writes in her memoir, 'The Unexpected Spy: From CIA to The FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists',. that when she first arrived at the University of Southern California in 1996, she pursued the normal undergraduate experience by rushing Delta Gamma and easily 'blended into the crowd' of other young co-eds.
She thrived in university Greek life, where she was elected vice president of social standards, partied with close friends and would have decorated her room completely in pink if not for her roommate's protests.
Walder, whose a news-junkie and a lover of history, initially planned to become a school teacher until she met CIA recruiter at a jobs fair during her junior year.
Tracy Walder (pictured) temporarily left behind her dreams of becoming a teacher to join the CIA - and later the FBI - where she would become an expert in Al Qaeda and confronting captured terrorist associates in the Middle East
At the time, Walder was dressed in a pink top, flip flops and was pushing along a Huffy bike when the recruiter asked her the life-changing question,
New York Post reports.
'Do you want to be in the CIA?' he asked, after Walder handed him a résumé.
'Yes, I do,' she said.
Walder recalls the surprising moment in the upcoming memoir, which is co-authored by Jessive Anya Blau.
She goes on to detail how CIA would put her through series of intense interviews, including two lie-detector tests. The agency also interviewed four of her sorority sisters, before they ultimately welcomed her into the ranks of the agency's elite.
At just 21-years-old, she began her career with the CIA in 2000. In time, Walder become an expert on al Qaeda, interviewed terrorist associates in the Middle East and was well-versed in chemical weapons.
Walder (right), pictured with two of her Delta Gamma sorority sisters, attended the University of Southern California and soon became apart of the student Greek culture
Despite becoming entrenched in the world of terrorist networks at the CIA, Walder wrote that she had feared Osama bin Laden for several years after watching a TV interview with him in 1997.
Those fears suddenly became tangible after al-Qaeda's attach on 9/11, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
Walder said she remembers watching live footage of American Airlines Flight 77 tragically crashing into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
She wrote: 'The plane might as well have crashed into the south side of my body. The pain, the guilt, the sense that my failures were resulting in lives lost ... erased all other thoughts.'
The 9/11 attacks pushed the CIA to step up the country's frontlines, prompting them to assign Walder to an elite counterterrorism unit solely created to stop al-Qaeda.
'I was ready to even the score,' she wrote.
Walder traveled the world in her efforts to foil al-Qaeda's plans, flitting from Europe to the Middle East and Africa.
She describes dealing with a myriad of challenges, including exhaustion, homesickness and sexism at the hands of men who dubbed her 'Malibu Barbie'.
Family holidays with her parents in Los Angeles were pushed to the side and Walder worked a rigorous seven-day week.
After the 9/11 attacks in the United States, Walder (pictuerd) joined an elite counterterrorism unit that sent her to Europe, the Middle East and Africa to stop al Qaeda efforts
However, Walder said the White House was only interested in gaining information that connected al-Qaeda to former Iranian President Saddam Hussein.
Unfortunately, there was none.
'The whole thing felt like a nutty fun-house game,' Walder wrote.
'No matter what we reported to the administration, they turned it around, turned it inside out, and spat it back out with some non-truth.'
Meanwhile, she was beginning to have thoughts of settling down and questioned if she could have a family as a spy.
Impulsively, Walder applied for a position at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and got in.
While in the FBI, Walder made a name for herself by unveiling a Chinese husband-and-wife team who were sending military secrets to China.
Operatives Chi and Rebecca Mak had lived in Los Angeles since the 1970s.
'The Unexpected Spy: From CIA to The FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists' will be released on February 25
Chi worked for Power Paragon, a company that developed products for the U.S. Navy, while Walder conducted her investigation.
The couple usually kept to themselves and ate their meals on newspapers.
It was Walder's job to sift through their garbage for clues.
Within the Mak's trash, Walder, with the help of a Chinese translator, would find an eye-opening piece of information.
Between the greasy pages of discarded newspaper, they found a 'tasking list [that] clearly identified classified materials that Mak was supposed to supply the Chinese government.'
Chi had been stealing U.S. secrets for decades.
While Walder excelled at her work, her time at the FBI proved to be a bad fit and described the agency as a boys' club.
'I was The Girl,' she wrote, saying that she experienced bullying and hazing from sexist training officers.
In one incident, she was disciplined for wearing a suit that was deemed 'distracting.'
Walder spent 15 months with the FBI and notes that 'currently, there are a dozen women who have filed a complaint against the[m] with the Equal Employment Commission.'
In the following years, she's since given up her government job and has relocated Dallas, Texas, where she works as a history teacher at an all-girls school.
Fighting terrorism was what originally inspired her, but now she's taken on a new mission of encouraging girls to pursue intelligence roles and deconstruct the agency's culture.
11. Column: Trump and the Taliban have one goal in common: getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan
On Saturday, after 19 years of war, the United States and the Taliban began what both sides delicately called a seven-day
"reduction of violence" in Afghanistan, a trial attempt at a partial truce. If the experiment works, they have set Feb. 29 for a ceremony to sign an agreement that would launch broader peace negotiations.
The Taliban has a good reason to keep its promise to pause offensive operations for a week: Under the proposed deal, the U.S. will withdraw about one-fourth of its roughly 12,000 troops from Afghanistan by this summer. It's one goal the Taliban shares with President Trump, who wants to run for reelection claiming he is ending the United States' longest war.
But the larger peace process that is supposed to follow will be far more difficult - and the Taliban is not the only complicating factor.
There's also Trump's impatience and his penchant for disrupting slow-moving diplomatic efforts at whim.
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As early as 2012, Trump declared the U.S. war in Afghanistan "a complete waste" and said it was time to pull out. If something goes wrong in the Afghan peace process - and something surely will - will he check his impulse to declare victory and leave?
The plan negotiated by Trump's special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, has plenty of
moving parts. Its text hasn't been released, but officials and others say it is almost identical to a draft deal Khalilzad reached in September.
According to their accounts, the deal calls for the United States to trim its troop presence from about 12,000 to 8,600 by July - and later, if all goes well, to zero. Or as the Taliban put it in a statement Friday, the deal would lead to "the withdrawal of all foreign forces ... so that our people can live a peaceful and prosperous life under the shade of an Islamic system."
The Taliban must agree not to harbor Islamic State, Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups that seek to attack the West. The plan even provides for U.S. forces and the Taliban to cooperate on counterterrorism.
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Peace negotiations among all Afghan factions are supposed to begin within 10 days after the plan is signed. But the government in Kabul led by President Ashraf Ghani is mired in an internal power struggle and could prove incapable of acting as an effective player.
Those talks could lead to a new constitution and give the Taliban a major role in a future Afghan government.
Keeping that complex process on track will require Washington to stay involved in Afghanistan with both diplomatic muscle and continued financial aid - which means Congress will have to buy in.
That hasn't happened. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and other Republican hawks are already grumbling about trusting the Taliban and the folly, in their view, of reducing troops below 8,600.
One question is practical: U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to destroy Al Qaeda, which launched the 9/11 attacks from its sanctuary there, and to push the Taliban out of power. Can U.S. counterterrorism needs be met without troops in Afghanistan?
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who helped run the war under two presidents, says the answer is yes.
"The threat is not what it was in 2001. Al Qaeda is much diminished," he told me. "And we're much better at counterterrorism than we were back when we were simply launching cruise missiles into the desert."
Other questions could be difficult in a different way.
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Most Americans have concluded that the U.S. war in Afghanistan turned into a tragic, expensive failure once it expanded beyond unseating Al Qaeda. The explicit U.S. recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political force makes that verdict official.
And allowing the Taliban to win a share of power - or potentially dominate the government in Kabul - will diminish whatever hope remains of helping Afghanistan become a recognizable democracy.
Americans once congratulated themselves for freeing Afghanistan's women from Islamic extremism. Taliban leaders have said they intend to protect women's rights to education and employment, but their track record - closing schools, barring women from public life, and worse - inspires little confidence.
Many, including Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, are pessimistic.
"We encouraged women to step forward," Crocker told me. "Now it appears they're expendable."
Trump has disrupted his own diplomacy more than once. When the U.S. and Taliban reached a tentative deal last September, Trump impulsively decided that he wanted
Taliban leaders to fly to Camp David for a splashy ceremony three days before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
The Taliban, which isn't big on photo ops, refused. Republicans in Congress also denounced the idea of honoring the leaders of a guerrilla force who had killed 1,800 Americans by bringing them to the presidential retreat in Maryland. Trump announced that he was canceling the deal entirely, blamed the Taliban for an attack that killed a U.S. serviceman in Kabul, and pronounced the peace talks "dead."
Khalilzad needed almost six months to bring the deal back to life.
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If the Feb. 29 deal holds, Trump will claim credit for cutting U.S. troops in Afghanistan down to 8,600 - the same number deployed when President Obama left office.
But what Trump really wants is to announce -in an election year, no less - that those troops are on their way home, too.
Given the complexities of Afghan politics, that's probably impossible. Diplomats warn that putting pressure on the Afghans to conclude a peace agreement could scuttle the process.
If Trump wants to withdraw troops as part of a comprehensive deal - one that avoids chaos, meets U.S. counterterrorism needs and gives Afghanistan a chance at peace - he'll need to exercise unwonted self-restraint.
After three years as president, he doesn't have many diplomatic achievements to his name. He's staged disruptive events, including summit meetings with Kim Jong Un, trade wars and withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran, but produced few tangible accomplishments.
Launching a peace process for Afghanistan, if it succeeds, could be his most substantive achievement - but only if he gets out of his own way.
12. Schumer raises security concerns on TSA's use of TikTok app
Hmmm... I am sure there are ways to use TiKTok without having it on government servers. To give it the benefit of the doubt It seems to me TSA is trying to use the service to communicate with the general public a large part of which seems to use TikTok.
Excerpts:
Over the last few months, the agency has posted a number of videos on TikTok - some of which have been re-shared on other social media platforms like Twitter and amassed hundreds of thousands of views.
Some of the videos are musical parodies about what can and can't be brought on an aircraft, while others advertise services like TSA's expedited screening program known as PreCheck. In one of the videos, a TSA spokeswoman with Nutella spread on her face is showing different containers of the chocolate-hazelnut spread to detail which one can be brought in carry-on luggage.
A spokesperson for the TSA did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Schumer raises security concerns on TSA's use of TikTok app
WASHINGTON - The Senate's top Democrat is raising questions about the Transportation Security Administration's use of the China-owned video app TikTok, citing potential national security concerns and a ban by the Department of Homeland Security.
Sen. Chuck Schumer raised the concerns in a letter Saturday to TSA Administrator David Pekoske, months after news reports that the U.S. government launched a national security review of the app, which is popular with millions of U.S. teens and young adults.
In his letter, Schumer said national security experts have raised concerns about TikTok's collection and handling of user data and personal information, locations and other content. He also noted in the letter that Chinese laws compel companies to cooperate with China's government and intelligence collection.
The New York Democrat also pointed to a Department of Homeland Security policy that prohibits TikTok on department-issued cellphones.
"Given the widely reported threats, the already-in-place agency bans, and the existing concerns posed by TikTok, the feds cannot continue to allow the TSA's use of the platform to fly," Schumer said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Over the last few months, the agency has posted a number of videos on TikTok - some of which have been re-shared on other social media platforms like Twitter and amassed hundreds of thousands of views.
Some of the videos are musical parodies about what can and can't be brought on an aircraft, while others advertise services like TSA's expedited screening program known as PreCheck. In one of the videos, a TSA spokeswoman with Nutella spread on her face is showing different containers of the chocolate-hazelnut spread to detail which one can be brought in carry-on luggage.
A spokesperson for the TSA did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
13. Digital Edits, a Paid Army: Bloomberg Is 'Destroying Norms' on Social Media
We can do large scale influence operations for political candidates. Why cannot we not conduct them to support US national interests and national security objectives?
Digital Edits, a Paid Army: Bloomberg Is 'Destroying Norms' on Social Media
His campaign is testing the boundaries of what platforms like Twitter and Facebook allow in politics. They're having trouble coming up with an answer.
Michael R. Bloomberg at the Democratic debate last week. A campaign video, extending a pause and adding crickets, made it appear that he had left his rivals speechless. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO - In the first few months of his presidential campaign, Michael R. Bloomberg has been as aggressive on social media as President Trump was four years ago. But with a lot more money to spend.
Through his money and his willingness to experiment, the billionaire former mayor of New York has poked holes in the already slapdash rules for political campaigns on social media. His digitally savvy campaign for the Democratic nomination has shown that if a candidate is willing to push against the boundaries of what social media companies will and won't allow, the companies won't be quick to push back.
"The Bloomberg campaign is destroying norms that we will never get back," said Emerson Brooking, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies disinformation. The campaign, he said, has "revealed the vulnerabilities that still exist in our social media platforms even after major reforms."
On Friday, Twitter announced that it
was suspending 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts for violating its
policies on "platform manipulation and spam." The accounts were part of a coordinated effort by people paid by the Bloomberg campaign to post tweets in his favor.
Twitter's rules state, in part, "You can't artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts," including "coordinating with or compensating others" to tweet a certain message.
In response to Twitter's move, the Bloomberg campaign issued a statement on Friday evening. "We ask that all of our deputy field organizers identify themselves as working on behalf of the Mike Bloomberg 2020 campaign on their social media accounts," it said. The statement added that the tweets shared by its staff and volunteers with their networks went through
Outvote, a voter engagement app, and were "not intended to mislead anyone."
Social media companies have been under pressure since the 2016 presidential election. Over the last year or so, they have publicized a stream of new rules aimed at disinformation and manipulation. Facebook, Google and Twitter have created teams that look for and remove disinformation. They have started
working with fact checkers to distinguish and label false content. And they have created
policies explaining what they will allow in political advertisements.
Most social media companies have special rules that place elected officials and political candidates in a protected category of speech. Politicians are allowed much more flexibility to say whatever they want online. But the companies have had a hard time defining what is a political statement and what crosses the line into deception.
When Mr. Trump posted an
altered video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Facebook and Twitter refused to take the video down. A
30-second video ad on Facebook in October falsely accused former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. of blackmailing Ukrainian officials to stop an investigation of his son.
Mr. Bloomberg, a latecomer to the race, has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into it. As the owner of Bloomberg L.P., he has the money and the resources to vastly outspend his rivals.
Mr. Bloomberg has reassigned his employees and recruited other workers from Silicon Valley with salaries nearly double what other campaigns have offered their staffs. The
roughly $400 million he has spent has made him omnipresent in ads across Facebook and Instagram, as well as on more traditional forms of media such as television and radio.
His campaign's sophisticated understanding of how to generate online buzz has shown how uneven social media's new political speech rules can be.
Mr. Bloomberg's lackluster performance in the Las Vegas debate - three days before Saturday's Democratic caucuses in Nevada - was
startling even to his supporters. But soon after, his campaign's digital team edited the debate into digestible bites on social media that made Mr. Bloomberg appear as though he had done better. On Thursday morning, a video was posted to his Twitter account.
"I'm the only one here, I think, that's ever started a business. Is that fair?" Mr. Bloomberg said
in the clip, showing him up on the debate stage. The video then cut to reactions from the other candidates, who appeared speechless. Crickets chirped in the background as the silence stretched on for 20 seconds.
In reality, Mr. Bloomberg had
paused for about a second before moving on.
"It's tongue in cheek," Galia Slayen, a Bloomberg campaign spokeswoman, said of the video, which was viewed nearly two million times within hours. "There were obviously no crickets on the stage."
Was the video against the rules?
Referring to new
guidance on manipulated videos, Twitter said it would most likely label the video as misleading. That is, it would if the rule, which goes into effect in March, were already in effect. The company said it would not label Mr. Bloomberg's video retroactively.
Facebook, which owns Instagram, said it would not remove the video. The company has recently altered its
policy on manipulated media to state that Facebook will remove videos that have been edited "in ways that aren't apparent to an average person and would likely mislead someone into thinking that a subject of the video said words that they did not actually say."
The companies are less certain of how they will handle Mr. Bloomberg's hiring of 500 "deputy digital organizers" to recruit and train their friends. (All 500 haven't been hired yet.) His campaign has said it is paying people to use their own social media accounts to publish content of their choosing to mobilize voters for Mr. Bloomberg.
"We are meeting voters everywhere on any platform that they consume their news. One of the most effective ways of reaching voters is by activating their friends and network to encourage them to support Mike for president," said Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the Bloomberg campaign.
The Bloomberg team said the people they hired were ordinary Americans, and would not include so-called social media influencers, or individuals with large social media followings. The campaign said the digital organizers would not add disclosures to every post, but they would be directed to clearly identify in their social media profiles that they were affiliated with the Bloomberg campaign.
"We recommend campaign employees make the relationship clear on their accounts," said Liz Bourgeois, a spokeswoman for Facebook. But if Mr. Bloomberg's employees do not make clear on their accounts that the campaign paid them, Facebook has no easy way to identify them, she said.
Facebook has also made it clear that influencers who post content in support of Mr. Bloomberg's campaign must clearly label themselves as being sponsored. The company also is exploring ways in which it can identify and catalog sponsored political content.
Google, which owns YouTube, did not respond to a request for comment on how it plans to handle paid influencers as well as digital organizers working for the Bloomberg campaign.
Mr. Brooking and other social media experts said they believed that until the companies saw themselves as media organizations - not neutral internet platforms - they would continue to struggle with how to police their platforms.
"We would not tolerate a falsified, unattributed political ad on CNN. We would not tolerate a paid campaign staffer masquerading as an objective analyst on NBC," Mr. Brooking said. "We should not tolerate these behaviors on Twitter and Facebook today."
Sheera Frenkel reported from San Francisco, and Davey Alba from New York.
14. AI discovers antibiotic that kills even highly resistant bacteria
Excerpt:
Don't expect a prescription for halicin any time soon. MIT successfully used the medicine to eradicate A. baumanii (a common infection for US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq) in mice, but hasn't used it in human trials. This could be just the start of a much larger trend, mind you. The scientists have already used their model to screen over 100 million molecules in another database, finding 23 candidates. They also hope to design antibiotics from scratch and modify existing drugs to increase their effectiveness or reduce their unintended side effects. This is far from guaranteed to finish off "superbugs." If it takes out even some of them, though, it could save many lives.
AI discovers antibiotic that kills even highly resistant bacteria
MIT researchers used a machine-learning algorithm to identify a drug called halicin that kills many strains of bacteria. Halicin (top row) prevented the development of antibiotic resistance in E. coli, while ciprofloxacin (bottom row) did not.
Courtesy of the Collins Lab at MIT
The
use of AI to discover medicine appears to be paying off. MIT scientists have
revealed that their AI discovered an antibiotic compound, halicin (named after
2001's HAL 9000), that can not only kill many forms of
resistant bacteria but do so in a novel way. Where many antibiotics are slight spins on existing medicine, halicin wipes out bacteria by wrecking their ability to maintain the electrochemical gradient necessary to produce energy-storing molecules. That's difficult for bacteria to withstand --
E. coli didn't develop any resistance in 30 days where it fought off the more conventional antibiotic cipofloxacin within three days.
The team succeeded by developing a system that can find molecular structures with desired traits (say, killing bacteria) more effectively than past systems. Unlike previous methods, the neural networks learn representations of molecules automatically, mapping them into continuous vectors that help predict their behavior. Once ready, the researchers trained their AI on 2,500 molecules that included both 1,700 established drugs and 800 natural products. When tasked with looking at a library of 6,000 compounds, the AI found that halicin would be highly effective.
Don't expect a prescription for halicin any time soon. MIT successfully used the medicine to eradicate
A. baumanii (a common infection for US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq) in mice, but hasn't used it in human trials. This could be just the start of a much larger trend, mind you. The scientists have already used their model to screen over 100 million molecules in another database, finding 23 candidates. They also hope to design antibiotics from scratch and modify existing drugs to increase their effectiveness or reduce their unintended side effects. This is far from guaranteed to finish off "superbugs." If it takes out even some of them, though, it could save many lives.
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15. TWE Remembers: George Kennan and the Long Telegram
Who is our George Kennan today?
Excerpt:
Kennan, however, was never enamored with how his intellectual handiwork was implemented. He believed that the Truman administration gave containment a more belligerent and militaristic twist than he had intended. He found himself increasingly marginalized within the State Department, and he left the Foreign Service in 1950. He spent most of the rest of his life at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton writing elegantly though critically about U.S. foreign policy. He died in 2005 at the age of 101. He had provided the defining term of his era. But he always thought he was out of place, describing himself as a "guest of one's time and not a member of its household."
TWE Remembers: George Kennan and the Long Telegram
Foreign service officers posted in embassies and consulates around the world send cables to Washington every day. Much of what they write is forgotten even before it is read at the State Department. A few cables gain notoriety when
they are leaked to the public. Almost none help change the course of history. But the cable that
George F. Kennan sent to his State Department superiors from Moscow on February 22, 1946 did just that.
Hopes in the United States were high during the winter of 1945-46. World War II had ended with the defeat of Japan and Nazi Germany. Many Americans expected that Washington would build on the relationship with its wartime ally, the Soviet Union. They shared the conclusion that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower reached visiting Moscow in 1945: "
Nothing guides Russian policy so much as a desire for friendship with the United States." But by late fall 1945 the alliance began to unravel as Moscow pushed to carve out a sphere of influence in the Balkans, a prelude to what would become Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Then on February 9, 1946, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
gave a fiery speech in which he spoke of the wartime alliance as a thing of the past and called for the Soviet Union to undertake a series of five-year plans aimed at a rapid military-industrial buildup.
Coming as it did just six months after World War II ended, Stalin's speech alarmed U.S. officials. The State Department turned to Kennan, its foremost Soviet expert and chargé d'affaires at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, for an explanation. The then-forty-two-year-old Kennan, a career foreign service officer, wired back a 5,000-word reply-
the Long Telegram.
Kennan argued that U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union rested on an erroneous assumption: that Washington could influence Soviet behavior by offering incentives to encourage better behavior. To the contrary, powerful and irresistible internal dynamics drove Moscow's behavior. The Soviets were:
committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent
modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure.
As a result, only the threat of force could limit or alter Soviet ambitions.
Kennan published a revised version of the Long Telegram a year later in
Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym "X." (He was still a State Department employee, and it was deemed unwise that he should write under his own name.) For all the revisions,
the critical point remained the same:
the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.
Kennan's idea that the United States should seek to contain rather than appease or roll back the Soviet Union got noticed. (The words "contain" and "containment" did not appear in the Long Telegram.) As the official history of the Council of Foreign Relations, the publisher of
Foreign Affairs, later
summarized it:
Perhaps no single essay of the twentieth century can match the X article for its impact upon the intellectual curiosity of a confused nation, upon the mindset of equally confused policymakers and scholars, upon national policy in at least seven presidential administrations to come.* It ran only 17 pages; its tone was scholarly, elegant but practical; only three sentences used the magic word that came to define American policy for half a century.
The
doctrine of containment would guide U.S. foreign policy for the next four decades. When the Soviet Union landed on the ash heap of history in 1991, foreign policy scholars across the ideological spectrum vied to win the Kennan sweepstakes and name the foreign policy era that succeeded containment. So far no one has claimed the crown.
Kennan, however, was never enamored with how his intellectual handiwork was implemented. He believed that the Truman administration gave containment a more belligerent and militaristic twist than he had intended. He found himself increasingly marginalized within the State Department, and he left the Foreign Service in 1950. He spent most of the rest of his life at the
Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton writing elegantly though critically about U.S. foreign policy. He died in 2005 at the age of 101. He had provided the defining term of his era. But he always thought he was out of place, describing himself as a "
guest of one's time and not a member of its household."
16. "A New Postmodern Condition": Why Disinformation Has Become So Effective
Excerpt:
Can all of this really be the cause of so much confusion and turmoil in the world? Can all of these thoughts, ideas, and phenomena - storytelling as reality, volatility and ambivalence toward established political parties and ideologies, science and reason becoming unimportant, identity being in permanent deferral, hypocrisy becoming the norm, language becoming meaningless, reality being a movie, history becoming useless, institutions unbecoming themselves, and truth becoming worthless - can all of these thoughts really matter? Yes, because the history of the world is indeed a history of thoughts, shaped by ideas before it is shaped by events.[xxviii] The thoughts that motivated our founders are the thoughts that manufactured this great country, and with this in mind, strategists must be vigilant of the thoughts that can similarly bring destruction to it. These thoughts and attitudes are increasingly becoming adopted by the growing population of postmodern thinkers in the US. Disinformation works likes supply and demand. The more postmodernists consume it, the more our adversaries will produce it. The disinformation may appear random, but shotguns have killed more people than sniper rifles, and strategists should become mindful of all of these dynamics of the information environment, because they will be responsible for developing strategies to defend against it. To quote a founding father, "these are the times that try men's souls." This is all so perplexing, and it makes so many just want to close their eyes and wait until it's over. Strategists cannot and this ambivalence must be avoided at all costs. As a congressman recently remarked, "In the United States, the truth matters. If not, no Constitution can protect us. If not, we are lost." My biggest fear is that while we may not yet be lost, we surely are in the processing of losing.
"A New Postmodern Condition": Why Disinformation Has Become So Effective
Why are conspiracies so prevalent? Why are facts and truth so elusive to so many today? Why are people so susceptible to disinformation? Why is the current political climate so peculiar, turbulent, and divided? It is clear that there is a relationship between the disinformation that people ingest and the vitriol that some seem to spit out. These puzzling circumstances may be the result of a growing trend of postmodern thought in the United States and the world.[i] Unsurprisingly, recent reports indicate that Russia is currently interfering in the 2020 election. Though difficult to estimate, and since the country has done virtually nothing to combat it, the Russians consider their past interferences highly successful, if at nothing more than just sowing the seeds of discontent and chaos in US domestic politics. That said, the questions still remains: why is disinformation so effective on the US population? The rise in effectiveness of Russian disinformation is directly related to the increase in postmodern thinkers amongst the US population, because postmodern thinkers are easy to manipulate. To be clear, Postmodernism is not some form of trendy, divergent thinking, but rather a serious intellectual, conceptual, cultural, psychological and philosophical engagement which challenges humanity's engagement with itself and the world.[ii] Just as the enlightenment brought us modern thought, reason and science, postmodern thought attempts to obliterate it. It is in the national interest, for strategists to pay close attention because they will be responsible for developing strategies to survive in a postmodern strategic context. What follows is an attempted explanation of what may be the cause of many issues and phenomena in our political climate today.
The term 'postmodernism' often provokes strong resistance, including deep suspicion and outright hostility, especially by those who champion modern thought and reason as the primary way to obtain truth and knowledge.[iii] Modern thought brought civilization the scientific and industrial revolutions, healthcare and medicine, computers and satellite technology - the world would not be the same were it not for the result of modern thought. However, Postmodernism directly challenges this, seeking not to judge modernity by its own criteria but rather to deconstruct it entirely.[iv] In the past, postmodern thought was thought to emerge exclusively from academic institutions, because those institutions offered alternative and "informed" views of the world. However, technology's advancements have created endless space for postmodern thought to luxuriate.[v] As well, while the political left's postmodern inclination often originates from the academic institutions, the political right's postmodern inclination originates from the internet, where a multitude of divergent perspectives thrive freely. Frustratingly, there are probably as many forms of postmodernism as there are postmodernists.[vi]
Not everyone who exercises postmodern thought is a postmodernist, and many that do so, do it unconsciously. Like an unsuspecting beach-goer, this rip-tide of thought can sweep you away before you even realize you've gone anywhere. Making sense of it all can be difficult, because postmodernism is resistant to attempts at a grand unifying theory that explains itself, with postmodernists decrying causation as a "myth" and logic as useless. Postmodernism can be stimulating and fascinating, and simultaneously, it is always on the brink of collapsing into confusion and senselessness.[vii] Postmodernists are cognizant of the trenchant contradictions, and revel in the frustration it causes.[viii] Postmodernism operates by its own logic for its own purposes, and rarely, if ever, will it make sense to people who reject it as nonsense. Thriving in an atmosphere of irony and satire, it doesn't even take itself seriously at times - the as of late comment "irony is dead," is more appropriate than many realize. Postmodern thought affects different groups differently, which contributes to its elusive nature. Purposely generating confusion and ambiguity, Postmodernism rejects epistemological assumptions, refutes methodological conventions, resists knowledge claims, and dismisses policy recommendations based on modern conceptions of evidence.[ix] Below are some examples of the general phenomena.
Have you noticed the prominence of storytelling and narrative as a representation of reality? Metanarratives are modern and assume the validity of their own truth claims, while mini-narratives, micro-narratives, and local narratives are just stories that make no truth claims.[x] Challenging metanarratives, postmodernists have a tendency to emphasize smaller narratives - stories of the forgotten, subordinated and marginalized, in an effort to displace power in society.[xi] This approach is practiced through pluralism, in which even the arguments of science and history become another set of narratives in competition for acceptance, having themselves no privileged correspondence to reality.[xii] In this context, science and history are just another form of fiction.[xiii] The recent onslaught of disinformation is effective because postmodern thinkers are easy to manipulate, will deny they have been manipulated, and will then resentfully take pride in living the manipulation.
Have you noticed the increase in and volatility of political movements? The growth of marginalized voices on the peripheries of society, such as white nationalism, Black Lives Matter, Women's March, march for science, #metoo, environmentalists, anti-vaxers, flat-earthers, QAnon, 'woke culture,' etc., represents an attempt by the repressed, disillusioned and border-lined communities to level the playing field - to find the individuals and energies on the margins of society: the alienated, the subaltern, the outcast, the divergent and then, through political activism, shock and destabilize the established power structures that are perceived responsible for their alienation. Subsequently, this instability is intended to leave the door open for a renewal of humanity through socialism.[xiv] Socialism and postmodernism are related: people who are inclined to believe in the former, are likely to indulge in the latter. Practically, though, the failure of socialism necessitated postmodernism and it is through an ostensibly innocuous egalitarianism that "postmodernism seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change."[xv] This is how some imagined, virtual communities converge around shared grievances to transform into actual protests on the street.
Have you noticed the fundamental transformation of some political parties? In the long term, postmodern thought affects political behavior by encouraging the decline, radical transformation, and reorientation of political parties, encouraging as well the growth of new social and political movements, and ambivalence toward previously existing ones.[xvi] Put simply, postmodern thought demands cultural and societal transformation for the sake of transformation. It is a radically different cultural movement coalesced around a broadly gauged reconceptualization of how people experience and explain the world around them.[xvii] Since, postmodernists are relentlessly constructing and reconstructing their identities and realities, the postmodern self remains an unfinished project, with identity becoming a role and a performance in the making, temporarily selecting the one which becomes best for public consumption and recognition.[xviii] There is a reason why the adage that, "this isn't your father's republican/democratic party," rings true for so many.
Have you noticed many people, when faced with irrefutable scientific evidence, state that "the science is still out on that"? Postmodernism "unmasks" structures, stating that all eras have embedded within them power relations which structure people's outlook on reality and relations between themselves.[xix] Its goal is not to formulate an alternative set of assumptions but to declare the impossibility of establishing any such underpinning for knowledge.[xx] Postmodernism decries the privileged position that science has in determining what is good for community and humanity. Postmodern arguments use the wars of the 20th century, culminating with the atomic bomb, as evidence that science has not ushered in progress like it purports to do, but conversely inflicts massive harm on society. Postmodern arguments also interpret the gross disparity of wealth and the abundance of famine and suffering in the world as the fault of modern thought, posing the question thusly: if modern thought and science indeed solve these problems, then why do they still exist? Postmodernism's own response to this question is that, in fact, science has its own narrative to legitimate its own enterprise, claiming that "science cannot know and make known that it is the true knowledge without resorting to the other, narrative, kind of knowledge, which from its point of view is no knowledge at all."[xxi] The answer to its own questions are satirical. Irony is the standard, not the exception.
Have you noticed the increase in people declaring their sexuality? Modern thought suggests there is no choice: you are what you are born. Postmodernists see this idea as an imposition of power: from the language to describe sexuality, including pronouns, to the various clothes that are placed in the men and women's section of a department store - everything is made to make people behave a certain way, in line with their sexuality. Postmodernists do not see it this way and refuse to have a static or permanent identity. They consider identity and being as an endless enterprise in self-rediscovery, constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing their identity by either necessity or choice. The modern maxim, "I think, therefore I am," bears no relevance in a postmodern world. Simple and basic logic is meaningless, and therefore mathematics and the rules within it might well be nonsense too. By extension, postmodernism directly refutes the mathematic approach to personal identity and existence, challenging the first and second principles of logic: the law of identity and non-contradiction, which state that every object bears to itself and to nothing else.[xxii] In the postmodern world, two plus two can equal whatever you want and you can chose who and what sexuality you are.
Have you noticed the increase in frequency and severity of hypocrisy? In the modern era, hypocrisy is an insult because, the 'say-do gap' and being a 'person of one's word' matters. People being true to their word means they are reliable, if not otherwise, honorable. Postmodernists do not abide by a foundational or ideological symmetry: their previous beliefs, thoughts and behaviors do not define their identity and they do not have to remain consistent with what they have done or said in the past. As a result, they do not see hypocrisy as a character indictment, but rather quite the opposite for change is not only good, but great. Combine this attitude with the fact that YouTube and social media ensure that people's words and actions of the past remain fresh and present, and it makes making sense, in modern sense, senseless. A Youtube video of someone stating their position two years earlier might as well have been recorded two days earlier - to a postmodern thinker there is little if any distinction, because to them, time is not linear, either. Playing an old clip of their own words will not bother them, because they know they have "changed" since then.
Have you noticed how people use semantics to avoid responsibility and accountability? Postmodernism places a special emphasis on language, claiming that its ability to communicate the nature of reality is an illusion. Subsequently, the relationship between language and reality is unreliable because language is a subjectively constructed phenomenon that does not transcend time; a person can communicate utterances that are only true within the context in which they are spoken.[xxiii] Remove the subject from the context and the words that were spoken become meaningless. This is how and why many have come to deny the very words they just said. From a postmodern perspective, meaning changes over time, and therefore attribution of meaning is deferred forever. Counterintuitively, in a postmodern context, words are never intended to be literal. Language and rhetoric are used elliptically, metaphorically and deliberately falsely, textured with layers of circumstantial meaning, designed to help the speaker evade answering a question or taking a permanent position.[xxiv] Discourse, that is debate, becomes a duel where words are the primary weapons, and each person is trying solely to win. The theory of victory for a postmodernist is to either change the nature of the established power structure altogether, or to increase and maintain discord. In postmodern discourse, there is often a contrarian approach: people will not have a position other than that they disagree with their opponent's position. There's no debate, there's no answering questions, and there's no contributing to a greater truth or understanding - there's just arguments. Does, "That's what I said, but not what I said," sound familiar?
Have you noticed the prevalence of Wikipedia; the subsequent misuse of Wikipedia, and the lack of historical awareness in society? In the postmodern view, all of history is an attempted narrative, specifically aimed at reinforcing the legitimation of the current paradigm. For a postmodern thinker, there is no final account of historical truth. History becomes intertextual or an endless conversation between competing texts. Consequently, all histories are stories and all stories are narratives and narratives can be undone, often paradoxically, so that truth is more like a fiction, with all reading becoming a misreading, all understanding becoming a misunderstanding.[xxv] Postmodern thought does not necessarily see a distinction between truth and fiction, and if all of history is an artificially manipulated narrative, then novels, literature and television are as much a reality as the reality in which modern man clams to live. Living in a postmodern society is like inhabiting a film-like world, where truth and fiction merge.[xxvi] If you have not noticed by now, we live in a hyperreal panopticon: people are modeling their behavior on reality television, which models its behavior on them. Unlike Fukuyama's and others' explanation, this is the actual end of history. Strategists will have to pay as much attention to the history of war as they do to "wars of history". Who started the Second World War again?
Have you noticed governmental institutions not functioning as they have in the past? Postmodern thinkers jeopardize the integrity of the US constitutional system because they are naturally anti-institutionalists. Institutions persist only when they are legitimated by the people who inhabit them. When the people who occupy structures intended for the exercise of modern thought do not, in fact, exercise modern thought, then the structures will cease to behave as designed. At its inception, the US government was structurally designed to be occupied by modern, enlightened thinkers. The diffuse checks and balances between three co-equal branches of government, the criminal justice system, and the rule of law were designed by modern thinkers and were intended to remain guided by modern thinkers. Though they clearly had their flaws, the founding fathers considered reason and enlightened thought as the apogee of human achievement, and that any future progress would be guided by human reason. Obscuring the founding fathers' foresight, postmodernism will catastrophically disrupt and jeopardize the functionality of governmental institutions. There's no reasoned deliberation, there's no self-restraint guided by unwritten social norms for why should they bother to follow anything other than what suits their interests or is entertaining, which coincidentally, is an interest of theirs.
Have you noticed that the truth doesn't carry the same weight as it used to? "Truth isn't truth or there is no truth," has been expressed more often as of late - why is this? To a postmodernist, truth changes constantly and is irrelevant - not just in reference to one thing, but to all things. In fact, in their view, truth changes so much that it holds no special value. Modernists see the truth as useful. Whereas, postmodernists see what's useful as true, and just as they change their identity to serve their interests, they are equally happy to contort the truth to achieve their purpose, and when falsehoods can masquerade as truth, it seems that evil can appear as virtue. This unprincipled pragmatism is anathema to so much in our society, among them is the rule of law, but most of all are those precious ideas that our founders found to be so self-evident. Consequently, when people's beliefs cease being disciplined by the truth, then their beliefs can be swayed by mere prejudice, persuasion, or power.[xxvii] A condition such as this exposes the masses to both domestic and foreign disinformation and manipulation, for any monopoly on truth is a monopoly on power. This should concern us all and this is worth fighting for. Make no mistake: our greatest adversaries are aware of all of this and will design strategies to exploit it.
Can all of this really be the cause of so much confusion and turmoil in the world? Can all of these thoughts, ideas, and phenomena - storytelling as reality, volatility and ambivalence toward established political parties and ideologies, science and reason becoming unimportant, identity being in permanent deferral, hypocrisy becoming the norm, language becoming meaningless, reality being a movie, history becoming useless, institutions unbecoming themselves, and truth becoming worthless - can all of these thoughts really matter? Yes, because the history of the world is indeed a history of thoughts, shaped by ideas before it is shaped by events.[xxviii] The thoughts that motivated our founders are the thoughts that manufactured this great country, and with this in mind, strategists must be vigilant of the thoughts that can similarly bring destruction to it. These thoughts and attitudes are increasingly becoming adopted by the growing population of postmodern thinkers in the US. Disinformation works likes supply and demand. The more postmodernists consume it, the more our adversaries will produce it. The disinformation may appear random, but shotguns have killed more people than sniper rifles, and strategists should become mindful of all of these dynamics of the information environment, because they will be responsible for developing strategies to defend against it. To quote a founding father, "these are the times that try men's souls." This is all so perplexing, and it makes so many just want to close their eyes and wait until it's over. Strategists cannot and this ambivalence must be avoided at all costs. As a congressman recently remarked, "In the United States, the truth matters. If not, no Constitution can protect us. If not, we are lost." My biggest fear is that while we may not yet be lost, we surely are in the processing of losing.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the 1st Infantry Division, the United States Army, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
End Notes
[i] Pauline Marie Rosenau, Postmodernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992),
[xix] Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 19.
[xx] Pauline Marie Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions, 6.
[xxi] Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1979), 29.
[xxii] Graham Priest, Logic: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 64.
[xxiii] Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 114.
[xxiv] Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, 175.
[xxv] Christopher Butler, Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction, 21.
[xxvi] Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 33.
[xxvii] Richard van de Lagemaat, Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma, 2nd Edition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 579.
[xxviii] Yuval Levin, Tyranny of Reason: The Origins and Consequences of the Social Scientific Outlook (Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 2001), 215.
Major Larry Kay is an Infantry Officer in the United States Army. Major Kay holds degrees from the University of Florida and Central Michigan University. Major Kay is also a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College and the School of Advanced Military Studies. He is the author of "Making Sense of the Senseless: War in The Postmodern Era," and "Putting the Enemy Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Multi-Domain Operations in Practice." Follow him on Twitter @larrykay954.
17. Analysis/Commentary: Pentagon Announces Army 1st SFAB Deployment to Counter Surge in Violent Extremism and Russian/Chinese Competition
Excerpts:
The Army's 1st SFAB deployment almost certainly was announced to better compete with China and Russia following General Townsend's statement in which he described the dramatic increase in Russian activities across the continent over the past three years. Townsend highlighted that Russia's goals were part of a three-pronged strategy focused on resource extraction, establishing a firm foothold across northern Africa, particularly in Libya on NATO's southern flank, and to serve as a credible alternative to the United States.[xi]
Townsend also warned Russia and China military cooperation with African partners could be on the uptick as he described a South Africa naval exercise several months ago between Russia, China, and South Africa, noting it was "the first visible sign of cooperation" between the two countries.[xii]
Townsend elaborated on Chinese and Russian investments in space infrastructure on the African continent. Townsend estimated the Chinese have roughly 13-16 space facilities across Africa while the Russians have five to six facilities.[xiii]
General Townsend's frank, candid, and honest assessment of the complex and myriad threat environment across Africa complicates the Secretary of Defense's priority effort to realign and reallocate military forces to the Department's priority military theater, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.[xiv] This deployment along with General Townsend's testimony reinforces the need for the United States to step up and reinforce support to U.S. allies and African partners to protect vital U.S. national security interests.
Analysis/Commentary: Pentagon Announces Army 1st SFAB Deployment to Counter Surge in Violent Extremism and Russian/Chinese Competition
Last Wednesday, the Pentagon announced the Army's 1st SFAB (SFAB-Security Force Assistance Brigade) would deploy within the coming weeks to conduct train, advise, and assist missions in select African countries.[i] This is a good move as it sustains U.S. military presence, and reinforces U.S. commitment to regional security partners at they work to beat back violent extremist and strategic competitor gains for influence.
Senator Jim Inhofe, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and ardent supporter of bolstering US military presence across Africa, praised the announcement, noting the growing security threats in Africa require additional capabilities that the current U.S. contingent of 6,100 soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, civilians, and contractors currently provide across the continent.[ii][iii]
The announcement also comes on the heels of General Stephen Townsend's testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee last month in which he warned of the emanating threats posed by violent extremist organizations and malign Chinese and Russian activities across the continent.
When describing the threat from al Qaeda- and ISIS- related groups the top U.S. military commander in Africa stated, "that threat is very serious and that threat is on the advance."[iv] General Townsend emphasized confronting groups like al-Shabaab who he described as "the largest and most violent of al-Qaeda's branches" that threaten U.S. interests and the American homeland.[v] The group claimed responsibility for an attack in Manda Bay, Kenya last month that killed one U.S. service member and two contractors.
General Townsend remarked that his command was consistently under-resourced and not equipped with the necessary ISR (ISR-Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) assets to provide presence and around-the-clock coverage to prosecute counter-terrorism targeted strikes to disrupt and degrade al-Shabaab leadership capacity. General Townsend commented that his command had fulfilled only 25 percent of his validated ISR requirements.[vi]
The Pentagon's announcement was also likely made to encourage European allies to contribute more troops, and resources to assist French counter-terrorism efforts in the Sahel region of West Africa. The French are the lead international security partner in the Sahel region of West Africa, to include Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, with about 4,500 troops conducting daily operations to confront various VEOs (VEOs-Violent Extremist Organizations) operating across the region.[vii]
Last month, Townsend told the Senate Armed Services Committee "the Europeans need to step up and do more in the Sahel to help the French." Townsend indicated he was leading an effort to encourage European allies to provide more direct support to French efforts, specifically in providing the French with the airlift and air refueling capabilities that the United States were providing as French counter-terrorism efforts "are not having the desired effect they need."[viii] General Townsend stressed how dire the security situation was across the Sahel, with a 250% increase in VEO violence since 2018 in Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger.[ix]
This week, during a delegation visit to Africa, Senator Inhofe touted US military cooperation efforts in bolstering African partners' capabilities to disrupt and defeat radical VEOs in West Africa. Inhofe said "any reduction in U.S. military presence in West Africa would have real and lasting negative consequences for our African partners...downgrading our investment now would only increase our risk and make future competition or potential conflict more costly down the road."[x]
The Army's 1st SFAB deployment almost certainly was announced to better compete with China and Russia following General Townsend's statement in which he described the dramatic increase in Russian activities across the continent over the past three years. Townsend highlighted that Russia's goals were part of a three-pronged strategy focused on resource extraction, establishing a firm foothold across northern Africa, particularly in Libya on NATO's southern flank, and to serve as a credible alternative to the United States.[xi]
Townsend also warned Russia and China military cooperation with African partners could be on the uptick as he described a South Africa naval exercise several months ago between Russia, China, and South Africa, noting it was "the first visible sign of cooperation" between the two countries.[xii]
Townsend elaborated on Chinese and Russian investments in space infrastructure on the African continent. Townsend estimated the Chinese have roughly 13-16 space facilities across Africa while the Russians have five to six facilities.[xiii]
General Townsend's frank, candid, and honest assessment of the complex and myriad threat environment across Africa complicates the Secretary of Defense's priority effort to realign and reallocate military forces to the Department's priority military theater, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.[xiv] This deployment along with General Townsend's testimony reinforces the need for the United States to step up and reinforce support to U.S. allies and African partners to protect vital U.S. national security interests.
The views expressed in this article solely reflect those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Military, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
John S. Turner is a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) national security professional with 10 years' experience analyzing Latin America, Asia, and Middle East security trends, and developments. John deployed to Afghanistan from June-December 2019 in support of Operation Freedom Sentinel and to Iraq in 2011 in support of Operation New Dawn. From 2014-2017 John served in a staff position with the U.S. Defense Attache Office in Mexico City, Mexico. He is currently assigned to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. He holds a M.A. in International Relations with a focus in Security Studies from St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.
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."
