Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago."

– Goethe

"Calmness and humility provide pleasures which are not accessible to the selfish and the proud."

– Leo Tolstoy

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."

– Albert Camus

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 22, 2024

2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 22, 2024

3. 21 Israeli troops are killed in the deadliest attack on the military since the Gaza offensive began

4. Exclusive: Israel’s spy chief proposed letting Hamas leaders leave Gaza as part of broader ceasefire talks

5. A War in All but Name Simmers at Israel-Lebanon Border

6. South Korean official touts fledgling drone command as global model

7. ‘China strikes hard at terrorism’: Beijing’s new white paper praises its tough measures in Hong Kong and Xinjiang

8. Congress vs. the U.S. Military

9. Kyiv Missile Attack: Multiple Explosions in Capital as Russia Launches Massive Strike

10. Yemen: US and British forces strike Houthis again

11. Norwegian Factory Gears Up to Supply Ammunition to Ukraine

12. The Pentagon is already testing tomorrow’s AI-powered swarm drones, ships

13. The Military Recruiting Outlook Is Grim Indeed. Loss of Public Confidence, Political Attacks and the Economy Are All Taking a Toll.

14. ‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade

15. DEI Is Worth Saving From Its Excesses

16. US Cyber Command aiming to consolidate disparate programs in warfighting platform in 2024

17. New Airstrikes Target Houthi Forces In Yemen (Updated)

18. The Army Has a Competition Problem

19. Trust the AI, But Keep Your Powder Dry: A Framework for Balance and Confidence in Human-Machine Teams

20. The Game of Irregular Warfare across Global Economic Chokepoints

21. Rocket-Powered Corruption: Why the Missile Industry Became the Target of Xi’s Purge

22. Opinion - Why Iran Doesn’t Want a War

23. Bind Ukraine’s Military-Technology Revolution to Rapid Capability Development

24. End America’s unwise alliance with Qatar

25. Navy IDs two SEALs who died during sea mission off Somalia

26. A New Concern on the Ukrainian Battlefield: North Korea’s Latest Missiles

27. The Strategic Case for Democracy Promotion in Asia

28. Containment for AI – How to Adapt a Cold War Strategy to a New Threat

29. Top military chief says UK Special Forces are vanguard for wider defence

30. CIA tries to recruit double agents in Russia with new video

31. We've made progress on our nuclear deterrent, but much more is needed

32. Why Russia needs invisibility cloaks for its forces

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 22, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-22-2024

Key Takeaways:

Russia continues to weaponize its position on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to propagate several long-standing Russian information operations.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited Kyiv on January 22 and announced a new Polish defense package for Ukraine.
Footage purportedly showing an altercation between a Russian soldier and Chechen “Akhmat-Vostok” forces in occupied Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast, reignited criticism of Chechen forces for their lack of contributions to Russian military operations in Ukraine.
An investigation by a Russian opposition outlet suggests that Russian elites may have accepted and internalized the domestic consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russian officials and information space actors are attempting to further rhetorically justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by misrepresenting a decree that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed on January 22 concerning discrimination against ethnic Ukrainians in Russia. Zelensky’s decree does not establish any territorial demands upon Russia, as select Russian ultranationalists falsely claimed.
Russian forces made confirmed advances south of Avdiivka and west of Donetsk City amid continued positional engagements along the entire frontline.
Kyrgyzstan issued a statement against Russia’s continued practice of targeting naturalized migrants as part of ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts.
Russian federal subjects continue to establish ties with areas of occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 22, 2024

Jan 22, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 22, 2024

Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

January 22, 2024, 6:45pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:40pm ET on January 22. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the January 23 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russia continues to weaponize its position on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to propagate several long-standing Russian information operations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke at a UNSC meeting, which Russia convened, on January 22 and blamed the West for the lack of negotiations, claiming that Russia has always been “ready for negotiations.”[1] Lavrov clarified, however, that Russia is only interested in negotiations that result in the removal of the current Ukrainian government from power, confirming that Russia still officially seeks regime change in Ukraine.[2] Lavrov continued to deny Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty, falsely claiming that the Ukrainian people have no interests in the war against Russia and that the West has pushed Ukraine to continue the war.[3] Lavrov advised the West to understand that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ”peace formula” is a “path to nowhere,” claiming that the “sooner [the West] realizes this, the better it will be for both Ukraine and the West.”[4] Lavrov also claimed that “if Ukraine stops fighting, hundreds of thousands” of Ukrainian lives would be saved.[5] Lavrov previously made similar comments, suggesting that the Kremlin believes that Russia will be able to occupy more territory as the war continues and that this course of the war will increasingly weaken Ukraine’s negotiating position.[6]

Lavrov denied Russia’s responsibility for fears that Russia may attack NATO in the future, ignoring the recent Kremlin official statements that have prompted those fears. Lavrov falsely claimed that the West promotes the idea that Russia will attack the Baltic states, Poland, and Finland in the future as a way to “extort money” from Western states for aid to Ukraine.[7] Kremlin officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, have sustained consistent threatening rhetoric directed against NATO member states, and Kremlin-affiliated actors appear to be attempting to sow instability and set information conditions for possible future aggressive Russian actions against NATO members and other post-Soviet states.[8] Lavrov also blamed Ukrainian forces for conducting strikes on Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine, which the Kremlin used to support Russian justifications for its war of conquest in Ukraine.[9] Lavrov recently claimed that Ukrainian forces are using Western-supplied weapons to strike civilian targets, including in alleged strikes against occupied Donetsk City on January 21, for example.[10] Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), made similar claims on January 21.[11] The New York Times reported on January 21 that it could not independently confirm the actors behind the strike on Donetsk City, and the press service of the Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces stated on January 21 that forces under the control of the Tavriisk Group of Forces did not conduct the strikes.[12] Lavrov also attempted to downplay the various war crimes and crimes against humanity that Russian occupation forces and occupation administrators are conducting in Ukraine, claiming that Ukrainians and Russians “live in peace and harmony” in occupied Crimea and other Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.[13] Lavrov claimed that “Russians and Ukrainians will live exactly like brothers and good neighbors” after Russia achieves its goals in the war in Ukraine — which ISW continues to assess are tantamount to full Ukrainian and Western surrender.[14] ISW has routinely documented how Russian forces and occupation administrations have been engaging in large-scale and deliberate ethnic cleansing campaigns; forcibly and illegally deport Ukrainians, including children, to Russia; and are systematically working to eliminate the Ukrainian language, culture, history, and ethnicity in areas that Russian forces occupy.[15]

ISW previously assessed that Russia aims to reinforce the primacy of the UN and to link as many international efforts to the UN as possible in order to capitalize on Russia’s permanent UNSC seat and veto power.[16] Russia’s request for the January 22 UNSC meeting to discuss arms supplies to Ukraine and Lavrov’s use of this meeting to promote various Kremlin information operations is likely an attempt to legitimize these Kremlin narratives, promote them on a global stage, and convince Ukraine’s international partners to stop sending weapons to Ukraine.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited Kyiv on January 22 and announced a new Polish defense package for Ukraine.[17] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Tusk for the new Polish defense package and noted that he and Tusk discussed possibilities for the future production of weapons.[18] Zelensky stated that the package includes a Polish loan for large-scale Ukrainian weapons purchases, but Tusk and Zelensky did not specify additional details about security assistance package provisions or the overall value of the package.[19] Tusk later stated that Poland joined the Group of Seven (G7) declaration of support for Ukraine and noted that Poland will appoint a commissioner to oversee Polish involvement in Ukrainian reconstruction efforts.[20]

Footage purportedly showing an altercation between a Russian soldier and Chechen “Akhmat-Vostok” forces in occupied Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast, reignited criticism of Chechen forces for their lack of contributions to Russian military operations in Ukraine. Footage widely circulated on January 22 purportedly shows Chechen “Akhmat-Vostok” Battalion commander Vakha Khambulatov and other “Akhmat-Vostok” Battalion personnel threatening to kill a Russian soldier at a checkpoint in occupied Melitopol after the Russian soldier stated that Khambulatov had invalid identification documents.[21] Russian milbloggers criticized the Chechen personnel for having “too clean uniforms and too clean cars” and complained that these personnel receive the same state salary and social benefits as frontline Russian Airborne (VDV) forces despite contributing less to Russian military operations.[22] A Russian milblogger claimed that this is the fifth altercation between Russian and Chechen military personnel in rear areas.[23] Russian sources have previously criticized Chechen forces for conducting performative actions in Belgorod Oblast after all-Russian pro-Ukrainian forces raided the area, for posturing themselves as a response force during the Wagner Group rebellion in June 2023, and for exaggerating their supposed frontline combat contributions around Bakhmut in July 2023.[24] Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov has routinely attempted to curry favor with the Kremlin and promote his domestic power through emphasizing Chechnya’s contributions to the war in Ukraine, and continued criticism against Chechen forces in Ukraine may degrade the influence Kadyrov has gained through this effort.

An investigation by a Russian opposition outlet suggests that Russian elites may have accepted and internalized the domestic consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russian opposition outlet Verstka, citing unnamed interlocutors amongst Russian elites, reported that Russian elites are increasingly complaining that vacations in Russia and abroad in “friendly countries” are becoming more expensive.[25] Verstka’s interlocutor noted that many Russian elites who work in military and government affairs want a quick end to the war on the condition that Ukraine recognizes Russia’s illegal annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts, and that elites desire Russia to ”finish off” Ukraine so that Russia can go about planning for a new future isolated from Europe. Verstka cited Russian political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov noting that the upcoming March 2024 Russian presidential election is not galvanizing Russian political elites as the Presidential Administration had hoped because most Russian elites view the outcome of the elections as pre-determined, and do not anticipate much change to their status as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s re-election. Grashchenkov noted that “new” elites who came into power as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have realized that they will be unable to gain more influence and “old” elites understand they have limited political control. Verstka summarized the sentiments of Russian elites as “apathetic,” which suggests that many Russian elites have internalized and accepted the social ramifications of the war. ISW has previously reported on Russian public opinion polls that similarly show a substantial degree of domestic internalization of the war’s consequences and support for the war.[26]

Russian officials and information space actors are attempting to further rhetorically justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by misrepresenting a decree that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed on January 22 concerning discrimination against ethnic Ukrainians in Russia. Zelensky signed a decree titled “On the Territories of the Russian Federation Historically Inhabited by Ukrainians,” which accurately stated that Russia has systematically oppressed and continues to oppress Ukrainians living in Russia and eroding their national identity, including on lands historically inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians in modern day Russia’s Krasnodar Krai and Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, and Rostov oblasts.[27] The decree instructs the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers to develop an action plan for preserving Ukrainian national identity in Russia, documenting the history of Russia’s oppression of its Ukrainian communities, countering disinformation about the history of Ukrainians in Russia, and disseminating materials about Ukrainian national state formations in different historical periods. Zelensky’s decree does not establish any territorial demands upon Russia, as select Russian ultranationalists falsely claimed.[28]

Russian officials purposefully misrepresented the decree to further justify Russia’s full-scale invasion and made further genocidal appeals to the destruction of Ukrainian statehood and ethnic identity. Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoyt called the decree a blatant distortion of history and argued that it shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin was correct to invade Ukraine.[29] Starovoyt’s response suggests that Russian officials and actors may continue to misrepresent the decree as an ex post facto casus belli to falsely assert that Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was defensive in nature. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev responded to the decree and reiterated longstanding Kremlin rhetoric that aims to erase Ukrainian ethnic identity by asserting that ethnic Ukrainians are ethnically Russian.[30] Medvedev also stated that “Malorossiya” (Little Russia) is part of Russia — a pseudo-historical Kremlin talking point that Russian officials routinely invoke to deny Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty.[31] The Kremlin has repeatedly used the concept of “compatriots abroad,” which includes ethnic Russian and Russian speakers of other ethnicities, to justify the war in Ukraine and aggression in other neighboring states, and Russian officials and ultranationalists may be primed to view legitimate appeals to protecting compatriots abroad as similar pretexts for aggressive actions.[32]

Russia has historically had a policy to Russify ethnic minorities living within Russian territory, and Zelensky’s decree coincides with wider Russian animus towards non-ethnic Russians within Russia that extends far beyond ethnic Ukrainian communities.[33] The Russian ultranationalist community continues to seize on incidents involving migrants and non-ethnic Russians to express growing hostility towards diaspora communities and non-ethnic Russian minorities within Russia.[34] Russian officials and ultranationalists may attempt to frame states’ legitimate concerns about growing Russian domestic animus towards their diaspora communities and Russia's history of discriminatory policies as anti-Russian and inherently escalatory.

Key Takeaways:

Russia continues to weaponize its position on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to propagate several long-standing Russian information operations.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited Kyiv on January 22 and announced a new Polish defense package for Ukraine.
Footage purportedly showing an altercation between a Russian soldier and Chechen “Akhmat-Vostok” forces in occupied Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast, reignited criticism of Chechen forces for their lack of contributions to Russian military operations in Ukraine.
An investigation by a Russian opposition outlet suggests that Russian elites may have accepted and internalized the domestic consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russian officials and information space actors are attempting to further rhetorically justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by misrepresenting a decree that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed on January 22 concerning discrimination against ethnic Ukrainians in Russia. Zelensky’s decree does not establish any territorial demands upon Russia, as select Russian ultranationalists falsely claimed.
Russian forces made confirmed advances south of Avdiivka and west of Donetsk City amid continued positional engagements along the entire frontline.
Kyrgyzstan issued a statement against Russia’s continued practice of targeting naturalized migrants as part of ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts.
Russian federal subjects continue to establish ties with areas of occupied Ukraine.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Russian Technological Adaptations
Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
Activities in Russian-Occupied Areas
Russian Information Operations and Narratives
Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued intensified offensive operations southeast of Kupyansk on January 22 and reportedly advanced. Several Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces continued efforts to advance southwest of Krokhmalne near Berestove (25km southeast of Kupyansk).[35] A prominent Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed on January 21 that Russian forces advanced four kilometers deep along a 1.5-kilometer-wide front towards the Kotlyarivka-Kyslivka line (20km southeast of Kupyansk and just north of the Krokhmalne area), although ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation of Russian gains towards Kotlyarivka.[36] Milbloggers claimed that Russian advances in this area will allow Russian forces to access the P07 Kupyansk-Svatove road and open a new front against Kupyansk.[37] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that positional engagements continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka and Petropavlivka.[38] Elements of the Russian 1st Guards Tank Army (Western Military District) reportedly continue to operate in the Kupyansk direction.[39]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line on January 22 and reportedly advanced in some areas. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 400 meters along a 1.5 kilometer-wide-front from near Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna), and other milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced near the mill facility area southeast of Bilohorivka.[40] ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation of these Russian gains near Bilohorivka, however. Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that positional engagements continued northwest of Kreminna near Makiivka and Novoyehorivka; west of Kreminna near Terny, Torske, and Yampolivka; and south of Kreminna in the Serebryanske forest area and near Bilohorivka.[41] Geolocated footage posted on January 21 shows at least 20 new Russian vehicles losses following a recent unsuccessful assault on Terny.[42] Elements of the 2nd Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Army Corps continue to operate near Bilohorivka.[43]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces reportedly advanced northwest of Bakhmut amid continued positional fighting in the area on January 22. Russian milbloggers claimed on January 21 and 22 that Russian forces advanced within central Bohdanivka (northwest of Bakhmut) and that Ukrainian forces control roughly a third of the settlement.[44] ISW has only observed confirmation of Russian forces holding positions in the northern outskirts of Bohdanivka. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting occurred northwest of Bakhmut near Hryhorivka and Bohdanivka; west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske; and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka, Andriivka, and Pivnichne.[45] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) published footage on January 22 of elements of the Russian 106th Airborne (VDV) Division participating in the alleged capture of Vesele (northeast of Bakhmut) on January 18.[46] Elements of the Russian 98th VDV are reportedly operating northwest of Bakhmut, elements of the “Sever-V” Volunteer Brigade (Russian Volunteer Corps) are reportedly operating near Bohdanivka, and elements of the 11th VDV Brigade are reportedly operating in the Bakhmut area.[47]

Russian forces recently made confirmed gains south of Avdiivka and reportedly continued to advance in southern Avdiivka on January 22. Geolocated footage published on January 22 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced beyond a section of railway line south of Avdiivka.[48] Russian milbloggers claimed on January 21 and 22 that Russian forces further consolidated positions in the “Tsarska Okhota” restaurant area just south of Avdiivka and continued to advance along Sportyvna, Soborna, and Cherenyshevskoho streets on the southern outskirts of Avdiivka.[49] A Russian milblogger claimed on January 22 that Ukrainian forces still control the area between the “Tsarska Okhota” restaurant and the Avdiivka quarry and Vynohradnyky garden areas in southeastern Avdiivka.[50] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported positional fighting northwest of Avdiivka near Ocheretyne, Novokalynove, Novobakhmutivka, and Stepove; near Avdiivka itself; west of Avdiivka near Sieverne; and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske and Nevelske.[51] Elements of the Donetsk Peoples Republic (DNR) “Pyatnashka” international volunteer brigade are reportedly operating near Avdiivka, and elements of the DNR 1487th Motorized Rifle Regiment (1st DNR Army Corps) reportedly participated in the alleged capture of the “Tsarska Okhota” restaurant area.[52]

Ukrainian forces recently made marginal advances west of Donetsk City. Geolocated footage published on January 21 indicates that Ukrainian forces recently advanced at the Trudovska mine south of Krasnohorivka (west of Donetsk City).[53] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 300 meters deep along Zhovetna Street and 240 meters deep near the All-Saints Church in Heorhiivka (west of Donetsk City).[54] ISW has not observed confirmation of these claimed Russian advances in Heorhiivka. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued near Heorhiivka and Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City).[55] Elements of the Russian 68th Army Corps (Eastern Military District) are reportedly operating near Novomykhailvika, and elements of the 150th Motorized Rifle Division (8th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District), the DNR 5th Motorized Rifle Regiment (DNR 1st Army Corps), and the 8th CAA’s 238th Artillery Brigade are operating near Heorhiivka.[56]

Russian forces recently made a confirmed advance in the Vuhledar area southwest of Donetsk City. Geolocated footage published on January 22 indicates that Russian forces recently marginally advanced north of Mykilske (southeast of Vuhledar).[57]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Positional engagements continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on January 22, but there were no confirmed changes to this area of the frontline. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that Ukrainian forces marginally advanced south of Urozhaine (south of Velyka Novosilka), although ISW has not observed visual evidence confirming this purported advance.[58] Russian sources claimed that positional engagements continued near Novodonetske (southeast of Velyka Novosilka), Staromayorske, and Zavitne Bazhannya (both south of Velyka Novosilka).[59]

Positional engagements continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on January 22, but there were no confirmed changes to this area of the frontline. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces captured several unspecified positions near Verbove (east of Robotyne), although ISW has not observed visual evidence confirming this claim.[60] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Robotyne, Verbove, Novoprokopivka (south of Robotyne), Pyatykhatky (27km northwest of Robotyne), and Kamyanske (35km northwest of Robotyne).[61] Russian milbloggers claimed that frequent Ukrainian first-person view (FPV) drone strikes increase the difficulty of Russian operations in the Zaporizhia direction.[62]

Ukrainian forces maintain positions on east (left) bank Kherson Oblast as of January 22, but there were no changes to the frontline in this area. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Krynky.[63] Russian forces reportedly continue conducting TOS-1A thermobaric artillery strikes on Ukrainian positions in Krynky.[64] Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Colonel Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces have reduced tactical aviation activity over southern Ukraine but have started to intensify the use of various modified drones to drop explosives on Ukrainian positions and populated areas.[65] Humenyuk also reported that Russian forces are attempting to adjust their combat tactics on the east bank to push Ukrainian forces from the east bank, so the number of Russian assaults per day has fluctuated between one and 10 over the past week.[66] Humenyuk stated that Russian personnel are increasingly refusing to conduct assaults in the Kherson direction because the Russian command prohibits Russian forces from using armored vehicle support during the attacks.[67]

Russian news outlet RIA Novosti reported on January 22 that a source close to Crimean occupation authorities claimed that the Russian military will dismantle Ukrainian ships abandoned in Sevastopol after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 instead of transferring them to the Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF).[68] The source claimed that the Russian military has suspended dismantling the Ukrainian ships in order to prioritize protecting BSF vessels.[69]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Kyrgyzstan issued a statement against Russia’s continued practice of targeting naturalized migrants as part of ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts. Russian outlet It’s My City reported on January 19 that Russian security forces from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), and Rosgvardia conducted a raid at a construction site in Yekaterinburg on January 17.[70] It’s My City reported that the Russian security officials inspected the documents of about 150 foreign workers, deported eight workers, and issued military summonses to four foreign workers who recently obtained Russian passports but had not registered with Russian military registration and enlistment offices.[71] Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported on January 22 that there were about 40 Kyrgyz citizens at the construction site on January 17 and that Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the Consulate General is taking measures to investigate the legality of Russian law enforcement’s methods that “degrade the dignity of [Kyrgyz] citizens engaged in labor activities.”[72] Kyrgyzstan previously sentenced Kyrgyz citizens to prison on charges of participating in a military conflict in a foreign country after the Kyrgyz citizens fought in Ukraine as part of the Wagner Group and a Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) unit.[73]

Russian officials continue attempts to censor family members of mobilized Russian military personnel who demand the return of their family members back to Russia. Russian opposition outlet Mobilization News stated on January 22 that Russian authorities accused relatives of mobilized Russian military personnel of violating anti-COVID-19 measures, demanded an inspection of the group’s documents, and photographed the group’s signs after the group laid flowers at the Field of Mars in St. Petersburg on January 20.[74]

Russian authorities are reportedly struggling to develop a unified electronic military register for digitizing recruitment processes. Forbes Russia stated on January 21 that Russia will have to create its electronic military summonses system from scratch, which may delay the project’s implementation.[75] Forbes Russia stated that the Russian government decided on December 22, 2023, to not develop a military registration system based on its platform for public services, Gostekh, as this system is not designed to process classified information. Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the creation of a digital register to send electronic summonses to citizens eligible for conscription in April 2023, and Russian Deputy Minister of Digital Development Oleg Kachanov stated in September 2023 that Russia will launch the digital register in 2025.[76]

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed on January 22 that it delivered an unspecified quantity of modernized T-72B3M tanks to the Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces operating in the southern Donetsk direction in Ukraine.[77] The T-72B3M is a modernized version of the T-72 with an improved fire control system with a digital ballistic computer, a sight with a laser rangefinder, an anti-tank missile control system, a modernized digital communications system, a rearview camera, and more reliable tracks.[78] TASS stated that the T-72B3M is reinforced with side screens, mounted lattice screens, and new protection systems.[79]

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

Click here to read ISW’s new analysis on Ukrainian long-term efforts to develop a self-sufficient DIB with US and European support.

Ukraine’s partners continue to prepare military assistance packages and bolster defense production for Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on January 21 that the European Union (EU) is developing a new plan to provide Ukraine with “tens of billions of dollars” of military assistance and that 22 billion euros ($23.9 billion) of this assistance will feed back into EU member states.[80] The WSJ also reported that NATO plans to announce a new investment in artillery ammunition production on January 23.[81] Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov stated on January 22 that Belgium will provide military assistance valued at 611 million euros ($665.1 million) to Ukraine in 2024 and that Belgium has made a long-term commitment to help modernize the Ukrainian military.[82]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian federal subjects continue to establish ties with areas of occupied Ukraine. Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko stated on January 22 that Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov visited occupied Mariupol to hold administrative meetings with Russian occupation officials.[83] Kherson Oblast occupation administration head Vladimir Saldo claimed on January 22 that the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic continues to establish patronage networks with occupied Kherson Oblast, including through the construction of a medical facility and school in occupied Mykhailivka and Kalanchak and the provision of school supplies to schools in occupied Skadovsk and Hola Prystan raions.[84]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Senior Russian officials continue efforts to falsely portray Ukraine as a pawn of the West that lacks agency. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergei Naryshkin falsely claimed on January 22 that the US is trying to make Ukraine into a “vassal state” and that the US is blackmailing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into making cabinet-level personnel changes that allegedly favor the West.[85] Senior Russian officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, routinely attempt to frame Ukraine as an agent of the West to mask Russia’s expansionist and maximalist war goals of establishing full Russian control over Ukraine and eliminating Ukrainian sovereignty.[86]

Russian officials and Kremlin mouthpieces further intensified efforts to misrepresent French support for Ukraine as escalatory to constrain ongoing and future French assistance to Ukraine. Russian State Duma International Affairs Committee Head Leonid Slutsky announced that the Duma has submitted a draft appeal to the French National Assembly to begin an investigation into Russian allegations of “French mercenaries” fighting for Ukraine.[87] Slutsky stated that the State Duma will consider the appeal on January 24.[88] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin claimed on Russian state television channel Rossiya-24 that France is violating its own laws by failing to admit that ”French mercenaries” are fighting in Ukraine.[89] The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) previously summoned French Ambassador to Russia Pierre Levy over these accusations on January 19.[90] Russian MFA Spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne on January 22 of being “indifferent” and “unprofessional” in response to the French MFA’s January 18 denial of “French mercenaries” operating in Ukraine.[91] The French MFA characterized the Russian accusations as “another clumsy Russian manipulation.”[92]

A pro-Kremlin actor is amplifying information attacks on Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan likely to punish Armenia for recently distancing itself from Russian influence. A prominent, Kremlin-affiliated milblogger amplified a claim on January 22 portraying Pashinyan as purposefully destroying the Armenian military and that Pashinyan aims to destroy the Armenian state.[93] The milblogger also claimed that Azerbaijan demanded a list of minefields along the Azerbaijan-Armenia border and that this demand sets a precedent for further Azerbaijani demands on the Armenian military.[94] The milblogger’s seemingly contradictory characterizations of Pashinyan as both abusing power and as weak in posturing against Azerbaijan likely aim to portray Pashinyan as an incapable head of state and punish Pashinyan for his increasingly anti-Russia policies.

Significant Activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stated on January 22 that he will hold one-on-one negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the meeting agenda of the upcoming Union State Supreme Council meeting, which will likely occur in early 2024.[95] Neither Russia nor Belarus has announced a date for the Putin-Lukashenko discussions nor for the Union State Supreme Council meeting, however. Union State Secretary of State Dmitry Mezentsev announced on January 22 that Belarus has prepared a draft resolution to create a unified media holding for the Union State for the Supreme Council to consider at the meeting.[96] Mezentsev stated that this media company will coordinate and ensure the release of print publications, television channels, and internet resources related to the Union State formation, components, history, plans, and reactions to pressure. Russian and Belarusian officials have described the Union State’s united media holding as a single media company that will unify Belarus’ and Russia’s media resources under one consolidated “powerful editorial office” to “promote the Union State agenda” domestically.[97]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 22, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-january-22-2024

Key Takeaways:

The Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces “expanded” ground operations in Khan Younis to “dismantle” Hamas’ military forces in Khan Younis.
The Northern Gaza Strip: Hamas and other Palestinian fighters are likely in the early stages of the reconstitution of their military and governance capabilities in the northern Gaza Strip.
The West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters seven times across the West Bank on January 22.
Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon: Lebanese Hezbollah conducted nine attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on January 22.
Iraq: The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Iraqi airline Fly Baghdad for aiding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force and its militias in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for three attacks targeting US positions in Syria and Iraq on January 22.
Yemen: The Houthis claimed that they conducted a missile attack targeting an American military cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden on January 22.
Iran: The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) held a funeral ceremony in Tehran on January 22 for three IRGC Quds Force officers that Israel killed in Syria. Israel’s strike on January 20 was a response to Iran’s efforts to accelerate its supply of military equipment to Hezbollah, which is using the equipment to support attacks into northern Israel.

IRAN UPDATE, JANUARY 22, 2024

Jan 22, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, January 22, 2024

Brian Carter, Andie Parry, Alexandra Braverman, Amin Soltani, and Kathryn Tyson

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Key Takeaways:

The Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces “expanded” ground operations in Khan Younis to “dismantle” Hamas’ military forces in Khan Younis.
The Northern Gaza Strip: Hamas and other Palestinian fighters are likely in the early stages of the reconstitution of their military and governance capabilities in the northern Gaza Strip.
The West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters seven times across the West Bank on January 22.
Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon: Lebanese Hezbollah conducted nine attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on January 22.
Iraq: The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Iraqi airline Fly Baghdad for aiding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force and its militias in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for three attacks targeting US positions in Syria and Iraq on January 22.
Yemen: The Houthis claimed that they conducted a missile attack targeting an American military cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden on January 22.
Iran: The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) held a funeral ceremony in Tehran on January 22 for three IRGC Quds Force officers that Israel killed in Syria. Israel’s strike on January 20 was a response to Iran’s efforts to accelerate its supply of military equipment to Hezbollah, which is using the equipment to support attacks into northern Israel.

Israeli forces “expanded” ground operations in Khan Younis to “dismantle” Hamas’ military forces in Khan Younis.[1] The IDF 98th Division is executing the “expanded” ground operation in western Khan Younis. Palestinian militias are continuing to execute a deliberate defense against the Israeli ground operation in western Khan Younis. Israeli media described the operation as the “fiercest battle” between the IDF and Palestinian militias.[2] The operation aims to “dismantle” Hamas’ military forces in Khan Younis over “several days” by raiding Hamas outposts, “strongholds,” and capturing Hamas infrastructure.[3] An Israeli military correspondent reported that the 98th Division isolated the Khan Younis Refugee Camp after airstrikes overnight on January 21 and 22.[4] See the Gaza Strip Axis for more details on this development.

The IDF told the military correspondent that it is “aware of the sites where civilians are sheltering” in Khan Younis.[5] The IDF also told the Washington Post that it still considers Mawasi a “safer zone.”[6] Israeli forces are operating along the easternmost edge of the al Mawasi Humanitarian Zone. See the Gaza Strip Axis for more details on this development.

Hamas and other Palestinian fighters are likely in the early stages of the reconstitution of their military and governance capabilities in the northern Gaza Strip. The IDF has decreased its footprint in the northern Gaza Strip since December 31, which created an absence of authority in some areas of the Gaza Strip.[7] There is no functioning civil authority in the northern Strip, which permits Hamas-backed governing structures to reemerge in some areas. The Israeli Army Radio’s military correspondent reported on January 16 that Hamas is attempting to reconstitute its local Police in the northern Gaza Strip and that the humanitarian aid arriving in the northern Strip comes immediately “into the hands of Hamas.”[8]

Hamas and other Palestinian fighters are already contesting Israeli raids into the northern Gaza Strip, which indicates that Hamas is reconstituting some of its military capabilities. A local Gazan activist reported on January 20 that Israeli forces reentered the Strip east of Jabalia from the Gaza “envelope.”[9] The Gaza Envelope describes populated areas in southern Israel that are within seven kilometers of the Israel-Gaza border. Hamas and other Palestinian fighters have engaged Israeli forces east of Jabalia since January 18, when Hamas claimed five attacks targeting Israeli forces.[10] Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a Palestinian Islamist group backed by Iran and aligned with Hamas, mortared an Israeli supply line east of Jabalia in a combined operation with Hamas fighters on January 22.[11] PIJ fighters also fired small arms at an Israeli combat outpost near the Eastern Cemetery east of Jabalia on January 22.[12]

Hamas and other Palestinian militias are also reconstituting militarily elsewhere in the northern Gaza Strip. Local Gazan activists and journalists reported heavy fighting in Tel al Hawa near the al Katiba Square in southwestern Gaza City on January 21.[13] Israeli forces are continuing to conduct operations in southern Gaza City, as CTP-ISW has previously reported.[14]

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

The IDF Yiftach Brigade engaged two Hamas cells in the central Gaza Strip on January 22.[15] The IDF said that the brigade killed both groups of Hamas fighters.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)’s military wing claimed two attacks targeting Israeli forces in the central Gaza Strip on January 22. PIJ published a video on January 22 that showed its fighters firing a sniper rifle from a hide site targeting several Israeli soldiers east of Bureij.[16] PIJ also launched one Badr-1 rocket targeting Israeli soldiers east of Maghazi.[17] The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a leftist Palestinian militia aligned with Hamas in this war, ambushed an Israeli infantry unit that breached a house in Bureij on January 22.[18]

The IDF withdrew the 900th “Kfir” Brigade from Bani Suheila for a “short [rest and recuperation] and training period.”[19] Unspecified Israeli forces backfilled the brigade. An Israeli military correspondent reported that the Kfir Brigade will resume its operations according to the IDF’s requirements.

For Israel’s “expanded” operation in Khan Younis, see topline.

Palestinian militias are continuing to execute a deliberate defense against the Israeli ground operation in western Khan Younis amid the IDF’s “expanded” ground operation in Khan Younis. Palestinian militias claimed 11 attacks targeting Israeli forces in western Khan Younis city.[20] Israeli media and Palestinian militias both reported “fierce” combat in western Khan Younis on January 22.[21] The DFLP claimed that it clashed with Israeli forces near al Aqsa University, which is on the edge of the al Mawasi Humanitarian Zone.[22] The al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, which is a nationalist militia aligned with Hamas in this war, also said that it engaged Israeli forces operating in the Austrian Quarter, near Nasser Hospital.[23] Local Palestinian sources also claimed that IDF armor deployed “near” Nasser Hospital in western Khan Younis.[24]

Protesters and relatives of the hostages stormed the Israeli Knesset to demand the government do more to secure the release of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip on January 22.[25] Knesset security staff were unable to prevent the entry of protesters to the Knesset Finance Committee session. Many protesters wore photos of family members being held in the Gaza Strip on their shirts. This protest follows an earlier demonstration calling for new elections outside the Knesset on Monday morning.[26] Non-voting Israeli war cabinet member Gadi Eisenkot stated on January 19 that the only way to secure the release of the hostages is with a ceasefire.[27]

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters seven times across the West Bank on January 22.[28] This number of attacks is consistent with the daily attack rate over the past week. The military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades—claimed on January 22 that it conducted a combined attack with the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades south of Jenin. This is the group’s first attack in the West Bank since October 12.[29]

Israeli forces arrested 15 wanted individuals in raids across the West Bank.[30]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Lebanese Hezbollah conducted nine attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on January 22.[31] The Israeli Air Force responded by striking Lebanese Hezbollah military infrastructure in multiple areas in southern Lebanon.[32]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for three attacks targeting US positions in Syria and Iraq on January 22.[33] The group fired two barrages of rockets targeting US forces at the Conoco Mission Support Site in Deir ez Zor Province.[34] The group separately claimed a drone attack targeting US forces at Ain al Asad airbase in western Iraq.[35] The drone attack is the first on Ain al Asad airbase since the Islamic Resistance in Iraq fired multiple ballistic missiles at the base on January 20. The missile strikes injured US and Iraqi service members.[36]

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Iraqi airline Fly Baghdad for aiding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and its militias in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon on January 22.[37] The Department of the Treasury stated that Fly Baghdad has carried weapons and military personnel to the Damascus International Airport for a range of Iranian-backed groups over the past several years. Fly Baghdad has supplied these groups with Iranian-made Fateh missiles, Zulfiqar missiles, al Fajr rockets, as well as AK-47s, RPG-7s, grenades, and machine guns. Kataib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al Haq used the airline to transport fighters, weapons, and US currency to Lebanon and Syria.

The Houthis claimed that they conducted a missile attack targeting an American military cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden on January 22. The group claimed to fire missiles at the US-flagged heavy load carrier Ocean Jazz but did not state whether they hit the vessel.[38] Shipping monitors did not report an incident in the Gulf of Aden on January 22 and unidentified US defense officials said the Ocean Jazz was not targeted by the Houthis.[39] The group’s military spokesperson threatened that the Houthis intend to respond to US and UK strikes on Houthi naval missiles and other military targets in Yemen.[40]

EU member states “agreed in principle” to deploy military assets to protect merchant shipping in the Red Sea on January 22.[41] The German outlet Der Speigel citing unspecified diplomats reported that the EU-led operation will ”ideally start next month” and will involve sending European warships and early warning systems to the region.[42] The planned operation does not include participation in US strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.[43] EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell said after a meeting with European foreign ministers that the operation’s details still require unanimity.[44] The Houthi military spokesperson said on January 22 that the group would target all threats in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The Houthis would likely interpret the EU‘s protection of merchant shipping as a threat to its anti-shipping campaign. Italy, France, and Spain did not join the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian in December, despite a contradictory announcement from the US Defense Secretary.[45]

The Houthis are seeking new weapons from Iran, according to a January 21 report by Politico. Politico cites US and Western intelligence that the Houthis are lobbying Iran for additional weapons needed to launch missiles at freighters.[46] US naval forces seized an illegal shipment of Iranian-made ballistic and cruise missile components en route to Yemen on January 11.[47] Iran’s provision of these kinds of weapons to the Houthis enables their attacks on international shipping around the Red Sea. Houthi Supreme Leader Abdulmalik al Houthi claimed on January 21 that US strikes on the Houthis will develop the group’s military capabilities, instead of degrading the Houthi’s military capacity to target global shipping routes.[48]

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) held a funeral ceremony in Tehran on January 22 for three IRGC Quds Force officers that Israel killed in Syria.[49] The IRGC announced on January 20 that Israel killed five IRGC officers in an airstrike on al Mazzah, Damascus.[50] Among the killed were Brigadier General Sadegh Omid Zadeh, who was the IRGC Quds Force’s intelligence deputy in Syria, and his deputy, ”Haj Gholam.”[51] Omid Zadeh, also known as Hojjat Ollah Omidvar and ”Hajj Sadegh,” was reportedly an adviser to former IRGC Quds Force Commander Major General Qassem Soleimani and responsible for directing Iranian-backed militias in Syria to conduct attacks against US forces.[52] High-ranking IRGC officials, including IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami, attended the ceremony.[53]

Iranian officials and state media vowed retaliation against Israel for killing the five IRGC officers.[54] Israel previously conducted strikes targeting senior IRGC officers involved in transferring military equipment to Lebanese Hezbollah through Syria on December 2 and 25, 2023.[55] Israel was responding to Iran accelerating its supply of military equipment to Hezbollah, which is using the equipment to support attacks into northern Israel.[56]

An Iranian soldier shot and killed five fellow soldiers at an Artesh military facility near Kerman on January 21.[57] The Artesh is Iran‘s conventional military and is separate from the IRGC. The Artesh Southeastern Regional Headquarters commander said that the Artesh and Law Enforcement Command arrested and interrogated the individual. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said that the incident was not terrorism.[58] Iranian officials and state media have provided no further information on the individual and his motive at the time of writing.

The Iranian and Pakistani foreign affairs ministries announced on January 22 that the two countries plan to renormalize diplomatic relations.[59] Iran conducted drone and missile strikes on Salafi-jihadi, Baloch militant headquarters inside Pakistan on January 16.[60] Pakistan recalled its ambassador and expelled the Iranian ambassador on January 17. Both sides adopted de-escalatory rhetoric following the strikes.[61] Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian discussed the renormalizing diplomatic ties and his upcoming visit to Pakistan on January 29 during a phone call with his Pakistani counterpart before the foreign affairs ministries’ announcements on January 22.[62] Pakistan responded by conducting strikes on Baloch separatists inside Iran on January 17.[63] Ambassadors from both countries will return to their posts on January 26.[64]

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian discussed the Israel-Hamas war with the Kuwaiti Parliamentary Friendship Group head in Tehran on January 22.[65] Abdollahian praised Kuwait for its position in support of the Palestinian people and claimed that Israel is attempting to compensate for its failures in the Israel-Hamas war by resorting to acts of “blind” terrorism.

Abdollahian discussed the Israel-Hamas war with Algerian Parliament Deputy Speaker and Algerian-Iranian Parliamentary Friendship Group head Moussa Kharfi in Tehran on January 22.[66] Abdollahian thanked Algeria for its support of the Palestinian people and emphasized that the Palestinian issue is of strategic importance to Algeria.

3. 21 Israeli troops are killed in the deadliest attack on the military since the Gaza offensive began

21 Israeli troops are killed in the deadliest attack on the military since the Gaza offensive began

AP · January 23, 2024

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinian militants carried out the deadliest single attack on Israel’s forces since the Hamas raid that triggered the war, killing 21 soldiers, the military said Tuesday, a significant setback that could add to mounting calls for a cease-fire.

Hours later, the military announced that ground forces had encircled the southern city of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest. That marked a major advance, but it was unclear how much closer it would bring Israel to defeating Hamas or freeing Israeli hostages — two central war aims that have proved increasingly elusive — or what impact it would have on cease-fire talks that appear to be gathering pace.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mourned the soldiers but vowed to press ahead with the offensive until “absolute victory” over Hamas. But Israelis are increasingly divided on whether such a victory is possible — and whether it is compatible with bringing back the hostages. In previous conflicts, large numbers of casualties have pressured Israel to halt military operations.

A senior Egyptian official said Israel has proposed a two-month cease-fire in which the hostages would be freed in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel and top Hamas leaders in Gaza would be allowed to relocate to other countries.

The official, who was not authorized to brief media and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Hamas rejected the proposal and is insisting that no more hostages will be released until Israel ends its offensive and withdraws from Gaza. Israel’s government declined to comment on the talks.

The official said Egypt and Qatar — which have brokered past agreements between Israel and Hamas — were developing a multistage proposal to try to bridge the gaps. Families of the hostages have called for Israel to reach a deal with Hamas, saying time is running out to bring their relatives home alive.

Israel launched its offensive after Hamas crossed the border Oct. 7, killing over 1,200 people and abducting some 250 others. More than 100 were released in November during a weeklong cease-fire.

The offensive has caused widespread death and destruction, displaced an estimated 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and left one-quarter facing starvation.

The war has heightened regional tensions, with Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen attacking United States and Israeli targets in support of Palestinians. The U.S. and Britain launched another wave of strikes Monday against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have targeted international shipping in the Red Sea.

DEADLY FIGHTING IN THE CENTER AND SOUTH

Hamas is believed to have suffered heavy losses but has continued to put up stiff resistance in the face of one of the deadliest air and ground offensives in recent history. Militants are still battling Israeli forces across the territory and launching rockets into Israel.

On Monday, Israeli reservists were preparing explosives to demolish two buildings in the built-up Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, when a militant fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a tank nearby. The blast triggered the explosives, causing both two-story buildings to collapse on the soldiers inside.

At least 217 soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive began in late October, including three killed in a separate event Monday, according to the military.

Netanyahu acknowledged it was “one of the hardest days” since the war began and said the military would launch an investigation. “In the name of our heroes, and for our own lives, we will not stop fighting until absolute victory,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Tuesday that the bodies of 195 people killed in Israeli bombardments were brought to hospitals in the previous 24 hours. Hospitals also received 354 wounded, it said.

The fatalities brought the death toll in the strip to 25,490 since the war began, the ministry said. Another 63,354 were wounded, it added. The ministry’s count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Israel claims to have killed thousands of militants and to have largely defeated Hamas in northern Gaza in operations that caused widespread destruction to that part of the territory, including Gaza City. In recent weeks the offensive has focused on Khan Younis and refugee camps in central Gaza, including Maghazi, that date back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

The military said its forces had killed dozens of militants in Khan Younis in recent days and had encircled the city, without providing evidence. It was not possible to independently confirm those claims.

Israel believes Hamas commanders may be hiding in vast tunnel complexes beneath Khan Younis, the hometown of the group’s top leader in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar, whose location is unknown. Hamas leaders are also believed to be using hostages as human shields, further complicating any rescue efforts.

PRESSURE FOR A CEASE-FIRE

The growing death toll and dire humanitarian situation have led to increasing international pressure on Israel to scale back the offensive and agree to a path for the creation of a Palestinian state after the war. The United States, which has provided crucial military aid for the offensive, has joined those calls.

But Netanyahu, whose popularity has plummeted since Oct. 7 and whose governing coalition is beholden to far-right parties, has rebuffed both demands.

Instead, he has said Israel will need to expand operations and eventually take over the Gaza side of the border with Egypt — an area where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have fled from other areas are packed into overflowing U.N.-run shelters and sprawling tent camps.

That drew an angry protest from Egypt’s government, which rejected Israeli allegations that Hamas smuggles in weapons across the heavily guarded frontier.

Diaa Rashwan, head of Egypt’s State Information Service, said Monday that any Israeli move to occupy the border area would “lead to a serious threat” to relations between the two countries, which signed a landmark peace treaty over four decades ago. Egypt is also deeply concerned about any potential influx of Palestinian refugees into its Sinai Peninsula.

Rashwan said Egypt was in full control of the border after taking a number of measures in recent years, including the creation of a 5-kilometer (3-mile) buffer zone and the construction of barriers above and below ground.

___

Jobain reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo and Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

AP · January 23, 2024

4. Exclusive: Israel’s spy chief proposed letting Hamas leaders leave Gaza as part of broader ceasefire talks

Interesting and I am sure a controversial proposal.

Exclusive: Israel’s spy chief proposed letting Hamas leaders leave Gaza as part of broader ceasefire talks | CNN Politics

CNN · by Alex Marquardt · January 23, 2024

CNN Pentagon correspondent on Israel spy chief's proposal to Hamas

01:43 - Source: CNN

CNN —

Israel has proposed that Hamas senior leaders could leave Gaza as part of a broader ceasefire agreement, two officials familiar with the ongoing international discussions told CNN.

The extraordinary proposal, which has not been previously reported, comes as Israel has struggled to achieve its stated goal of completely destroying Hamas. Despite its nearly four-month war in Gaza, Israel has failed to capture or kill any of Hamas’s most senior leaders in Gaza and left around 70% of Hamas’ fighting force intact, according to Israel’s own estimates.

Though it would give safe passage out of Gaza for top Hamas leaders who orchestrated the October 7 attack, draining Gaza of its leaders could weaken Hamas’ grip on the war-torn area while also allowing Israel to continue tracking down high-value targets abroad.

Senior Hamas officials are known to live in Doha, Qatar, and the Lebanese capital Beirut, among other places outside the Palestinian territories. An Israeli airstrike earlier this month killed a top Hamas commander in Beirut.

Israel’s suggestion that Hamas leaders could leave Gaza, though unlikely to be accepted by Hamas, has been discussed as part of broader ceasefire negotiations at least twice in recent weeks — once last month in Warsaw by Israel’s intelligence chief, Mossad Director David Barnea, and then again this month in Doha with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to one official familiar with the discussions.

It also comes amid a flurry of diplomatic activity to try to achieve an extended break in the fighting and free hostages believed to still be alive in Gaza. The White House’s top official for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, is traveling to Egypt and Qatar this week for further talks.

American and international officials familiar with the negotiations have said that Israel and Hamas’ recent engagement in talks is encouraging but that a deal doesn’t appear imminent.

Pressure on Netanyahu

Pressure is building on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deliver some kind of resolution. The “complete victory” over Hamas that he has called for is a long way off, by his own admission. Meanwhile, anger among Israelis has grown over the inability of the government to bring home the more than 100 hostages being held in Gaza.

Israel is “not achieving their military objectives,” says Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. That, combined with the “enormous pressure” on Netanyahu and his government to bring hostages home, Miller said, has created a situation where Israel would be willing to propose having Hamas leaders leave Gaza.

An Israeli tank along a fence on January 19, 2024, as damaged buildings are seen in the Gaza strip amid continuing battles between Israel and Hamas.

Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

“I think they’re simply bumping up against against reality,” said Miller. “And hostage families are beginning to exert tremendous influence.”

In addition, international sentiment toward Israel has soured over its continued bombardment of Gaza, which has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

For the past two months, the Biden administration has been openly calling on Israel to transition to a lower-intensity phase of the conflict, which US officials argue has started happening, though intense operations continue in southern Gaza.

Proposal ‘would never work’

The proposal for Hamas leaders to leave Gaza was raised in Warsaw in December by Barnea, Israel’s top intelligence official when he met with US CIA Director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani, who has acted as an intermediary with Hamas. The official familiar with the discussions in the meetings said it was then brought up again when Blinken was in the Qatari capital earlier this month.

Mossad Director David Barnea

Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images/File

In that meeting Blinken was told by al Thani that the Israeli idea “would never work,” the official said. In part because of distrust by Hamas that Israel would in fact end its operations against Hamas in Gaza even after its leadership left.

A second official, from the Middle East, was told about Israel’s proposal by the US.

The US State Department, CIA and the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office all declined to comment.

While it’s unclear whether in private discussions Israel has named which Hamas leaders they would hope to leave Gaza, there is no bigger target than Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ top official in Gaza. Sinwar is a “dead man walking,” Netanyahu and others have said.

Sinwar spent two decades in Israeli prisons and is originally from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where the bulk of Israel’s operations in Gaza are currently focused. Israeli and US officials have said they believe Sinwar could be hiding out in the vast, deep network of tunnels under the city, Gaza’s second biggest.

His closest confidantes and aides are Mohammed Deif, the leader of Hamas’ armed wing, along with Deif’s deputy Marwan Issa. Sinwar’s brother Mohammed is also a senior Hamas commander. None are believed to have been found or killed by Israel.

Top Hamas official Yahya Sinwar

Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images/FILE

Last month Israel dropped leaflets on Gaza offering rewards of hundreds of thousands of dollars for information on the Hamas leaders, including a $400,000 reward for information on Sinwar.

“The goal is bringing down Hamas as the ruler in the Gaza Strip,” said Ofer Shelah, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.

“There is no difference if [Sinwar] dies, or if he leaves,” Shelah said. “If he dies, then somebody could take over much in the same way. If we bring all the hostages back and Sinwar leaves, definitely that would make most people in Israel feel that we’ve won the war.”

American officials believe it is highly unlikely Sinwar and those around him would agree to leave Gaza, preferring instead to die fighting their sworn enemy.

Israel vows to hunt Hamas globally

Israel has made no secret of its intention to continue hunting Hamas leaders long after the war is over.

Netanyahu said in November he had “instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are.” Ronen Bar, the director of Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Bet, has vowed to “eliminate Hamas” around the world, even if it takes years.

“Everywhere: in Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar, everywhere,” Bar said in a recording aired in early December by Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan.

Sinwar could perhaps be convinced to leave, Miller argued, if Israel were to agree to an “asymmetrical” trade of many times more Palestinian prisoners held by Israel than Israeli hostages.

“I think he would only consider it in the event the Israelis also agreed to free all of the Palestinian prisoners,” Miller said.

“Whatever the Israelis agree to, Sinwar must know that they’re going to try to kill him,” he added. “Weeks, months years.”

CNN · by Alex Marquardt · January 23, 2024

5. A War in All but Name Simmers at Israel-Lebanon Border

Of course Israel does not need a two front war. But I am sure it is already prepared for one and I think the best way to prevent one is to demonstrate strength in the north and a commitment to defense rather than using words we have used such as we want to prevent escalation. The best way to prevent escalation is to show that you do not fear escalation and are prepared to deal with whatever happens.

A War in All but Name Simmers at Israel-Lebanon Border

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah inches closer to an all-out conflict, prompting residents on both sides to flee

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-border-lebanon-hezbollah-conflict-4565ee12?mod=hp_lead_pos7

By Marcus WalkerFollow

and Carrie Keller-Lynn | Photographs by Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR for The Wall Street Journal

Jan. 23, 2024 12:01 am ET

KIBBUTZ HANITA, Israel—Drizzle covered the forest. Dense mist rolled through the hills. Israeli 155mm artillery shells whistled close overhead, replying to the crunch of a mortar round fired by nearby Hezbollah.

“It’s quieter than usual,” said Lt. Col. Dotan Razili of the Israeli army, sheltering from the rain in this rural community 300 yards from the Lebanese border. “It makes me suspicious.”

An undeclared war is festering all along the hill country that separates Israel and Lebanon. It involves nearly as many troops as the war in the Gaza Strip. So far it’s a largely static battle of missiles, artillery, bombing raids and stealthy infiltration.

Hezbollah hasn’t unleashed its long-range firepower. Israel hasn’t ordered forward its tanks. But the fighting has intensified this month. Nobody knows how long the border battle can continue before the gloves come off.

“We don’t yet have a name for it,” Razili said of the cross-border conflict—but across northern Israel and in southern Lebanon, people are starting to call it a war.

U.S. diplomats are trying, fruitlessly so far, to broker a cease-fire based on Hezbollah pulling back its fighters from Israel’s doorstep. The militant Shia movement has vowed to carry on firing missiles at Israel for as long as Israeli forces are fighting in the Gaza Strip against Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah and its backer Iran.

Washington has urged Israel not to launch a ground assault on southern Lebanon. Such a step would sharply escalate the war in the Middle East that began with Hamas’s bloody Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel and is already sparking exchanges of bombs, missiles and targeted killings from the Levant to the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf.

A soldier walked through Kibbutz Hanita.

Hezbollah, caught off guard by events since Oct. 7, is looking to avoid all-out war by restricting its attacks to towns and military bases in a strip across Israel’s north. But Israel says it will have no choice but to drive Hezbollah away from its border unless there’s an unexpected diplomatic breakthrough.

Israelis from apple farmers to army chiefs say the situation in the north is intolerable. The country fears losing a swath of its hard-won livable space. Israel’s defense minister and chief of staff warned in recent days that time is running out.

Israel has evacuated most of the civilians from the border area. Some 120,000 are currently displaced, according to Giora Zaltz, head of the Upper Galilee regional council. “The regional economy is frozen,” he said.

Hanita and other northern kibbutzim, close-knit communities founded on socialist ideals last century, have become ghost villages. Residents say they won’t return home as long as Hezbollah fighters are based near the border fence. Those include its feared Radwan Force commandos, who have repeatedly tried to cross the border in small groups since October.

Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis: Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance,’ Explained

South Korean official touts fledgling drone command as global model

Defense News · by Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo · January 22, 2024

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Nations eager to bolster their military drone chops should look to South Korea, where officials recently centralized the discipline’s various functions under a single command, the chief of South Korea’s Drone Operations Command said.

“Before our Drone Operations Command was established, each branch of our armed forces had their own individual drone units,” Maj. Gen. Lee Bo-hyung said during a panel on the occasion of the UMEX conference here on Jan 22.

“However, since every branch has their own area of responsibility, when it came to operational and strategic deployments, there were some limits as to how we conducted our missions,” he added.

The Drone Operations Command was officially established in September in the wake of North Korea’s drone intrusion on Dec. 26, 2022, which included the entry of one enemy system into a no-fly zone near the presidential office in Seoul.

The South Korean military at the time earned much criticism for having failed to intercept and shoot down the drones. Following the incident, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed to rapidly boost the country’s drone-related capabilities and readiness.

Bo-hyung said that one of the quickest and most effective moves to that end was creating a joint unit that could dedicate itself entirely to specific drone operations, both defensive and offensive.

“Since North Korea is significantly increasing their military capabilities, including nuclear threats, it is important for our Joint Chiefs of Staff to have a reliable, joint unit that can conduct these types of missions,” he said.

“We aim to have an operational and strategic balance at the command, we conduct reconnaissance as well as strike, electronic warfare and psychological warfare operations,” the official added.

The unit is based in Pocheon, near the inter-Korean border, and falls under the control of the Ministry of National Defense and JCS chairman. It is the first joint combat unit to be composed of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, per a Korea Times report that quoted a previous military statement.

In line with the new command’s doctrine, all missions must now include mobile counter-drone capabilities for detecting and classifying enemy unmanned aircraft. The unit also has been tasked with standardizing the education curriculum of the country’s different military branches, and setting safety standards about the deployment of forces, Bo-hyung said.

“A great number of countries around the world are interested in deploying their drone forces as early as possible, so we suggest that they can look at our case as an example and could create something similar,” Bo-hyung said.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s drone-focused reorganization comes against the backdrop of an increasingly stance by the regime in Pyongyang.

According to the state news agency KCNA, leader Kim Jong Un said the regime would boost its nuclear arsenal in 2024 and abandon the objective of reunification with South Korea, instead designating Seoul as an enemy.

Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.

7. ‘China strikes hard at terrorism’: Beijing’s new white paper praises its tough measures in Hong Kong and Xinjiang

I seem to recall reports in 2001 or 2002 about China asking to join the Global War on terrorism and wanting to focus on its "threats" in Xinjiang.

‘China strikes hard at terrorism’: Beijing’s new white paper praises its tough measures in Hong Kong and Xinjiang

Information Office of the State Council releases white paper titled ‘China’s Legal Framework and Measures for Counterterrorism’
It says China’s counterterrorism measures guaranteed human rights, citing three unnamed cases in Xinjiang as evidence

Yuanyue Dang

in Beijing

+ FOLLOWPublished: 7:00pm, 23 Jan, 2024

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3249503/china-strikes-hard-terrorism-beijings-new-white-paper-praises-its-tough-measures-hong-kong-and?utm

Beijing has hailed Hong Kong’s national security law and anti-terrorism measures in Xinjiang as improvements to China’s legal system over the past decade, according to the latest white paper.

The document titled “China’s Legal Framework and Measures for Counterterrorism” was released by the Information Office of the State Council, China’s cabinet, on Tuesday morning.

Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai's high-stakes national security trial gets under way

It said China had long faced the “real threat” of terrorism but had “found a path of law-based counterterrorism that conformed to its realities by establishing a sound legal framework”

The five-part white paper described how Beijing had confronted terrorism by revising existing laws and regulations and enacting a specialised anti-terrorism law.

Among “other relevant laws”, the white paper said, the Hong Kong national security law “contains provisions on combating crimes of terrorism in the region and defines the relevant penalties”.

China’s legislature passed the sweeping law in 2020 to ban acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. It stoked fears of greater restrictions on civil freedoms and led to US sanctions against some senior officials from both Hong Kong and the central government.

The white paper said several regions in China, including Beijing and Shanghai, had enacted their own counterterrorism rules.

It highlighted deradicalisation regulations in the western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. The regulations in Xinjiang – which were passed in 2017 and revised in 2018 – listed behaviours deemed to be extremism by the authorities, including growing an “abnormal” beard and wearing a veil.

Beijing has repeatedly denied allegations of human rights abuses and forced labour in Xinjiang.

EU envoy slams China’s ‘national security obsession’, questions growth rebound

18 Jan 2024

The white paper said China’s counterterrorism measures had guaranteed human rights – including personal freedom, the right to a defence and the right to stand trial in the languages of ethic minority groups – citing three unnamed cases in Xinjiang as evidence.

In the document, the State Council accused “some countries” – without naming them – of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries “under the pretext of defending the rule of law and human rights” which it said “severely hampered the global effort to fight against terrorism”.

It said China was “striking hard at unlawful and criminal terrorist activities” and had attached greater importance to the “education and rehabilitation of victims of extremist teachings who have committed only minor offences”, which it said could eliminate the “ideological basis” of terrorism.

Hong Kong national security law: HK$1 million bounties for arrests of political fugitives overseas

The white paper was issued as Beijing continued efforts to bolster its toolkit to fight terrorism and crimes, despite the risk of attracting further criticism.

The municipal government of Beijing rolled out its own regulations under the national anti-terrorism law last year. It stated that city authorities would also inspect and strengthen risk monitoring of “new technologies” and “new industries”.

China’s legislature has proposed amendments to a public security rule that would further empower police by giving them a legal basis to collect biological information in cases involving minor offences, vastly expanding a controversial practice currently used only in investigations related to terrorism, drugs and other serious crimes.

China started drafting anti-terrorism legislation in April 2014, a month after an attack on Kunming railway station in which 31 people were killed, according to the white paper.

The anti-terrorism law was then passed in December 2015 and amended in 2018.

China ramps up national security studies amid ‘unprecedented’ external threats

3 Dec 2023

The white paper praised China’s legal system for its clear definitions and penalties for terrorist activities, adding that Beijing’s law enforcement agencies were overseen by the legislature, political advisory bodies and society.

China has strengthened its border controls to stop the flow of terrorists and “effectively curb the spread of terrorism”, measures the white paper said contributed to global security and stability.

The white paper also pledged that Beijing would support counterterrorism technologies to meet the challenges of artificial intelligence, encrypted communication and virtual currency.

CONVERSATIONS (9)

+ FOLLOW

Yuanyue Dang

Yuanyue joined the Post in 2022 after working as a feature writer for various Chinese media outlets. He graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a bachelor's degree in journalism and holds a master’s degree in anthropology from University College London.

8. Congress vs. the U.S. Military

Not the way to run a railroad. I think CRAs always damage the military.

Congress vs. the U.S. Military

A yearlong continuing resolution would harm the armed forces.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/congress-budget-continuing-resolution-defense-spending-mike-johnson-a6940805?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

By The Editorial Board

Jan. 22, 2024 6:28 pm ET

U.S. soldiers watch a U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt during a joint live fire exercise between South Korea and the U.S. at a military training field, Pocheon, Jan. 4. PHOTO: JUNG YEON-JE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Congress is relying on a stopgap spending measure to avert a government shutdown and—this may sound familiar—a faction of House Republicans are threatening to hold funding hostage unless their demands are met. Congress may eventually resort to a yearlong patchwork measure, which would be a disaster for American defense.

House Republicans are balking at Speaker Mike Johnson’s budget deal with the Democratic Senate and White House, and many are pushing to fund the government for the rest of the year with a continuing resolution (CR). The appeal is holding domestic discretionary spending at last year’s levels, which the GOP could sell as a victory for fiscal discipline.

But a full-year CR would hold the defense budget at least $26 billion below the $886 billion negotiated in last year’s debt-limit deal, despite two wars and terrorists patrolling the Red Sea on the rules of Blackbeard. That $886 billion already represents a cut to national defense after inflation, and the two-year deal puts defense on a bigger diet in 2025.

A year-long continuing resolution would shrink purchasing power and trap the Pentagon in old spending priorities. One example: bulk buying bombs. Congress has approved multiyear contracts for some munitions, as Americans have learned that U.S. arsenals are inadequate to meet today’s threats.

But under a CR the Pentagon can’t strike multiyear contracts for Patriot air defense missiles, precision rockets, antiship missiles and more. The Air Force can’t spend on tooling and staffing to increase production for the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) to 810 a year from about 550 now. JASSM is one of the military’s premiere long-range weapons that could be “depleted in about a week” of intense fighting, as a 2021 think-tank analysis put it.

Budget failure would also prevent the Air Force from starting 19 initiatives to compete with China, which both parties supposedly agree is America’s top threat. One is a project to develop drones that complement manned fighter aircraft and reduce risks to U.S. pilots. B-21 procurement to replace the geriatric U.S. bomber force would be delayed.

The Navy needs more attack submarines to deter or prevail in the Pacific. The goal has been to buy at least two hulls a year and someday three to exploit U.S. advantages in undersea warfare. But the Navy told Congress that “only one of two ships requested could be awarded” under a year-long CR, and forget about purchasing parts in bulk.

The Pentagon would still have to pay a 5.2% raise for troops, and that means raiding money for enlistment bonuses in the worst recruiting environment in decades. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs C.Q. Brown told Congress that a yearlong CR would blow a $5.8 billion crater in military personnel accounts.

Some Republicans say they can duct-tape these problems by writing “anomalies” into a CR that allow some new projects. Yet billions will inevitably end up mismatched, and the Pentagon will lose time, even as the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to Taiwan grows.

A year-long CR would broadcast to U.S. adversaries that America is too caught up in internal dysfunction to notice the growing risks around the world.

WSJ Opinion: Choosing a President in a World of Enemies

Kyiv Missile Attack: Multiple Explosions in Capital as Russia Launches Massive Strike

kyivpost.com · January 23, 2024

At least ten explosions were heard in Kyiv. Kharkiv and other cities also came under attack and six people are known to have been killed and around 70 injured.

by Chris York | January 23, 2024, 8:13 am |

Russian forces launched yet another mass missile attack against Ukraine on Tuesday morning with explosions reported in cities across the country, including Kyiv.

Currently, five people are known to have died in Kharkiv and one person in Pavlograd. More than 70 are known to have been injured across the country.

In the capital, Kyiv Post reporters were woken by an air raid alert shortly before 6am, then a series of at least ten explosions in quick succession at around 7:20am.

According to preliminary reports from Mayor Vitali Klitschko, a “non-residential building” was on fire in the Pechershk district and a fire broke out in “several apartments” in the Solomyan district.

Several cars were also ablaze next to a kindergarten in the Svyatoshynskyi district.

Klitschko also said an unexploded warhead had been found in an apartment and an evacuation of the building had been undertaken.

It is not currently known if any of the damage was caused by direct missile hits or debris from the work of air defenses.

Early reports said one woman had been killed in Kyiv but Klitcshko later reported she was alive but in hospital. Twenty-two people were injured including a 13-year-old boy

Ukraine's army chief Valery Zaluzhny said on social media that Russian forces had fired 41 missiles, including cruise and ballistic missiles, and that his forces had downed 21.

Kharkiv also came under attack. Early reports indicate several residential buildings were damaged and a gas pipeline is on fire. Five people are known to have died and 51 injured.

Final Suspect Arrested in Defense Procurement Corruption Scheme

Roman Hrynkevych, along with his father Ihor and three others, stand accused of large-scale fraud that has left the Defense Ministry out of pocket to the tune of $32 million.

"As a result of the morning shelling, we have a complete destruction of a section of an apartment building. Now the rescuers are trying to dismantle the rubble in order to find people under it," Kharkiv's mayor said.

The all clear was given in Kyiv around 8:15am.

Denise Brown, the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, called the attacks "brutal and indiscriminate."

She added: "The attacks caused damage to civilian buildings just next to the United Nations office in Kyiv. Homes were damaged and civilians – those I just mentioned who were only trying to continue with their lives despite the war – are now hospitalized.

"These strikes are yet another bitter reminder of the devastation, suffering and distress that Russia’s invasion is causing for millions of people in Ukraine.

"Brutal and indiscriminate attacks against civilians must stop."

To suggest a correction or clarification, write to us here

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Chris York

Chris is Kyiv Post’s Head of News and has over a decade of experience as a former senior editor and reporter at HuffPost UK. He has an MA in Conflict, Development, and Security and after a stint learning Russian, is now trying to forget it and learn Ukrainian instead.

kyivpost.com · January 23, 2024

10. Yemen: US and British forces strike Houthis again

There is a graphic of Red Sea oil traffic at the link.

Yemen: US and British forces strike Houthis again

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-british-forces-carry-out-new-strikes-yemen-officials-2024-01-22/?utm

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali

January 23, 20244:06 AM ESTUpdated 3 hours ago

0 seconds of 27 secondsVolume 0%

WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - U.S. and British forces carried out a fresh round of strikes on Monday in Yemen, targeting a Houthi underground storage site as well as missile and surveillance capabilities used by the Iran-aligned group against Red Sea shipping, the Pentagon said.

The Houthis, who control the most populous parts of Yemen, have said their attacks are in solidarity with Palestinians as Israel strikes Gaza.

The Houthi attacks have disrupted global shipping and stoked fears of global inflation. They have also deepened concern that fallout from the Israel-Hamas war could destabilize the Middle East.

In the latest response, U.S. and British forces carried out strikes at eight different locations in Yemen, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, according to a joint statement signed by the six countries.

A senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said roughly 25 to 30 munitions were fired, some of them from warplanes launched from a U.S. aircraft carrier.

So far, eight rounds of strikes over the past month have failed to stop Houthi attacks against shipping.

The Houthis' military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said on Tuesday that the U.S.-British alliance had carried out 18 air strikes: 12 in the capital Sanaa, three in the port city of Hodeidah, two in Taiz and one in Al-Bayda province.

"These attacks will not go unanswered or unpunished", he said.

U.S. officials say the strikes have degraded the Houthis' ability to carry out complex attacks. But they have declined to offer any specific numbers of missiles, radar, drones or other military capabilities destroyed so far.

[1/4]Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4 being preparded to take off. Royal Air Force Typhoon aircraft have conducted precision strike operations against Houthi military targets in response to further attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, in this undated handout image. UK MOD/Handout via REUTERS Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

"We are having the intended effect," the U.S. military official told Pentagon reporters.

Speaking after the latest strikes, British foreign minister David Cameron said the action had sent a clear message to the Houthis.

"We will continue to degrade their ability to carry out these attacks whilst sending the clearest possible message that we back our words and our warnings with action," he said.

President Joe Biden said last week that air strikes would continue while acknowledging they might not be halting the Houthi attacks.

Last week, the Houthis fired two anti-ship ballistic missiles at a U.S.-owned tanker ship that hit the water near the vessel but caused no injuries or damage.

Biden's emerging strategy on Yemen aims to weaken the Houthi militants but stops well short of trying to defeat the group or directly address Iran, the Houthis' main sponsor, experts say.

The strategy - a blend of limited military strikes and sanctions - appears aimed at punishing the Houthis while limiting the danger of a wider Middle East conflict.

Container vessels have been pausing or diverting from the Red Sea, which leads to the Suez Canal, the fastest freight route from Asia to Europe. Many have taken the longer route around Africa instead.

Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics

Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; additional reporting by Nayera Abdallah in Cairo and Sarah Young in London, editing by Jonathan Oatis, Rosalba O'Brien and Kevin Liffey

Phil Stewart

Thomson Reuters

Phil Stewart has reported from more than 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Sudan. An award-winning Washington-based national security reporter, Phil has appeared on NPR, PBS NewsHour, Fox News and other programs and moderated national security events, including at the Reagan National Defense Forum and the German Marshall Fund. He is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Joe Galloway Award.

Idrees Ali

Thomson Reuters

National security correspondent focusing on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Reports on U.S. military activity and operations throughout the world and the impact that they have. Has reported from over two dozen countries to include Iraq, Afghanistan, and much of the Middle East, Asia and Europe. From Karachi, Pakistan.

11. Norwegian Factory Gears Up to Supply Ammunition to Ukraine

Nordic countries are stepping up.

Norwegian Factory Gears Up to Supply Ammunition to Ukraine

kyivpost.com · January 23, 2024

Norway War in Ukraine

With both sharing a border with Russia, Norway and Finland were spooked by the Russian 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

by AFP | January 23, 2024, 8:18 am

Empty artillery shells stand at the production line of weapons manufacturer Nammo, on January 17, 2024 in Raufoss, Norway. (Photo by Petter Berntsen / AFP)

Around the clock, glowing slabs of steel move from one machine to the next in a Norwegian factory producing artillery shells desperately needed by Ukraine.

Nordic countries have stepped up efforts to supply much needed ammunition to the Ukrainian war effort.

With both sharing a border with Russia, Norway and Finland were spooked by the Russian 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Finland and Sweden also abandoned decades of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO -- though Sweden's application still awaits ratification by Hungary and Turkey. Norway was already a member.

Largely controlled by the Norwegian and Finnish states, Nammo is -- along with Germany's Rheinmetall, France's Nexter and the UK's BAE Systems -- one of the leading manufacturers of 155mm artillery shells in Europe.

In Raufoss, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) north of Oslo, its factory is producing shell cases "non-stop", which will then be filled with explosives elsewhere.

"As long as we have the right machines and the right operators, there are no limits to the specifications we can meet," process engineer Sigbjorn Overboe explains.

"Precision can be down to the micron (one millionth of a metre)".

But the process, which includes several stages of treating the metal, is relatively slow, and therefore struggles to keep up with the rate of consumption in Ukraine.

- New production line -

To speed up production, Norway announced last week that it would invest 2 billion kroner ($191 million) to boost its ammunition and missile production capacity.

Final Suspect Arrested in Defense Procurement Corruption Scheme

Roman Hrynkevych, along with his father Ihor and three others, stand accused of large-scale fraud that has left the Defense Ministry out of pocket to the tune of $32 million.

"It is absolutely necessary to increase European production," Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told AFP.

"We have had many years of reducing the European weapons industry. The war in Ukraine reminds us that this has to increase again," he added.

Half of the funds will go to purchasing a new press and new machining tools, so that Nammo can open an additional shell production line.

"With that, we will quintuple our artillery production capacity," Morten Brandtzaeg, CEO of Nammo, told AFP.

"We prefer not to specify volumes, because there may be prying eyes, but we will soon be producing more".

Finland and Sweden have also dedicated funds to boost production at Nammo sites on their territory.

But the needs are enormous, both to supply Ukraine and to replenish stocks of Western militaries.

Ukraine fires around 200,000 shells a month, according to experts.

- Competition with cat videos -

While the EU has set a target of supplying Ukraine with one million rounds by the end of March, only 300,000 shells have officially been delivered so far.

"We're not there yet in Europe, we're 50 percent behind schedule", risk consultant Stephane Audrand explained. "And American aid is becoming very uncertain".

"There has been an effort and some announcements in recent weeks, but there is also a lot of competition between manufacturers for supplies and materials such as cotton linter used for charges of propellant", he noted.

In addition to supply chain bottlenecks, ammunition production can also be snagged by other difficulties, such as access to energy.

Last year, Brandtzaeg warned that the planned expansion of the Raufoss factory would require a volume of electricity already promised to a data centre being built for the Chinese app TikTok.

"We're banking on the fact that we'll have enough electricity," he says today. "And if someone also wants to devote energy to cat videos, so be it".

In any case, it will be some two years before the investments in Raufoss translate into more ammunition in the Ukrainian theatre.

"It's very important for Ukraine to know that somewhere down the road they will have increased supplies," a Norwegian official said on condition of anonymity.

"But in the meantime, it is clear that it will still be American ammunition stocks that will make the biggest contribution to feeding the machine".

12. The Pentagon is already testing tomorrow’s AI-powered swarm drones, ships

It looks like we are developing a lot of important capabilities.

Again, I still think of the drone capabilities demonstrated at the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018. If they can create that kind of "drone ballet" I am sure they could create swarming tactics.

The Pentagon is already testing tomorrow’s AI-powered swarm drones, ships

DOD pulled off unmanned amphibious landings, self-coding drones, and more just in the last year. What's next?

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

Autonomous weapons are coming. Recent Pentagon breakthroughs in experimental aerial and naval craft are paving the way for low-cost attack drones and new tactics that feature AI in key roles. Navy and Air Force experiments also highlighted how the U.S. military might employ autonomous weapons differently than China or Russia.

The Navy, for example, brought swarms of air and sea drones to the annual Unitas exercise, where they collected and shared reconnaissance data that helped the multinational fleet detect, identify, and take out enemy craft more quickly.

“We had an unmanned surface vessel and unmanned air vessel informing each other and then we actually had an international partner’s missiles on board, and we're able to shoot six high speed patrol boats coming at us. And we were six for six,” said Rear Adm. James Aiken, 4th Fleet commander, sharing new details about the July exercise at the Navy Surface Warfare symposium in Virginia last week.

Navy

The 4th Fleet, along with the 5th Fleet halfway around the world, are the Navy’s leaders in emerging AI concepts. Then-CNO Adm. Michael Gilday pushed for experiments in operational waters, which he said might become critical for dealing with grey-zone operations, smuggling, and other threats.

Aiken said unmanned and AI systems could help detect and thwart hostile attempts to interfere with international shipping, in part by scouring video footage and other sensor data. He added that such systems might also make it easier to share information and work with partners, from shipping companies to other governments.

“We actually use a human-machine interface to make better watchstanders, to better inform the fleet and to move forward,” he said. “How can we...use them in different ways to inform distributed maritime [operations]? To get us a better sight picture of what's going on? And then share that with with some of our key stakeholders around the globe?”

The United States isn’t the only country making new uses of autonomy. While the one-way attack drones that Houthi forces are firing at ships in the Red Sea are crude, earlier this month they launched what U.S. officials called a “complex” attack of more than 20 drones at once. Iran reportedly has plans to build jet versions of its one-way attack drones, weapons that could show up anywhere from Ukraine to the Red Sea.

That highlights the urgent need for cheaper interception technologies but it also validates the Pentagon’s five-month-old Replicator plan to increase production of cheap drones for attack, much as both sides have done in the Ukraine war and Iran has done to arm the Houthis.

U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said that the Navy is contributing.

“These concepts have been brought to fruition in terms of all the advances that we've made in unmanned, whether it be on the surface, whether it be in the air, whether it be underneath the surface,” Del Toro said. “The concepts that we've put forward to Replicator have been very well embraced.”

Air Force

The Air Force last year also demonstrated new capabilities in autonomy and AI, Col. Tucker Hamilton, Operations Commander of the Air Force’s 96th Test Wing, said this week.

“We are testing things like the XQ-58 high-performance drone that is uncrewed and has AI-enabled functionality which is really cool. We actually, for the first time in the history of aviation, had an AI agent and AI algorithm fly a high-performance drone” last July at Eglin Air Base, Florida,” he said during a Defense News broadcast. “I had the fortune of flying on the wings of this thing. When the AI agent turned on for the first time, I was in an F-15 and it was awesome.”

Hamilton said previous “autonomous” drones have generally followed simple instructions, say, for returning to a predetermined location after losing contact with its operator. There’s little room for actual elaboration. The directions are simple, he said, like “will fly at this throttle setting at this airspeed. You will turn it 30 degrees… and it's all like very deterministic software.”

But new experiments, such as with XQ-58, have allowed a more sophisticated form of autonomy.

“This is where we give it an objective, but it decides what throttle setting, what bank angle, what altitude, what dive angle it's going to do to meet that objective, right? So that's the AI-enabled autonomy that we're talking about. When that turned on, it is great to see,” Hamilton said.

The results are sometimes surprising. The XQ-58, for instance, makes extremely rapid or “crisp” rolls compared to an aircraft with a human pilot.

“A computer-controlled aircraft…may do things differently than a human. And we need to recognize there's a huge benefit there,” he said.

To realize that benefit, he said, AI systems need a learning space where they can make decisions in a safe way.

“We have, in simulation, allowed it to rewrite code a little bit to optimize its performance to do that objective. And then we surround that AI algorithm with autonomy code so if, at any point, that AI agent that is flying the XQ-58 asks for—I'm just making up numbers—but say it asks for like a universal bank, but we didn't want it to be able to ask for 80 degrees of bank; we only wanted the maximum to be 70 degrees of bank, it would automatically turn off if it asked for more.”

That human-and-computer collaboration sets U.S. military autonomy research apart from similar research elsewhere.

The Ukraine conflict marks the long-feared arrival of autonomous weapons in combat. Michael Horowitz, deputy assistant defense secretary for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities, told an audience last week that because jammers can sever communications between operator and drones, militaries are building AI-powered ones that don’t need to communicate to execute their missions.

“If you look at the context of Ukraine and in a lot of … sort of articles you see out there about about jamming, about electronic warfare, about all the different kinds of the cat-and-mouse games that Ukraine and Russia are constantly playing with each other, autonomy is one of the ways that you know that a military might seek to to address some of the some of them some of those challenges,” Horowitz said.

A year ago, the Defense Department revised its policy on autonomous weapons to clarify when they would be allowed to shoot.

“We had ended up in a situation where outside the department, the community veterans, thought that DOD was maybe building killer robots in the basement. And inside the department, there was a lot of confusion over what the directive actually said, with some actually thinking the directive prohibited the development of autonomous weapon systems, with maybe particular characteristics or even in general. So we wanted to do with the revision to the directive is make clear what is and isn't allowed in the context of DOD policy surrounding autonomy and weapon systems,” Horowitz said.

“That directive does not prohibit the development of any systems. All it requires is that for autonomous weapons systems, unless they fit a specific exempted category, like, say, protecting a U.S. base from lots of simultaneous missile strikes, that it has to go through a senior review process, where senior leaders in the department take an extra look. In addition to all of the other testing and evaluation…and other requirements that we have.”

That may sound like the Defense Department giving itself permission to build whatever killer robot it wants, so long as that permission comes via a “senior review process”—the sort of self-review that Russia or China might undertake to justify building Terminator knock-offs.

Horowitz said the policy actually shows how the Pentagon’s development of autonomous weapons (should they undertake it) fundamentally differs from those of Russia and China.

The U.S. is also looking to set international norms for the responsible military development of AI and bringing in European partner nations, many of whose citizens are highly cautious about AI in military settings. Last November, the United States launched a Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of AI that already has 51 signatories, Horowitz said.

“We're proud of the fact it's not just the usual suspects…if you look at the pattern of countries that have endorsed the political declaration,” he said.

U.S. officials hope that such a large international consensus will compel Russia and China to adhere to some norms on AI development.

“Because, again, we think of this as good governance so countries can develop and deploy AI enabled military systems safely, which is in everybody's interest. Nobody wants, you know, systems that increase the risk of miscalculation or that behave in ways that you can't predict,” he said. “I think trends are heading in the right direction.”

That highlights the importance of strong multi-national alliances and institutions in keeping the world safe from new weapons. But that also suggests that we are only as safe as those alliances and institutions themselves.

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

13. The Military Recruiting Outlook Is Grim Indeed. Loss of Public Confidence, Political Attacks and the Economy Are All Taking a Toll.

Depressing. We all have to contribute to changing these conditions.

The Military Recruiting Outlook Is Grim Indeed. Loss of Public Confidence, Political Attacks and the Economy Are All Taking a Toll.

military.com · by Richard Sisk · January 22, 2024

Recruiting patterns in the military have increasingly come to reflect the nation's red state-blue state political divide, with recruiting strong in the South and Midwest but lagging on the coasts, retired Army Brig. Gen. Michael Meese said at a Rand Corp. event Thursday.

"When you look at it regionally, the North and the West tend to be less positive" on military service "than the South and the Midwest," said Meese, the former head of West Point's Department of Social Sciences.

"The implications of that for recruiting are problematic," he said, "because where are you going to fish" to fill out the ranks?

The pattern has been in place for decades and, should it continue, Meese said, he could envision a time 50 years from now when recruits from New York and Oregon would number in the single digits, "and everybody else is gonna be from Georgia and North Carolina" despite the ongoing efforts of the services to attract recruits nationwide.

Meese, president of the American Armed Forces Mutual Aid Association, spoke at a Rand panel discussion on "What Americans Think About Veterans," which amounted to a review of a Rand report in December that examined possible factors in what the Pentagon has called a "crisis" in recruiting.

The report found that Americans still think highly of veterans, but a majority (54%) would recommend against joining the military, particularly in the enlisted ranks. However, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they would tell a 17-year-old to join as an officer, either through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, known as ROTC, or the military academies.

"Although the public still holds the military generally in high esteem compared with other major institutions, that esteem is wavering, influenced by such factors as the end of the war in Afghanistan, the increased polarization of the public, and heightened politicization of the military," the Rand report said.

The Rand report followed several other surveys and studies last year that also showed a decline in the trust and confidence the public gives the military, resulting in another year of missed recruiting goals.

In November, the annual defense survey by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute found that only a slim majority (51%) of Americans would recommend that family and friends join the military, while 33% would discourage military service.

The 51% figure was a significant decline from the results of the 2018 Reagan Foundation survey, when 70% said they would recommend joining the military. About half of the respondents to the foundation's survey attributed the decline to "so-called 'woke' practices undermining military effectiveness" and unit cohesion.

In July, a Gallup poll showed that only 60% of the public expressed a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the military, the lowest marks in the poll since 1997. "Republicans have been the most likely to express confidence in the military, and they remain so today, but the rate has declined by over 20 percentage points in three years, from 91% to 68%," the poll said.

The military also has to contend with drawing recruits from a stressed-out society, according to the latest "Stress in America" survey conducted by the Harris Poll for the American Psychological Association and released in November.

"The COVID-19 pandemic, global conflicts, racism and racial injustice, inflation, and climate-related disasters are all weighing on the collective consciousness of Americans," the survey said.

Few of the respondents to the survey "reported confidence about the direction our country is going (34%) or said they feel that their government representatives have their best interests in mind (31%)," the APA said.

The growing doubts about military service coupled with other factors -- ranging from low unemployment to the prevalence of youth obesity and the closing of high schools to recruiters during the pandemic -- have all contributed to fewer and fewer young Americans signing up for the military.

In fiscal 2023, only the Marine Corps and the Space Force among the five service branches met their recruiting goals. The Army fell short by about 10,000 of its goal to bring on 65,000 active-duty enlisted soldiers; the Air Force recruited only 24,100 of the 26,877 it wanted; and the Navy recruited 30,236 active-duty enlisted sailors, well short of its goal of 37,000.

The shortfall "understates the challenge before us as the services lowered [their] end-strength goals in recent years, in part because of the difficult recruiting environment," Ashish Vazirani, the Pentagon's acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness, told the House Armed Services Military personnel subcommittee last month.

The result is that "the all-volunteer force faces one of its greatest challenges since [its] inception" in 1973 when then-President Richard Nixon ended the draft, Vazirani said, and the demographics argue against a quick turnaround.

He testified that fewer and fewer young Americans have a parent who served in the military, which greatly decreases the propensity to serve. "In 1995, 40% of young people had a parent who served in the military but by 2022, just 12% had a parent who had served," Vazirani said.

"This has led to a disconnect between the military and a large share of society," he said.

In November, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth mused about the possibility of getting past the disconnect with a little help from Tom Cruise. At a Duke University Program in American Grand Strategy session, Wormuth said the Army would "love to find [its] 'Top Gun,'" referring to the boost in recruiting the Navy got from the "Top Gun" movies.

Barring an assist from Hollywood, Wormuth said the Army would focus on modernizing its recruiting methods to include creating a new recruiting MOS, or military occupational specialty, to be called MOS 42T, which will be aimed at talent acquisition.

"We are still relying heavily on call lists and solicitations in places like fast-food restaurants, gyms and shopping malls," she said. "These methods may have worked for us when unemployment was high, but in today's extremely competitive labor market, they have put us at a distinct disadvantage" in contacting and recruiting from Gen Z, the generation born after 1997.

"For us, it is an existential challenge, particularly given the very dangerous security environment that we are facing," Wormuth said. "We need to build back our end strengths so we can continue fulfilling our mission, and the only way we can do that is by recruiting significantly more young Americans to serve in uniform."

Traditionally, recruiting has been good when the economy is struggling and young Americans have difficulty entering the civilian workforce, but reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other government agencies show that inflation is easing, the labor market is strong and unemployment was below 4% for all of 2023.

Wormuth also pushed back on the notion that the Army has gone "woke" in its efforts at diversity and inclusion, which allegedly have taken resources away from training and deployments. She said the "wokeness" charges stemmed from the hyper-partisan political climate gripping the nation and challenged the critics to come see firsthand how the Army trains.

Duke University political science Professor Peter Feaver, who moderated the discussion with Wormuth, told Military.com last Thursday that charges of wokeness in the military have primarily come from Republicans who have shifted from "adoration of the military to criticism of the military."

"There's no evidence that the military itself is woke" or has been taken over by the political left, Feaver said in a phone interview, but there is evidence that the wokeness charges are having an impact on what the military calls the "influencers" -- the coaches, pastors and respected adults in communities who are sought out for advice by young Americans.

"There are a lot of things in the category of what I call 'more rocks in the rucksack'" for the military in dealing with the recruiting problem, Feaver said, including the effects of the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan on how military service is perceived.

In addition, the Defense Department estimates that only 23% of Americans aged 17 to 24 would qualify for military service and the rest would be rejected for being overweight, abusing drugs, or having mental and physical health problems.

"There's nothing the military can do about that," Feaver said.

Veterans groups have noted with concern the reports and surveys on the military's recruiting problems, and the 1.4 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars took particular exception to charges by some congressional Republicans that the military going woke was discouraging young Americans from joining, said Ryan Gallucci, assistant adjutant general of the VFW and an Army veteran of Iraq.

"We've had these discussions on Capitol Hill" with those alleging that the current administration is presiding over a woke military and delivered the message that "You need to knock that off," Gallucci said.

military.com · by Richard Sisk · January 22, 2024

14. ‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade

‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade - The New York Times

nytimes.com · by Nicholas Confessore · January 21, 2024

In late 2022, a group of conservative activists and academics set out to abolish the diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Texas’ public universities.

They linked up with a former aide to the state’s powerful lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick,1 who made banning D.E.I. initiatives one of his top priorities. Setting their sights on well-known schools like Texas A&M, they researched which offices and employees should be expunged. A well-connected alumnus conveyed their findings to the A&M chancellor; the former Patrick aide cited them before a State Senate committee. The campaign quickly yielded results: In May, Texas approved legislation banishing all such programs from public institutions of higher learning.

Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas

Long before Claudine Gay resigned Harvard’s presidency this month under intense criticism of her academic record, her congressional testimony about campus antisemitism and her efforts to promote racial justice, conservative academics and politicians had begun making the case that the decades-long drive to increase racial diversity in America’s universities had corrupted higher education. Gathering strength from a backlash against Black Lives Matter, and fueled by criticism that doctrines such as critical race theory had made colleges engines of progressive indoctrination, the eradication of D.E.I. programs has become both a cause and a message suffusing the American right. In 2023, more than 20 states considered or approved new laws taking aim at D.E.I., even as polling has shown that diversity initiatives remain popular.

Thousands of documents obtained by The New York Times cast light on the playbook and the thinking underpinning one nexus of the anti-D.E.I. movement — the activists and intellectuals who helped shape Texas’ new law, along with measures in at least three other states. The material, which includes casual correspondence with like-minded allies around the country, also reveals unvarnished views on race, sexuality and gender roles. And despite the movement’s marked success in some Republican-dominated states, the documents chart the activists’ struggle to gain traction with broader swaths of voters and officials.

2021 draft proposal fromthe Claremont Institute

Attempts to reason with universities have failed. The money paying for their bad behavior must be taken away. Only then will the behavior stop.

Centered at the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank with close ties to the Trump movement and to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the group coalesced roughly three years ago around a sweeping ambition: to strike a killing blow against “the leftist social justice revolution” by eliminating “social justice education” from American schools.

The documents — grant proposals, budgets, draft reports and correspondence, obtained through public-records requests — show how the activists formed a loose network of think tanks, political groups and Republican operatives in at least a dozen states. They sought funding from a range of right-leaning philanthropies and family foundations, and from one of the largest individual donors to Republican campaigns in the country. They exchanged model legislation, published a slew of public reports and coordinated with other conservative advocacy groups in states like Alabama, Maine, Tennessee and Texas.

In public, some individuals and groups involved in the effort joined calls to protect diversity of thought and intellectual freedom, embracing the argument that D.E.I. efforts had made universities intolerant and narrow. They claimed to stand for meritocratic ideals and against ideologies that divided Americans. They argued that D.E.I. programs made Black and Hispanic students feel less welcome instead of more.

2021 email fromScott Yenor

The core of what we oppose is ‘anti-discrimination.’ That is too much of a sacred cow.

Yet even as they or their allies publicly advocated more academic freedom, some of those involved privately expressed their hope of purging liberal ideas, professors and programming wherever they could. They debated how carefully or quickly to reveal some of their true views — the belief that “a healthy society requires patriarchy,” for example, and their broader opposition to anti-discrimination laws — in essays and articles written for public consumption.

In candid private conversations, some wrote favorably of laws criminalizing homosexuality, mocked the appearance of a female college student as overly masculine and criticized Peter Thiel, the prominent gay conservative donor, over his sex life. In email exchanges with the Claremont organizers, the writer Heather Mac Donald derided working mothers who employed people from “the low IQ 3rd world” to care for their children and lamented that some Republicans still celebrated the idea of racially diverse political appointments.

Lagging achievement for African Americans and other racial minorities, some argued privately, should not be a matter of public concern. “My big worry in these things is that we do not make ‘the good of minorities’ the standard by which we judge public policy or the effects of public policy,” wrote Scott Yenor,2 a conservative Idaho professor who would come to lead the anti-D.E.I. project for Claremont. “Whites will be overrepresented in some spheres. Blacks in others. Asians in others. We cannot see this as some moral failing on our part.”

Scott Yenor, fellow at the Claremont Institute

In a statement for this article, Claremont said that it was “proud to be a leader in the fight against D.E.I., since the ideology from which it flows conflicts with America’s Founding principles, constitutional government and equality under the law. Those are the things we believe in. Without them there is no America. You cannot have those things with D.E.I.”

The institute added: “Repeatedly, and in public, we make these arguments to preserve justice, competence and the progress of science.”

Naming ‘the Enemy’

In recent decades, amid concerns about the underrepresentation of racial minorities on campus, American universities have presided over a vast expansion of diversity programs. These have come to play a powerful — and increasingly controversial — role in academic and student life. Critics have come to view them as tools for advancing left-wing ideas about gender and race, or for stifling the free discussion of ideas. In response, officials in some states have banned D.E.I. offices altogether. Others have limited classroom discussion of concepts like identity politics or systemic racism. A growing number of states and schools have also begun eliminating requirements that job applicants furnish “diversity statements” — written commitments to particular ideas about diversity and how to achieve it that, at some institutions, have functionally served as litmus tests in hiring.

But in early 2021, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and President Donald J. Trump’s re-election defeat, the Claremont organizers were on the defensive. The documents show them debating how to frame their attacks: They needed not only to persuade the political middle but to energize conservative politicians and thinkers, many of whom they regarded as too timid, or even complicit with a liberal regime infecting American government and business.

Thomas D. Klingenstein,1 a New York investor who is both Claremont’s chairman and a top Republican donor, offered a glum perspective in March that year.

Thomas Klingenstein, Claremont chairman and Republican donor

“Rhetorically, our side is getting absolutely murdered,” Mr. Klingenstein wrote to Dr. Yenor and another Claremont official. “We have not even come up with an agreed-on name for the enemy.”

One problem, Dr. Yenor reported to his colleagues, was that many lawmakers were reluctant to take on anything called “diversity and inclusion.” Terms like “diversity,” he argued, needed to be saddled with more negative connotations.

“I obviously think social justice is what we should call it,” he wrote. “We should use the term that is most likely to stigmatize the movement that is accurate and arises from common life.” While nobody wanted to seem in favor of discrimination, he argued, “social justice” could be “stigmatized so that when people hear it they can act on their suspicions.”

At the time, a like-minded activist, Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, was popularizing an alternative catchall with his attacks on “critical race theory” — a once-obscure academic framework that examines how racism can be structurally embedded in seemingly neutral laws or institutions.

In short order, Republican officials and activists around the country set out to ban critical race theory — or anything that could be successfully labeled “C.R.T.” — from schools. But Dr. Yenor believed such bans were not far-reaching enough.

To combat leftism in America, conservatives would need to wage a much broader war. The Claremont group kept tinkering.

2021 email fromScott Yenor

Bans on CRT and its associated ideologies are a lot of smoke or boob-bait for the bubbas, but they are obviously (I would say) not something that is going to change the educational experience.

By 2022, as Claremont and allies like the Maine Policy Institute and a Tennessee group called Velocity Convergence rolled out early research, the approach had changed. Their public reports began to borrow from Mr. Rufo’s rhetoric, attacking “critical social justice” or “critical social justice education.”

When Claremont and the Texas Public Policy Foundation turned to the state’s public universities in early 2023, they circled back to “diversity,” but with a twist.

“Academics and administrators are no longer merely pushing progressive politics but are transforming universities into institutions dedicated to political activism and indoctrinating students with a hateful ideology,” warned a report on Texas A&M. “That ideology is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).”

A Donation Opportunity

“Woke” politics was not just a threat to American life. It was also a fund-raising opportunity. By spring 2021, as parents grew impatient with Covid school closures, or skeptical of “anti-racist” curriculums in the wake of the Floyd protests, Claremont officials had begun circulating urgent grant requests to right-leaning foundations.

“America is under attack by a leftist revolution disguised as a plea for justice” reminiscent of “Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution,” Claremont’s president, Ryan P. Williams,1 wrote in a draft proposal to the Jack Miller Family Foundation.

Ryan Williams, Claremont’s president

(A spokesman for the Miller foundation said that officials there did not recall whether the foundation had ever received the proposal, and that it had not made any grants to Claremont in recent years.)

Liberals dominated the world of higher education, the Claremont proposals said. What was needed was a frontal attack on public university systems in states where conservatives dominated the legislatures.

2021 draft proposal forthe Jack Miller Family Foundation

America is under attack by a leftist revolution disguised as a plea for justice […] This is, in fact, the goal: to produce swarms of anti-American zealots who will work to reshape the culture, customs, and political principles of the country, using strategies reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.

Claremont officials would partner with state think tanks, and with the hundreds of former fellows scattered through conservative institutions and on Capitol Hill. They would catalog the D.E.I. programs and personnel honeycombed through public universities. Then they would lobby sympathetic public officials to gut them.

In the proposals, Claremont set a first round of targets, in states including Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

“Our project will give legislators the knowledge and tools they need to stop funding the suicide of their own country and civilization,” Claremont pledged in an August 2021 draft proposal to the Taube Family Foundation.

2021 draft proposal tothe Taube Family Foundation

Our project will give legislators the knowledge and tools they need to stop funding the suicide of their own country and civilization.

The Wisconsin-based Searle Freedom Trust had separately agreed to fund a Claremont effort to inventory what it considered “C.R.T. courses” that had “metastasized throughout Higher Ed,” according to the draft proposal. Another proposal, drafted for the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation in May 2022, aimed to dissect how red states could disentangle themselves from federal funding and mandates that, in Claremont’s view, advanced social justice ideology. Related proposals went to at least eight foundations in total.1 (Representatives of the Taube and Rupe foundations did not reply to emails and phone messages seeking comment.)

2021 email from Chris Ross

I will finish polishing up the budget along with the rest of the proposal, almost all of which is previously-blessed language from the latest Scaife, Dockweiler, Darling, and Verheij proposals, and send that to you tomorrow.

Ultimately, according to one document, the Claremont organizers hoped state lawmakers across the country would pass sweeping prohibitions on teaching “social justice programming.”

2021 draft proposal tothe Taube Family Foundation

In the project’s first year, our goal is to help at least one state to pass legislation to defund and ban spending money on social justice programing, similar to, or better than, what has been accomplished in Idaho. By the end of the third year, our goal is to get another six states to do the same.

As the project progressed, Claremont made plans to prospect for donors at a Dallas country club and at the Palm Beach home of Elizabeth Ailes, the widow of the Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes. Growing anger among older conservatives helped open the spigot. “The Searle kids don’t like wokery,” wrote Chris Ross, a Claremont fund-raising official, in a December 2021 email, apparently referring to adult children of the trust’s late benefactor, Daniel C. Searle. (A representative of the Searle trust disputed whether Claremont officials had knowledge of the Searles’ political views.)

2021 email fromChris Ross

Ryan, I’d like your feedback on whether the portion in yellow highlight is necessary for context, or whether we can safely assume that since we know the Searle kids don’t like wokery, it could safely be summarized in the cover letter.

Among other efforts, the Searle trust agreed to back a project examining critical race theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The school had been roiled that fall by the cancellation of a science lecture by Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist who, like a plurality of Americans, opposed aspects of affirmative action in higher education.

The following year, a Utah scientist and renewable-energy consultant, along with his wife, kicked in $25,000 for the project.1 It had “really caught their imagination,” Mr. Ross wrote, because of their “ongoing concerns about their grandchildren and wokeism.” Secrecy was essential. “This work will be done more easily if the wokesters at MIT don’t see it coming,” he wrote.

2022 email from Chris Ross

This project really caught their imagination, not only because of their backgrounds, but because of their ongoing concerns about their grandchildren and wokeism. With the understanding that this work will be done more easily if the wokesters at MIT don’t see it coming, they have volunteered to stay quiet about the project until it is publicized.

Under the Banner of Freedom

The Claremont effort seemed to diverge from others on the right who had long urged academic institutions to renew their commitment to ideological diversity. In one exchange, some of those involved discussed how to marshal political power to replace left-wing orthodoxies with more “patriotic,” traditionalist curriculums.

“In support of ridding schools of C.R.T., the Right argues that we want nonpolitical education,” Mr. Klingenstein wrote in August 2021. “No we don’t. We want our politics. All education is political.”

Dr. Yenor appeared to agree, responding with some ideas for reshaping K-12 education. “An alternative vision of education must replace the current vision of education,” he wrote back.

2021 email fromScott Yenor

An alternative vision of education must replace the current vision of education. In the short-term, state legislatures could get out of the business of banning and get into the business of demanding — demanding the certain conclusions about American history be delivered.

State legislatures, he proposed, could strip “educational professionals” of the power to decide what to teach and even shorten the school day so that young people would spend less time in class. They might pass laws letting private citizens sue school board members with financial ties to the “education industry.”

At the same time, individuals and groups involved in the effort seemed to grasp that academic freedom could be a politically useful frame for their attacks.

In a 2023 exchange, Dr. Yenor and two associates discussed how to defend Amy Wax, a conservative law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Wax had drawn the ire of administrators and students there for once opining, among other things, that the United States would be “better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration,” and that Black people felt “resentment and shame and envy” over the “Western peoples’ outsized achievements and contributions.”

Filing a grievance claim against the university, Dr. Wax’s lawyer apparently asked David Azerrad,1 a professor at Hillsdale College, for a statement of support. Dr. Azerrad, in turn, sought his Claremont friends’ advice.

David Azerrad, professor at Hillsdale College

Dr. Yenor had experience with such situations. Two years earlier, he had faced Title IX complaints at Boise State University following a speech in which he argued that feminism had made women “more medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome than women need to be.” Amid the uproar, Boise State officials defended the right of faculty to “introduce uncomfortable and even offensive ideas.”

2023 email fromScott Yenor

I think the main point is that the effect of firing Amy Wax will have ripple effects on academic freedom everywhere.

You are appealing to lefties, so you should target them, both on free speech grounds and on grounds that implicate their fears.

Now, Dr. Yenor advised his friend Dr. Azerrad to aim his statement at a liberal audience — to defend Dr. Wax on the grounds that if she were fired, it would only embolden red-state lawmakers to fire controversial left-wing professors.

“But don’t we want this to happen?” Dr. Azerrad asked.

“Yes,” replied Dr. Yenor. “But your audience doesn’t want it to happen.”

In an email, Dr. Azerrad described the exchanges as “flippant banter” that “do not discuss substantive policy matters.” A spokesman for Claremont said that both Dr. Yenor and Mr. Klingenstein believed that “intellectual diversity and free speech are not ends in themselves but means to other important ends, including a vision of education.”

‘More Wholesome Policies’

Even as they sought to stigmatize and defeat left-wing ideas, academics and activists in the Claremont orbit seemed cognizant that some of their own views were outside the mainstream.

In a 2021 exchange among academics at Claremont, Hillsdale and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Dr. Yenor discussed edits to an essay he was planning to publish in First Things, a conservative journal. His editor, he said, wanted Dr. Yenor to be less “prudent” in his writing about homosexuality, encouraging him to voice ideas like — as Dr. Yenor characterized it — “Our sexual culture will not heal until ‘faggot’ replaces ‘bigot’ as the slur of choice,” or “Our sexual culture will not be healed until we once again agree that homosexuality belongs in the closet and that a healthy society requires patriarchy.” (“Since they are my views, I have tried to do that,” Dr. Yenor wrote. In the end, he settled for tamer language.)

In casual discussions with like-minded academics and activists, some those involved in the anti-D.E.I. effort mocked what they considered liberals’ obsession with hierarchies of oppression. Some evinced a frank dislike of gay people.

In an exchange last May, Dr. Yenor, two former Trump administration officials with Claremont ties and Ms. Mac Donald discussed a court case in India about same-sex marriage. Ms. Mac Donald1 — a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who last spring published a book titled “When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty and Threatens Lives” — was not formally connected to Claremont’s anti-D.E.I. efforts but corresponded frequently with those who were.

Heather Mac Donald, fellow at the Manhattan Institute

She speculated in the May exchange that it would be “fun to see” what liberals would say about Indians if the court conferred gay marriage rights but Indians refused to “go along.” “How will western elites explain the benightedness of yet another group of POCs?” In response, Dr. Yenor noted that “not tons of asian countries have SSM” but rather “more wholesome policies like prison” for gays.

2023 email fromDavid Azerrad

Heather, that’s an easy one. Indians are Asians who are white-adjacent so at the bottom of the totem poll. Gays are second after blacks.

Last spring, Ms. Mac Donald emailed some of the same people about news reports that a boyfriend of Mr. Thiel — nominally their ally in the rising “national conservatism” movement — had committed suicide after a confrontation with Mr. Thiel’s husband at a party. Calling the episode “a scandal,” she opined that gay men “are much more prone” to extramarital affairs “on the empirical basis of testosterone unchecked by female modesty.” She added mockingly that a friend had once tried to convince her “how wonderful Thiel’s ‘husband’ was.”

2023 email fromHeather Mac Donald

Some female over the last year or so, eager to show her openmindedness, was crowing to me about how wonderful Thiel’s “husband” was, making them out to be the most proper couple.

I wonder if he will feel any shame in public. Probably not.

Neither Ms. Mac Donald nor a Manhattan Institute spokeswoman replied to emails seeking comment.

Dr. Yenor and his allies bristled at the conventions of academic life as overly solicitous toward female and nonwhite students. He sometimes shared routine emails from administrators at his home institution, Boise State, deriding them as examples of being “ruled by women.” On one occasion, he forwarded a Boise State email featuring a photo of a female computer science student with close-cropped hair and a plaid shirt. “Gynocracy update!” Dr. Yenor wrote.

Riffing on the woman’s masculine appearance, his friend Dr. Azerrad chimed in with a correction: “Androgynococracy update.”

In another email to Dr. Yenor, Ms. Mac Donald reflected on a further “curse of feminism”: the proliferation of “nannies of color” in her Manhattan neighborhood and the “bizarreness” of women entrusting their children to caregivers from “the low IQ 3rd world” while devoting themselves to making partner at a law firm.

2023 email fromHeather Mac Donald

As I was taking my evening power walk in the hood here (upper east side) and seeing all the nannies of color walking school children back to their apartments, it struck me again the bizarreness of females deciding that their comparative advantage is in being an associate in a law firm, say, and thus that they should outsource the once in a lifetime unduplicable unrepeatable experience of raising a unique child to some one else, especially someone from the low IQ 3rd world, while they do the drone work of making partner. The child is evolving so quickly, absorbing so many influences, and yet they would rather absent themselves from its life to show that they are as good as males. such a distribution of labor is allegedly pareto optimal. Another curse of feminism.

Ms. Mac Donald, some Claremont friends and a conservative Canadian professor also discussed a routine in which the comedian Bill Burr took feminists to task for the low attendance at WNBA games. (“None of you showed up! Where are all the feminists?”)

When Ms. Mac Donald asked why the comedian hadn’t been “canceled,” Mr. Williams, Claremont’s president, pointed out that Mr. Burr was “married to a black woman, which helps.”

Ms. Mac Donald replied, “We are all just SO grateful if there is a black who does not overtly hate us.” She went on to rail against a libertarian podcast that praised former President George W. Bush for selecting Black people for his cabinet, “as if there is any talent required to make quota appointments.”

2023 email fromHeather Mac Donald

Hilarious. the usual pet black phenomenon. We are all just SO grateful if there is a black who does not overtly hate us.

The Movement Grows

Since 2021, the network’s anti-D.E.I. campaign has spread to at least a dozen states, according to the documents.

In Tennessee, where Claremont partnered with Velocity Convergence, one of the anti-D.E.I. reports they produced reportedly circulated among Republican state lawmakers as they worked to pass a bill limiting how universities could teach or train students about “divisive concepts.” A spokeswoman for the University of Tennessee said in a statement that the report’s conclusions “seem to be based on subjective criteria, made-up definitions and the opinions of the authors,” who obtained information from online searches and public records but “made no attempt to understand the information through questions or interviews.” Tennessee’s governor signed the new law in April 2022.

Susan Kaestner, Velocity’s founder and a veteran Republican operative in the state, said that “the obsessive focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is effectively reducing viewpoint diversity on Tennessee campuses.”

Last year, Claremont organizers forged connections with the Arkansas Senate’s Republican leader. In Alabama, they partnered with a group called Alabamians for Academic Excellence and Integrity. Jeff Sessions, the former U.S. attorney general and a supporter of the Alabama group, was among those who provided funds for a Claremont report, “Going Woke in Dixie?,” that focused on Auburn University and the University of Alabama.

After it was released last summer, according to another email, Samuel Ginn,1 a wealthy Auburn alumnus and donor to both the school and Claremont, confronted the university’s president, Christopher B. Roberts, and pressed him to address the report’s findings.

Samuel Ginn, Claremont donor

“The president then told him, ‘Things will change,’” a Claremont fund-raiser wrote to Dr. Yenor and other officials there.

An Auburn spokeswoman said in an email that Dr. Roberts “has no recollection of the comment that was attributed to him.” Efforts to contact Mr. Ginn were unsuccessful.

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, the group also teamed with Republican political operatives and a think tank in Maine — where Mr. Klingenstein owns a vacation compound — to gather examples of “D.E.I. in action” in the state’s public universities and K-12 schools. Mr. Klingenstein suggested highlighting examples of putatively odd-sounding college courses,1 as another conservative group had done in a report about left-wing influence at Bowdoin College in Maine. (Among them were “Queer Gardens” and “Sex in Colonial America.” Bowdoin responded by defending its coursework and calling the report distorted and “meanspirited.”)

2022 email from Thomas Klingenstein

When NAS reviewed the Bowdoin curricula NAS highlighted courses such as “Queer Gardens, ” “Sex in Colonial America”. These were the sorts of thing that got peoples’ attention. How do we show a video of DEI in action?

After the group published a report on “critical social justice” in Maine’s K-12 classrooms, Mr. Klingenstein noted in one email that despite the need to reform public schools, the group faced difficulty figuring out what was “actually happening on the ground.” He praised the report but acknowledged it was “necessarily rather anecdotal.” Even so, the work could be wielded as a bludgeon. By fall 2022, the effort had expanded to include an advertising campaign against the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills. The campaign, funded by Mr. Klingenstein, was spearheaded by a national advocacy group called the American Principles Project, which in turn operated through a front group called Maine Families First.

2022 email fromThomas Klingenstein

As you know, Scott Yenor did a report on K-12 education in Maine. It was very good but necessarily rather anecdotal. Could we do, would it make sense to do, an in-depth analysis of one school or one school district a la the Bowdoin report. We might analyze one school/district in Portland, which is all in on social justice, and one in Northern Maine which is more traditional. I wonder if we could get enough information to do this.

Citing the Maine K-12 report, among other sources, ads from the group misleadingly claimed that Ms. Mills was “distributing pornography to our children,” referring to “Gender Queer,” a graphic memoir for young adults that includes sexually explicit scenes. (In fact, according to a report by Maine Public Radio, the book had appeared on one American Library Association list of gay-themed literature, a link to which could be found on the website of the Maine Department of Education.) All told, the group would spend nearly $3 million on ads attacking Ms. Mills.

‘Just the Beginning’

Ms. Mills went on to win re-election. But the anti-D.E.I. campaign has gained ground in more Republican-leaning states. Claremont has claimed credit for helping pass the most wide-ranging bans, in Florida as well as in Texas. Last January, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas issued an executive order banning “indoctrination and critical race theory in schools.” In North Carolina in June, Republican lawmakers passed a law barring public universities and other agencies from requiring employees to state their opinions on social issues, a move Democratic lawmakers said was aimed at D.E.I. programs more broadly. Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, issued a similar executive order in December.

Last year, Claremont officials also courted Mr. DeSantis, then a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination and the governor most closely associated with anti-D.E.I. policies. The institute dispatched Dr. Yenor to Florida to run a new office in Tallahassee, appointing him as its “senior director of state coalitions.” (On Sunday, Mr. DeSantis suspended his presidential bid.)

In early April, as Mr. DeSantis prepared to announce his presidential campaign, he visited Mr. Klingenstein. In an email, Mr. Klingenstein told Claremont officials that Mr. DeSantis had agreed to give Dr. Yenor access to his top political and government aides. Mr. Klingenstein also said he’d urged the governor to do a better job explaining to voters why “wokeism” was dangerous.

Appearing on the campaign trail in subsequent weeks, Mr. DeSantis began to offer a more expansive definition of the term — while mentioning “woke” so many times that some reporters began keeping count.

2023 email fromThomas Klingenstein

I was unsure. He was much more passionate about winning the election than he was in saving the country. He knew policy stuff in great detail. But there was no vision. I asked him how he defines “woke.” He said “you know it when you see it.” I suggested gently that he might improve on that. I quoted Glenn, “all action no talk.”

I suggested he should explain better than he has why wokeism is so dangerous.

But as Mr. DeSantis’s presidential bid sputtered and conservative campaigns against left-wing education began to lose traction in some parts of the country, people involved in the anti-D.E.I. effort began to retool once again. In June, the American Principles Project circulated a memo detailing the results of several focus groups held to test different culture-war messages.

For all the conservative attacks on diversity programs, the group found, “the idea of woke or DEI received generally positive scores.” Most voters didn’t know the difference between equality and the more voguish term “equity,” oft-mocked on the right, which signifies policies intended to achieve equal outcomes for different people, not simply equal opportunities.

2023 memo fromthe American Principles Project

Similarly DEI was thought to consist more of comfort with diverse workplaces than affirmative action or anti-white hiring practices. When we got into the details of specific DEI initiatives (race-based quotas, affirmative action, diversity for diversity’s sake), they were mostly opposed. We also tested the idea of equality vs. equity, and little to no difference was seen between the two words.

The memo was sent by an associate to Mr. Klingenstein and Mr. Williams, along with an undated draft speech apparently written for Representative Jim Banks,1 an Indiana Republican who founded the House Anti-Woke Caucus last January. (Mr. Banks’s spokesman did not reply to an email seeking comment.)

Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana

For Mr. Banks and other Republicans, the controversies over antisemitism on campus this fall provided a fresh opportunity to make their case. With some student protesters defending or even valorizing the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas, criticisms of campus D.E.I. programs began to gain more of an audience among liberals. In December, when House Republicans summoned Dr. Gay to Capitol Hill, along with the presidents of M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania, they argued that diversity programs were the root cause of antisemitic rhetoric on campus.

As the presidential election looms, Republicans are embarking on a renewed campaign against the higher-education institutions they have long criticized, now under the banner of eradicating anti-Jewish hate. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is investigating Harvard and other schools, and the scope of the inquiry is expected to expand.

“This is just the beginning,” pledged Representative Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican whose questioning of Dr. Gay helped set in motion the Harvard president’s resignation. “Our robust congressional investigation will continue to move forward to expose the rot in our most ‘prestigious’ higher-education institutions and deliver accountability to the American people.”

nytimes.com · by Nicholas Confessore · January 21, 2024

15. DEI Is Worth Saving From Its Excesses

DEI Is Worth Saving From Its Excesses

Companies should root out discrimination and hostile training sessions and focus on optimizing talent.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dei-is-worth-saving-from-its-excesses-school-choice-prejudice-merit-5fe12460?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

By Roland Fryer

Jan. 22, 2024 4:40 pm ET

ILLUSTRATION: DAVID GOTHARD

A war is raging over “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Opponents and supporters of DEI have very different ideas about what it is. “DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism,” hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman tweets. “Good businesses look where others don’t, to find the employees that will put your business in the best possible position to succeed,” businessman Mark Cuban counters.

Both men have a point. Some of what happens under the DEI banner is truly objectionable, even illegal—hiring, promotion and admissions standards under which race trumps qualifications, training sessions that create a hostile environment for whites. But as companies, universities and other organizations weed out these practices, they should be careful that the parts of DEI that the majority of us agree on don’t become collateral damage. DEI as talent optimization is good for disadvantaged groups, good for organizations that embrace it, and good for America.

DEI at its best is about developing talent, measuring it in a fair way, selecting the best people for important roles, and finding hidden talent in a world where not everyone has an equal chance to exhibit their abilities. This approach focuses on overcoming individual disadvantages rather than on race. Its beneficiaries won’t suffer the stigma that comes with unfair preferences.

Talent optimization has implications from preschools to boardrooms—but strategies change as people grow older and have opportunities to prove themselves. What they do with these opportunities provides part of the signal we are trying to measure, serving as indicators of their underlying ability; when people lack these opportunities, we are left guessing.

To start with childhood, no 4-year-old has done anything to “merit” a better preschool than another. For that reason, efforts to help children who are falling behind, to improve failing schools, and to close racial gaps should be a high priority. As Steven Levitt and I showed in a study, there’s a racial achievement gap by age 4, but it’s explained by parental income and occupation. I have long challenged independent private schools in the Northeast to see each class of prekindergartners they admit as part of their core DEI strategy, rather than wait until high school.

As I have written in these pages, school-choice efforts have made immense progress in recent years but are still a long way from creating true competition and guaranteeing all students the chance to reach their full potential. Policymakers should revolutionize education from preschool through high school so that students from all walks of life have an equal opportunity to compete.

At the college level, an admissions policy focused on talent optimization would take into account the obstacles a student has faced. Imagine a rich kid who has had private schools and tutors and a poor kid from a broken home and an underfunded public school. If they have roughly similar academic performance after adjusting for their backgrounds, the poor kid has demonstrated more latent ability even if his unadjusted scores are lower. A talent-focused admissions policy would admit him over his rich competitor. But it wouldn’t do the opposite—accept a rich applicant over a poor one because the former is of an underrepresented race, or because his private-school counselors were able to massage his application to make him seem cultured.

Employers should stamp out racial bias—not only because discrimination is wrong but because it is a market failure that prevents the right people from being placed in the right positions. Fair hiring and promotion maximizes productivity and profit and increases diversity. Meritocracy and diversity are at odds only if bias doesn’t exist, but in my own work with dozens of corporate enterprises, I find that roughly 10% to 15% of racial disparities in hiring and promotion are due to bias—meaning narrowly identifiable discriminatory practices gleaned from troves of empirical data, not mere statistical disparity.

A pattern I have seen in the data is that large enterprises don’t weigh their internal performance reviews the same for all racial groups when they decide whom to promote. High-performing black employees are often more likely to be promoted than similarly performing whites, but among those with mediocre performance, whites enjoy a sizable advantage in promotion. Economists call that statistical discrimination—the use of easily observable proxies such as race, sex or age when information about individual employees is imperfect. For those with nearly perfect performance reviews, black employees are promoted more often than white ones because those are easy decisions. For those with mediocre performance, judgments are more subjective and thus more prone to stereotyping.

Another pattern we see consistently in companies is that there are significant racial differences in starting compensation, even among similar employees, but these differences decrease over time as employers learn more about each employee’s true productivity. I found a similar result using both a large sample of job seekers in New Jersey and a nationally representative sample of workers—wage trajectories are 1% to 2% steeper annually for black employees than white ones. This is a classic example of how statistical discrimination manifests itself in human-resource data.

Getting rid of this type of bias as a DEI strategy increases both productivity and diversity. There are two ways to do so: provide more objective information at the time of decision-making so there is less need to rely on gut instinct, and use analytics such as machine learning to help with decisions like hiring or promotion to counter human biases. I prefer the second approach and have built several machine-learning-based algorithms to help companies maximize productivity and achieve diversity as a talent-optimizing DEI strategy.

The tumult around DEI has given me many sleepless nights. I received a minority scholarship to attend graduate school; I assume I was a DEI admit. My math GRE scores were in the 95th percentile, while my study partners’ scores hovered around the 99th. But what I endured to achieve those scores—a father in prison and a mother I had yet to meet—were important context.

I worry that the desire to take down DEI in its entirety will make successes like mine harder, even impossible, to realize. What gives me hope is that there are important parts of DEI almost anyone can believe in. Optimizing talent and giving all the opportunity to reach their full potential are at the core of what it means to be American.

Mr. Fryer is a professor of economics at Harvard, a founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

16. US Cyber Command aiming to consolidate disparate programs in warfighting platform in 2024

Excerpts:

Clark described how, despite the name and vision, programs such as Unified Platform really aren’t unified.

“It’s a federation of Army, Navy, Air Force, DISA, NSA, soon to be Space [Force] probably, SOCOM and the command. And there’s no reciprocity between them in terms of interoperability,” he said. For example, “I can’t do a query, take Log4j, and be able to sit at [Joint Force Headquarters-DOD Information Network] and do a query and understand: Have any of the services’ sensors detected Log4j? I can’t do that today because of the way we have architected the big data clouds.”

Log4j is commonly used to log security information. Last year, a major vulnerability was discovered within it.

To address some of these issues, Nguyen said, officials want to consolidate their DevSecOps environments as each program has its own DevSecOps platform, or DSOP.

“From a DevOps perspective, they all have their own DevSecOp environment and they all have their own DSOP. I’m looking to consolidate DSOPs,” he said. “I’m looking to have UP as one DSOP for all the non-OCO capabilities and then JDE as the other DSOP for offensive capabilities, because their functionality is s a little bit different and I want the uniqueness of the Dev environment to really facilitate to the developers kind of thing.”

When it comes to a JCWA 2.0 mindset, Nguyen said officials want to get to a common Kubernetes platform so all the users and programs can add applications to it.

“Because I have the authority over all these programs, it’s going to be easier for us to move to this much more modern software development construct,” he said.

US Cyber Command aiming to consolidate disparate programs in warfighting platform in 2024

Cybercom is getting serious about integrating the various programs under its Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture and consolidating the DevSecOps environments.

MARK POMERLEAU

JANUARY 19, 2024

defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · January 19, 2024

U.S. Cyber Command plans to begin integration of the disparate factions of its warfighting platform this year.

The Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture, or JCWA, was first envisioned in 2019 as a way of getting a better handle on the capabilities, platforms and programs the command is designing and setting priorities for the Department of Defense and its industry partners that are building them.

When Cybercom was first created, it relied heavily on intelligence personnel, infrastructure platforms and tradecraft to build its enterprise. But just like the Army needs tanks and the Air Force needs planes to conduct missions, cyber troops need their own military-specific cyber platforms separate from the National Security Agency, which collects foreign intelligence.

The JCWA encompasses several components that are built by each of the services on behalf of the joint cyber mission force. The services provide them to Cybercom to conduct cyber operations, as executive agents. Now, JCWA is thought of as a singular platform to conduct military cyber ops, made up of the sum of its parts.

JCWA consists of “disparate program shops, not really well synchronized together,” Khoi Nguyen, command acquisition executive and director of the cyber acquisition and technology directorate (J9) at Cybercom, said during remarks at the AFCEA Northern Virginia chapter’s annual Army IT Day conference Jan. 11. “What we’re doing this next year from a delivery perspective is I picked a chief engineer, we’re laying out a JCWA product roadmap that says hey, the next six months, these six components will play around, we’ll be a little bit better, interoperable in these specific areas.”

As initially laid out, it included four main programs and two additional categories:

The Persistent Cyber Training Environment for conducting training and mission rehearsal, which is managed by the Army.
Unified Platform, considered the centerpiece where data is ingested, analyzed and shared, which is managed by the Air Force.
Joint Cyber Command and Control to command cyber forces and the larger cyber environment, which is managed by the Air Force.
The Joint Common Access Platform (JCAP) for executing offensive operations beyond friendly firewalls, which is managed by the Army.
Sensors, which pertain to the kits defensive cyber protection teams use to respond to intrusions, that are overseen by Cybercom’s acquisition arm.
Tools, which consists of the Joint Development Environment — a space to rapidly develop and test cyber tools run by the Army — though the rest of the portfolio is overseen by Cybercom’s acquisition arm.

Nguyen said specifically, the goal over the next six months will be to get tools developed in the Joint Development Environment seamlessly transferred to JCAP, which today is done by burning the tools to a disk and uploading to JCAP.

“That’s very slow,” Nguyen said.

Congress granted Cybercom so-called enhanced budget authority that was supposed to begin in fiscal 2024, pending budget passage. This gives the command greater oversight over all the programs and personnel as it now inherits the nearly $3 billion budget dealing with almost everything cyber related.

In the short term, the services will still run the programs as executive agents and be reimbursed by Cybercom as the command establishes its own program executive office and acquisition workforce.

This evolution will help Cybercom gain better control and integration over the execution of these programs, experts have said.

Officials have been very open about the fact that the command still has a ways to go in terms of building its program executive office, acquisition prowess and workforce as a still relatively young organization.

The key challenge will be integrating these disparate systems all developed separately into a common framework that all the joint cyber mission forces can use for missions — something that has not truly been done yet.

“We did an in-depth review of the platform, compared to what the operational needs were … [and] we found some pretty significant deficiencies in the architecture,” Michael Clark, Nguyen’s predecessor, said last year. “We know that platform does not meet our mission needs.”

He referred to JCWA in its current state as a confederation of capabilities that aren’t integrated into a true warfighting platform. But now that Cybercom and its units are maturing, it needs an integrated platform that the joint cyber mission force can use, which the command has dubbed JCWA 2.0.

Clark described how, despite the name and vision, programs such as Unified Platform really aren’t unified.

“It’s a federation of Army, Navy, Air Force, DISA, NSA, soon to be Space [Force] probably, SOCOM and the command. And there’s no reciprocity between them in terms of interoperability,” he said. For example, “I can’t do a query, take Log4j, and be able to sit at [Joint Force Headquarters-DOD Information Network] and do a query and understand: Have any of the services’ sensors detected Log4j? I can’t do that today because of the way we have architected the big data clouds.”

Log4j is commonly used to log security information. Last year, a major vulnerability was discovered within it.

To address some of these issues, Nguyen said, officials want to consolidate their DevSecOps environments as each program has its own DevSecOps platform, or DSOP.

“From a DevOps perspective, they all have their own DevSecOp environment and they all have their own DSOP. I’m looking to consolidate DSOPs,” he said. “I’m looking to have UP as one DSOP for all the non-OCO capabilities and then JDE as the other DSOP for offensive capabilities, because their functionality is s a little bit different and I want the uniqueness of the Dev environment to really facilitate to the developers kind of thing.”

When it comes to a JCWA 2.0 mindset, Nguyen said officials want to get to a common Kubernetes platform so all the users and programs can add applications to it.

“Because I have the authority over all these programs, it’s going to be easier for us to move to this much more modern software development construct,” he said.

Written by Mark Pomerleau

Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for DefenseScoop, covering information warfare and cyberspace.

defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · January 19, 2024

17. New Airstrikes Target Houthi Forces In Yemen (Updated)

New Airstrikes Target Houthi Forces In Yemen (Updated)

The latest strikes by the U.S. and U.K. on Houthi targets in Yemen comes after reports that the Pentagon has given the operation a new name.

HOWARD ALTMAN

PUBLISHED JAN 22, 2024 5:52 PM EST

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · January 22, 2024

The U.S. and U.K carried out a new round of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, the Pentagon announced Monday afternoon.

"The militaries of the United States and United Kingdom, at the direction of their respective governments with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands, conducted an additional round of proportionate and necessary strikes against eight Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the Houthis' continued attacks against international and commercial shipping as well as naval vessels transiting the Red Sea," the Pentagon said in a joint statement. "Today's strike specifically targeted a Houthi underground storage site and locations associated with the Houthis' missile and air surveillance capabilities."

"These precision strikes are intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of innocent mariners, and are in response to a series of illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi actions since our coalition strikes on January 11, including anti-ship ballistic missile and unmanned aerial system attacks that struck two U.S.-owned merchant vessels," the Pentagon added.

The U.K. MoD said four RAF Typhoon FGR4 fighters took part in the operation.

"Our aircraft used Paveway IV precision guided bombs to strike multiple targets at two military sites in the vicinity of Sanaa airfield," the MoD said in a statement. "These locations were being used to enable the continued intolerable attacks against international shipping in the Red Sea. This follows our initial operation on 11 January, and subsequent US action, to degrade the Houthis’ capability to conduct such attacks."

News of the airstrikes comes after CNN reported that the Pentagon is now calling the fight against the Houthis "Operation Poseidon Archer."

Assigning an operation name to these strikes is nod to the fact that efforts to stop the Houthis from attacking shipping in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab Strait and Gulf of Aden will require more than attacks of opportunity or even the wider airstrikes we've already seen. For the last five weeks, we have repeatedly highlighted how it is unrealistic that anything but an intricate, sustained and costly campaign that relies of persistent presence over and near Houthi territory in Yemen will be need to drastically reduce militant group's ability to continue disrupting shipping.

From our piece on the complex reality of 'striking the Houthis' from December 17th, which is more relevant now than before, linked here:

"Having the U.S. military strike targets in Yemen sounds easy, and it wouldn't be hard to do operationally, but the escalation that could follow could pose much more challenging tactical problems. Giving the Houthis a 'bloody nose' is very different than actually stopping or even significantly curbing their ability to launch anti-ship attacks. Preempting anti-ship missile and drone attacks would require a large, costly, resource-sucking, open-ended operation. This would include persistent intelligence gathering across a very broad area, as well as strike assets at the ready to hit time-sensitive targets based on that real time intelligence. Is the United States prepared to see that through and to what end?"

And from a more recent post about America's first strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen linked here:

"Still, it must be highlighted that attempting to directly stop the Houthi missile and drone attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden militarily would be extremely resource intensive. While space-based infrared warning satellites would have detected the locations of anti-ship ballistic and most cruise missile launches — with many other intelligence capabilities gaining valuable information on these operations in recent weeks, as well — and documenting these patterns of operations would be critical to stopping launches before they occur, actually doing this would be a huge challenge. It would require a far more elaborate surveillance and reconnaissance enterprise to be persistently deployed over large swathes of Yemeni coastline and inland areas. This would need to be paired with assets at the ready capable of time-sensitive strikes. They would need to hit the launchers before firing.

Considering the Houthis have years of experience fighting against Saudi Arabia and their Arab coalition, they have dispersed their capabilities so they cannot be easily destroyed and know that firing from unpredictable locations and moving the weapons themselves around constantly is key to surviving. This makes eliminating them very challenging.

That being said, degrading the Houthis ability to target ships in other ways, like striking known radar systems and command and control nodes, could help reduce their ability to launch attacks but it will not eliminate it. Not even close."

The Biden administration is now crafting plans for a sustained military campaign targeting the Houthis in Yemen after nearly two weeks of strikes failed to halt the group’s attacks on maritime commerce, The Washington Post reported Jan. 20. That, however, is "stoking concern among some officials that an open-ended operation could derail the war-ravaged country’s fragile peace and pull Washington into another unpredictable Middle Eastern conflict," the newspaper reported.

The U.S. has carried out several preemptive strikes against Houthi missiles preparing to launch and on Jan. 12, U.S. and U.K. aircraft, surface ship and submarine attacked more than 60 targets hit at 28 sites in Houthi-controlled Yemen.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported last week that European Union member states have given initial backing to a naval mission to protect ships from attacks by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militia in the Red Sea. That is in addition to Operation Prosperity Guardian, a U.S.-led defensive effort to protect Red Sea shipping.

This is a developing story. We have reached out to several sources and will update it when more details emerge.

Update: 8:11 PM Eastern -

The Pentagon released an image of an F/A-18E/Fs Super Hornet from the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower taking part in today's strike.

USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) conducts flight operations in response to increased Iranian-backed Houthi malign behavior in the Red Sea, Jan. 22, 2024. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kaitlin Watt)

Update: 6:41 PM Eastern-

A senior U.S. military official provided some additional details at a press briefing attended by reporters, including from The War Zone.

"At approximately 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, U.S. Central Command forces alongside the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, and with the support of Allied and partner nations conducted strikes on Houthi targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide operational details.

"The strikes were launched from air, surface and subsurface platforms targeting eight locations consisting of Houthi missiles, unmanned aerial systems, and weapons storage areas. We conducted the strikes with Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles, and manned aircraft from the United States Navy, and the U.K. Armed Forces. Precision-guided munitions were used to destroy the targets and also to minimize collateral damage. We'd like to emphasize that these strikes have no association and are completely separate from Operation Prosperity Guardian, which is a defensive coalition currently comprised of 22 countries operating in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Gulf of Aden. The U.S., U.K. and partner forces that participated in these strikes this evening remain well prepared to defend themselves as well as well prepared to continue to contribute to the defense of maritime traffic and other military vessels as part of the coalition in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden.”

In addition to participation by the Eisenhower, the Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea and Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers USS Gravely and USS Mason also took part in today's attack, the senior U.S. military official told The War Zone.

Video posted by CENTCOM shows Super Hornets, a Growler, and an E-2 Hawkeye launching off of the 'IKE.' The video shows an F/A-18F with what appears to be a 2,000lb GBU-31 JDAM with a BLU-109 'bunker buster' bomb body launching off the ship.

We are also getting video of the RAF Typhoons that took part in the strikes:

Imagery shows 500lb Paveway IVs under the Typhoon's wings.

Update: 7:18 PM Eastern -

Some addition information from the Pentagon press briefing by a senior U.S. military official and a senior U.S. defense official:

“We observed good impacts and effects at all eight locations,” said the senior U.S. military official. “We did in fact destroy missiles, unmanned aerial systems and weapons storage areas. We continue to collect battle damage assessment, and we'll have we'll have a better assessment going forward. But at this point, we do assess that the strike was successful and achieved the desired effect of removing these capabilities from the Houthis.”

“These were facilities that had missiles and unmanned aerial systems. There's a combination of advanced and conventional weapons at these facilities. I don't know the exact number of munitions at this point as we're still assessing the strike itself, but I would, I would put it likely around probably in the 25 to 30 range right now.”

“This would be the first time we struck a storage facility of this type in Yemen,” said a senior U.S. defense official when asked if this was the first strike against a Houthi underground facility. “These other storage facilities were of a different type.”

“None of these targets had concerns for civilian casualties,” said the senior U.S. military official. “Again, precision-guided munitions were used in each of each of these events, and the locations were carefully vetted for any collateral damage concerns, so no, we we did not have any concern for civilian casualties at any of the tape locations.”

The senior U.S. defense official declined to say how long these strikes will continue.

“I don't want to make any projection about our future operations and I obviously will not speculate about these decisions and strategies,” said the official. “We've said that we aim to de-escalate. We aim to restore calm and the Red Sea. But when the international community is going to be attacked, there will be consequences. And that's what's happened again tonight.”

The senior U.S. military official declined to say what kind of precision-guided munitions were used by the Super Hornets.

The Jan. 11 interdiction that resulted in two Navy SEALs presumed dead after one fell into the water and one tried to rescue him was unrelated to the strikes against the Houthis, the senior U.S. military official said.

“This interdiction was separate from our ongoing maritime security operations in that region,” said the official. “We have for a very long time maintained a force that conducts routine interdiction actions on intelligence related to the smuggling of arms, particularly advanced conventional weapons throughout that region. And that is exactly what this mission was.”

The SEALs, operating from the Expeditionary Sea Base ship USS Lewis B. Puller, with the help of helicopters and drones, conducted the complex nighttime boarding operation when they went missing.

They were identified by our colleagues at Task & Purpose as Navy Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Christopher J. Chambers, 37, and Navy Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class Nathan Gage Ingram, 27.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · January 22, 2024

18. The Army Has a Competition Problem

I would just caution that by declaring China the "pacing threat" we may risk missing the activities and intentions of other mailgin actors who can cause damage and create conditions that are opposed to our interests.

Excerpts:

The new Army chief of staff, General Randy George, is recalibrating the force. His message and guidance to focus on warfighting and to do so efficiently is a crucial first step in winning in competition. His strategy provides greater flexibility and surge capacity by eliminating wasteful practices. However, without a fundamental reorganization of Army forces or a wholesale philosophical shift the US Army will continue to react to the pacing threat.

The coming decade will be one of increasing risk. The People’s Republic of China has declared its intentions. Beijing is assembling a military capable of challenging the world order. The US Army’s time to prepare for war is now. However, preparation for war isn’t sufficient. It must also start competing.

The Army Has a Competition Problem - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by George Fust · January 22, 2024

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“If the Joint Force does not change its approach to strategic competition, there is a significant risk that the United States will ‘lose without fighting.’” The newest Joint Concept for Competing offers a powerful explainer of the problem, yet fails to fully identify the solution. For an Army whose raison d’etre is to fight and win our nation’s wars, what does it mean to compete? Hostile forces already view themselves as at war with the United States. The Army has a critical role to play in defense of the nation and can contribute prior to conflict. However, to do so effectively some additional considerations must be addressed.

At present, the Army is expected to prepare for conflict during a time of strategic competition. The key term, however, is competition. Of the three phases of the conflict continuum, the most ambiguous for the role of the Army is competition. The Army is manned and equipped to fight. It prepares from home station and certifies at national or regional training centers. And yet, under multidomain operations doctrine and with wide-ranging current requirements, it is increasingly tasked to compete. How can an army deliver effects in competition without forward placement, authorities, or the organizational structure to do so? The competition phase is different than conflict and crisis and consequently should be executed and designed differently.

A one-size-fits-all solution does not work in this instance. The demands are too great and even the most creative leader will struggle to find the time or resources required. In short, the US Army must fundamentally reexamine how it operates in the competition phase. It must be prepared to win in competition so we don’t have to win by fighting. Better yet, it must be able to set conditions during competition so we can win in conflict. These are more than just catchphrases. They provide focus amid ambiguity—ambiguity about competitors, the strategic landscape, and even the fundamental nature of competition and the Army’s role in it.

Absent such focus, the Army and the joint force are perilously close to an identity crisis in which expectations of it do not align with its reason for being. The first step toward addressing the issue is acknowledging that the Army’s role isn’t just to prepare and win in conflict. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is currently leveraging a whole-of-government approach to compete and win without fighting. The CCP’s authoritarian government gives it an edge in directing all resources and tools toward a single goal of undermining the Western-backed order and the US hegemony that underwrites it. Beijing has been competing for a decade. Importantly, however, China does not use the term “competition,” but rather “struggle.” Competitions connote rules-based contests. A struggle can more closely imply a fight without limits. Terminology matters. It sets the framework and conceptual approach.

US policymakers have caught on to this threat and are focused on the China problem set. Naturally, they have called on the joint force to provide deterrence—and options in this competition. For the Army, the primary contradiction, as described above, is the Army’s mission statement and resourcing to accomplish it. The Army is simply not a competition Army. It fights wars and it fights to win. If our primary adversary’s goal is to win without fighting, then traditional deterrence options will be ineffective.

The Department of Defense use of the phrase “pacing threat” says it all. To pace something is to make progress at the same speed. Gone are the days of rapidly established dominance and complete overmatch. The US strategy is to keep pace with our adversary. In many instances, China has the advantage. In the Indo-Pacific region, China has interior lines, mass, and magazine depth. Further, China isn’t just competing—it is leveraging a whole-of-government, globally integrated plan to gain influence and redefine the international world order.

The US Army is only one portion of one of the DIME instruments of power. However, to compete it must perform elements of all four instruments without the resourcing, expertise, or authorities.

The US Army Pacific uses a different term for competition. The command defines this phase as “campaigning.” DoD joint publications state that when done correctly campaigning through competition below armed conflict “creates strategic opportunities for the US and its partners.” Time is the critical variable for this method. Efforts will be protracted and require a long-term approach. The question for DoD then becomes this: How do we resource a protracted campaign below armed conflict? If the Army is the tool of choice, it needs to be equipped, manned, and trained for this mission. Requiring the same Army to maintain readiness for war will result in strain and suboptimal outcomes in both campaigning and warfighting. Evidence of an overstretched Army is obvious with current commitments spanning the globe. Ground forces provide national decision-makers options. Ongoing conventional regional conflicts in Ukraine and Israel highlight the necessity of a trained and ready land force. However, the gray-zone activities of adversaries and other hostile actors also require a deliberate approach.

All warfighting functions must be considered as part of any revision to US Army force structure or operating concept alterations. For example, military intelligence collection is different prior to hostilities. In the competition phase, setting the theater and providing early warning are paramount. During crisis or conflict, a shift to targeting becomes necessary. While targeting is also possible during competition, it is heavily if not exclusively weighted toward nonkinetic effects. In competition, countering malign influences, information operations, and deception are more immediate and important than weaponeering a tomahawk solution. Additionally, during this phase a humanitarian-assistance/disaster-relief event or an engineering operation to improve seaport capacity might be more critical than a show-of-force operation. While all options should be maintained, their prioritization and resource allocation should necessarily vary based on the phase of the conflict continuum. How the Army is currently structured matters when balancing winning in competition versus traditional, kinetic warfighting.

The new Army chief of staff, General Randy George, is recalibrating the force. His message and guidance to focus on warfighting and to do so efficiently is a crucial first step in winning in competition. His strategy provides greater flexibility and surge capacity by eliminating wasteful practices. However, without a fundamental reorganization of Army forces or a wholesale philosophical shift the US Army will continue to react to the pacing threat.

The coming decade will be one of increasing risk. The People’s Republic of China has declared its intentions. Beijing is assembling a military capable of challenging the world order. The US Army’s time to prepare for war is now. However, preparation for war isn’t sufficient. It must also start competing.

George Fust is an active duty Army officer currently serving in the INDOPACOM AOR. He is an intelligence officer and advisor to senior leaders within US Army Pacific. He is a graduate of Duke University and is currently an adjunct professor of political science. He previously taught at the US Military Academy in the Department of Social Sciences and served in the 75th Ranger Regiment. He has multiple deployments and experience in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Sgt. David Resnick, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by George Fust · January 22, 2024

19. Trust the AI, But Keep Your Powder Dry: A Framework for Balance and Confidence in Human-Machine Teams

Conclusion:

Every day more advanced technology is making its way into the hands of users around the world, and they are working with these systems to improve the quantity and quality of what they can accomplish. To fully unlock the potential of human-machine teams, they have to learn how to work together effectively. Using this framework—the 4 Cs—as a baseline for developing this relationship will help people continue to find the best ways to build on the strengths of their teams as we continue to explore what is possible.

Trust the AI, But Keep Your Powder Dry: A Framework for Balance and Confidence in Human-Machine Teams - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Thomas Gaines, Amanda Mercier · January 23, 2024

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As the Pentagon pushes for more AI-powered tools, there is a lot of ink being spilled on whether such tools can be trusted. Too often missing from the conversation, however, is something we already know about: building organizational trust. With a little reimagining, that knowledge can be applied to show how we can build trust in human-machine teams. Practitioners and academics have written at length about how critical trust is to organizations, pulling examples from the military, sports, and business to unlock their secrets. One popular framework coming out of this research describes the essential ingredients humans require to build trust as competence, character, and caring.

But what happens when part of that team isn’t human? This framework seems an odd way to describe a relational exchange between a human and technology. As we sit here typing away on a computer thousands of times more powerful than the one used to put a man on the moon, the question of whether to trust this laptop never enters our minds. The utility becomes clearer with the addition of one more appropriately alliterative attribute, communication. By framing each of these four attributes as a question, we can get to the essence of what humans require to trust a technology. Can you do what you say (competence)? Do you do what you say (character)? What are your priorities (caring)? And how do you share understanding (communication)?

Before we explore each of the four questions, however, it’s important to think about who is doing the trusting. Despite the ease with which humans can anthropomorphize artificial intelligence, outside of access controls and cleaning data, machines accept input and direction without the slightest hint of incredulity. Given the implicit trust by our machine counterparts, the need to build trust lies with the humans. But not just those working directly with the technology—the human-machine team must also be trusted by its leadership, adjacent units, and those who are responsible for integrating them into larger organizations. Regardless of whether it is simply a new search algorithm or an autonomous drone, this is the group, extending far beyond an equipment operator, that must gain and maintain trust in the team for it to be successful.

Competence: Can You Do What You Say?

The great thing about well-designed teams is that they are purpose-built to amplify strengths and mitigate weaknesses of each individual. All team members are assigned tasks that best fit their individual capabilities so that the team is collectively strong everywhere. Human-machine teams are no different. Machines excel at computation, executing repetitive rules, and analyzing large datasets for useful correlations. Data analytics systems have no problem calculating a linear regression on millions of points or reducing thousands of excel entries into a statistical failure rate for a piece of equipment. They are also exceedingly effective at maintaining focus on a particular target and meticulously recording everything they see. Unmanned reconnaissance systems can loiter over a target area for days capturing, recording, and storing everything they sense. Conversely, humans are notoriously bad at repetitive computation and sifting through large amounts of data, and they are equally hard-pressed to stare at a target without losing focus or becoming exhausted.

While humans struggle in these areas, we continually outperform machines at thinking creatively, especially in the realms of causal reasoning and counterfactual thinking. We have a natural gift at using questions, especially as a means of hypothesizing about what we see in our environment. Humans also have a natural ability to identify exceptional information—that thing that is different or out of place in their environment. To watch these innate abilities in action, take a four-year-old to the zoo. These skills will be on full display as the child notices and questions everything, working overtime to make sense of all of the novel observations. Put together, these skills make humans well-suited to exercising judgment when operating in volatile or uncertain situations where they have to come up with new plans with limited data—the opposite of our mechanical counterparts.

Generating trust on the team through competence is about improving all team members’ strengths rather than shoring up their weakness with the recognition that a teammate will cover the difference. Technological development should remain focused on evaluating data—faster, more effective computing algorithms, increasing operating time, and gaining efficiencies with data processing, transport, and storage. Humans can then concentrate on improving their creativity, the ability to identify exceptional information, and exercising ethical decision-making. When all team members show up prepared to play the part that best suits their capabilities, demonstrating competence becomes a simple matter. Alternatively, when they are asked to perform outside of their positions, the likelihood of failure increases significantly.

Character: Do You Do What You Say?

Once human-machine teams are task organized around what they do well, the next question is whether they actually execute their assigned roles and responsibilities. For machines, this question centers on availability and reliability. Combat is an unforgiving place filled with Clausewitzian friction and adversaries actively working against you. As the information environment becomes more congested and contested, building resiliency and availability into our advanced technology becomes more critical. There is nothing worse than turning to a teammate that isn’t there.

Only marginally better than complete absence is when a teammate is unreliable. Artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies are incredibly complicated, and their learning models end up only being as good as the training data available to them. While humans can make educated guesses about the differences between operating in woodland and desert environments with the recognition that they may not have all of the data available, AI systems cannot. An AI will respond based on the information it has without any indication that it has been asked to operate outside of its limits. This makes it susceptible to errors accidently introduced by bias inherent in nondiverse training data. Couple this with the “black box” nature of these systems—meaning that they cannot explain the way they arrive at their conclusions—and it makes it hard for their human counterparts to gauge if a machine is operating based on the right information. Finding ways to improve transparency in their processes, or at least alerting an operator when a result may not be as reliable, would increase the ability for people to trust that the machine will either produce a usable result or signal that the upcoming result is not reliable and should be discarded.

On the other side of the screen, humans become good teammates by being digitally disciplined. Like any other form of discipline, controlling habits and behaviors as they work is critical. Digital discipline takes the form of understanding the systems they are using and taking appropriate action based on what they see. This means they are both doing things right—applying technology in a way that gets its best performance—and doing the right things—applying technology in a way that accomplishes the mission.

Failures in discipline take many forms, but two of the most common are complacency and task creep. We’ve already noted that repetitive, mundane, and long-duration tasks are better suited for machines, and complacency is one of the biggest reasons why. Over time, humans naturally lose focus on these tasks, resulting in an increase in errors and introducing unnecessary risk into the situation. Preventing complacency from affecting the mission falls on both the individual performing the tasks to remain engaged and whoever is designing and leading the team. The aviation industry has strict guidelines around how long pilots are allowed to work and what they are allowed to do during critical phases of flight to combat fatigue-induced errors. The industry has also designed avionics to draw attention to specific information when necessary. As we look to enhance the way we design human-machine teams, we need to incorporate the lessons learned from attention-heavy industries to ensure we help people stave off inattention and complacency.

Similar to complacency, task creep also signals a failure in discipline when the tasks that should be aligned to a specific human or machine are shifted onto a different member of the team. This shift leads to overloading certain parts of the team with tasks or giving them tasks for which they are ill-suited. Both scenarios lead to a decrease in performance and introduction of unnecessary risk into the team’s operations. AI prediction engines are a common example of this phenomenon. The insights AI produces are based on analyzing data from the past. While they might help identify trends, they are not reliable for answering “what if” questions or predicting future outcomes. Despite this known weakness, there is no shortage of people trying to give this task to the latest algorithm in the name of data-driven decision-making. Using data to make decisions is great. Having that same tool make the decisions for you is not. While reassigning tasks naturally occurs when teams reorganize or the situation evolves, it should be a deliberate process based on a continual evaluation to ensure the team is still doing things right.

Caring: What Are Your Priorities?

Until they gain sentience machines don’t actually care about anything, but they are programmed with some manner of prioritization. For example, the tit-for-tat program, written to solve the prisoner’s dilemma in Robert Axelrod’s famous 1980 competition, prioritized cooperation in its winning strategy. Similarly, Isaac Asimov’s famous three laws of robotics outline a fictional starting point of a moral code for artificial intelligence. As humans continue to wrestle with the nature of machines and artificial intelligence in warfare and society in general, these sorts of coded priorities will remain key to the level of trust we place in autonomous systems. Part of this trust will come down to the amount of transparency built into the system. Solving this means developers must balance achieving desired outcomes with being able to explain how the algorithm arrived at the conclusion it did.

This need for transparency comes down to the fact that it is still the humans who maintain moral and ethical responsibility for what the team does. Somewhere in that balance is the level of meaningful human control that people are willing to accept for what they are having their teams do. To bolster the effectiveness of human control, virtue-based ethical decision-making should remain central to the training and education we provide to our human workforce and leaders. Armed with a strong moral compass and given clear guidance and intent on the mission, leaders can be far more confident that not only will the mission be fully carried out but that it will be done in a way that supports the bigger picture.

Communication: How Do You Share Understanding?

The final piece to the puzzle of building trust within human-machine teams is through the ways in which the team shares understanding. The fundamental differences between humans and machines means that there is a large gap in native understanding between the two based not only on an uncommon language but a difference in the way each processes information. Data and information lie on a spectrum with human-readable at one end and machine-readable at the other. At the dawn of the computing age, humans had to cross the entire divide translating every input into 1s and 0s and again translate the results once the machine had completed its task. The creation of coding languages served to partially bridge this gap, extending access to more and more people. Over the past few years, machines have begun to meet humans part way through large language models that are able to accept and return recognizable human text.

Closing the gap with their artificial counterparts requires people to become digitally literate—educating themselves on how to provide inputs and interpret outputs as they work with these systems to solve problems and accomplish the mission. Knowing how the technology functions and how to employ it to the greatest result does not require a data science degree any more than a driver needs to be a mechanical engineer to take a road trip. Instead, the driver needs to know how to drive the car and navigate the road system in concert with other motorists to get to the intended destination. Similarly, users of these advanced systems—and those charged with making responsible decisions about their use—should have a basic understanding of the key concepts and how they function. Courses such as West Point’s Digital Literacy 101 are a fantastic starting point to help leaders learn how to be intelligent consumers of data.

Every day more advanced technology is making its way into the hands of users around the world, and they are working with these systems to improve the quantity and quality of what they can accomplish. To fully unlock the potential of human-machine teams, they have to learn how to work together effectively. Using this framework—the 4 Cs—as a baseline for developing this relationship will help people continue to find the best ways to build on the strengths of their teams as we continue to explore what is possible.

Lieutenant Colonel Tom Gaines is currently assigned as the ACoS G6 for 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne). His writing on human creativity, decision-making, and technology can be found in Harvard Business Review and at West Point’s Modern War Institute.

Amanda Mercier is the chief technology officer for 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne). She is an expert in data analytics and machine learning.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Technical Sgt. Luke R Sturm, US Air National Guard

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Thomas Gaines, Amanda Mercier · January 23, 2024

20. The Game of Irregular Warfare across Global Economic Chokepoints

A useful graphic at the link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/game-irregular-warfare-across-global-economic-sal-artiaga-qdjte%3FtrackingId=k%252BHbYtKyZ8DWJVSQUDBloA%253D%253D/?trackingId=k%2BHbYtKyZ8DWJVSQUDBloA%3D%3D

The Game of Irregular Warfare across Global Economic Chokepoints

Sal Artiaga

January 23, 2024

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Introduction

Irregular Warfare (IW) represents a significant dimension of the geopolitical machinations that superpowers employ in pursuit of strategic advantage. The engagement in IW activities at globally recognized economic chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, and the Panama Canal underscores their pivotal role in maintaining and projecting power. This paper delves into the intricate tapestry of strategic IW activities undertaken by superpowers in regions housing these chokepoints, exploring their implications on international stability and economic flow.

The Global Arteries

Economic chokepoints are narrow channels that serve as conduits for most of the global trade and energy transport. Their strategic importance is exemplified by the intense geopolitical focus on the ten primary recognized chokepoints, including the Suez Canal, Bab al Mandeb, and the Turkish Straits, among others. Control or influence over these channels enables states to exert considerable leverage on international trade dynamics and regional stability. Superpowers, recognizing the strategic value of these chokepoints, engage in a silent tug of war, leveraging irregular warfare activities to influence, control, or disrupt activities in these regions. The underlying motives span from ensuring the security of supply lines and projecting naval power, to potentially throttling the economic lifelines of adversaries in times of conflict.

A Theater of Shadow Warfare

The Strait of Hormuz stands as a paramount example of such geopolitical maneuvering. Accounting for a significant portion of the world’s oil transit, it has been a focal point of strategic IW activities. Superpowers have engaged in covert operations, cyber warfare, and proxy support to regional allies, all aimed at securing influence over this vital artery and ensuring the flow or disruption of resources aligns with their strategic objectives.

Similarly, the Strait of Malacca, a critical route connecting the Pacific and Indian Oceans, has witnessed superpower engagement in irregular warfare to sway regional dynamics. Here, activities range from intelligence operations and support to non-state actors, to cyber-espionage targeting regional nations, underlining the multifaceted approach superpowers employ to secure their interests.

In a different region, but with paramount significance, we encounter The Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, another geopolitical pivot where irregular warfare plays out in the shadows. Superpowers have historically engaged in political influence operations, support for friendly regimes, and economic interventions to maintain sway over this man-made chokepoint, appreciating its role as a gateway for naval mobility and trade. In other chokepoints like the Suez Canal and the Turkish Straits, similar patterns of irregular warfare emerge, tailored to the unique geopolitical and socio-economic landscapes of each region. While the tactics and actors vary, the unified objective remains — to secure control or influence over these strategic junctures.

Implications for International Stability

The strategic IW activities at these chokepoints have profound implications for international stability. They exacerbate regional tensions, fuel proxy conflicts, and create an undercurrent of instability that can potentially escalate into larger confrontations. Furthermore, the ability to disrupt the flow of resources through these chokepoints presents a latent threat to global economic security. Navigating this intricate geopolitical tapestry requires a nuanced understanding of the motivations driving superpower engagement in IW at economic chokepoints. Balancing acts between regional actors, diplomatic engagements, and international law play pivotal roles in managing the complex dynamics and ensuring the uninterrupted flow of global commerce.

Towards Cooperative Security

Looking forward, the escalating strategic competition at economic chokepoints necessitates a reevaluation of international norms and cooperative frameworks. Fostering dialogue, building mutual trust, and developing mechanisms for conflict resolution are essential steps in mitigating the risks associated with irregular warfare activities in these vital regions. Strategic irregular warfare activities at economic chokepoints represent a complex and shadowy dimension of international relations. Superpowers, driven by geopolitical ambitions and strategic interests, continue to engage in a multifaceted and covert struggle for influence over these global arteries. Embracing the complexity of these dynamics and fostering international cooperation and stability are imperative to safeguarding the world’s economic lifelines and ensuring a balanced and secure global order.

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Sal Artiaga

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Global Economic Chokepoints and The Game of Irregular Warfare In today's complex geopolitical landscape, superpowers are increasingly leveraging irregular warfare strategies to gain control over critical economic chokepoints worldwide. These strategic locations, vital for global trade and resource flows, have become the battlegrounds for influence and power. From the South China Sea to the Strait of Hormuz, these superpowers employ a range of tactics, including proxy wars, cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and economic coercion, to assert dominance and secure their interests. Understanding these dynamics is essential for policymakers, analysts, and security experts alike. As the competition intensifies, the implications for global stability and security are profound. hashtag

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21. Rocket-Powered Corruption: Why the Missile Industry Became the Target of Xi’s Purge

Excerpts:

Conclusion: Xi’s Mistrust and Danger of Institutional Corruption

Xi’s purge of the Rocket Force has effectively shown a “crisis of confidence” that can generate concerning implications for both the Chinese military and the international security landscape. Unlike previous high-profile purges that Xi launched, which often targeted political rivals and those deemed loyal to his predecessors, the 2023 round of housecleaning seems to focus on rooting out corruption within his military inner circle and his precious Rocket Force. Xi’s military reform and relentless efforts to consolidate power allowed him to hand-pick military leaders who were considered politically reliable due to prior association, proven loyalty, and family background. These trusted individuals include the disappeared defense minister Li Shangfu, who was the son of Maj. Gen. Li Shaozhu, the deputy commander of the Railway Force (铁道兵), along with other purged cadres whom Xi almost certainly personally vetted. The fact that Xi sees a fire in his backyard may prompt him to prioritize personal loyalty and obedience over all else on matters of promotion, as with the appointment of complete outsiders like Vice Adm. Wang Houbin, an aviator turned career staff officer, to lead the Rocket Force. Naturally, this will further exacerbate the information challenge faced by authoritarian leaders. Installing extraordinarily loyal generals or “yes men” without the relevant expertise repeats the same process that led the purged generals into leadership positions in the first place, only this time without the benefit of putting an established leader in charge.

Furthermore, while a leadership shakeup may halt the most egregious forms of graft, such as selling military assets, using naval ships for smuggling, and wasteful banquets, it is powerless to correct what sustained the pervasive corruption now being uncovered. Corruption as egregious as the kind plaguing the People’s Liberation Army stems from an institutional source. The domination of state-owned enterprises in defense procurement, the lack of transparency and oversight that led to the previous practice of buying promotions, and even the backward compensation system for mid to lower-ranked officers and their families could all elevate corruption to the point it becomes not merely a reflection of bad discipline or greed but a necessary form of currency or lubricant to keep the system going. Abruptly choking off the flow of dirty money without addressing the underlying issue may only further deflate morale and loyalty and sow the seeds of greater grievance. Consider the recent incident in Beijing where families of retired officers were forcibly removed from assigned apartments, presumably to make space for other officers. Perhaps the real question for Xi is to what extent the corruption has affected the military’s ongoing modernization and, more importantly, how much of the modernization progress can be sustained in the absence of the illicit practices that have been inextricably fused with the Chinese defense community.

Rocket-Powered Corruption: Why the Missile Industry Became the Target of Xi’s Purge - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Elliot Ji · January 23, 2024

The People’s Liberation Army is experiencing yet another wave of purges by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Since July 2023, about 15 military and defense industry officials have been taken down by Xi, including defense minister Li Shangfu, the commander and commissar of the Rocket Force, and several high-ranking officers and civilian leaders in the defense industry. On Dec. 27, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress expelled nine senior cadres from the country’s nominal law-making body without explanation, further adding to the suspicion that a large-scale corruption scheme that democratically touched many levels of the military and the Chinese defense industry had been discovered by Xi. Just a week after Xi’s New Year speech to the People’s Liberation Army that stressed “fighting the uphill and protracted battle against corruption,” Bloomberg reported that Xi’s purge was likely due to rampant corruption found within the Rocket Force, citing alarming stories from U.S. intelligence such as mishandling of missile fuel and silo lid malfunctions that could prevent the launch of inter-continental ballistic missiles. While some sources contested the “water-filled missile” story, as liquid-fueled missiles are normally empty to prevent accidents, any corruption at the level of compromising Chinese missile readiness adds to the growing suspicion that the deep-rooted corruption has eroded the Chinese military’s combat readiness and its potential to conduct large-scale operations in the near future.

It should not be surprising to see high levels of corruption in China’s secretive custodian of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. This is not only because bribery, rent-seeking, and graft are commonplace in the loosely supervised Chinese military and its defense acquisition systems. Large, politically salient, yet rarely tested systems like nuclear missiles are also magnets of bad behavior. These systems are indispensable as instruments of strategic power, given large budgets to maintain and operate, and are seldom practically tested for readiness. Moreover, the fact that the hand-picked top brass of the military and the defense industry are found to be egregiously corrupt could indicate widespread disbelief among senior cadres that the People’s Liberation Army will need to fight in the near future.

Become a Member

This calls into question whether Xi could accurately assess his military’s actual readiness to fulfill their historical mission when called upon. The removal of so many senior cadres in a matter of months and a retroactive anti-corruption probe into the acquisition system suggest that Xi must deal with a problem that is bigger than greed: institutionalized corruption and perhaps a lack of faith in his vision of a modernized, politically reliable, ready-to-go military. This might prompt Xi to prioritize personal loyalty and obedience from officers over everything else, including operational competence and leadership records. This will only make Xi’s plans for Taiwan less predictable to the outside world.

The Corruption Sweet Spot

The current wave of purge distinctively targets corruption within the high-cost acquisition programs, most notably the ones in the missile industry. Over half of the 15 officials removed without official explanation were senior cadres leading the Rocket Force, with several more previously responsible for the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission. These include former top brass Zhou Yaning, Zhang Zhendong, the recently removed Rocket Force commander and commissar Li Yuchao and Xu Zhongbo, and former Equipment Development leaders Li Shangfu and Rao Wenmin.

A closer look at all 15 fallen cadres reveals that their careers in the People’s Liberation Army military and defense industry have one thing in common: Rockets. Aside from the military officers who commanded missile brigades, manned space programs, or weapons acquisition programs that include missiles (Air Force Gen. Ding Laihang seems to be the only exception), the three civilian cadres whose removal was announced on Dec. 27 were also rocket specialists in their careers. Liu Shiquan, a former executive at China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp and the chairman of China North Industries Group Corp before his removal, began his career as a missile engineer. He led several ballistic missile research programs and wrote a book on ballistic missile defense penetration in 2003. Before taking the helm at the China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp, he directed the 4th Institute (航天四院, also known as the Academy of Aerospace Solid Propulsion Technology), which worked on the solid fuel technology that powers the DF-31 inter-continental ballistic missile and the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile. Wu Yansheng and Wang Changqing, the other two civilian industrial executives who led the China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp, were also rocket engineers. Wu spent a decade in the manned space program before being elevated to leadership. Wang led the China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp 3rd Institute, which works on missile research, among other military aerospace technologies. Based on these cadres’ career trajectory and influence in the Chinese defense industrial base, the series of removals in the past few months seemed to be laser-focused on cleaning out rot within the missile industry.

Why missiles and rockets, then? At first glance, it may be counterintuitive to see jaw-dropping corruption in the area in which the Chinese military has seen numerous successes. The People’s Liberation Army currently operates the largest land-based ballistic missile fleet in the world and has achieved dazzling successes with advanced missile technologies such as the hypersonic DF-17, a fractional orbital bombardment system, and the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, which boosted long-range precision-strike capabilities against American surface assets. However, corruption is more intuitive if one considers it a rational calculus that balances the gain from corruption against the risks of being caught. First, the missile industry, monopolized by state-owned enterprises and state research institutions, is among China’s most well-funded defense portfolios. While the exact budget for this industry is unclear, China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp, the primary research and manufacturing entity for ballistic missiles, publishes its financial report, revealing its operations’ gross revenue. In 2017, the state-owned corporation earned approximately 2.35 billion RMB, almost doubling its revenue in 2015. The number rose to just under 4.44 billion RMB in 2020. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, a parallel aerospace state-owned enterprise that is primarily responsible for the manned space program and the CZ-series rockets, cleared 2.42 billion RMB in 2020, though the number was substantially greater in 2017 (5.80 billion RMB). Considering China’s greater purchasing power parity, the funding for missile programs is more than abundant in China, leaving plenty to line the pockets of many actors involved. Indeed, corruption in equipment development has been noticed by the party. In 2012, the Legal Daily (法制日报), the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (政法委), warned that some military representatives (军代表), officers who were sent to the weapons manufacturers to ensure the quality of the products, received bribes from the manufacturers. In 2018, the People’s Liberation Army Daily also reported that the system of military representatives (军代表系统) has a “weak link薄弱环节” in enforcing discipline at the lower level.

Second, the risks of being exposed by verifiable testing or examination are low for missiles reserved for nuclear missions. This is particularly true for the inter-continental ballistic missiles that are going to fill China’s 320 newly constructed silos. Strategic deterrence weapons like the liquid-fueled DF-4s and DF-5s and the solid-fueled DF-31s and DF-41s serve their deterrence mission by their perceived readiness. Given China’s longstanding commitment to no-first-use, the level of day-to-day readiness for these systems is low in China, reducing the need to test these systems for their readiness constantly. Also, unlike the U.S. Minuteman III, which is test-launched regularly to demonstrate effective deterrents, the Chinese inter-continental ballistic missiles are primarily tested to gather data for new technologies. The DF-41, for instance, has been tested about 7–10 times since 2012, all of which were to test new technologies such as multiple independent reentry vehicles and rail-mobile canister ejection. The DF-31 was test-launched only a few times, and so were the older liquid-fueled DF-5B/Cs since 2000. The most recent known DF-5C test was in 2017, before the construction of the new silos. This means that a full-scale test launch is unlikely once the missile enters the production and deployment phases. Therefore, the combination of the missile’s high prestige, large budget, and slight chance of being launched for readiness verification reaches a corruption sweet spot.

This seems a plausible explanation for the missile-related corruption reported by Bloomberg. The water-filled missiles are presumably the liquid-fueled DF-5s that are going to fill about 30 of China’s new missile silos if the Bloomberg story is indeed true. One can imagine the acquisition and operations officers involved in the scandal reassuring themselves that since test-launching a DF-5 is such an unlikely event, no one will be the wiser if the missiles are not operationally ready. Meanwhile, a steady stream of substantial funds was funneled regularly through the missile industry, providing ample opportunities and incentives to line the pockets of everyone involved. In comparison, the more “verifiable” systems within the aerospace industry, like the frequently used jet fighters and drones, rarely see publicized corruption directly compromise system readiness, though kick-backs and graft in the acquisition process likely existed. The high states of readiness for these systems increase the chance of showing a significant failure that could lead to an investigation into the procurement process, potentially capping the scale of corruption in these systems.

Corruption as a Symptom of Peace Disease

The severe corruption in the Chinese rocket industry points to another problem that may be as endemic as corruption itself: The disillusion that the People’s Liberation Army will never be tasked to fight a war soon. If members of the force, from service branch commanders to company-grade officers, firmly believed that the party’s mission to reunify with Taiwan must be carried out soon, the Chinese defense industry would have at least some resistance against the rampant and self-destructive corruption, like stealing fuel from a military fuel depot. It is not that the People’s Liberation Army was incapable of self-reflection and criticism. In fact, in 2005, the People’s Liberation Army Daily wrote a story about a missile brigade commander, Sen. Col. Jiang Xueli, and praised him for refusing to accept the silo lids when he found that a silo lid would not open due to the product being too heavy. Considering that China is currently building over 300 silos, failures of this type could not have gone unnoticed. However, if the senior leaders decided to look the other way because they believe that war is unlikely, so the lids will probably stay where they are, there would be nothing to stop corruption like this from taking place.

Indeed, the People’s Liberation Army is aware of the mental laxity and disbelief that it will be subjected to combat. The People’s Liberation Army Daily called this a mentality that “there will never be a war; even if there is one, it won’t be me to fight it仗打不起来, 打起来也轮不上我.” From his sweeping reforms to boost military modernization and his upbringing as one of the Chinese Communist Party princelings, Xi is likely aware of how pervasive the “peace disease” has been. He called out officers for having low self-discipline at the 2014 Gutian conference, voiced his discontent at the military’s various inadequacies like the “Five Don’t Know,” and instructed the People’s Liberation Army to adopt less scripted realistic training. Perhaps to his dismay, the Rocket Force corruption scandal showed that years of anticorruption campaigns failed to reach the core of the peace disease, pointing to an institutionalized corruption that even his hand-picked loyalists cannot resist or overcome.

Conclusion: Xi’s Mistrust and Danger of Institutional Corruption

Xi’s purge of the Rocket Force has effectively shown a “crisis of confidence” that can generate concerning implications for both the Chinese military and the international security landscape. Unlike previous high-profile purges that Xi launched, which often targeted political rivals and those deemed loyal to his predecessors, the 2023 round of housecleaning seems to focus on rooting out corruption within his military inner circle and his precious Rocket Force. Xi’s military reform and relentless efforts to consolidate power allowed him to hand-pick military leaders who were considered politically reliable due to prior association, proven loyalty, and family background. These trusted individuals include the disappeared defense minister Li Shangfu, who was the son of Maj. Gen. Li Shaozhu, the deputy commander of the Railway Force (铁道兵), along with other purged cadres whom Xi almost certainly personally vetted. The fact that Xi sees a fire in his backyard may prompt him to prioritize personal loyalty and obedience over all else on matters of promotion, as with the appointment of complete outsiders like Vice Adm. Wang Houbin, an aviator turned career staff officer, to lead the Rocket Force. Naturally, this will further exacerbate the information challenge faced by authoritarian leaders. Installing extraordinarily loyal generals or “yes men” without the relevant expertise repeats the same process that led the purged generals into leadership positions in the first place, only this time without the benefit of putting an established leader in charge.

Furthermore, while a leadership shakeup may halt the most egregious forms of graft, such as selling military assets, using naval ships for smuggling, and wasteful banquets, it is powerless to correct what sustained the pervasive corruption now being uncovered. Corruption as egregious as the kind plaguing the People’s Liberation Army stems from an institutional source. The domination of state-owned enterprises in defense procurement, the lack of transparency and oversight that led to the previous practice of buying promotions, and even the backward compensation system for mid to lower-ranked officers and their families could all elevate corruption to the point it becomes not merely a reflection of bad discipline or greed but a necessary form of currency or lubricant to keep the system going. Abruptly choking off the flow of dirty money without addressing the underlying issue may only further deflate morale and loyalty and sow the seeds of greater grievance. Consider the recent incident in Beijing where families of retired officers were forcibly removed from assigned apartments, presumably to make space for other officers. Perhaps the real question for Xi is to what extent the corruption has affected the military’s ongoing modernization and, more importantly, how much of the modernization progress can be sustained in the absence of the illicit practices that have been inextricably fused with the Chinese defense community.

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Elliot Ji is a Ph.D. candidate in international politics at Princeton University. He was a member of the 2023 class of the Nuclear Scholar Initiative of the Center of Strategic and International Studies’ Project on Nuclear Issues. From 2022–2023, he served as the director of the Strategic Education Initiative at Princeton University’s Center for International Securities Studies.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Elliot Ji · January 23, 2024

22. Opinion - Why Iran Doesn’t Want a War

Excerpts:

But for Ayatollah Khamenei, the home front will always prevail over problems in the neighborhood. In the end, in the event Israel succeeds in its goal of eliminating Hamas, the clerical state would most likely concede to the group’s demise, however grudgingly.

Of course, the more conflict Iran engages in — directly or indirectly — also increases the chance that a rogue or poorly judged strike could send the violence spinning out of control — in a direction Iran does not favor. History is riddled with miscalculations, and there is a real possibility that Iran could find itself pulled into the larger conflict that it has sought to avoid.

But Iran’s supreme leader is the longest-serving ruler in the Middle East precisely because of his uncanny ability to blend militancy with caution. He understands the weaknesses and strengths of his homeland when he seeks to advance the Islamic revolution beyond its borders.

In other words, Ayatollah Khamenei knows his limits — and he knows the legacy he needs to secure for the revolution to survive his passing.

Opinion - Why Iran Doesn’t Want a War - The New York Times

By Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh

Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

nytimes.com · by Ray Takeyh · January 22, 2024

Guest Essay

Why Iran Doesn’t Want a War

Jan. 22, 2024

Credit…Wana News Agency/Reuters, via Redux

By Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh

Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The war in Gaza has now gone where many feared it would, expanding into conflict in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Red Sea. With America’s repeated strikes against the Houthis in Yemen this month, fears of a larger regional conflagration are steadily growing.

Present in each of those arenas is Iran — and the question of whether Tehran and its powerful military will enter a wider war.

For years, Iran has provided funding, arms or training to Hamas and Hezbollah, which are fighting Israel, and to the Houthis, who have been attacking ships in the Red Sea. Iran has also launched its own strikes in recent days in retaliation for a deadly bombing earlier this month, claiming to target Israeli spy headquarters in Iraq and the Islamic State in Syria. It has also exchanged strikes with Pakistan across their shared border.

While Iran is clearly asserting its military strength amid the widening regional turmoil, that doesn’t mean its leaders want to be drawn into a wider war. They have said as much publicly, and perhaps more important, they have meticulously avoided taking direct military action against either Israel or the United States. The regime appears to be content for now to lean into its longtime strategy of proxy warfare: The groups they back are fighting Iran’s foes and so far, neither Israel nor the United States has signaled any interest in retaliating directly.

At the heart of Iran’s aversion to a major conflict are the domestic issues that have been preoccupying the regime. The elderly supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is seeking to secure his legacy — by overcoming political headwinds to install a like-minded successor, pursuing a nuclear weapon and ensuring the survival of the regime as an Islamist paladin dominating the Middle East — and that means not getting dragged into a wider war.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s government has been trying to keep his political opposition in check since 2022, when the Islamic Republic faced perhaps its most serious uprising since the revolution. The death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police tapped into widespread frustration with the country’s leaders and triggered a national movement explicitly intent on toppling the theocracy. Using brutal methods, the mullahs’ security forces regained the streets and schools, well aware that even unorganized protests can become a threat to the regime. Iran is also facing an economic crisis because of corruption, chronic fiscal mismanagement and sanctions imposed because of its nuclear infractions.

Even under less fraught circumstances, succession would be a delicate task in Iran. The only other time the Islamic Republic has had to choose a new supreme leader since its founding in 1979 was in 1989, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution, died. At the time, Ayatollah Khamenei worried that unless the regime got the process right, its Western and domestic enemies would use the vacuum at the top to overthrow the young theocracy.

Today, Iran’s Assembly of Experts, a body of 88 elderly clerics, is constitutionally empowered to select the next supreme leader. Much about that process is veiled in secrecy, but recent reports in Iranian media indicate that a three-man commission that includes President Ebrahim Raisi and the Assembly members Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami and Ayatollah Rahim Tavakol is vetting candidates under Ayatollah Khamenei’s supervision. While the process may be intended to look like an open search in the fractured political environment, it is almost certainly just staging for the installation of another revolutionary conservative into the job.

To Ayatollah Khamenei, a fellow religious hard-liner would be the only candidate fit to continue Iran’s quest for regional dominance, or to lock in another key part of his legacy: the pursuit of a nuclear weapon. As the world has been focused on wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Tehran has been inching closer to the bomb — enriching uranium at higher levels, constructing more advanced centrifuges and improving the range and payload of ballistic missiles. At a time when the bomb seems tantalizingly close, Ayatollah Khamenei is unlikely to jeopardize that progress by conduct that might invite a strike on those facilities.

As he oversees the succession search and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Ayatollah Khamenei appears to be content, for now, to let the Arab militias across the Middle East do what Tehran has been paying and training them to do. Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, which includes Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, is at the core of the Islamic Republic’s grand strategy against Israel, the United States and Sunni Arab leaders, allowing the regime to strike out at its adversaries without using its own forces or endangering its territory. The various militias and terrorist groups that Tehran nurtures have allowed it to indirectly evict America from Iraq, sustain the Assad family in Syria and, on Oct. 7, help inflict a deeply traumatizing attack on the Jewish state.

As its proxy fighters inflame Israel’s northern front through sporadic Hezbollah missile strikes, instigate attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and impede maritime shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, Iran is likely hoping to pressure the international community to restrain Israel. And the imperative of not expanding the Israel-Gaza war, which has thus far guided American and Israeli policy, means that neither is likely to retaliate against the Islamic Republic — only against its proxies.

Of course, Hamas, which Israel has vowed to eliminate, is valuable to Iran. The regime has invested time and money into the group, and unlike most Islamic Republic proxies and allies, Hamas is Sunni, which helps the Shiite theocracy transcend sectarianism in the region. Liberating Palestinians, whom Iranian revolutionaries have been fond of since the Palestine Liberation Organization aided them against the Shah in 1979, is also at the core of the clerical regime’s anti-imperialist, Islamist mission.

But for Ayatollah Khamenei, the home front will always prevail over problems in the neighborhood. In the end, in the event Israel succeeds in its goal of eliminating Hamas, the clerical state would most likely concede to the group’s demise, however grudgingly.

Of course, the more conflict Iran engages in — directly or indirectly — also increases the chance that a rogue or poorly judged strike could send the violence spinning out of control — in a direction Iran does not favor. History is riddled with miscalculations, and there is a real possibility that Iran could find itself pulled into the larger conflict that it has sought to avoid.

But Iran’s supreme leader is the longest-serving ruler in the Middle East precisely because of his uncanny ability to blend militancy with caution. He understands the weaknesses and strengths of his homeland when he seeks to advance the Islamic revolution beyond its borders.

In other words, Ayatollah Khamenei knows his limits — and he knows the legacy he needs to secure for the revolution to survive his passing.

Mr. Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Iran Doesn’t Want a War. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

nytimes.com · by Ray Takeyh · January 22, 2024

23. Bind Ukraine’s Military-Technology Revolution to Rapid Capability Development

Excerpts:

Conclusions

Zaluzhny’s essay helps to lay out a theory of success for reconstituting Ukraine’s forces after the culmination of last year’s counter-offensive. Now, to implement his vision of technology-driven capability development, new institutional capacities are required.

Ukraine has been well served by the grassroots model of defense innovation that has evolved over a decade of war. Ongoing efforts to boost the development of Ukraine’s defense industry and scale the production of platforms — like the pledge to manufacture a million drones — are essential, but they cannot in themselves connect available technologies and mission needs.

Mainstream approaches to capability development are too slow to harness emerging and disruptive technologies, and the special operations model is not meant to be diffused and scaled. These approaches should be supplemented by a rapid capability development approach that serves the security and defense forces as a whole.

In the grand scheme of Ukraine’s defense acquisitions and security cooperation, the establishment of a capability accelerator will require few resources. But by aligning resources to mission priorities and scaling the pace of innovation, it can bring vital change.

Bind Ukraine’s Military-Technology Revolution to Rapid Capability Development - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Mykhaylo Lopatin · January 23, 2024

The political heat around Gen. Valery Zaluzhny’s comments last fall should not obscure the insight they offer into a shift in his approach to force design. A year earlier, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief expressed requirements in terms of platforms: “I need 300 tanks, 600–700 infantry fighting vehicles, 500 howitzers.” Now, he talks about capabilities: air superiority, counter-battery, electronic warfare, and mine breaching — to be developed using “new technological solutions and innovative approaches.”

To a degree, the accent on innovation reflects the obsolescence of some of the older donated systems. More importantly, it conveys a growing confidence in Ukraine’s native ability to develop and integrate new technologies to deliver lethal capability to its troops. As many have noted, Ukraine is surfing the wave of a military-technological revolution, exploiting the diffusion of dual-use technologies through close collaboration between civilian developers and military end-users.

What fewer may realize, however, is the extent to which Ukraine’s grass-roots model of defense innovation has relied on the initiative of volunteers and private donors. Approaching the third year of all-out war, the government has initiated several programs to cut red tape and support local industry but has yet to embrace the agile and mission-focused approach pioneered by civil society. To reach this objective, Ukraine should establish a defense-led, end-to-end process that binds the mil-tech revolution to rapid capability development.

Towards this end, Ukraine should establish a capability accelerator that runs a process of mission integration tailored to leverage emerging and disruptive technologies. Building on the success of grass-roots efforts, the accelerator would provide much-needed guidance and open a new channel for structured security cooperation. Instead of merely sharing intelligence from the world’s leading test ground for new approaches to warfare, Ukraine and its partners would reap greater rewards through the joint development of solutions.

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The Societal Source of Defense Innovation

When Ukraine was invaded in February 2014, its security and defense sector was in disarray. Fortunately, the Revolution of Dignity coincided with the democratization of military capability, and tech-savvy activists stepped in for a faltering state. Beyond the provision of non-lethal support like gear, rations, and medications, volunteers designed, developed, procured and fielded systems and apps for ballistic calculation, tactical battle management, secure communications, and drone surveillance, leveraging technologies that until recently were the preserve of states.

The pressure of war and the weakness of defense institutions thus catalyzed the emergence of a distinct, Ukrainian model of defense innovation that spans the boundary between closed military communities and the civilian world to develop capability from readily available commercial technologies. A decade later, Ukraine’s military had developed immensely as a fighting force, but the institutions for planning, resource management, and acquisitions lagged, as shown by the failure to procure or import meaningful quantities of armaments and gear before the full-scale invasion. To this day, volunteers raise funds to supply an inordinate share of the basic equipment and advanced technologies employed by frontline units.

Security expert Audrey Kurth Cronin has shown how public-private innovation is key to Ukraine’s strategic resilience, but the leading role of society in this tandem is not sufficiently recognized. For example, the Delta platform, the core of what Cronin calls the “seamless integration of public and private digital capabilities,” was not acquired by government from industry, as she reasonably assumes, but imposed upon the recalcitrant defense establishment through years of persistent pressure from civil society, representing the interests of troops on the ground.

Delta — which was used to orchestrate the defense of Kyiv, the Kharkiv and Kherson counter-offensives, and the sinking of the cruiser Moskva — integrates intelligence with surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance tasks, providing situational awareness and decision-making support. Delta development was initiated by Aerorozvidka, one of the first groups of volunteers to support the troops fighting in eastern Ukraine since 2014, with the consistent support of NATO, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and other allies.

Tellingly, Delta is only one of several examples of sophisticated capability development projects initiated or delivered by non-governmental organizations and defense startups. Consider a few others. Teams like Army SOS or UA Dynamics crowdsourced funds to develop, manufacture, and field the Kropyva targeting software, as well as the Valkyriareconnaissance and the Punisher strike drones. Interfacing directly with military units on the front, they developed techniques, tactics, and procedures for reconnaissance and strike drone missions, along with top-notch target acquisition.

As for state efforts, Ukraine’s security and intelligence agencies and special operators have shown the most initiative, reaching out to volunteers and private donors on projects that leverage commercial technologies to execute operations of strategic importance. As recently revealed, this led to the development of the fixed-wing Beaver drone, to conduct precision strikes against adversary missile production and storage facilities, and the Sea Baby surface drone, to execute the strikes on the Kerch Bridge.

The Challenge of Scale

As demonstrated by the examples above, Ukraine’s model of grass-roots innovation exhibits several key features. First, the focus is placed on capabilities rather than technologies. Effects attainable through the augmentation of tactics, improved situational awareness, or combinations of systems are preferred to material solutions for reasons of cost and time. Second, tasking is focused on clearly defined combat missions, enabling the orchestration of multiple actors and systems to achieve the maximum combat effects. Third, minimally viable systems are deployed into battle even at relatively low levels of maturity. Fourth, immediate operational feedback is used for continuous improvement, in a spiral model of capability development, addressing individual capability components as time allows. Fifth, informal networksthat evolved over several years between civilians and field commanders facilitate direct interaction of developers with end-users. Sixth, donor funding minimizes overhead and eliminates red tape, enabling development at minimal expense. Finally, experts in acquisitions, engineering, and operations work together in dedicated cross-functional teams.

The initiative of independent actors in this ecosystem has given Ukraine an early edge in many areas such as the use of autonomy and artificial intelligence in support of reconnaissance and precision strikes. However, the informality of the approach also poses challenges. Donations and crowdfunding enjoy low overheads, but only commercial contracting can tap the much larger and reliable pools of state funding and private capital necessary for planning and scale. The donation of ostensibly free goods and services has enhanced national resilience, but the outsized role of volunteers in the supply of essential battlefield capabilities sometimes becomes a source of controversy.

To address these issues, the Ukrainian government launched the Army of Drones project along with Brave1, a platform that provides grants to Ukrainian companies, linking investors, stakeholders, and companies into a technology cluster. Regulatory reforms expedited the import of dual-use technologies, simplified the certification of uncrewed and electronic warfare systems, and authorized non-competitive procurement through simple, cost-plus contracts with a margin of up to 25 percent, and advance payments up to 70 percent of costs for up to 12 months. Domestically produced systems slated for transition are fast-tracked through codification by the Ministry of Defense in just a few weeks.

Supporting the development of defense startups will bring a greater variety of new products to the door of defense. Scaling the production of selected systems will deliver large quantities of those systems, just as volunteers crowdfund the mass purchase of commercial off-the-shelf drones. Expediting certification and codification will accelerate the process designed to ensure the quality of products, but none of these efforts are focused on the identification of urgent operational requirements and making the connection between available technologies and mission needs.

To a degree, Ukraine’s special operators have picked up the slack. However, their model of training, equipping, and planning for the execution of strategic-level, one-off operations is too expensive and time-consuming to scale. Focused on building bespoke solutions one operation at a time, their approach is ill-suited to replicating and diffusing capability more widely. As emphasized by “Hunter,” the brigadier-general who masterminded the Kerch operation, “the [Security Service of Ukraine] will never, ever strike the same way twice.” Moreover, the secrecy inherent to their way of work compartmentalizes expertise and lessons learned — antithetical to the open model of innovation necessary to exploit dual-use technology in a timely manner.

The Need for a Capability Accelerator

Ukraine’s defense innovation ecosystem now consists of hundreds of Ukrainian and international entities pursuing thousands of projects. They are increasingly capable of supplying whatever technologies may be required. But the impactof the mil-tech revolution depends on the capacity of the defense establishment to characterize operational challenges and a policy to implement a process for developing capability in a rapid, effective, and feasible manner. This capacity and policy are not yet in place.

Admittedly, the rapid integration of emerging and disruptive technologies is a challenge for military organizations everywhere. During the Cold War, technologies were developed in house and the development cycle for new platforms in the United States and Soviet Union alike was about a decade. But now that commercial companies are releasing new products by the day, established acquisition processes have become a bottleneck to the development and delivery of capability to the user.

Capability-based approaches introduced via cooperation with NATO are relatively new to the defense establishment of Ukraine. Capability-based planning was not formally implemented until December 2020, and a capabilities management committee to guide the process was only established in January 2023. These developments will guide major acquisitions and the allocation of resources in the medium term but are not designed to hasten emerging and disruptive technologies into the battlefield.

For this purpose, Dan Patt and Bryan Clark have called, in a Hudson Institute report, for the implementation of a mission integration process that includes the following six functions: problem definition; solution development and experimentation; material procurement; digital integration; resourcing and requirements; and operational refinement. In the U.S. context, these functions are all being implemented, but they are scattered across the Department of Defense and should ideally, as argued by Patt and Clark, be consolidated under a single resource sponsor, with program managers established in service program executive offices.

In Ukraine, a process of mission integration resembling that described by the Hudson Institute has been implemented mainly by volunteers and startups working ad hoc with front-line commanders and special operators. Crucially, their approach assigns an absolute priority to the timely delivery of capability using readily available technologies, and is powered by adaptable resource allocation. The establishment of a capability accelerator would thus be an evolutionary step — formalizing and elevating this practice with systems and capability thinking — rather than the introduction of something completely new.

The accelerator would introduce state of the art methods for approaching, assessing, validating, sourcing, resourcing, and fielding capabilities to meet urgent operational needs. It would manage a portfolio of open innovation projects, implemented by task force teams of technology, military, and business specialists, working directly with warfighting units. As a clearly defined program with transparent governance, the accelerator would also set an example in terms of the accountable allocation of resources to priorities.

By bringing acquisition together with concept development and experimentation, the accelerator would not simply tighten the loop between defense and industry to accelerate iterative improvements, but address attributes like performance, security, interoperability, maintainability, and other qualities necessary for adoption and transition, and not just once the system is submitted for certification, but at the earliest possible stage of development through stakeholder engagement.

Building upon the longstanding network of relationships between civilian developers and military end users — as well as the work of Brave1 — the capability accelerator would enable Ukraine’s military and defense establishment to play a more active role in aligning technological development with urgent operational needs. The development of technologies and the development of capabilities are distinct but complementary programs that require distinct but cooperating sponsors.

The formalization of a rapid capability development process would also enable structured cooperation with allied battle laboratories, warfare centers, and military services. At present, Ukraine’s partners are observing the tandem of defense innovation and military adaptation from afar. They treat it as a matter for intelligence collection and are developing solutions to emerging challenges in various allied formats, separately from Ukraine.

Given the speed of change on the battlefield, joint efforts to develop solutions would generate far greater benefits for Ukraine and its partners alike. Beyond good intentions, security cooperation requires structure and process — precisely what the capability accelerator should provide. Through distributed wargaming and simulation, collaboration on concept development and experimentation could be established quickly, and with no need for non-Ukrainian boots on the ground.

Conclusions

Zaluzhny’s essay helps to lay out a theory of success for reconstituting Ukraine’s forces after the culmination of last year’s counter-offensive. Now, to implement his vision of technology-driven capability development, new institutional capacities are required.

Ukraine has been well served by the grassroots model of defense innovation that has evolved over a decade of war. Ongoing efforts to boost the development of Ukraine’s defense industry and scale the production of platforms — like the pledge to manufacture a million drones — are essential, but they cannot in themselves connect available technologies and mission needs.

Mainstream approaches to capability development are too slow to harness emerging and disruptive technologies, and the special operations model is not meant to be diffused and scaled. These approaches should be supplemented by a rapid capability development approach that serves the security and defense forces as a whole.

In the grand scheme of Ukraine’s defense acquisitions and security cooperation, the establishment of a capability accelerator will require few resources. But by aligning resources to mission priorities and scaling the pace of innovation, it can bring vital change.

Become a Member

Mykhaylo Lopatin is a defense expert, director of international relations for the non-governmental organization Aerorozvidka, former member of the Reform Committee of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and a co-founder of Rapid Capability Group – Ukraine. This article is a collective effort of Rapid Capability Group – Ukraine.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Mykhaylo Lopatin · January 23, 2024

24.

As an aside we have 18 major non-NATO allies:

https://samm.dsca.mil/glossary/major-non-nato-allies#:~:text=Currently%2018%20countries%20are%20designated,Korea%2C%20Thailand%2C%20and%20Tunisia.

Definition

Currently 18 countries are designated as MNNAs under 22 U.S.C. 2321k and 10 U.S.C. 2350a:

Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, South Korea, Thailand, and Tunisia.

In addition, P.L. 107-228 provides Taiwan shall be treated as an MNNA, without formal designation as such.

Ref Link

https://www.state.gov/major-non-nato-ally-status/

22 U.S.C. 2321k;

22 U.S.C. 2403;

10 U.S.C. 2350a

End America’s unwise alliance with Qatar

BY MICHAEL PREGENT, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 01/22/24 4:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4422149-end-americas-unwise-alliance-with-qatar/

An alliance with the U.S. — specifically, a Major Non-NATO alliance — was once the most highly coveted relationship a nation could earn, a sacrosanct pact of mutual importance. But one such alliance is now a liability for both the U.S. and its long-time allies.

Qatar, our oil-wealthy “ally” in the Persian Gulf, is funding and harboring terrorists that not only threaten American forces but are attacking long-standing American allies. Worse yet, Doha believes this terrorist/ally balance is protected because the country hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East.

A U.S. base should give America leverage with the country hosting it — it should not give leverage to Iran, in the case of Iraq; and it should not give leverage to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in the case of Qatar.

Qatar is counting on the proposition that hosting a strategically significant U.S. base insulates Doha from the repercussions of funding and supporting Hamas attacks against Israel and helping the terrorist organization survive to carry out more such attacks in the future —attacks promised by Hamas leaders from luxury hotels in Doha.

How did the Hamas political office end up in the capital of a U.S. ally? Qatar’s ambassador to the U.S. says the nation was asked by the Obama administration in 2012 to set up “indirect lines of communication” with Hamas. Doha gravely mistook the request. Qatar was certainly not asked to give Hamas billions of dollars, give its leaders a platform on Al Jazeera to call for jihad, and embed its reporters to film terrorist attacks.

There should be a cost: targeted sanctions and designations like those established by the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force, which was set up to seize and reallocate assets to support the victims of Vladimir Putin’s aggression. The U.S. should seize assets tied to individuals and entities in Qatar for supporting terrorist groups, especially those tied to Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism. The U.S. should use those funds to replenish the U.S. Victims Of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund.

It’s time to put Doha on notice that they are jeopardizing their relationship with the U.S. by providing material support to designated terrorist groups. Qatar is clearly acting like a state sponsor of terror and should not be allowed to use the U.S. banking system to bypass existing, though not enforced, sanctions on funding Iran and its terrorist proxies.

The U.S. needs to end the facade of Qatar being a major player in the region. Designated terrorist leaders are happy to take Doha’s money and easily intimidate the tiny kingdom to make further payments and concessions. Doha is a bank that requires nothing from Tehran or its terrorist proxies to secure billions. Qatar has not delivered results. It has delivered only the one thing it excels at — money.

The U.S. has become the best ally Qatar can buy, from bribing officials to buying the support and silence of institutions; from Sen. Bob Menendez to Sen. Lindsey Graham, from Texas A&M to Cornell University. Qatar is using its influence and its proceeds from American investments to steal intellectual property, fund terrorism and foment anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment through its funding to universities, to pro-Hamas groups, and its propaganda machine, Al Jazeera.

So what are we going to do about a country that resembles the Mos Eisley Cantina or The Continental hotel?

We have every tool at our disposal to sanction and designate the main players. The mere threat to disfavor Doha and freeze the funds of their front companies would result in a “please don’t, we can stop” response.

It is time to disclose Qatari money to American think tanks, universities, high schools, politicians, journalists and businesses. Qatar cannot fund Hamas and the Taliban while buying influence in the U.S. to silence critics and secure praise from politicians.

Congress must weigh in and cancel the 10-year extension of the military base in Qatar, which was quietly done behind the scenes by the Biden White House and fast-tracked as the spotlight on Qatar’s seedy ties grew more intense. We need to call Al Jazeera what it is — a foreign agent that promotes terrorism and anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment. We need to move our base out of Qatar and designate Qatar a state sponsor of terror.

An alliance with the U.S. should be a coveted position, not one where our enemies profit through their ties to a corrupt regime.

Michael Pregent is a former intelligence officer and current Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute specializing on material support and lethal aid to terrorist groups.

25. Navy IDs two SEALs who died during sea mission off Somalia

Another tragic loss of men doing what they loved for what they believed in. May they rest in peace.

Two timeless quotes. W should be grateful for such Americans.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

-T.R. Roosevelt

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

-George Orwell

Navy IDs two SEALs who died during sea mission off Somalia

militarytimes.com · by Diana Correll · January 22, 2024

The Navy identified Monday the two Navy SEALs who died after they went missing during a Iranian weapons seizure mission this month.

Navy Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Christopher J. Chambers and Navy Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class Nathan G. Ingram were both part of a mission to board an “illicit dhow carrying Iranian advanced conventional weapons” on Jan. 11 when they went missing off Somalia, according to U.S. Central Command.

CENTCOM announced Sunday that search and rescue operations for Chambers and Ingram had concluded, and both were considered deceased.

Chambers, originally from Maryland, enlisted in 2012 and graduated from SEAL qualification training in Coronado, Calif., in 2014.

Gage, originally from Texas, enlisted in 2019 and graduated from the same SEAL training in 2021. They both were assigned to West Coast-based SEAL units.

“We extend our condolences to Chris and Gage’s families, friends, and teammates during this incredibly challenging time,” Capt. Blake Chaney, the commander of Naval Special Warfare Group 1, said in a statement Monday. “They were exceptional warriors, cherished teammates, and dear friends to many within the Naval Special Warfare community.”

Navy SEALs who went missing during sea mission pronounced dead

The SEALs went missing off the coast of Somalia earlier this month.

Those aboard the dhow, which did not have a country flag, were planning to transfer the missile parts, including warheads and engines, to another boat off the coast of Somalia, the Associated Press reported earlier this month, citing a U.S. defense official.

The Navy recognized the boat as one with a history of transporting illegal weapons from Iran to Somalia, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details not made public.

The SEALs traveled in small special operations combat craft driven by naval special warfare crew to get to the boat. As they were boarding it in rough seas, around 8 p.m. local time, one SEAL got knocked off by high waves and a teammate went in after him.

Neither the Navy nor CENTCOM has indicated which SEAL first fell into the water, but the combatant command said that the mission resulted in the successful seizure of Iranian weapons.

“Seized items include propulsion, guidance, and warheads for Houthi medium range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) and anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), as well as air defense associated components,” CENTCOM said in a statement on Jan. 16. “Initial analysis indicates these same weapons have been employed by the Houthis to threaten and attack innocent mariners on international merchant ships transiting in the Red Sea.”

The Navy has regularly conducted interdiction missions in the region, also intercepting weapons on ships that were bound for Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

Officials have said that the SEAL mission was not related to Operation Prosperity Guardian, the ongoing U.S. and international mission to provide protection to commercial vessels in the Red Sea, or the retaliatory strikes that the United States and the United Kingdom have conducted in Yemen in recent weeks.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

26. A New Concern on the Ukrainian Battlefield: North Korea’s Latest Missiles

We need to apply US capabilities to demonstrate how to defeat north Korean missiles. Both missile defense as well as precision strike against the missile system on the ground. This should be an opportunity to demonstrate the inferiority of north Korean missile systems.

On the other hand, South Korean legislators and the Korean people need to view these attacks and their effects to remind them that they must fully fund South Korean defense capabilities to protect the South from these types of missile attacks.

A New Concern on the Ukrainian Battlefield: North Korea’s Latest Missiles

As the war approaches its second anniversary, the Russians are beginning to deploy North Korean arms, worsening Ukraine’s troubles while it still awaits new air defenses from the United States.

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The aftermath of a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, in early January.Credit...Laura Boushnak for The New York Time

By David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt

David E. Sanger reported from Berlin, and Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Jan. 22, 2024

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When Russia turned to Kim Jong-un of North Korea to help it through its war with Ukraine, it came with a big shopping list that included a million rounds of artillery to shoot at Ukrainian troops dug into trenches across the south and east, and dozens of North Korea’s newest, barely tested missiles.

Now those weapons are beginning to show up, deeply worrying U.S. and European officials who say they fear the North’s ammunition could prove important on the battlefield at a huge moment of vulnerability for Ukraine.

While many of the North Korean artillery rounds are proving to be duds — some appear to have been manufactured decades ago — they are giving the Russians something to fire at Ukrainian forces, who are rationing their own dwindling supply. European nations promised Ukraine a huge resupply, but for now seem to have been able to scrounge up only 300,000 or so artillery shells.

But it is the missiles that raise the most concern, from the Pentagon to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. In interviews, a range of officials said they fear the Russians hope to use missiles to overwhelm Western air defenses. While so far the number of missiles transferred is small, likely fewer than 50, U.S. and European officials believe there could be far more to come.

And unlike with the artillery rounds, North Korea is not shipping its older equipment. An analysis by Conflict Armament Research, an organization that has documented the arms used in Russia’s war in Ukraine, showed the missiles being provided to Russia are more recent in their design. And U.S. officials say the missiles are proving as accurate as Russia’s home-built equipment. Three barrages of North Korean-made missiles targeted Ukrainian positions around the new year, American officials say, and they believe more were used on the battlefield on Sunday.

In South Korea, officials and analysts say the Ukraine war is giving the North something it desperately needs: a testing ground to see how its new missile arsenal, designed for a conflict with South Korea and the United States, fares against Western-designed air defenses.

The turn to North Korea, as the war approaches its second anniversary, reflects Russia’s own struggle to keep up with the pace at which both sides are burning through their stocks of arms. Russia has also turned to Iran for drones, and is reportedly seeking Iranian missiles as well — though there is no evidence it has yet gotten them.

The bulk of the missiles being fired at Ukraine are still produced in Russia. But if North Korea steps up its supply, Ukraine could be forced to shoot off precious rounds of air defenses, a development that could be devastating to Ukraine if additional military funding is not approved by Congress, American officials said. The imports have especially alarmed leading members of NATO, who have declined to speak publicly but say they worry the infusion of the North Korean arms could prove particularly troublesome at a time when Ukraine is uncertain about when, or from whom, it will receive its next supplies.

Image

Kim Jong-un of North Korea and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in a state news photograph from September. North Korea has been providing Russia with arms for its war with Ukraine.Credit...Vladimir Smirnov/Sputnik

For now, the air defenses are holding. Last Tuesday, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the top American commander in Europe, told Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III that he believed the Ukrainian military had enough air defenses to survive the winter, two senior U.S. officials said.

But if North Korea increases its missile shipments, and Congress fails to pass additional aid, that calculation could change.

Russia has already obtained several dozen North Korean missiles and is hoping to acquire more. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said he planned to visit North Korea soon, according to North Korean state media. Russia has fired North Korean missiles against Ukraine at least three times since late December, including attacks on Dec. 30, Jan. 2 and Jan. 6.

The missiles come on top of a steady stream of artillery shells, as many as a million rounds, that North Korea has agreed to ship to Russia. But the quality of those rounds is poor. Some have exploded inside Russian guns, and many of the rest have fallen harmlessly in underpopulated areas.

Quantity itself, however, matters on the battlefield. Last summer, Ukraine was firing as many as 7,000 artillery shells a day and had managed to damage Russia’s ammunition supplies to the point that Russia was firing about 5,000 rounds a day, according to U.S. and other Western analysts. Now the Ukrainians are struggling to fire 2,000 rounds daily, while Russian artillery, augmented by the North Korean shells, is reaching about 10,000 a day, analysts said.

Still, U.S. officials are far more worried about North Korean missiles.

After the first barrage, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, began working on an intensified effort to gather international support condemning the weapons transfer, and trying to increase pressure on North Korea to stop providing the missiles.

U.S. officials believe that at times since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, U.S. disclosures of North Korean shipments have caused Pyongyang to halt or delay further transfers.

The Russian transfers are coming at a critical time in the war in Ukraine, as further American support hangs in the balance, subject to intense political debates on Capitol Hill. Ukraine’s ammunition needs will be a main focus of a virtual meeting of Kyiv’s allies on Tuesday, to be led by Mr. Austin.

The United States has provided myriad air defense systems and ammunition to Ukraine. And American officials have said those systems — including Patriot batteries — have proved capable of blunting the damage of Russian missile attacks.

But American officials said that in order to provide more air defense systems and ammunition, Congress needs to approve an additional aid package.

U.S. officials say Ukrainian air defenses are a critical area of concern. After initial setbacks because of Western sanctions, Russia has rebuilt its industrial capacity and stockpiled missiles. But if Russia can get even more North Korean missiles, it will be able to more easily overcome Ukrainian defenses.

“The Ukrainians continue to get attacked,” John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said on Wednesday. “They continue to come under artillery shell, air attacks, ballistic and cruise missile, as well as drone attacks from the Russians.”

Image

Last summer, Ukraine was firing as many as 7,000 artillery shells a day, but analysts say that number has fallen to about 2,000.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

It will be difficult for the United States to stop those additional shipments. North Korea has been taking a more belligerent position in its foreign policy in recent days. It has declared that it would no longer seek reconciliation with the South, prompting some experts to speculate that the country may be seeking to provoke a new conflict — though the evidence for that is fragmentary at best. Without question, though, it has focused on strengthening its ties with Russia.

Yet the nature of the renewed relationship is not clear. Russia is promising an array of technology in return for the North’s ballistic missiles, including aircraft and advanced technological know-how. But U.S. officials do not believe Russia has yet provided the weaponry or additional ballistic missile technology.

John Ismay contributed reporting from Washington, and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul.

David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades. More about Julian E. Barnes

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 23, 2024, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: New Concern on Ukrainian Battlefield: North Korea’s Latest Missiles. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

27. The Strategic Case for Democracy Promotion in Asia

Excerpts:

Prioritizing support for democracy in Asia does not mean that United States can, or should, stop working with non-democratic partners, or with partners whose democracies have shortcomings. Authoritarian states such as Vietnam share the U.S. interest in a free and open Indo-Pacific while stifling political dissent at home. Hybrid regimes such as Singapore share vital security and economic interests with the United States but afford their citizens fewer rights. India’s civic and media space has become more restrictive and sectarian politics threaten minority rights, even as electoral competition flourishes and Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains popular with the Indian public. The United States, which itself confronts challenges to democratic best practice, is nonetheless right to work closely with these nations because they share an overriding interest in preventing a greater threat to freedom—hegemony by a totalitarian China.

Even in these countries, the United States and its Asian partners can counteract democratic backsliding by engaging with all sectors of society—including youth leaders, independent journalists, and digital activists—and not simply ruling elites, in preparation for the day when political change opens greater space for democratic participation. Consider the hard case of Myanmar, where a military coup in 2021 ended a historic but incomplete democratic transition. In that country, hardly anyone supports the military regime, most citizens hold negative opinions of China, and most consider democracy the best form of government.

The smart play for Washington is not to ignore this strategic fulcrum, but to ally itself with brave citizens in Myanmar demanding democratic change while encouraging allied governments and civil societies to do the same. Countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines eventually bucked one-party rule when economic development created large middle classes that demanded more political rights. Washington worked with these nations when they were not democracies. But U.S. efforts to nurture civil society eventually helped enable activists in these countries pursue democratic openings. They now provide examples to other nations. Pro-democracy advocates in countries such as Cambodia can look to neighbors such as South Korea and Indonesia, instead of to the West, as models for their own democratic transitions.

Thanks to population powerhouses such as India and Indonesia, more people live under democratic governments in Asia than in any other region in the world. The countries in the region most resilient to Chinese intimidation, cooptation, and coercion are those with effective institutions. The United States must work pragmatically with regional partners to bolster a democratic infrastructure that provides an enduring foundation for peace, pluralism, and prosperity.

The Strategic Case for Democracy Promotion in Asia

How the Spread of Liberal Values Gives America a Competitive Edge Over China

By Michael Green and Daniel Twining

January 23, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Michael Green and Daniel Twining · January 23, 2024

Democracy promotion is falling out of fashion in U.S. foreign policy circles. This is especially true when it comes to Asia: policymakers tend to believe that if the United States dwells on principles when engaging with that region, it will become distracted and lose the edge to China—purportedly a more pragmatic country focused on economic prowess and hard power. Beijing’s grand strategy undoubtedly focuses on dominating the Indo-Pacific, controlling the development and production of the most advanced technologies, and making China the hub of the global economy.

But Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s ambitions are also ideological: he aims to shift global opinion toward an admiration for authoritarian rule and thereby forge a world safe for his autocracy and eager to welcome Chinese influence. This ideological campaign does not yet pose an existential threat to well-established Asian democracies such as Japan and South Korea. It creates great risks, however, for smaller Chinese neighbors whose economic and political fragilities Beijing seeks to exploit.

Foreign policy realists argue that supporting democratic governance distracts the United States from hard-power competition. But throughout the course of American history, the country’s sharpest strategic thinkers knew that was not the case. President Thomas Jefferson argued that supporting well-governed republics in the Pacific Northwest would be the best way to prevent European imperial expansion there. In the second half of the nineteenth century, U.S. naval commander Matthew Perry and the naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan made the same arguments about the western Pacific, determining that American interests in the region depended on the ability of Japan and other maritime states to self-govern and resist European imperial ambitions. Nearly two hundred years later, President Ronald Reagan concluded that weak democratic governance was rendering U.S. strategic partners in Asia unstable and vulnerable to hostile influences. Leaning in to encourage democratic transitions in the Philippines and South Korea helped him contain the Soviet Union in its waning days.

These lessons from American statecraft are invaluable in today’s competitive environment. To make creating democratic partnerships effective as a foreign-policy tool, however, the United States must ensure that regional nations take a greater lead, putting Washington in a supporting role where possible. Fortunately, powerful democracies in Asia are rising to this challenge. The Indo-Pacific is bucking the global trend of democratic backsliding. The kinds of liberties that Freedom House measures improved in the region over the past year.

And leading Asian democracies evince an increasing determination to make values the center of their foreign policy. In recent surveys run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Asian policy experts—excepting only Chinese and Singaporean respondents—ranked “democracy,” “human rights,” and “free and fair elections” as critical to the future of their entire region. In a shift, Japan and South Korea have added support for good governance to their foreign assistance portfolios, recognizing that accountability and the rule of law undergirds security in the Indo-Pacific.

These efforts deserve more American encouragement and support. The United States should partner with Asian allies working to strengthen democratic institutions from the Maldives to Mongolia and engage more robustly with civil-society watchdogs that fight against corruption that corrodes national sovereignty and threatens U.S. interests. Of course, many countries in Asia remain only partly free, and some still have authoritarian governments. But most of Asia’s one-party states still support a free and open Indo-Pacific rather than the international order China’s revisionist autocracy wishes to create—a hierarchical world in which expansionism is celebrated and great powers are free to suborn the independence of their neighbors.

The preservation of freedom in the Indo-Pacific is a vital interest for so many Asian nations that have transitioned from colonial rule and want to protect their hard-won independence from authoritarian interference. In short, democracy is an Asian value. U.S. strategy depends on siding with these countries—and with Asia’s broader trend toward growing popular participation and forging democratic partnerships.

POPULAR FRONT

When U.S. foreign policy has focused on encouraging democratic governance as a means to national resilience, the impacts on the balance of power abroad has redounded to the United States’ benefit. Historically, the United States’ policy toward the Philippines had many flaws. But despite those, U.S. efforts to encourage the country to develop stronger democratic institutions on its path to independence made the Philippines much more capable of resisting Japan’s appeals to pan-Asianism during World War II. The United States’ post-war project to set Tokyo down a democratic path helped ensure that communism did not take root in Japan; the fact that Japan became an economically flourishing democracy helped contain Soviet expansionism after the United States withdrew from Vietnam and contributed to bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end.

Reagan began his term critical of his predecessor Jimmy Carter’s emphasis on human rights and democracy with frontline allies such as the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan. Initially, he believed any country that could serve as an anti-Soviet ally—democratic or not—should be embraced. But Secretary of State George Schultz and other advisers convinced him—based on the United States’ experience in Vietnam—that corrupt, authoritarian leaders tend to lose legitimacy and prove brittle allies in the long run.

Reagan soon pivoted to the side of pro-democracy reformers. Today, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan are robust democracies. Alongside Australia, India, and Japan, these countries have become stalwarts against Chinese coercive ambitions in the region, including by actively supporting the presence of the U.S. military as a guarantor of stability.

President Joe Biden has signaled that he believes the global fight for democratic values is crucial. He has struggled, however, to frame democracy as a critical part of the United States’ Asia strategy. His administration has become so focused on dominating the narrative in its great-power competition with China that it has inadvertently reinforced the impression that Washington is mainly concerned with its own economic and military rivalry with Beijing, not with how China’s ambitions affect other states in the region. But the fact remains that the most powerful states in China’s neighborhood have far more values in common with Washington than they do with Beijing. U.S. strategy needs to reflect that favorable ideological balance of power in Asia.

OPEN SEASON

While some American policymakers are questioning whether values-based internationalism may be a liability in strategic competition, many Asian countries are prioritizing support for a value-based foreign policy. Japanese leaders, for instance, understand clearly that they must defend democracy in Europe if they hope to defend it in Asia. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has championed support for Ukraine against Russia’s assault, saying in 2022 that “Ukraine today could be Taiwan tomorrow.”

Japan’s 2023 Development Cooperation Charter, the document that guides Tokyo’s overseas development assistance, pledges to make support for freedom and the rule of law a key component of foreign aid. And in December, when Japan unveiled a pioneering new national security strategy, it identified a commitment to universal values as one of the three pillars on which the country’s safety relies. Tokyo is now supporting parliamentary strengthening in the Pacific Islands, helping these nations bring more accountability to their governance.

South Korea, too, is increasingly emphasizing its support for freedom beyond its borders. Its 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy emphasized the importance of human rights and rule of law. Seoul recently committed $100 million to support democratic development abroad. South Korea’s version of the Peace Corps has embraced a new focus on strengthening open and accountable local governance in the societies where it works, and Seoul has sought a leading role in the annual Summit for Democracy, originally a U.S. initiative to combat authoritarianism worldwide; in 2024, Seoul will host the global summit. The recent political rapprochement between Japan and South Korea seems likely to reinforce Seoul’s turn toward a values-based foreign policy.

Asian leaders have seen firsthand that investing in democratic institutions is strategically wise.

Asians’ recognition of democracy's strategic importance extends beyond the United States’ core allies. Large majorities of young Asians—even those living in countries that are not key U.S. partners, such as Malaysia, the Maldives, Mongolia, and Timor Leste—recently told International Republican Institute pollsters that they believe democracy is the best form of government and desire democratic consolidation in their countries. Over the past several decades, Indonesia has transformed into an imperfect yet thriving pluralistic democracy that runs credible elections and boasts a rich civil-society sector determined to protect freedoms and hold politicians to account. Now, Jakarta is turning toward championing democratization abroad, pressing for democratic change in Myanmar within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and hosting the Bali Democracy Forum, which trains civic and political leaders from Asia and the Middle East.

Taiwan only held its first free presidential election in 1996. But today, its competitive elections, thriving civil society, and independent press may make it the freest society in Asia. Since 2003, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy—a government-funded nonprofit modeled on the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy—has provided critical support to Asian pro-democracy civil society groups.

And many Indo-Pacific multilateral organizations—such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the Pacific Islands Forum—are organized around upholding democratic values and resisting authoritarian coercion. Asia’s enthusiasm for democracy is no accident. The region’s recent history has demonstrated that democratic development is central to economic growth. Its wealthiest societies all benefit from responsive government institutions, regular elections, property rights, and strong rule of law. Despite China’s propaganda about its development miracle, Asia’s most prosperous societies are open societies. Witnessing the economic flourishing of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, Asian citizens and leaders have seen firsthand that investing in democratic institutions is strategically wise.

FREE FALL

But pressures on democratic governance are growing across the Indo-Pacific, including within the region’s most developed democracies. Many Asian nations have been subjected to overt Chinese economic coercion: when Australia, India, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea have refused to toe Beijing’s line in territorial or diplomatic disputes, China has hit them with import bans in key sectors. Such economic coercion subverts democracy and national sovereignty by trying to compel elected leaders to pay greater fealty to Chinese interests than to the interests of their own citizens.

Asian countries are also the targets of extensive influence operations run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 2015, Australia was stunned to discover well-financed PRC influence campaigns influencing its parliament and subsequently passed strict laws to enforce the registry of potential foreign agents of influence. More recently, a Chinese government-sponsored corruption scheme successfully pressured leaders in the strategically situated Solomon Islands to extend the Chinese navy new rights to base ships in its harbors and to allow Chinese police officers to deploy on its territory.

China’s growing attempts to strategically encircle Australia demonstrate its appetite to exploit vulnerabilities in even strong democracies. But Chinese pressure poses a special risk to countries that are not democracies or where democratization is reversible. Key Asian states are now poised between pursuing greater freedom or embracing authoritarianism: in Thailand, for instance, an opposition party scored a stunning victory in the country’s 2023 elections, but then saw governing elites stymie that overwhelming vote for change by sustaining the old order. China’s ideological push could tip the balance away from democracy in such smaller Asian nations. Credible allegations of Chinese influence-peddling now plague political processes in the Pacific Islands; Nauru recently dropped its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan at Beijing’s behest.

Asian countries sometimes recoil at the American tendency to frame its support for democracy in chest-thumping, even messianic terms. Even the United States’ closest friends in the region do not share the distinctive history that has shaped the U.S. sense of democracy’s preciousness. As one senior Australian official put it to the authors, “America fought three brutal wars to define its democracy, but in our country a bunch of guys with long beards signed a document and said, ‘Right, let’s go to the pub.”

Asian countries where citizens have had to fight for democratic governance—Taiwan and South Korea, for instance—often speak more urgently of democracy as a universal value. But they tread more carefully in their diplomacy with their neighbors. Even if Asian countries’ tone and approach in supporting democracy are not the same as America’s, however, the underlying assumptions that led Perry, Mahan, and Reagan to see geopolitical advantage in supporting well-governed republics are taking root across the region. So, too, is a belief that threats to democracy, for reasons of national interest, require a response.

HAZARD INSURANCE

If the United States merely follows a realist strategy in Asia, that would play into China’s hand. China, after all, is not leaving ideology off the table. The CCP sanctions pro-democracy groups, politicians who stand up for human rights, and independent activists abroad precisely because it believes that appeals to accountability, transparency, and democratic values undercut China’s geostrategic advantages. Leaked CCP documents show that China is actively pursuing a strategy of disrupting democracies and democratic alliances in Asia as well as in the rest of the world.

An Asia that is more free and democratic would be harder for the CCP to coerce and coopt. China’s rivals in Asia are open societies that enjoy strong partnerships with the United States in part because they share common values. Beijing’s closest allies, by contrast, are autocracies where citizens have little say in how their rulers conduct their affairs. A U.S. retreat from overtly supporting democratic values would make China’s quest for dominance easier, opening new opportunities for Beijing to engage in bribery to secure new investments, military access points, and influence over the infrastructure and digital domains in key geographic locations in Asia.

Instead of shying away from promoting universal values, the United States should work pragmatically with its regional partners to consolidate the Indo-Pacific’s democratic infrastructure. Washington should encourage Tokyo and Seoul, in particular, to keep stepping up to lead the region’s democratic development. The White House must make it clearer that developing the region’s democratic infrastructure is a strategic priority, and U.S. development agencies and congressionally funded NGOs can offer these countries more support by sharing best practices and aligning development-assistance strategies.

Throughout the rest of the region, Washington should pursue programs to help combat corruption, give sanctuary to persecuted political dissidents, and empower democratic reformers, offering new possibilities for partnership with Asian allies beyond traditional forms of military and economic cooperation. The United States could profitably invest in parliamentary strengthening, training young Asian leaders who want to deliver on democratic reforms, and supporting investigative journalists and civil society watchdogs to keep politicians honest in the face of malign foreign influence. Building civic and political alliances, including with next-generation Asian leaders, is a sound way for Americans to invest in a free and open Indo-Pacific, rather than mainly relying only on government-to-government and military-to-military relations.

SUPPORT SYSTEM

Prioritizing support for democracy in Asia does not mean that United States can, or should, stop working with non-democratic partners, or with partners whose democracies have shortcomings. Authoritarian states such as Vietnam share the U.S. interest in a free and open Indo-Pacific while stifling political dissent at home. Hybrid regimes such as Singapore share vital security and economic interests with the United States but afford their citizens fewer rights. India’s civic and media space has become more restrictive and sectarian politics threaten minority rights, even as electoral competition flourishes and Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains popular with the Indian public. The United States, which itself confronts challenges to democratic best practice, is nonetheless right to work closely with these nations because they share an overriding interest in preventing a greater threat to freedom—hegemony by a totalitarian China.

Even in these countries, the United States and its Asian partners can counteract democratic backsliding by engaging with all sectors of society—including youth leaders, independent journalists, and digital activists—and not simply ruling elites, in preparation for the day when political change opens greater space for democratic participation. Consider the hard case of Myanmar, where a military coup in 2021 ended a historic but incomplete democratic transition. In that country, hardly anyone supports the military regime, most citizens hold negative opinions of China, and most consider democracy the best form of government.

The smart play for Washington is not to ignore this strategic fulcrum, but to ally itself with brave citizens in Myanmar demanding democratic change while encouraging allied governments and civil societies to do the same. Countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines eventually bucked one-party rule when economic development created large middle classes that demanded more political rights. Washington worked with these nations when they were not democracies. But U.S. efforts to nurture civil society eventually helped enable activists in these countries pursue democratic openings. They now provide examples to other nations. Pro-democracy advocates in countries such as Cambodia can look to neighbors such as South Korea and Indonesia, instead of to the West, as models for their own democratic transitions.

Thanks to population powerhouses such as India and Indonesia, more people live under democratic governments in Asia than in any other region in the world. The countries in the region most resilient to Chinese intimidation, cooptation, and coercion are those with effective institutions. The United States must work pragmatically with regional partners to bolster a democratic infrastructure that provides an enduring foundation for peace, pluralism, and prosperity.

MICHAEL GREEN is CEO of the U.S. Studies Center at the University of Sydney and former Senior Director for Asia at the U.S. National Security Council.
DANIEL TWINING is President of the International Republican Institute and a former Member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff.

Foreign Affairs · by Michael Green and Daniel Twining · January 23, 2024

28. Containment for AI – How to Adapt a Cold War Strategy to a New Threat

Excerpts:

Containment will require hard technical questions to be answered by international treaties and mass global movements alike. It must encompass work on AI safety, as well as the audit mechanisms needed to monitor and enforce compliance. The companies behind AI will be critical to this effort and will need to think carefully about how to align their own incentives with government regulation. Yet containing AI will not be the sole responsibility of those building its next generation. Nor will it rest entirely on national leaders. Rather, all of those who will be affected by it (that is, everyone) will be critical to creating momentum behind this effort. Containment offers a policy blend capable of working from the fine-grained details of an AI model out to huge public programmes that could mitigate vast job destruction.

Collectively, this project may prove equal to this moment and capable of counteracting the many risks that AI poses. The cumulative effect of these measures—which must include licensing regimes, the staffing of a generation of companies with critics, and the creation of inbuilt mechanisms to guarantee access to advanced systems—is to keep humanity in the driving seat of this epochal series of changes, and capable, at the limit, of saying “no.” None of these steps will be easy. After all, uncontrolled proliferation has been the default throughout human history. Containment should therefore be seen not as the final answer to all technology’s problems but rather, the first critical step.

Containment for AI

How to Adapt a Cold War Strategy to a New Threat

By Mustafa Suleyman

January 23, 2024

Foreign Affairs · January 23, 2024

The last two years have seen startling advances in artificial intelligence. The next few years promise far more, with larger and more efficient models, capable of real creativity and complicated planning, likely to emerge. The potential positives are astonishing, including heightened business productivity, cheaper and more effective health care, scientific discoveries, and education programs tailored to every child’s needs. But the risks are also colossal. These include the proliferation of disinformation, as well as job losses, and the likelihood that bad actors will seek to use the new technology to sow havoc.

This technology will proliferate rapidly. That means that over the next ten years, grappling with AI’s inbuilt tendency toward uncontrolled spread will become a generational challenge. It will, accordingly, require a generational response akin to what the West mobilized in the early days of the Cold War. At that time, the American diplomat George F. Kennan talked about containing the Soviet Union by using hard power and economic and cultural pressure to ensure that the Soviets were kept behind their borders and the democratic world was not overwhelmed. Today’s challenge requires a similarly broad and ambitious program, in this case to keep AI in check and societies in control. It will be, like Kennan’s, an effort based on laws and treaties. It will also necessitate, however, a massive global movement and changes to the culture of technology companies. This modern form of containment will be needed not only to manage AI and prevent it from creating catastrophe but also to ensure that it becomes one of the most extraordinarily beneficial inventions in human history.

THE TIDE ALWAYS COMES IN

Across the sweep of human history, there is a single, seemingly immutable law: every foundational technology ever invented—from pickaxes to plows, pottery to photography, phones to planes—will become cheaper and easier to use. It will spread far and wide. The ecosystem of invention defaults to expansion. And people, who always drive this process, are Homo technologicus, the innately technological species.

Consider the printing press. In the 1440s, after Johannes Gutenberg invented it, there was only a single example in Europe: his original in Mainz, Germany. But just 50 years later, there were around 1,000 presses spread across the continent. The results were extraordinary. In the Middle Ages, major countries including France and Italy each produced a few hundred thousand manuscripts per century. A hundred years later, they were producing around 400,000 books each per year, and the pace was increasing. In the seventeenth century alone, European countries printed 500 million books.

The same trend was seen with the internal combustion engine. This was a tricky invention that took over 100 years to perfect. Eventually, by the 1870s, there were only a few working examples in German workshops. The technology was still nascent, limited in number, and utterly marginal. Eight years after he invented the first practical automobile in 1885, the German engineer Carl Benz had sold just 69 cars. But a little over 100 years later, there were over two billion internal combustion engines of every conceivable shape and size, powering everything from lawnmowers to container ships.

Some technologies, particularly nuclear weapons, may appear to buck this trend. After all, 80 years on from their creation, they have been used only twice, by the United States in 1945, and arsenals are well down from their 1980s highs. Although there is some truth to this counterargument, however, it ignores the thousands of warheads still deployed around the world, the constant pressure of new states looking to build them, and the hair-raising litany of accidents and close calls that, from the beginning, have been a regular and, for obvious reasons, underreported feature of these weapons. From the drama of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 to the disappearance of nuclear materials from a U.S. government employee’s car in 2017, nuclear weapons have never been truly contained despite the avoidance of outright catastrophe. If such technologies as nuclear weaponry are an exception to the rule of technological spread, they are at best a very partial and uneasy exception.

THE IMPENDING DELUGE

It is inevitable that AI will follow the trajectory of the hand axe, the printing press, the internal combustion engine, and the Internet. It, too, will be everywhere, and it will constantly improve. It is happening already. In just a few years, cutting-edge models have gone from using millions of parameters, or variables adjusted in training, to trillions, indicating the ever-increasing complexity of these systems. Over the last decade, the amount of computation used to train large AI models has increased by nine orders of magnitude. Moore’s law, which holds that computing power doubles every two years, predicted exponential increases in what computers can do. But progress has been even faster in AI, with the trends of lower costs and improving capability ascending on a curve beyond anything seen with a technology before. The results are visible in well-known AI products but are also proving transformative under the surface of the digital world, powering software, organizing warehouses, operating medical equipment, driving vehicles, and managing power grids.

As the next phase of AI develops, a powerful generation of autonomous AI agents capable of achieving real world goals will emerge. Although this is often called artificial general intelligence, I prefer the term “artificial capable intelligence,” or ACI, which is a stage before full AGI, where AI can nonetheless achieve a range of tasks autonomously. This technology can accomplish complex activities on humans’ behalf, from organizing a birthday party to completing the weekly shop, in addition to something as consequential as setting up and running an entire business line. This will be a seismic step for the technology, with transformative implications for the nature of power and the world economy. It can be expected to proliferate rapidly and irreversibly.

An ACI in everyone’s pocket will result in colossal increases in economic growth, as the most significant productivity enhancer seen in generations becomes as ubiquitous as electricity. ACI will revolutionize fields including health care, education, and energy generation. Above all, it will give people the chance to achieve what they want in life. There is a fair amount of doomsaying about AI at the moment, but amid well-justified concerns, it is important to keep in mind the many upsides of AI. This is particularly the case for ACI, which has the potential to give everyone access to the world’s best assistant, chief of staff, lawyer, doctor, and all-around A-team.

Yet the downsides cannot be ignored. For a start, AI will unleash a series of new dangers. Perhaps the most serious of these will be new forms of misinformation and disinformation. Just a few simple language commands can now produce images—and, increasingly, videos—of staggering fidelity. When hostile governments, fringe political parties, and lone actors can create and broadcast material that is indistinguishable from reality, they will be able to sow chaos, and the verification tools designed to stop them may well be outpaced by the generative systems. Deepfakes caused turmoil in the stock market last year when a concocted image of the Pentagon on fire caused a momentary but noticeable dip in indexes, and they are likely to feature heavily in the current U.S. election race.

Many other problems can be expected to result from the global advance of AI. Automation threatens to disrupt the labor market, and the potential for immense cyberattacks is growing. Once powerful new forms of AI spread, all the good and all the bad will be available at every level of society: in the hands of CEOs, street vendors, and terrorists alike.

STOPPING THE SPREAD

Most people’s attention has correctly focused on the social and ethical implications of this change. But this discussion often neglects to consider technology’s tendency to penetrate every layer of civilization, and it is this that requires drastic action. It is technology’s tendency to spread fast, far, and wide that demands that AI must be contained, both in its proliferation and in its negative impacts, when the latter do occur. Containment is a daunting task, given the history and the trajectory of innovation, but it is the only answer—however difficult—to how humanity should manage the fastest rollout of the most powerful new technology in history.

Containment in this sense encompasses regulation, better technical safety, new governance and ownership models, and new modes of accountability and transparency. All are necessary—but not sufficient—to assure safer technology. Containment must combine cutting-edge engineering with ethical values that will inform government regulation. The goal should be to create a set of interlinked and mutually reinforcing technical, cultural, legal, and political mechanisms for maintaining societal control of AI. Governments must contain what would have once been centuries or millennia of technological change but is now unfolding in a matter of years or even months. Containment is, in theory, an answer to the inescapability of proliferation, capable both of checking it and addressing its consequences.

This is not containment in the geopolitical sense, harking back to Kennan’s doctrines. Nor is it a matter of putting AI into a sealed box, although some technologies—rogue AI malware and an engineered pathogen, in particular—need just that. Nor is containment of AI competitive, in the sense of seeking to fight some Soviet Red Menace. It does resemble Kennan’s approach in that the policy framework must operate across all dimensions. But containing technology is a much more fundamental program than what Kennan envisioned, seeking a balance of power not between competing actors but between humans and their tools. What it seeks is not to stop the technology but keep it safe and controlled.

Most people rightly argue that regulation is necessary, and there is a tendency to believe that it is enough. It is not. Containment in practice must work on every level at which the technology operates. It therefore needs not only proactive and well-informed lawmakers and bureaucrats but also technologists and business executives. It needs diplomats and leaders to cooperate internationally to build bridges and address gaps. It needs consumers and citizens everywhere to demand better from technology, and ensure that it remains focused on their interests. It needs them to agitate for and expect responsible technology, just as growing demand for green energy and environmentally friendly products has spurred corporates and governments into action.

STEERING WITHOUT A MAP

Containment will require hard technical questions to be answered by international treaties and mass global movements alike. It must encompass work on AI safety, as well as the audit mechanisms needed to monitor and enforce compliance. The companies behind AI will be critical to this effort and will need to think carefully about how to align their own incentives with government regulation. Yet containing AI will not be the sole responsibility of those building its next generation. Nor will it rest entirely on national leaders. Rather, all of those who will be affected by it (that is, everyone) will be critical to creating momentum behind this effort. Containment offers a policy blend capable of working from the fine-grained details of an AI model out to huge public programmes that could mitigate vast job destruction.

Collectively, this project may prove equal to this moment and capable of counteracting the many risks that AI poses. The cumulative effect of these measures—which must include licensing regimes, the staffing of a generation of companies with critics, and the creation of inbuilt mechanisms to guarantee access to advanced systems—is to keep humanity in the driving seat of this epochal series of changes, and capable, at the limit, of saying “no.” None of these steps will be easy. After all, uncontrolled proliferation has been the default throughout human history. Containment should therefore be seen not as the final answer to all technology’s problems but rather, the first critical step.

MUSTAFA SULEYMAN is Co-Founder and CEO of Inflection AI, Co-Founder of DeepMind, and the author of The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma.
MORE BY MUSTAFA SULEYMAN

Foreign Affairs · January 23, 2024

29. Top military chief says UK Special Forces are vanguard for wider defence

The UK has a different view of their special forces including their standard "no comment" response.

Top military chief says UK Special Forces are vanguard for wider defence

forces.net · by Sian Grzeszczyk 22nd January 2024 at 1:51pm

Watch: General Sir Jim Hockenhull explains how Special Forces incubate new ideas and capabilities

One of the UK's top military chiefs says that Britain's Special Forces act as a "vanguard for defence", which helps the wider military to evolve, enabling new and different ways of working.

In an exclusive interview with Forces News, the Commander of Strategic Command, General Sir Jim Hockenhull, gave an exceptionally rare insight into this incredibly secretive organisation.

UK Special Forces, which currently consist of the Special Air Service (SAS), Special Boat Service (SBS), Special Reconnaissance Regiment and 18 (UKSF) Signals Regiment, have world-leading expertise in behind-the-lines operations, undercover raids, counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, reconnaissance and covert surveillance.

The British Government has a long-standing "no comment" policy when it comes to Special Forces, with little known publicly about the elite units.

Gen Hockenhull shed a little light for Forces News though, explaining how Special Forces incubate new ideas and capabilities which are then filtered down to be used by the rest of defence.

He said: "We ask incredible things of our Special Forces and they are an incredible group of individuals.

"They are always pushing new boundaries and, as a consequence of their ingenuity, their imagination and their initiative, we're able to see new ways of working."

Gen Hockenhull said that by its very nature, it is an integrated organisation, more than just a particular unit, and as a group can pioneer great change, especially regarding kit and technology.

"They are a microcosm of defence in one sense, they're also a vanguard which enables us to do new and different things."

Watch: General's plan was to 'pre-bunk' Putin's lies

He added: "My responsibility is to make sure we can pull those things forward into the wider force.

"I think there are things that we are doing in UK defence now, in the wider force, which perhaps only a few years ago would have been the preserve of the Special Forces.

"So, in some ways, they incubate new ideas and new capabilities.

"By doing that in a really operationally focused active group of individuals who are determined to be the very best they can be, it benefits wider defence."

An area that Gen Hockenhull highlighted was the use of uncrewed systems, with lessons learned by Special Forces rolled out to the wider military over several years.

Gen Sir Jim also spoke to Forces News explaining that the decision to publish Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion plan of Ukraine on social media a week before he did it was to "pre-bunk" his lies.

forces.net · by Sian Grzeszczyk 22nd January 2024 at 1:51pm

30. CIA tries to recruit double agents in Russia with new video

Video at the link:

https://www.reuters.com/world/cia-tries-recruit-double-agents-russia-with-new-video-2024-01-23/

CIA tries to recruit double agents in Russia with new video

By Andrew Osborn

January 23, 20248:02 AM ESTUpdated an hour ago

A scene from the slickly produced Russian-language video released by the CIA. Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

CIA releases recruitment video on official channel on XCIA hopes to recruit Russians disaffected by Ukraine warKremlin shrugs off video, says such practices quite common

LONDON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has released a slickly produced Russian-language video to try to persuade Russian intelligence employees to switch sides and work as double agents for Washington.

CIA Director William Burns said in July that disaffection among some Russians over the war in Ukraine was creating a rare opportunity to recruit spies, and that the CIA was not letting it pass.

The video, released on the CIA's official channel on X, tries to appeal to what it suggests are patriotic Russians working in the intelligence community who may feel betrayed by what it called corruption in elite circles and the poor way the Russian armed forces are equipped and supplied.

"Those around you may not want to hear the truth. But we do. You are not powerless," says the video, the latest in a series of recruitment videos targeting Russia, before detailing ways to contact the CIA.

Accompanied by melancholy classical music, the video's main, fictional character is an unnamed 35-year-old male employee of Russia's military intelligence agency who casts himself as a patriot who loves Russia and once served as a paratrooper.

A scene from the slickly produced Russian-language video released by the CIA. Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

"Do I have enough courage to confront this betrayal?" the video shows him saying, before he says he has realised the real enemy is inside Russia in the form of a corrupt leadership and elite.

"The top leadership has sold the country out for palaces and yachts at a time when our soldiers are chewing rotten potatoes and firing from prehistoric weapons. Our people are forced to give bribes to simply find work," the man says as video clips of a bleak Russian winter are spliced with images of high-end official limousines and wealthy Russians giving toasts.

The fictional character says his patriotism has spurred him to act and work with the CIA, and the video's final shot depicts a well-dressed man contacting the CIA by mobile phone from a snowy courtyard.

KREMLIN SHRUGS OFF VIDEO

The Kremlin says everything is done to ensure the Russian military has the equipment it needs to be successful in what Moscow calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine.

It has rejected as false various corruption allegations, and shrugged off the video.

"You know, this practice is quite common, intelligence agencies around the world very often use the media and social networks to recruit new employees. And they do it all the time, the CIA does it every year," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

A scene from the slickly produced Russian-language video released by the CIA. Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Peskov suggested the CIA had made a mistake by circulating the video on X, formerly known as Twitter, which is banned in Russia and can be accessed only by using a virtual private network, many of which are also banned.

"Somebody needs to tell the CIA that in our country (Russian social network) VKontakte is much more popular than the banned X. And that VKontakte's audience is much larger," Peskov said.

Reporting by Andrew Osborn, Editing by Timothy Heritage

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Andrew Osborn

Thomson Reuters

As Russia Chief Political Correspondent, and former Moscow bureau chief, Andrew helps lead coverage of the world's largest country, whose political, economic and social transformation under President Vladimir Putin he has reported on for much of the last two decades, along with its growing confrontation with the West and wars in Georgia and Ukraine. Andrew was part of a Wall Street Journal reporting team short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. He has also reported from Moscow for two British newspapers, The Telegraph and The Independent.

31. We've made progress on our nuclear deterrent, but much more is needed

We've made progress on our nuclear deterrent, but much more is needed

ByRep. Doug LambornandRobert Peters

Washington Examiner · January 22, 2024

During the Cold War, our nuclear arsenal served as the ultimate guarantor of American freedom and prosperity. Today, that arsenal is aged; the newest warhead is over 30 years old. Many are decades older.

The United States is now in the 13th year of a nuclear modernization program designed to update and modernize America’s strategic deterrent. During those 13 years, the number of new nuclear warheads the United States has built is zero.

In the last 12 months, China built 100 nuclear warheads. And it shows no signs of slowing down.

This October, a bipartisan group of experts, which included a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a former senator, a former undersecretary of Energy, the most senior living arms control ambassador in the United States, former officials from the National Security Council, and prominent think tank fellows, published a congressionally mandated report on America’s strategic deterrent.

Citing the breathtaking expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal — which, according to the Department of Defense, has doubled over the last three years — and the Russian nuclear arsenal — whose active stockpile of nuclear weapons is double the size of the American active stockpile — the Strategic Posture Commission warned of a “deterrence gap.”

The commission recommended several actions, including strengthening American conventional forces by building more ships, planes, and conventional missiles. But it also advocated an investment in our entire nuclear enterprise — the industrial base that supports designing, building, and maintaining our nuclear weapons and the bombers, missiles, and submarines that deliver them.

This investment is sorely needed. As noted, the United States is in year 13 of a nuclear modernization program. Unfortunately, it has little to show for it. A 2023 Government Accountability Office report on our ability to produce the fissile material necessary for nuclear weapons noted that the Department of Energy is years behind schedule and billions over budget. More worryingly, the report said that the modernization process would likely fall even further behind, and costs would further spiral.

Some life extensions on existing warheads have taken place, but such operations simply replace existing, decades-old wiring with new wiring.

Too many of today’s nuclear weapons rely on technology developed before most Americans were born. No one would expect a car built in 1967 — but never driven — to start on the first turn of the key, but that is what we expect of our strategic deterrent.

Moreover, we should remember that the current nuclear modernization program began in 2010 — when the world was far more benign. That world was one in which the United States hoped to work with China and Russia to combat terrorism, cooperate on environmental challenges, and cooperatively reduce the salience and size of global nuclear stockpiles.

That world, as we know, never materialized. As the current modernization program is designed for the benign security environment of the 2010s, it is necessary but wholly insufficient for a world where Russia regularly threatens to use nuclear weapons on its neighbors, where China seeks to become the regional hegemon, and where the United States’ ability to deter the threats of the 2030s may be increasingly questioned by determined adversaries — particularly those building and fielding theater-range, low-yield nuclear weapons designed to target U.S. bases across the Western Pacific and Europe.

A credible strategic deterrent is the cornerstone of America’s national security and is the primary mission of the Departments of Defense and Energy. To meet the growing threat, we must develop and field new systems, such as the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, and begin to think more comprehensively about what an effective strategic posture in the 2030s should be.

Before leaving for the year, Congress voted on the bill to fund the Department of Defense in 2024. This bill takes important steps to strengthen America’s deterrent — to include fully funding the modernization of our nuclear triad, establishing the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile as an official program of record, and accelerating the deployment of advanced sensors and defenses to counter long-range, high-altitude threats to our homeland from our adversaries in Beijing and Moscow.

But more is needed.

To build out the capacity necessary to scale our nuclear enterprise, we must grow every part of the workforce. Tens of thousands of Americans, from those with eight-week training certifications to become apprentice welders to Ph.D. physicists and engineers and everything in between, will be needed to build the deterrent necessary for America’s security.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

It also requires significant and sustained financial commitments to address the problems that plague our ability to produce new nuclear weapons. It requires sustained, bipartisan political support from the Oval Office to Capitol Hill to the American people. It will require determination and urgency on the part of the nuclear enterprise to revitalize the industrial base to produce the warheads, bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and submarines. But it can be done.

We must move with purpose — and soon.

Doug Lamborn represents Colorado’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives and is the chairman of the strategic forces subcommittee. Robert Peters is a research fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the Center for National Defense at the Heritage Foundation.

Washington Examiner · January 22, 2024

32. Why Russia needs invisibility cloaks for its forces

Why Russia needs invisibility cloaks for its forces

Russians are actively exploring methods to evade Ukrainian snipers

global.espreso.tv

Oleksandr Kovalenko, a political and military observer, explains why Russians develop the “invisibility cloaks.”

A few days ago, Ukrainian snipers eliminated 22 Russian soldiers in a single night. The success was attributed not only to the snipers' heroism, concentration, and composure but also to the thermal imaging optics provided by the well-known Kyiv-based company Archer (Thermal Vision Technologies LLC).

Since 2014, Archer has maintained close ties with Ukrainian security forces, supplying them with high-quality products for enhanced enemy detection during day and night operations. Archer continually evolves and improves its products to enhance their effectiveness.

Presently, the Russian forces are actively seeking ways to deceive Ukrainian snipers equipped with Archer's thermal imaging technology, particularly during nighttime operations. One such way is the development of an "invisibility cloak," coated with a special substance to conceal objects from thermal imaging. While such cloaks pose a potential challenge for military operations at night, they also raise concerns for companies developing thermal imaging cameras.

“However, the primary challenge for Archer does not appear to be these ‘invisibility cloaks.’ Instead, the company faces legal issues in Ukraine, with ongoing investigations and cases disrupting its systematic work in both production and product development,” the observer notes.

Notably, within the context of these legal proceedings in October 2023, design drawings, documentation, and software products related to Archer were copied.

The timeline raises eyebrows, Kovalenko highlights. In October 2023, data on Archer's developments were copied, and by January 2024, the Russians had developed their first "invisibility cloaks."

“The situation presents a peculiar scenario: the main supplier of products for Ukraine's top snipers is under ‘investigative pressure, and shortly after legal actions against the company, the enemy possesses equipment that counters its products,” points out the observer.

The Russian company HiderX has announced the development of a suit that will mask and protect the Russian military from Ukrainian thermal imaging equipment.

global.espreso.tv

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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."

Access NSS HERE

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