Quotes of the Day:
“The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.”
- Ronald Reagan
"They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
- Andy Warhol
"We must either learn to live together as brothers, or we are all going to perish together as fools."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
1. America Is Turning Asia Into a Powder Keg
2. Counterintelligence Head Narrows Focus to Five Technologies Critical to U.S. Dominance
3. Japan defense minister warns invasions can begin without troops
4. A Quartet of Warnings Highlight Climate-Related Threats
5. China-linked disinformation campaign blames Covid on Maine lobsters
6. Twitter accounts tied to China lied that COVID came from Maine lobsters
7. U.S. Army Failed to Warn Troops About COVID-19 Disinformation
8. Anti-Vaxxers Are Using Facebook to Spread Sovereign Citizen Conspiracies
9. Facebook’s Brand Is So Toxic Zuckerberg Reportedly Wants to Change Its Name
10. Battle between the ears: Chinese media warfare (Book Review)
11. Xi Jinping’s top five foreign policy mistakes
12. US nearing a formal agreement to use Pakistan's airspace to carry out military operations in Afghanistan
13. Fact Book 2022 United States Special Operations Command
14. Thanks to This ‘Biden Whisperer,’ the World Knows America’s Back
15. Is the Biden Admin Leading Us to War? by Patrick Buchanan
16. Facebook Increasingly Suppresses Political Movements It Deems Dangerous
17. Exclusive: U.S. hopes to soon relocate Afghan pilots who fled to Tajikistan, official says
18. The two most important ways to deter China
19. Can The United States Counter China’s Mounting Pressure On Taiwan? – Analysis
20. Taiwan vows to "defend itself" amid U.S. reversal, here's how China compares
21. Afghanistan Fallout: An Invitation to America's Enemies
22. South Korea’s People Power Party has a Final Four: Can Any of Them Win the Presidency?
23. A paratrooper turned movie advisor explains why shootings like Alec Baldwin’s shouldn’t happen
1. America Is Turning Asia Into a Powder Keg
I am surprised to read this from a former defense official in the Obama administration. This reads like a view from New Zealand (where Dr. Jackson teaches)
But are we really taking a military first approach ( "the crude militaristic approach")?
I think it might be better characterized as an alliance first approach that is based on diplomacy.
Excerpts:
There are better, more stabilizing alternatives to the crude militaristic approach that the Biden administration is currently pursuing. Instead of fueling an arms race to nowhere, the Biden administration could limit its military investments to capabilities that erode its adversaries’ ability to project power while refraining from threatening their territory or nuclear forces. But even an optimal defense policy can only establish the geopolitical conditions in which it is possible to build a more secure region by nonmilitary means. By reducing foreign policy to defense initiatives, the United States is forsaking any meaningful attempt to arrest the underlying causes of future regional insecurity, including extreme inequality, environmental degradation, and kleptocracy. The United States should be working tirelessly to shrink the widening gap between Asia’s haves and have-nots, to subsidize climate adaption policies in countries with at-risk populations, and to penalize corruption and strongman politics. It is through these measures that the United States can help prevent tragedies such as the ongoing civil war in Myanmar, India’s slide toward illiberalism, and the human rights crisis in the Philippines.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration has largely ignored the conflict in Myanmar. It has mostly refrained from speaking out against the abuses of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in India in favor of touting its importance to the regional balance of military power. And it continues to proudly provide security assistance to the Philippines, even as that country’s authoritarian leader has silenced journalists, allegedly taken payoffs from China, and ordered extrajudicial killings now being investigated by the International Criminal Court.
In short, the United States is sabotaging Asia’s future—and by extension, its own. By treating security as something that only missiles and submarines can ensure, allowing its economic position to weaken, and forfeiting opportunities to address underlying sources of violence, the United States is helping create a perilous situation in the Indo-Pacific. If the Biden administration doesn’t shift gears, it will be culpable in Asia’s next tragedy.
America Is Turning Asia Into a Powder Keg
The Perils of a Military-First Approach
Asia is trending in a dangerous direction. Across the continent, advanced missile technology is proliferating among U.S. friends and rivals alike. Nuclear powers are undertaking expansive nuclear modernization efforts. Democratization is stalling and, in some cases, rolling back. And the economic influence of the United States is waning while that of authoritarian China is growing.
The United States is not the cause of these troubling trends, but its overly militarized approach to Asia is making them worse. By surging troops and military hardware into the region and encouraging its allies to enlarge their arsenals, Washington is heightening tensions and increasing the risk of an avoidable conflict. Even worse, by treating the Chinese and North Korean military threats as Asia’s only real problems, the United States is ceding the economic playing field to Beijing and relinquishing its ability to address inequality, climate change, and other underlying causes of regional insecurity through nonmilitary means.
DEFENSE OVER DIPLOMACY
Washington’s approach to Asia has long been overmilitarized. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump both sought to shore up what remained of U.S. hegemony in the region—the former with his signature “pivot to Asia” and the latter with his objective of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” Both initiatives saw a threat in China’s growing wealth, political influence, and military power, and both came to be associated almost entirely with Pentagon pronouncements and efforts to preserve U.S. military superiority. President Joe Biden is continuing this military-first tradition in Asia.
In a bid to counter China’s rapid naval modernization, the Biden administration has embarked on an ambitious set of defense initiatives in what it now calls the “Indo-Pacific.” It has encouraged Japan to develop hypersonic weapons and extend the range of its antiship cruise missiles and other autonomous long-range missiles. It has pushed for $2.6 billion in new arms sales to the Philippines (on top of $2.4 billion in sales since 2016), despite congressional concerns about human rights abuses there. It has agreed to transfer cruise missiles to Australia and to support Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines as part of a three-way defense-technology pact with Australia and the United Kingdom known as AUKUS. And it has announced plans to expand the U.S. military presence across Oceania, including with a new base in the Federated States of Micronesia, an expanded presence in Guam, a new base in Papua New Guinea to be shared with Australia, and new radar systems in Palau.
The Biden administration has embarked on an ambitious set of defense initiatives in the Indo-Pacific.
The Biden administration’s response to China’s nuclear expansion has been similarly militarized. During Trump’s presidency, Pentagon officials warned that China might be abandoning its traditional strategy of deploying just enough nuclear weapons to deter an attack by an adversary. Partly in anticipation of that shift, the Trump administration drew up plans for a three-decade nuclear modernization effort that would cost between $1.2 and $1.7 trillion. The United States maintains a large margin of nuclear superiority over China, but Biden has nonetheless supported his predecessor’s plan for enormous investments in submarine-launched nuclear cruise missiles and a new “low-yield” nuclear warhead called the Trident D5, additional missile defenses for Northeast Asia, and a fleet of 145 B-21 stealth bombers—more than six times as many planes as the current B-2 bomber force commands.
Biden has also pursued a strictly military approach to North Korea, which has continued its nuclear and missile buildup, most recently by developing tactical nuclear weapons, hypersonic glide vehicles capable of evading missile defenses, and ballistic missiles that can be launched from railcars. In a reprise of the so-called strategic patience of the Obama years, when the United States sought to convince North Korea to denuclearize by piling on sanctions and beefing up its military presence in lieu of negotiations, the Biden administration has emphasized defense activities over diplomacy.
In May, Washington and Seoul jointly announced that South Korea no longer has to restrict the range and payload capabilities of its domestically produced missiles, lifting restrictions that dated back 42 years and aimed to curb regional missile proliferation. The Biden administration has also stood by its South Korean ally as it fields its own submarine-launched ballistic missiles and as calls for developing an indigenous nuclear capability grow within Seoul’s discontented political opposition. And Biden has continued the policy of his two immediate predecessors of aiding South Korea’s military as it develops precision-guided conventional missiles that it advertises as being capable of preemptive and “decapitation” strikes against North Korea’s leadership.
THE RISKS OF MILITARISM
The United States should not be blamed for the actions of China and North Korea, both of which are advancing their nuclear and missile capabilities of their own volition. The Biden administration, like the Trump and Obama administrations before it, must respond to its rivals’ military buildups. But the fact that the United States must do something does not mean that the Pentagon must do it. Mobilizing more military hardware, stationing U.S. forces closer to opponents, and spurring weapons proliferation among allies only makes the region more of a powder keg.
Biden’s approach brings antagonistic military forces into closer proximity, heightening the risk of preventable accidents that could spiral into conflict. It also threatens the leadership and nuclear arsenals of China and North Korea, incentivizing both to invest in improved military hardware that can hold U.S. forces at a greater distance. Predictably, Beijing and Pyongyang have embraced an arms-race logic, responding to U.S. posturing by expanding their own military forces, coercing U.S. allies and partners to halt cooperation with Washington, and attempting to project power farther from their borders.
The fact that the United States must do something does not mean that the Pentagon must do it.
China’s recent nuclear expansion is clearly a response to the gratuitous, unrestrained nuclear policies of the Trump administration. Even before the planned modernization and expansion of U.S. nuclear forces, the United States had 3,750 nuclear warheads compared with China’s 350 (at most). Given this enormous advantage, China’s nuclear advancements should be understood as an effort to catch up to and counter the United States—not to overtake it or launch a bolt-from-the-blue surprise attack. Massively outgunned, China is acting rationally and predictably. Less rational is Washington sitting in a position of advantage, observing China’s clear track record of seeking to counter U.S. nuclear modernization, and then proceeding as if Beijing won’t do so in this case. By modernizing its nuclear force, the United States is giving China every reason to expand its own.
Washington’s conventional arms competition with Beijing is similarly risky and self-defeating. Beijing may perceive a U.S.-supported Australian submarine fleet as a threat to its shipping lanes, just as it might come to see Japanese long-range cruise missiles and South Korean ballistic missiles as tools for striking China’s leadership or its nuclear arsenal. Moreover, Chinese officials have long argued that U.S. ballistic missile defense systems are intended to neutralize China’s much smaller second-strike capability. Their fears are likely heightened by the Pentagon’s recent boasts about converting ship-based anti-air missiles from defensive to offensive weapons and by Washington’s refusal to publicly admit that neither it nor Beijing has the ability to disarm enough of the other’s nuclear arsenal to prevent a retaliatory strike—a mutual vulnerability that it acknowledges with Moscow.
The United States’ military excesses are also reshaping the Korean Peninsula in dangerous ways. The dramatic imbalance between U.S. forces and the North Korean military incentivizes Pyongyang not only to continue to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal but to consider using it first in a crisis. Worse, the two Koreas—with help from the United States—have begun an unconventional asymmetric arms race: both are increasing the range and payload potentials of their missiles and both are developing sea-launched ballistic missiles (though neither really needs them). All of this adds up to a uniquely volatile form of one-upmanship with no clear exit.
A TRAGEDY IN THE MAKING
Washington’s overmilitarized approach not only increases the risks of war and arms racing but also reduces the prospects for stability and prosperity in Asia. The game that matters most in the region does not involve armies and navies but rather development, trade, and investment. Yet the United States has largely neglected Asia’s economic needs, allowing China to make enormous gains at its expense.
While Washington has busied itself with new arms sales and expanding its force posture, China has become the region’s economic hegemon. Chinese trade with the rest of Asia dwarfs U.S. trade with the region, and China’s infrastructure loans and investments have outpaced those of the United States for years. Beijing has also helped forge a complex web of multilateral institutions and agreements that privilege China and marginalize the United States. These advantages validate a narrative, already accepted by many Asian political elites, of China’s ascendance and the United States’ relative decline.
There are better, more stabilizing alternatives to the crude militaristic approach that the Biden administration is currently pursuing. Instead of fueling an arms race to nowhere, the Biden administration could limit its military investments to capabilities that erode its adversaries’ ability to project power while refraining from threatening their territory or nuclear forces. But even an optimal defense policy can only establish the geopolitical conditions in which it is possible to build a more secure region by nonmilitary means. By reducing foreign policy to defense initiatives, the United States is forsaking any meaningful attempt to arrest the underlying causes of future regional insecurity, including extreme inequality, environmental degradation, and kleptocracy. The United States should be working tirelessly to shrink the widening gap between Asia’s haves and have-nots, to subsidize climate adaption policies in countries with at-risk populations, and to penalize corruption and strongman politics. It is through these measures that the United States can help prevent tragedies such as the ongoing civil war in Myanmar, India’s slide toward illiberalism, and the human rights crisis in the Philippines.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration has largely ignored the conflict in Myanmar. It has mostly refrained from speaking out against the abuses of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in India in favor of touting its importance to the regional balance of military power. And it continues to proudly provide security assistance to the Philippines, even as that country’s authoritarian leader has silenced journalists, allegedly taken payoffs from China, and ordered extrajudicial killings now being investigated by the International Criminal Court.
In short, the United States is sabotaging Asia’s future—and by extension, its own. By treating security as something that only missiles and submarines can ensure, allowing its economic position to weaken, and forfeiting opportunities to address underlying sources of violence, the United States is helping create a perilous situation in the Indo-Pacific. If the Biden administration doesn’t shift gears, it will be culpable in Asia’s next tragedy.
2. Counterintelligence Head Narrows Focus to Five Technologies Critical to U.S. Dominance
Excerpts:
The U.S. officials also cited what they consider to be problematic Russian and Chinese partnerships at U.S. universities and warned of the risks of participating in foreign government-sponsored recruitment programs. A slew of prosecutions in the past two years have involved U.S.-based researchers being recruited by Chinese government-backed plans that offer generous stipends.
The scrutiny has made U.S.-China collaboration in academia a lightning rod, with some scientists accused of lying about receiving Chinese government funding and allegations that visiting Chinese researchers concealed their affiliation with the Chinese military. Several of those prosecutions have fallen apart.
Messrs. Orlando and You said they aren’t advocating a ban on U.S.-China research collaboration but that they want people to be fully aware of the risks.
Counterintelligence Head Narrows Focus to Five Technologies Critical to U.S. Dominance
Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology are among the fields the national counterintelligence chief says the U.S. must safeguard from rivals
WASHINGTON—The U.S.’s top counterintelligence official said he is narrowing his team’s focus to safeguarding five key technologies, including semiconductors and biotechnology, seeing their protection from rivals as determining whether America remains the world’s leading superpower.
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center’s acting director, Michael Orlando, said Thursday he is sharpening the center’s priorities in order to conduct an effective outreach campaign to educate businesses and academia about the expansive efforts by China and Russia to collect cutting-edge research.
The five technologies identified by Mr. Orlando include artificial intelligence, quantum computing and autonomous systems such as undersea drones and robots that can perform surgeries. The sectors are often depicted by scientists and researchers as future drivers of economic growth and military dominance.
Michael Orlando, acting director of the National Counterintelligence and Security, says losing dominance in certain fields could lead to the U.S. being eclipsed.
Photo: Office of the Director of National Intelligence
The narrower focus appears to mark an adjustment, rather than a departure, from a full-scale counterintelligence drive begun under the Trump administration to stop the theft and transfer of American technology, research and other proprietary information to China.
The initiative saw counterintelligence officers fan out to universities and businesses, briefing them on a broader set of fields Beijing has identified as areas to dominate, as well as the U.S.-China competition over next-generation wireless technology known as 5G. Civil liberties and academic groups criticized parts of that effort for creating an environment of suspicion that stigmatized Chinese and other Asians.
Mr. Orlando prefaced his remarks by clarifying that when he talks about China and Russia, he’s referring to the activities of their governments, not their people. He also said that he isn’t advocating across-the-board decoupling from the Chinese economy and that he recognizes the importance of attracting foreign talent, including students, to the U.S. to compete in these five areas.
Semiconductors are among the five technologies that are considered key to maintaining an edge. A semiconductor facility in Malta, N.Y.
Photo: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg News
He said it isn’t practical for the counterintelligence center to look at such a wide range of fields and that the threat of Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies Co. dominating 5G has already been highlighted.
As part of its new priorities, the counterintelligence center named Edward You, a career FBI agent and an expert on biological threats, to a newly created position to focus on emerging and disruptive technologies. Mr. You said Thursday that a goal is to raise awareness that China’s efforts to develop the world’s largest data set of genetic and other biological information pose a threat beyond individual privacy issues.
While Chinese companies such as BGI Group have continued harvesting global biological data by offering genetic-testing services, China’s government has effectively stopped granting access to its own peoples’ data, Mr. You said. “It’s a one-way street,” putting other countries at a disadvantage, he said.
BGI didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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The new priorities of the counterintelligence center, which falls under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, are in line with reports issued last year by a House Armed Services Committee group and the House Intelligence Committee. Those reports urged the Defense Department to rethink national security, including by investing in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology, and said intelligence agencies needed to adapt to “a changing geopolitical and technological environment increasingly shaped by a rising China.”
Messrs. Orlando and You pointed to a long list of examples of licit and illicit attempts by China to bolster its capabilities in the five key technologies. Among those were Chinese company acquisitions of biologic facilities and chip companies around the world, as well as the theft of autonomous vehicle technology that they said led to the indictments of a handful of people.
The officials cited announcements this year by China’s WuXi Biologics that it had purchased a Bayer manufacturing plant in Germany and a Pfizer plant in China, and by a WuXi AppTec unit that it was building a plant in Delaware.
CHINA MARKET REPORT
A representative for WuXi Biologics said it is building or acquiring the facilities in response to customer demand and that the projects have local government and community support. The representative said the company’s global biomanufacturing capacity is expected to account for less than 5% of global capacity by 2024.
A WuXi AppTec representative said it is building the Delaware facility to better serve customers and patients and that it will bring 500 jobs to the area.
The U.S. officials also cited what they consider to be problematic Russian and Chinese partnerships at U.S. universities and warned of the risks of participating in foreign government-sponsored recruitment programs. A slew of prosecutions in the past two years have involved U.S.-based researchers being recruited by Chinese government-backed plans that offer generous stipends.
The scrutiny has made U.S.-China collaboration in academia a lightning rod, with some scientists accused of lying about receiving Chinese government funding and allegations that visiting Chinese researchers concealed their affiliation with the Chinese military. Several of those prosecutions have fallen apart.
Messrs. Orlando and You said they aren’t advocating a ban on U.S.-China research collaboration but that they want people to be fully aware of the risks.
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3. Japan defense minister warns invasions can begin without troops
A wise warning.
Excerpts:
Kishi's comments come as China ratchets up pressure on Taiwan. Earlier this month, Beijing flew a record number of warplanes near the island it claims but has never ruled, and Taiwan's defense minister warned that China already has the ability to invade and will be capable of mounting a "full scale" invasion by 2025.
Kishi, the younger brother of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, told the forum that freedom and democracy are threatened in Asia and other parts of the world due to attempts to "unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion."
He stressed the need to adopt new technologies in the cyberspace and outer space sectors to cope with threats from China and other powers.
On top of China deploying coast guard vessels near Japan's Senkaku Islands, which Beijing claims and calls Diaoyu, and its aerial incursions near Taiwan, North Korea is testing a wider range of missiles that are more difficult for intelligence agencies to monitor and detect.
"Powerful nations are continuing to strengthen their military power to gain dominance in space and cyberspace," Kishi said. "North Korea has not only existing missiles but also advanced technology. Democracy is in danger everywhere in the world."
Japan defense minister warns invasions can begin without troops
Kishi points to annexation of Crimea in veiled reference to China
Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi speaks via video during the 18th CSIS/Nikkei Symposium on Oct 22. (Screenshot)
ERI SUGIURA, Nikkei staff writerOctober 22, 2021 11:22 JST | Japan
TOKYO -- In a veiled reference to China's recent aggressive moves on Taiwan, Japan's defense minister pointed to Russia's annexation of Crimea as an example of how an invasion can begin without deploying troops.
Russia's act was an "illegal annexation of Crimea," Nobuo Kishi said on Friday in a video message to the 18th CSIS/Nikkei Symposium. "An invasion may begin without anyone realizing it, and a war may be fought without the use of military forces."
Information control and cyberattacks became prominent before Russian troops took control of the Crimean region in 2014.
Kishi's comments come as China ratchets up pressure on Taiwan. Earlier this month, Beijing flew a record number of warplanes near the island it claims but has never ruled, and Taiwan's defense minister warned that China already has the ability to invade and will be capable of mounting a "full scale" invasion by 2025.
Kishi, the younger brother of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, told the forum that freedom and democracy are threatened in Asia and other parts of the world due to attempts to "unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion."
He stressed the need to adopt new technologies in the cyberspace and outer space sectors to cope with threats from China and other powers.
On top of China deploying coast guard vessels near Japan's Senkaku Islands, which Beijing claims and calls Diaoyu, and its aerial incursions near Taiwan, North Korea is testing a wider range of missiles that are more difficult for intelligence agencies to monitor and detect.
"Powerful nations are continuing to strengthen their military power to gain dominance in space and cyberspace," Kishi said. "North Korea has not only existing missiles but also advanced technology. Democracy is in danger everywhere in the world."
Kishi's warnings come as so-called hybrid warfare and gray zone tactics increasingly attract global attention. These include disinformation, economic manipulation, use of proxies and insurgencies and diplomatic pressure.
Competition in space is intensifying with China, Russia and the U.S. building space stations. The Financial Times reported this week that the Chinese military conducted two hypersonic weapons tests over the summer, with sources saying a rocket launched in July used a "fractional orbital bombardment" system to propel a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle around the earth for the first time.
Meanwhile, countries are competing to gain an edge in electronic warfare using the electromagnetic spectrum -- the frequency bands of all electromagnetic waves, including radio waves, microwaves, X-rays and infrared, used in everything from GPS, to missile precision attacks and advanced radar.
"With regard to these new areas, [Japan's] Self-Defense Forces are in a position to follow the world as we have just taken a step forward. We need to proactively embrace advanced technology," Kishi said.
The minister, who highlighted the need to increase the country's defense budget, also argued that Japan's efforts in cyberspace, outer space and the electromagnetic spectrum would bolster the Japan-U.S. alliance.
"The U.S. is ahead of us in technology, and currently Japan may seem dependent on the U.S. But I hope Japan can make a contribution with its unique technology," he said, noting that the country has foundations of cutting-edge science and technology.
4. A Quartet of Warnings Highlight Climate-Related Threats
White Report on the Impact Climate Change on Migration: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Report-on-the-Impact-of-Climate-Change-on-Migration.pdf
A lot to digest in all these reports. But I am sure they will be thoroughly criticized by certain pundits without even reading and understanding the reports.
A Quartet of Warnings Highlight Climate-Related Threats
Agencies vow to heed climate change in all strategy planning, but experts say that won’t be enough.
Climate change is likely to crank up geopolitical tensions as temperatures rise and nations argue about who is responsible for fixing it, according to a new national intelligence estimate.
The intelligence community document is one of four climate-related reports released on Thursday by national-security agencies ahead of President Joe Biden’s trip to the United Nations Climate Change Conference at the end of this month. They explain how a warming planet is expected to escalate geopolitical tensions, increase instability, and drive migration. Biden will travel to Glasgow for the conference armed with this data in a bid to convince allies around the world to act.
“We alone cannot solve this challenge. We need the rest of the world to accelerate their progress alongside with us,” a senior administration official told reporters ahead of the report release. “These analyses will serve as a foundation for our critical work on climate and security moving forward.”
The national intelligence estimate found that by 2040, there will likely be rising instability around the world because of strained energy and food infrastructure, which is likely to create an increased demand for humanitarian aid and military help. It concluded that a warming climate will exacerbate existing geopolitical problems, including migration to escape climate impacts.
But climate change is also likely to increase global political tensions by 2040 as countries argue about who is moving quickly and forcefully enough. Some countries are also likely to resist the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, breeding resentment from those who are taking aggressive action.
“The cooperative breakthrough of the Paris Agreement may be short lived as countries struggle to reduce their emissions and blame others for not doing enough,” the report says, adding that there is also likely to be friction between developed and developing nations, which will expect financial aid and technology assistance from developed countries to meet emissions goals.
Countries will also compete to dominate the clean-energy market, including processing for the rare earth metals and minerals that are critical to making products such as wind turbines, electric cars, and solar panels. The competition is likely to center around China, which is already the world’s top processor of rare earth metals because it can sell them cheaper due to lower environmental standards and cost of labor, the report said.
“Sometimes China and climate change are held up…in opposition. Either you deal with China or you deal with climate change,” said Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate and Security. “What the reports highlight is: you have to be able to look at them together. How does climate change shape competition with China? And how is China reacting?”
The intelligence community’s report is its first climate-focused national intelligence estimate—its most authoritative type of document. But it's not the first time intelligence officials have studied the issue. In 2008, the intelligence community assessed the national security implications of climate change through 2030—and drew many of the same conclusions, said Larry Hanauer, the vice president for policy at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
The Defense Department released a Climate Risk Analysis alongside the intelligence assessment. It says the risks related to climate change are growing, including domestic extreme weather that can hurt military readiness and rising sea levels in places such as Guam and the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. military has bases. To respond to this, the Pentagon is promising to consider climate change in all strategy documents, including the National Defense Strategy.
Two other reports were also released Thursday: a study of how climate change will affect migration and a strategy to address climate change from the Department of Homeland Security.
It’s important for officials to have this information, especially the intelligence community’s evaluation which represents an objective, nonpartisan outlook of the threats America might face because of the warming climate, Hanauer said.
“Unlike politicians...the intelligence community has no political agenda,” he said. “Its assessment represents the truth as it sees it.”
“It’s something that all policymakers should take note of,” he added.
It’s not clear whether the national security community’s findings will spur lawmakers or allies to action. Sikorsky the the national security workforce must be educated about the data and science behind climate change, so they can consider it in every strategic decision. Beyond a basic level of understanding, federal agencies must also embed advisors dedicated to climate change throughout their organizations, including at embassies and combatant commands.
“How do you make sure these reports don’t end up on a shelf?” Sikorsky said. “What I hope is the administration takes this and uses it to help catalyze action at the State Department, [combatant commands], and the intelligence community itself to make sure climate lens is being brought to all conversations.”
5. China-linked disinformation campaign blames Covid on Maine lobsters
This seems so outlandish. How would anyone take this kind of prop[aganda seriously? But we must expose it and China's efforts behind it.
But China's response is typically to admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter accusations.
Excerpts:
Kai Yan, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.K., said China was “opposed to the fabrication and spread of disinformation.”
“China is the biggest victim of disinformation, and the perpetrators are some politicians and media outlets eager for China-bashing in the U.S. and a few other Western countries,” Yan said.
Yan added that China urges “all members of the international community to work together in opposing and resisting such disinformation, which will inevitably disrupt global cooperation in fighting the pandemic.”
Despite the swift identification and suspension of the accounts, the same theory is still spreading on Twitter, Schliebs said.
“We slowed it down significantly, but we still see some coordinated effort to spread the message,” Schliebs said. “It seems like accounts are being set up now to replace the ones taken down in response to our investigation.”
China-linked disinformation campaign blames Covid on Maine lobsters
The University of Oxford found evidence that pro-China social media accounts are pushing a new thread of propaganda related to the origins of the pandemic.
NBC News · by Olivia Solon, Keir Simmons and Amy Perrette
In mid-September, Marcel Schliebs, a disinformation researcher at the University of Oxford who had been tracking messaging that Chinese diplomats and state media spread on Twitter for 18 months, spotted the emergence of a surprising coronavirus origin theory.
Zha Liyou, the Chinese consul general in Kolkata, India, tweeted an unfounded claim that Covid-19 could have been imported to China from the United States through a batch of Maine lobsters shipped to a seafood market in Wuhan in November 2019. It marks the latest in a series of theories that have been pushed by pro-China accounts since the start of the pandemic.
With some further digging, Schliebs uncovered a network of more than 550 Twitter accounts, which he shared with NBC News, spreading a nearly identical message, translated into multiple languages — including English, Spanish, French, Polish, Korean and even Latin — at similar times each day between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. China Standard Time. Some of the accounts were “unsophisticated sock puppets” with “very few or zero followers,” Schliebs said, while others appeared to be accounts that were once authentic but had been hijacked and repurposed to spread disinformation.
Read more about this story at NBCNews.com and watch "TODAY" this morning at 7 a.m. ET.
“Attribution is really difficult,” said Schliebs, a postdoctoral researcher of computational propaganda at Oxford’s Programme on Democracy and Technology. “But we can see there’s a coordinated effort, and that it’s a pro-Chinese narrative.”
Articles in Chinese media, shared on social networks, have repeatedly suggested that Covid-19 may have originated from frozen-food imports. The same diplomat Schliebs noticed pushing the Maine lobster theory last month had already tweeted in December about the theory that Covid could have arrived in Wuhan from elsewhere via the cold chain and called for further investigation into the baseless claim that the U.S. military was involved in spreading the virus.
“This is the third or fourth major different redirection Chinese officials have gone in to try and somehow pin the Covid outbreak on the U.S.,” Bret Schafer, the head of the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, part of the nonprofit German Marshall Fund of the United States, said about the diplomats spreading the messaging bolstered by inauthentic accounts. “It looks crude and not sophisticated when you look at individual accounts. But these kinds of networks are designed to try and get topics to trend on social media.”
“Whether or not anyone is buying into lobster or Fort Detrick being the source of Covid, it’s at least having the effect of muddying the truth and confusing people,” he added.
Schliebs said he shared with Twitter a spreadsheet of the accounts that appeared to be behaving inauthentically. The social media platform said it reviewed the accounts and suspended them under its platform manipulation and spam policy.
“Our top priority is keeping people safe, and we remain vigilant about coordinated activity on our service,” Twitter spokesperson Marco Bilello said. “Using both technology and human review, we proactively and routinely tackle attempts at platform manipulation and mitigate them at scale by actioning millions of accounts each week for violating our policies in this area.”
Twitter investigates inauthentic networks of accounts to see if it can reliably attribute them to state-linked activity, the company said, but that process can take several months. It has not yet linked this network to Chinese state actors.
Because of how quickly Schliebs’ team identified the network, the “real-world impact was likely small,” he said. “We alerted Twitter about the network, and they quickly suspended it just as it was starting to gain traction, when the network was in its growth phase.”
Maine’s lobster industry has been caught in the crossfire of U.S.-China trade relations for several years. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, American live lobster exports to China, a major buyer of seafood, plummeted by more than 40 percent in 2019 after China imposed heavy tariffs on U.S. lobsters during President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. U.S. lobster exports to China rebounded in 2020, as China eased restrictions on the industry. But some experts are concerned about the possibility of future seafood sanctions from China.
In November, China restricted the import of Australian lobsters amid a monthslong diplomatic and trade dispute. It also informally restricted the import of Norwegian salmon after a Nobel Prize was awarded to a Chinese activist.
Some articles pointing the finger at Maine lobsters link to a World Health Organization report published in March that said SARS-CoV-2 can survive in cold-chain products and packaging for a long time, which provides a “scientific basis for the possibility” that cold-chain imports could transmit the virus.
“Public health organizations from around the world have stated with certainty that imported food is not the cause of Covid-19,” said Tom Adams, owner of Maine Coast, a Maine lobster wholesale supplier whose headquarters were referenced in some of the Chinese media articles. “Maine Coast has no information supporting this claim.”
Adams added that the unfounded rumors had not affected his business.
Some articles falsely suggest that cases of lung disease identified by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention as caused by e-cigarettes may have been the first cluster of Covid-19 cases.
The Maine CDC said the claims have no scientific basis.
“It appears that these claims make an unfounded connection between individuals who required treatment for vaping-related lung injuries in a Maine hospital and the fact that lobsters live in the waters near that hospital,” said Robert Long, a spokesperson for the Maine CDC. “It’s a right load of codswallop.”
Kai Yan, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.K., said China was “opposed to the fabrication and spread of disinformation.”
“China is the biggest victim of disinformation, and the perpetrators are some politicians and media outlets eager for China-bashing in the U.S. and a few other Western countries,” Yan said.
Yan added that China urges “all members of the international community to work together in opposing and resisting such disinformation, which will inevitably disrupt global cooperation in fighting the pandemic.”
Despite the swift identification and suspension of the accounts, the same theory is still spreading on Twitter, Schliebs said.
“We slowed it down significantly, but we still see some coordinated effort to spread the message,” Schliebs said. “It seems like accounts are being set up now to replace the ones taken down in response to our investigation.”
NBC News · by Olivia Solon, Keir Simmons and Amy Perrette
6. Twitter accounts tied to China lied that COVID came from Maine lobsters
Twitter accounts tied to China lied that COVID came from Maine lobsters
| USA TODAY
Twitter accounts linked to China were discovered spreading misinformation about the origins of COVID-19, such as lies that the virus came from a shipment of Maine lobsters to Wuhan.
Oxford researcher Marcel Schliebs first noticed the misinformation campaign when he saw a tweet from Zha Liyou, the Chinese consul general in Kolkata, India.
Schliebs studies disinformation, propaganda and divisive political news content in the U.K. online information ecosystem at the Oxford Internet Institute. He linked the tweet to hundreds of Twitter accounts, some real and some fake, all of them spreading pro-China misinformation.
The tweet by Liyou said: "Major suspect of covid via cold chain identified: A MU298 of Nov. 11, 2019 carrying food from Maine, US to Huanan Seafood Market, Wuhan, Hubei via Shanghai. During the next few weeks, many workers around moving this batch of seafood got infected."
These narratives spread by China-linked accounts are nothing new, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Early in the pandemic, Chinese sources spread the theory that SARS CoV-2 originated at Fort Detrick and was spread to China by U.S. military," says Jamieson. "The platforms can remove it, or if they decide against doing so, can downgrade it or flag it and attach fact-checking content."
Schliebs echoes similar insights from his Oxford research.
"Almost since the beginning of the outbreak, the question of the origin of COVID has been of core importance to the Chinese propaganda apparatus," Schliebs says. "This coordinated operation was clearly trying to promote narratives in line with Beijing's general propaganda strategy and geopolitical objectives."
Twitter has imposed strict rules around COVID misinformation, stating in its rules and policies that any demonstrably false or misleading content is banned and will be deleted. Certain posts may be labeled as misinformation, and repeat offenders will have their accounts deleted.
The violations include attempts to "invoke a deliberate conspiracy by malicious and/or powerful forces," according to Twitter's guidelines.
Misinformation can have a powerful effect and impact how people respond to public health guidance.
"Acceptance of misinformation and/or conspiracy theories is associated with a reduced likelihood to mask or vaccinate," Jamieson says.
Kai Yan, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.K., told NBC that China urges “all members of the international community to work together in opposing and resisting such disinformation, which will inevitably disrupt global cooperation in fighting the pandemic.”
Once Schliebs sent the information to Twitter, they suspended the accounts tied to misinformation.
"We notified Twitter last week, and they were very responsive and suspended the accounts very rapidly within a few hours. Fortunately, we detected the campaign as it was still in its early growth phase and before it could really start to reach and impact real genuine audiences," Schliebs told USA TODAY.
The fight against myths and misinformation on social media
With disinformation spreading on social media, platforms can take an increasingly active role, according to Schliebs.
"Platforms can and should continuously monitor suspicious behavior particularly around sensitive geopolitical issues like the origin of COVID-19," Schliebs says. "To do so and detect coordinated networks of fake accounts, they can for example monitor whether there are patterns in the language or timing of tweets that raise red flags of suspicious coordination."
Research from the University of Pennsylvania's Social Policy Lab found misinformation works much more easily than the efforts to undo it. In fact, the data they gathered showed misinformation was accepted as fact 99.6% of the time, whereas attempts to correct it succeed only in 83% of cases.
The researchers also discovered that people who believe in science are actually more susceptible to misinformation because pseudoscience often uses terms that mimic the language of real scientific studies.
The Social Policy Lab recommends succinct corrections to misinformation as opposed to detailed ones, which were found to be less effective. They also pointed out that interacting with real people, such as family and friends, tended to reduce vaccine hesitancy.
Michelle Shen is a Money & Tech Digital Reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her @michelle_shen10 on Twitter.
2021-10-22T10:01:56Z
7. U.S. Army Failed to Warn Troops About COVID-19 Disinformation
Note the number of military personnel who have received one dose.
Excerpts:
On Monday, Sen. Jim Inhofe, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote to Austin asking for the removal of the vaccine mandate.
With thousands of U.S. troops, civilians, and contractors yet to comply with the vaccine mandate, Inhofe said he was concerned about the “mass attrition” of Pentagon personnel. “The lack of strategic foresight in the implementation of the COVID vaccination mandate is inexcusable,” Inhofe wrote to Austin. “Plainly stated, no service member, Department of Defense civilian or contractor supporting the Department should be dismissed due to failure to comply with the mandate until the ramifications of mass dismissal are known.”
Ninety-seven percent of active duty troops across all U.S. military services have had at least one dose of the vaccine, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said last week.
U.S. Army Failed to Warn Troops About COVID-19 Disinformation
Most soldiers said they weren’t told how to deal with Chinese and Russian propaganda.
By Amy Mackinnon, a national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy, and Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter.
NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by Jack Detsch, Amy Mackinnon
A preventive medicine services sergeant administers a COVID-19 vaccine to a soldier at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on Sept. 9. Jon Cherry/Getty Images
In the first months of the pandemic, the U.S. Army failed to warn most soldiers about Chinese and Russian coronavirus disinformation, according to a survey conducted last year and obtained by Foreign Policy.
A survey conducted in late May 2020, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, indicated the vast majority of U.S. Army soldiers and civilian employees—around 87 percent—had not received any information from their units about adversarial propaganda about the virus.
The study, entitled the “Army COVID-19 Campaign Plan,” came at the direction of senior Army leadership, who held outsized fears of Chinese and Russian propaganda impacting U.S. military readiness and recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 5,400 people took part in the online survey. Just over half were civilian employees with the rest drawn from different components of the Army.
In the first months of the pandemic, the U.S. Army failed to warn most soldiers about Chinese and Russian coronavirus disinformation, according to a survey conducted last year and obtained by Foreign Policy.
A survey conducted in late May 2020, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, indicated the vast majority of U.S. Army soldiers and civilian employees—around 87 percent—had not received any information from their units about adversarial propaganda about the virus.
The study, entitled the “Army COVID-19 Campaign Plan,” came at the direction of senior Army leadership, who held outsized fears of Chinese and Russian propaganda impacting U.S. military readiness and recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 5,400 people took part in the online survey. Just over half were civilian employees with the rest drawn from different components of the Army.
By March 2020, when much of the world was going into lockdown, Russia and China were actively promoting disinformation about the virus’s origins. Chinese officials falsely claimed without evidence that the U.S. military may have brought the virus to the city of Wuhan, China, while pro-Kremlin media alleged the virus was the product of a U.S. laboratory.
Although veterans groups, disinformation experts, and service members have for years been warning about foreign adversaries’ efforts to target members of the military, the findings suggest the Army was slow to counter disinformation that worked to undermine government trust and stymie efforts to stop the virus’s threat.
Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who served as commanding general of the U.S. Army in Europe, said he was surprised that almost 90 percent of people surveyed had not received information from their units about disinformation related to the pandemic. “Even if you cut that number in half, 40-something percent, that’s still a lot in an organization that prides itself on pushing information through the chain of command,” Hodges said.
The Army did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
The survey’s timing may also have influenced some of its findings. “It was very hard for the Defense Department to get ahead of the very real and deadly threats of the coronavirus at the same time that their commander in chief, President [Donald] Trump, was downplaying the risk,” said Peter Singer, a strategist and senior fellow with the New America foundation think tank.
Social media offers the opportunity to reach out to service members, veterans, and their communities directly. In 2019, advocacy group Vietnam Veterans of America published the results of a two-year investigation that found “persistent, pervasive, and coordinated online targeting of American service members, veterans, and their families by foreign entities who seek to disrupt American democracy.”
For years, Russia has been known to spread false, damaging stories about NATO forces in Europe. In 2017, Russian operatives sought to plant a fake story that German soldiers had raped a teenage girl in Lithuania in a bid to undermine support for NATO troops stationed in the country.
The United States as a whole is still coming to grips with the magnitude of the information warfare threat, Singer said. “There’s still a large amount of denial about their scale and seriousness.”
Almost 60 percent of those who responded to the U.S. Army’s survey said they had seen false claims about the pandemic spread by a variety of malign actors, including Russia and China. Claims that the United States was using the crisis for political gain, that 5G cell phone towers caused the pandemic, and that the military wasn’t being transparent about the number of infected people were among those most commonly encountered.
A second internal survey, which ran from late July through August of last year, tested receptiveness to a variety of falsehoods and disinformation about COVID-19. Many of the messages the Army considered to be Chinese and Russian disinformation did not find resonance among U.S. soldiers. Five percent of those who heard the claim said they believed the virus was created in a U.S. lab.
But some narratives did appear to gel with frustration within the force about the Pentagon’s response. Forty percent of the respondents said they believed the Defense Department was not being transparent about the number of soldiers and agency employees infected with COVID-19—something the Army flagged as a possible disinformation message.
“If I was a commander and 40 percent of my soldiers said they didn’t believe me, that would be devastating,” Hodges said, who is now with the Center for European Policy Analysis. “If the soldiers don’t trust their chain of command, that is a significant impediment to the ability of a unit to function.”
A small minority echoed Facebook disinformation and right-wing talk show hosts. “I have not fallen victim to the hysteria perpetrated by the news media,” one troop member said. Another described the pandemic as a “hoax.”
Although the vast majority of troops received Army guidance about the virus, those numbers were lower among enlisted troops. In some instances, soldiers said Army units failed to comply strictly with COVID-19 guidance, citing instances of failing to wear masks inside office buildings, not practicing social distancing, keeping photo studios and barbershops on base open, and resisting telework. One troop described “being told to return to work prior to bans being lifted” while another indicated their command did not want to allow telework, “which seemed reckless to me as most jobs only require a laptop.”
Thirty-four percent of people who responded to the survey said health and safety measures were lower on their bases than in surrounding communities, something the Army flagged as a concern given outbreaks early in the pandemic at installations in Japan, South Korea, and at Fort Benning, Georgia.
At the time of the poll, nearly 73 percent of troops surveyed said they planned to get the vaccine, in line with Pew Research Center polling data of the U.S. public at large. But in a finding that appeared to trouble Army leaders, just 51 percent of those surveyed said they intended to follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to self-isolate for 14 days after being exposed to the virus.
Foreign Policy’s publication of the results of these surveys comes as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin imposes a Dec. 15 deadline for active duty U.S. Army troops to get the vaccine, following a directive from U.S. President Joe Biden. Congressional Republicans have continued to chafe at the vaccine mandate, fearing the move will force the military to discharge capable service members. The delta variant has hit younger, unvaccinated populations harder than previous iterations of the disease.
On Monday, Sen. Jim Inhofe, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote to Austin asking for the removal of the vaccine mandate.
With thousands of U.S. troops, civilians, and contractors yet to comply with the vaccine mandate, Inhofe said he was concerned about the “mass attrition” of Pentagon personnel. “The lack of strategic foresight in the implementation of the COVID vaccination mandate is inexcusable,” Inhofe wrote to Austin. “Plainly stated, no service member, Department of Defense civilian or contractor supporting the Department should be dismissed due to failure to comply with the mandate until the ramifications of mass dismissal are known.”
Ninety-seven percent of active duty troops across all U.S. military services have had at least one dose of the vaccine, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said last week.
Amy Mackinnon is a national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @ak_mack
Jack Detsch is Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter. Twitter: @JackDetsch
8. Anti-Vaxxers Are Using Facebook to Spread Sovereign Citizen Conspiracies
Excerpts:
Possibly one of the most damning conclusions drawn by the researchers at ISD, however, is that ultimately the company doesn’t even fully understand the scale or complexity of the problem it is facing.
“It seems that Facebook does not have a proper understanding of how misinformation spreads on their platform and they are either unwilling, or unable, to take meaningful action,” Gallagher said.
Anti-Vaxxers Are Using Facebook to Spread Sovereign Citizen Conspiracies
Some anti-vaxxers have seen their accounts grow by 13,000% since the pandemic began.
Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
Facebook has given some of the best-known voices in the anti-vaccine community a huge platform to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19—allowing their accounts to grow by 13,000%.
And now these figures are leveraging their new-found popularity to spread Sovereign Citizen conspiracy theories and even run for public office.
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While Facebook did remove the group’s main page, the accounts belonging to the most prominent members of the group have seen their follower numbers jump by 13,215% between January 2020 and July 2021. They now have a collective following of over 550,000.
To give a sense of the scale of this group’s reach, the videos posted by these Facebook pages have been viewed more than 21 million times.
“Many of the group’s 12 key members have been able to build large, international, online audiences since the beginning of the pandemic,” the report’s authors wrote. “Members of the Alliance have repeatedly spread information related to COVID-19 and vaccines in direct contradiction to government guidance and the understanding of COVID-19 by the broader scientific community.”
Part of the reason that this group has been able to avoid punishment from Facebook is because it is made up of people with real qualifications in the areas of medicine and science, giving them a veneer of credibility when they spread disinformation.
Among the highest-profile members of the WDA are founding members Dolores Cahill, who holds a PhD in immunology and was recently fired from her job at University College Dublin, and Dr. Scott Jensen, a former Minnesota state senator.
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Cahill’s page has grown from just a dozen followers in January 2020 to over 130,000 today. In recent months Cahill has used her new-found prominence in the anti-vaxxer community to spread Sovereign Citizen conspiracies, and the people who helped “rescue” a 67-year-old COVID patient from hospital—who later died—claimed Cahill was advising them.
Jensen, meanwhile, is running for governor in Minnesota and is using his page to promote his campaign, which is focused on “medical freedom and law and order.” He opposes vaccine mandates and has recently promoted natural immunity against COVID-19.
Facebook/Scott Jensen
The WDA is part of a broader World Freedom Alliance, which Cahill founded at the end of 2020 alongside German physician Dr. Heiko Schöning and Danish financial executive Mads Palsvig. The group has links to renowned U.S. anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr and the New
Earth Project, an initiative that aims to create a new kind of society by encouraging people to “reclaim their sovereign birthright.”
Despite Facebook’s repeated claims that it was doing more to crack down on the spread of COVID-19 disinformation, the speed at which these pages are reaching new users is actually increasing.
In total these pages have accumulated 5.77 million interactions since January 2020, but interaction rates have increased by 85% in the first six months of 2021 compared to the previous six months.
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“Facebook is failing to enforce its policies around COVID nd vaccine misinformation on a very basic level,” Aoife Gallagher, a senior researcher at ISD, told VICE News. “Its policies are very detailed and outline precise examples of content that Facebook says it prohibits and removes. Members of the World Doctors Alliance frequently spread this kind of content.”
For example, a video featuring Cahill downplaying the threat from COVID-19 has amassed over 770,000 views and remains on the platform, despite appearing to violate a number of Facebook’s policies.
Another failure is that Facebook’s artificial intelligence system, which it uses to quickly identify multiple versions of the same post, is not working as envisioned.
“The AI technology used by Facebook is failing to track down false information, even when the content has been thoroughly fact-checked and uploaded natively to the platform with little editing,” Gallagher said.
While not all the content posted by member sof the WDA is conspiractorial or false, the researchers found that “that large proportions—often the majority—of the most engaged with content on Facebook mentioning the World Doctors Alliance or its members in English, Spanish, German and Arabic contained false, misleading or conspiratorial claims related to COVID-19 and vaccines.”
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And as usual with Facebook, the company’s ability to track disinformation in languages other than English is much weaker.
The researchers reviewed 50 of the most popular posts mentioning the World Doctors Alliance and found that just 13% of English-language posts containing false or misleading content carried a factcheck label.
But its success rate was even lower for posts in languages other than English, with 8% of German posts, 5% of Spanish posts, and just 2% of Arabic posts flagged as containing false information.
Possibly one of the most damning conclusions drawn by the researchers at ISD, however, is that ultimately the company doesn’t even fully understand the scale or complexity of the problem it is facing.
“It seems that Facebook does not have a proper understanding of how misinformation spreads on their platform and they are either unwilling, or unable, to take meaningful action,” Gallagher said.
9. Facebook’s Brand Is So Toxic Zuckerberg Reportedly Wants to Change Its Name
Perhaps Zuckerberg should consult with Eric Prince about how to rebrand.
Facebook’s Brand Is So Toxic Zuckerberg Reportedly Wants to Change Its Name
Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
In the middle of one of the worst crises his company has ever faced, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t digging in and fixing the democracy-destroying problems he’s created. Instead, he’s reportedly planning to rebrand.
That’s according to a report from the Verge that says Zuckerberg will speak about the new company name at Facebook’s big Connect conference, which kicks off on Oct. 28, though the new name could be announced sooner. Facebook has declined to comment on the report.
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While it might seem like odd timing, given that Zuckerberg has faced weeks of unrelenting negative press about his company’s myriad failures, it’s no surprise he wants a new start: Facebook has now become synonymous with hate speech, disinformation, election interference, and even genocide.
Over the last few weeks, the company’s massive failures have been laid bare, initially thanks to internal documents and reports published by the Wall Street Journal in a series of damning reports. Then Frances Haugen, the former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower testified before Congress. And this week former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang told British lawmakers how the company was facilitating authoritarian governments the world over.
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The Verge’s report, which is based on information from a source within the company, does not reveal what the new name will be, but it is likely to be an umbrella brand under which Facebook’s expanding universe of products—including WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus, and the Facebook app itself—will sit.
The rebrand could be seen as a reflection of just how toxic the Facebook brand has become.
Facebook is one of the most recognizable brands on the planet, and in the past, Zuckerberg has been keen to brand everything with the Facebook name. When he bought WhatsApp and Instagram, he insisted they be called “Instagram by FB” and “WhatsApp by FB.”
Whatever the company’s new name will be, the rebrand is very likely linked to Zuckerberg’s increased obsession with the “metaverse.”
Having spent 15 years building the world’s most powerful communications platform, which has been weaponized by bad actors determined to destroy the world, Zuckerberg now wants to create a virtual version of the world where he can begin again and try to do things better.
Facebook has already given us a glimpse of what the metaverse will look like with its horribly clunky Horizon Workrooms, a virtual reality space where meetings will take place in the future.
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Given Zuckerberg’s focus on the “metaverse,” it makes sense that the rebranding would reflect that.
Facebook’s former head of its now-dissolved civic integrity unit, Samidh Chakrabarti, believes that “meta” is a likely candidate for a new company name.
And luckily for the Facebook CEO, the meta.com URL currently redirects to meta.org, the website of a biomedical research discovery tool that’s controlled by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic organization run by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
By using the name meta for his new company, Zuckerberg would be much more likely to succeed in claiming outright control of the term “metaverse” in the future.
Other suggestions on social media include a rebranding as simply FB or, less likely, the return of “the Facebook,” which was the platform’s original name.
But for all Zuckerberg’s attempts to avoid facing real scrutiny for the multiple failures of his platform, the New York Times reported Wednesday morning that the CEO’s name would be attached to a lawsuit being brought by the attorney general of the District of Columbia, Karl Racine.
The lawsuit relates to a complaint filed in 2018 that alleges Facebook misled users about privacy by allowing Cambridge Analytica to hoover up the personal information of 87 million users—including more than half the District’s residents.
The move would, for the first time, expose Zuckerberg himself to possible financial and other penalties.
10. Battle between the ears: Chinese media warfare (Book Review)
We must take Chinese political warfare seriously.
Add also the gaming industry to the Chinese instruments. As I understand from an expert from taiwan CHin is attempting to control the narratives in the gaming industry to ensure they are favorable to CHina.
Excerpts:
Now a professor at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, Gershaneck knows the topic well, having vast Asia experience and hands-on strategic communications experience at all levels of the US government, as well as a particularly useful counterintelligence background. In 2020 he published a seminal work on PRC Political Warfare: Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s plan to “Win without Fighting.”
In this book, he focuses on what China has done and is doing to Taiwan on the media warfare front. As important, he lays out how Beijing is waging the same type of insidious warfare worldwide – especially against Taiwan’s main “ally,” the United States.
To Chinese strategists, media warfare (and the broader political warfare effort of which media warfare is part) is just as important as building the PLA into a force able to defeat the US military. Indeed the kinetic and the informational are considered mutually reinforcing lines of attack.
Media warfare – also known as public opinion warfare – leverages all instruments that inform and influence an adversary’s public and government opinion. The objective is to weaken, divide, corrode, confuse, co-opt and demoralize an opponent.
What are the instruments? The old standards such as television, radio, and newspapers, of course. But there are also books, textbooks – and, over the past three decades, the internet and social media. Indeed, the Chinese communists make full use of all of these and are particularly aggressive on the internet/social media vectors.
Conclusion:
Gershaneck’s book is indeed alarming – although one grudgingly admires China’s industriousness and persistence on the non-kinetic media/public opinion/psychological fronts.
But certainly the US government has its own media warfare and political warfare effort to match and defeat whatever Beijing is doing?
If only. Unlike previous administrations, the Trump administration understood the problem, and also understood China’s political warfare efforts. It had some limited success exposing and cracking down here and there – with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (to whom the book is dedicated) and Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger being particularly effective. But they ran out of time.
The US government is once again back to doing nothing while China runs wild in the crucial “cognitive” battlefield that Gershaneck explains so well in this important book.
This isn’t surprising, one supposes. The recent collapse of the Afghan government and military was as much a political warfare victory for the Taliban as a military victory.
The US military and civilian leadership didn’t seem to notice.
One hopes they take China’s version of the media and political warfare threat more seriously – and then do something about it.
Battle between the ears: Chinese media warfare
New book, Media Warfare: Taiwan’s Battle for the Cognitive Domain, details China’s massive, well-funded and effective public opinion warfare
Can the People’s Republic of China (PRC) invade and conquer Taiwan? Experts differ, but 99% of the current debate considers only the military balance – and whether the PLA has the weapons, hardware, and capabilities to get ashore, defeat Taiwan’s military and force Taiwan to surrender.
The military match-up is important, but it misses half the picture – and half of the PRC’s strategy against Taiwan.
Kerry K Gershaneck’s new book, Media Warfare: Taiwan’s Battle for the Cognitive Domain (The Center for Security Policy, paperback $14.99), details and explains a key portion of that other half: the PRC’s use of media warfare to psychologically fracture and demoralize Taiwan and make conquest easier or, even better, to have Taiwan give up without a fight.
Now a professor at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, Gershaneck knows the topic well, having vast Asia experience and hands-on strategic communications experience at all levels of the US government, as well as a particularly useful counterintelligence background. In 2020 he published a seminal work on PRC Political Warfare: Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s plan to “Win without Fighting.”
In this book, he focuses on what China has done and is doing to Taiwan on the media warfare front. As important, he lays out how Beijing is waging the same type of insidious warfare worldwide – especially against Taiwan’s main “ally,” the United States.
To Chinese strategists, media warfare (and the broader political warfare effort of which media warfare is part) is just as important as building the PLA into a force able to defeat the US military. Indeed the kinetic and the informational are considered mutually reinforcing lines of attack.
Media warfare – also known as public opinion warfare – leverages all instruments that inform and influence an adversary’s public and government opinion. The objective is to weaken, divide, corrode, confuse, co-opt and demoralize an opponent.
What are the instruments? The old standards such as television, radio, and newspapers, of course. But there are also books, textbooks – and, over the past three decades, the internet and social media. Indeed, the Chinese communists make full use of all of these and are particularly aggressive on the internet/social media vectors.
This makes sense. With newspapers, TV and radio, a propagandist has to somehow lure the intended target to receive the message. With the internet and social media, it is possible to jam the message into the target non-stop – 24/7/365. And given that 90% of Taiwan’s public is active on social media, that democracy presents a particularly target-rich environment.
What does the PRC’s media warfare campaign against Taiwan look like? In order to deliver its messages, Chinese entities have bought Taiwanese broadcasting outlets and newspapers and they use the lure of advertising dollars against “independent” outlets.
Another key part of the effort to shape the views of as wide an audience as possible is the aggressive use of social media platforms to influence, confuse and deceive, often through effective profiling of users to better target messaging.
Source: Amazon
How successful has Beijing been? In 2018, the PRC deployed media warfare stratagems – including heavy use of social media – to engineer the election of an absolute nobody – Kuomintang (KMT) party candidate Han Kuo-yu – as the mayor of Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second-largest city.
Many in the KMT support communist China’s plans to annex Taiwan. The surprise election of Han to this powerful mayorship was no small feat and no minor issue: Kaohsiung has historically been a stronghold of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which firmly opposes annexation by China.
As part of the effort to elect Han Kuo-yu, pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) media in Taiwan and the communist propaganda organs in China relentlessly attacked DPP leadership, including President Tsai, with disinformation including untrue allegations. That relentless campaign interference was enough to raise doubts with voters, especially because there were no effective means in Taiwan to detect and counter the media warfare attacks.
Han Kuo-yu ran for president two years later, once again with pro-CCP Taiwanese and communist China-based media warriors hard at work on his behalf. Han had a fair shot at winning had not two things happened: First, Taiwan’s government woke up to the media warfare threat and cobbled together effective enough defenses to derail and expose Beijing’s strategy.
Second, the Chinese communist crushing of Hong Kong’s pro-freedom movement a few months before Taiwan’s election awakened a huge chunk of Taiwan’s public to the Chinese threat – and inoculated many to Chinese subversion.
Gershaneck provides a concise, yet detailed, introduction to Media Warfare in Taiwan, but with larger implications. He walks the reader through the confusing and redundant terminology and explains how media warfare fits into the larger Chinese political warfare strategy – intended to defeat an enemy via all measures short of outright kinetic warfare.
While using Taiwan as the focus of his latest book, the author emphasizes that what the PRC is doing to Taiwan it is also doing to the United States and other free nations.
He wrote his most recent book to help Western nations “better detect, deter, counter and defeat” Chinese media warfare – and political warfare writ large. And he provides a set of practical recommendations for Taiwan’s government that are applicable to any country under PRC media warfare attack.
For example, Chinese state-controlled media (meaning all the media outlets operating in China) have formed business relationships with western media. The New York Times, Washington Post, and even the “conservative” and “tough on China” Wall Street Journal carried China Daily media warfare inserts for a number of years.
Gershaneck also describes how the Chinese government takes control of newspapers and broadcast media serving the Chinese diaspora in many, if not most, countries where such outlets operate.
At the same time that the PRC is flooding the US with “reporters,” it’s also making life miserable in China for the few foreign reporters still allowed to operate there. And US and other foreign outlets routinely self-censor to avoid angering Beijing.
Professor Gershaneck paints a grim picture of China’s massive, well-funded, and effective media warfare effort against Taiwan, and worldwide.
Yet, many – if not most – people will say they are too smart, too well educated and too discerning to be influenced by Chinese Communist Party media warfare propaganda. Maybe so. But if you’ve ever said or thought any of the following, you’ve been influenced:
- Covid-19 couldn’t possibly have come from a laboratory.
- China wants to “reunify” with Taiwan.
- The US must have China’s help dealing with climate change, North Korea and (fill-in-the-blank).
- We simply have to be invested in the China market.
- To make China an enemy, treat it like one.
- China is no longer communist; it is capitalist.
- China’s rise is “peaceful” and “inevitable.”
- China has never attacked its neighbors.
- China is not expansionist.
- China is just doing what all great powers do.
Gershaneck’s book is indeed alarming – although one grudgingly admires China’s industriousness and persistence on the non-kinetic media/public opinion/psychological fronts.
But certainly the US government has its own media warfare and political warfare effort to match and defeat whatever Beijing is doing?
If only. Unlike previous administrations, the Trump administration understood the problem, and also understood China’s political warfare efforts. It had some limited success exposing and cracking down here and there – with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (to whom the book is dedicated) and Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger being particularly effective. But they ran out of time.
The US government is once again back to doing nothing while China runs wild in the crucial “cognitive” battlefield that Gershaneck explains so well in this important book.
This isn’t surprising, one supposes. The recent collapse of the Afghan government and military was as much a political warfare victory for the Taliban as a military victory.
The US military and civilian leadership didn’t seem to notice.
One hopes they take China’s version of the media and political warfare threat more seriously – and then do something about it.
Reading Gershaneck’s books would be a good start.
Grant Newsham is a retired US Marine and a former diplomat and business executive who has spent many years in Asia. He is a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy.
11. Xi Jinping’s top five foreign policy mistakes
Excerpts:
Xi’s goals include increasing China’s international stature and quashing international criticism. He says he wants to cultivate the image of a “credible, loveable and respectable China.” Xi seeks to maximize China’s access to global markets and technology. He wants to hasten the withdrawal of US strategic influence from the region. He wants the world to believe “China will never seek hegemony, expansion, or a sphere of influence.”
Xi’s major foreign policy errors, however, have undermined these goals. The PRC government under Xi has indulged nationalistic domestic public opinion at the risk of sabotaging the important longer-term national objectives that Xi has specified as central to his “China dream.”
A PRC that other states perceive as aggressive is engendering coordinated strategic opposition. This will make it harder for China to become a regional and global leader. If other governments believe China is expansionist, they will believe every strategic gain by China emboldens Beijing to strive for more. During Xi’s tenure this logic has become commonplace in discussions about Beijing’s designs on Taiwan and the South China Sea. There is also an important economic and technological cost to China, as worried trade partners decouple to reduce their vulnerability to PRC coercion and to avoid selling China the rope that China might hang them with.
Chinese remember Mao’s leadership as 70% good. Xi may have difficulty reaching even that modest standard.
PacNet #49 – Xi Jinping’s top five foreign policy mistakes - Pacific Forum
- Denny Roy
- East-West Center
Xi Jinping’s aggressive foreign policy is stimulating increased international opposition to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) agenda, undoing years of effort by Chinese officials to assure regional governments that a stronger China will be peaceful and non-domineering. Here are five examples of Xi’s self-defeating decision-making in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) foreign relations.
Wolf Warriorism
Xi has ordered his diplomats to demonstrate “fighting spirit” and to “dare to show their swords.” Accordingly, over the past two years Chinese diplomats have aimed jarring insults and threats at various countries, not just Western democracies, but also Brazil, Kazakhstan, Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela, Thailand, and South Korea. The result is unsurprising. Public opinion surveys by the Pew Research Center and other pollsters show a marked increase in negative feeling toward China since 2019 in Europe, Australia, Japan, the United States, and other countries. Former Singaporean senior foreign ministry official Bilihari Kausikan said “China’s ‘Wolf Warriors’ are doing a better job than any American diplomat of arousing anti-Chinese feelings around the world.” Chinese diplomats could defend their country’s actions differently. Instead, Wolf Warriorism acts as an extension of domestic politics, with little regard for harm done to China’s international prestige and relationships.
Galwan Valley skirmish
According to Indian sources, this June 2020 battle on the disputed Sino-Indian border began when Chinese troops ambushed and killed an Indian colonel who had approached the Chinese unarmed and in good faith to negotiate de-escalation. Whether or not Beijing ordered this particular act, a PRC policy of creeping expansionism made an eventual confrontation almost inevitable absent a tacit Indian surrender. For years the Chinese have built infrastructure to facilitate quick military mobilization in disputed areas. The Chinese government found it intolerable when the Indian side started to do the same in response.
The clash caused a long-term hardening of Indian attitudes and policy toward China. The Indian government cancelled several infrastructure construction deals with China, halted the purchase of Huawei information technology equipment, and sought to economically decouple from China in other important sectors. New Delhi re-committed itself to blocking Chinese expansion into disputed areas. India has signaled a deeper commitment to the Quad, was quick to express support for the AUKUS agreement, and now sends warships into the South China Sea—acts that Beijing finds threatening.
South China Sea policy
Having already distinguished itself as the most aggressive of the South China Sea claimants, Beijing started building sizeable artificial islands in 2013. China has now installed military facilities, including runways, docks, barracks, and missile batteries, on at least three reefs in the Spratly group. The PRC’s South China Sea policy highlights Beijing choosing to impose its will upon weaker neighbors rather than seeking a mutually acceptable compromise. It is also another example of the Chinese government disregarding an international agreement to which China was a signatory. Beijing has argued that China’s “historic rights” to the South China Sea take precedence over the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and contemptuously rejected the 2016 ruling against China by the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
The upside of these outposts, located far from mainland China, is uncertain. They might be more liability than asset to the PRC in a time of conflict. As for the downside: more than any other single Chinese policy, the new bases convinced international observers that PRC foreign policy under Xi was taking an aggressive turn, with more emphasis on winning rather than managing strategic disputes, and less effort to avoid alarming other governments in the Indo-Pacific.
Taiwan
Rather than blazing a creative new solution to the cross-Strait dispute, the man celebrated for “Xi Jinping Thought” has simply doubled-down on his predecessors’ demonstrably failed policies. Xi maintains that unification is essential to China’s “rejuvenation,” although the PRC is abundantly prosperous and secure without controlling Taiwan. He has continued to insist that Taiwan’s destiny is “one country, two systems” (1C2S). Taiwan’s people, however, never supported 1C2S, and the destruction of Hong Kong’s liberties has thoroughly discredited the concept. That Xi would still speak of 1C2S in a message to Taiwan as recently as Oct. 9 indicates a stunning intellectual and political sclerosis.
Finally, Xi has increased military pressure on Taiwan. This has deepened resentment on the island toward China and bolsters support for the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, which now holds both the presidency and a legislative majority. The heightened sense of danger has prodded Taiwan to implement asymmetric defense, which will make it more capable of fighting off an attempted PRC invasion. The Biden administration has reaffirmed US support for Taiwan as “rock solid.” Even Japanese leaders are now openly discussingthe increasing likelihood that Japan would help defend Taiwan.
Xi’s Taiwan policy works to eliminate possible solutions other than a war that, even in the best-case scenario, would be disastrous for China.
Economic coercion against Australia
In April 2020, Canberra displeased Beijing by calling for an inquiry into the origins of the pandemic. The PRC retaliated by cutting importsof 10 Australian products. As in previous cases, Chinese officials implausibly denied that the restrictions were politically motivated, a gratuitous show of duplicity.
The consequences of this Chinese policy were worse for China than for Australia. Canberra did not accommodate the 14 political demandsmade by the Chinese embassy in November 2020. Australia suffered little from the import bans, finding other buyers for much of the supply turned away by China. Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg recently described the damage done to Australia’s economy as “relatively modest.” In addition to the reputation cost to Beijing, the Chinese government’s campaign against Australia drew greater international attention to the dangers of doing business with China. Power shortages in China during autumn 2021 are partly due to a coal shortage, worsened by the sanction against Australian coal imports. The attempt to punish Australia has increased momentum for addressing China’s systematic violation of both the spirit and the letter of its World Trade Organization obligations. Canberra’s refusal to capitulate may serve as an inspiration for other governments under Chinese economic pressure over a political disagreement, diminishing the usefulness of this tactic.
What drives Xi? First, he has relied heavily on pandering to Chinese nationalism. Appearing to defend China’s interests against challenges by foreigners makes the Xi regime more popular and implicitly makes opposing Xi seem unpatriotic.
Second, Xi rules during a period of Chinese hubris. By 2012, when Xi assumed leadership, China was the world’s second-largest economy and on track to surpass the United States for the top spot. Beijing had hosted the Olympic Games in 2008, China’s coming-out party as a world power, while the financial crisis in 2007-2008 convinced Chinese observers that America was in rapid decline even as China surged ahead.
A third contributing factor is hyper-authoritarianism. Xi has concentrated numerous decision-making powers in himself, built up a personality cult, and prioritized political correctness over pragmatic analysis. The resulting political climate is not conducive to advisors warning Xi that he is making mistakes.
Xi’s goals include increasing China’s international stature and quashing international criticism. He says he wants to cultivate the image of a “credible, loveable and respectable China.” Xi seeks to maximize China’s access to global markets and technology. He wants to hasten the withdrawal of US strategic influence from the region. He wants the world to believe “China will never seek hegemony, expansion, or a sphere of influence.”
Xi’s major foreign policy errors, however, have undermined these goals. The PRC government under Xi has indulged nationalistic domestic public opinion at the risk of sabotaging the important longer-term national objectives that Xi has specified as central to his “China dream.”
A PRC that other states perceive as aggressive is engendering coordinated strategic opposition. This will make it harder for China to become a regional and global leader. If other governments believe China is expansionist, they will believe every strategic gain by China emboldens Beijing to strive for more. During Xi’s tenure this logic has become commonplace in discussions about Beijing’s designs on Taiwan and the South China Sea. There is also an important economic and technological cost to China, as worried trade partners decouple to reduce their vulnerability to PRC coercion and to avoid selling China the rope that China might hang them with.
Chinese remember Mao’s leadership as 70% good. Xi may have difficulty reaching even that modest standard.
Denny Roy (RoyD@EastWestCenter.org) is a senior fellow at the East-West Center, Honolulu. He specializes in strategic and international security issues in the Asia-Pacific region.
PacNet commentaries and responses represent the views of the respective authors. Alternative viewpoints are always welcomed and encouraged. Click here to request a PacNet subscription.
12. US nearing a formal agreement to use Pakistan's airspace to carry out military operations in Afghanistan
Excerpts:
"We are developing a counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on any direct threats to the United States in the region, and act quickly and decisively if needed," he said on July 8.
But lawmakers have questioned the White House's ability to fulfil that promise. The Pentagon has repeatedly said the US can continue to fight terrorism in the region through over-the-horizon capabilities, but the Defense Department has not said where those capabilities will be headquartered in the region.
"They're building the plane as they fly it," one Senate aide told CNN of what Pentagon officials have shared about over-the-horizon plans.
On Thursday, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the US is "in a worse place to understand and track the terrorist threats coming from Afghanistan," following a classified briefing on Afghanistan. The briefing included a discussion of over-the-horizon capabilities, according to a Senate Armed Services Committee aide.
Inhofe said in a statement that the briefing "confirmed" that the US "is now less safe than before Biden's disastrous decision to unconditionally and entirely withdraw from Afghanistan."
US nearing a formal agreement to use Pakistan's airspace to carry out military operations in Afghanistan
CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Oren Liebermann, Zachary Cohen and Ellie Kaufman, CNN
(CNN)The Biden administration has told lawmakers that the US is nearing a formalized agreement with Pakistan for use of its airspace to conduct military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan, according to three sources familiar with the details of a classified briefing with members of Congress that took place on Friday morning.
Pakistan has expressed a desire to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in exchange for assistance with its own counterterrorism efforts and help in managing the relationship with India, one of the sources said. But the negotiations are ongoing, another source said, and the terms of the agreement, which has not been finalized, could still change.
The briefing comes as the White House is still trying to ensure that it can carry out counterterrorism operations against ISIS-K and other adversaries in Afghanistan now that there is no longer a US presence on the ground for the first time in two decades after the NATO withdrawal from the country.
The US military currently uses Pakistan's airspace to reach Afghanistan as part of ongoing intelligence-gathering efforts, but there is no formal agreement in place to ensure continued access to a critical piece of airspace necessary for the US to reach Afghanistan. The air corridor through Pakistan to Afghanistan may become even more critical if and when the US resumes flights into Kabul to fly out American citizens and others who remain in the country. The third source said that an agreement was discussed when US officials visited Pakistan, but it's not yet clear what Pakistan wants or how much the US would be willing to give in return.
With no formal agreement currently in place, the US runs the risk of Pakistan refusing entry to US military aircraft and drones en route to Afghanistan.
Read More
A Pentagon spokesman said the Defense Department does not comment on closed briefings due to security classifications. CNN has reached out to the National Security Council, State Department and Pakistan embassy in Washington for comment.
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan 'long shot' options for over-the-horizon operations
At the same time, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are emerging as the top options for possible locations to establish a US military presence to conduct so-called over-the-horizon operations in Afghanistan, the sources said, but both would run into severe opposition from Russian President Vladimir Putin and some local politicians. "Both are long shots," one source said, calling them "likely pipe dreams due to needing Putin's blessing."
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Uzbekistan earlier this month where she discussed "the way forward in Afghanistan" with President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, according to a readout of the meeting.
Currently, the US conducts its over-the-horizon operations from bases in the Middle East, forcing drones to fly from distant bases, such as those in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, around Iran and through Pakistani air space before reaching Afghanistan. The lengthy flight limits the time drones can loiter over Afghanistan gathering intelligence, and the Biden administration has been looking for closer, more effective options.
The commander of US Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, told lawmakers last month that he still has "the ability to look into Afghanistan," but it is "limited." McKenzie also said he was not confident in the US' ability to prevent ISIS and al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a launchpad for terrorist activity in the future.
"The US maintains ongoing ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities as needed to support the over-the-horizon and counter-terrorism mission requirements," a defense official told CNN. That includes not only drones, but also signals intelligence and cyber capabilities to monitor the situation in Afghanistan.
Biden promised US would maintain counterterrorism capabliity
President Joe Biden said in July, weeks before the evacuation from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, that the US would maintain its ability to operate in the country, even if US troops were no longer on the ground.
"We are developing a counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on any direct threats to the United States in the region, and act quickly and decisively if needed," he said on July 8.
But lawmakers have questioned the White House's ability to fulfil that promise. The Pentagon has repeatedly said the US can continue to fight terrorism in the region through over-the-horizon capabilities, but the Defense Department has not said where those capabilities will be headquartered in the region.
"They're building the plane as they fly it," one Senate aide told CNN of what Pentagon officials have shared about over-the-horizon plans.
On Thursday, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the US is "in a worse place to understand and track the terrorist threats coming from Afghanistan," following a classified briefing on Afghanistan. The briefing included a discussion of over-the-horizon capabilities, according to a Senate Armed Services Committee aide.
Inhofe said in a statement that the briefing "confirmed" that the US "is now less safe than before Biden's disastrous decision to unconditionally and entirely withdraw from Afghanistan."
CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Oren Liebermann, Zachary Cohen and Ellie Kaufman, CNN
13. Fact Book 2022 United States Special Operations Command
The 60 page document can be downloaded here.
or here:
Fact Book 2022 United States Special Operations Command
Table of Contents
Heroes 4
Medal of Honor Recipients 6
Bull Simons Award Recipients 8
Commando Hall of Honor Inductees 9
Headquarters 10
Organization 12
Leadership 13
Mission 14
Commands 16
U.S. Army Special Operations Command 18
Naval Special Warfare Command 22
Air Force Special Operations Command 26
Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command 30
Joint Special Operations Command 34
Special Operations Command - Africa 35
Special Operations Command - Central 36
Special Operations Command - Europe 37
Special Operations Command - Korea 38
Special Operations Command - North 39
Special Operations Command - Pacific 40
Special Operations Command - South 41
USSOCOM and Components Map 42
Theater Special Operations Commands Map 44
Equipment 46
Aircraft 48
Maritime 52
Ground 54
SOF Truths 57
The SOF Operator 58
Glossary 59
14. Thanks to This ‘Biden Whisperer,’ the World Knows America’s Back
"Biden whisperer?"
This will be taken to task. Approval rating up around the world compared to the now very low domestic approach rating. Most Americans do not factor international approval into their assessment of approval of POTUS.
A new Gallup poll shows a huge turnaround in how the world sees the United States. Under Donald Trump, our approval rating hit a record low. Under President Biden, it has rebounded to very nearly the highest level yet recorded, almost equal to that achieved during the presidency of Barack Obama.
What does the world see in America under Biden’s leadership that so many in the U.S. media have not? The answer is diplomacy. Often quietly, often in ways that do not drive ratings or generate clicks, the U.S. has put active, constructive diplomacy back at the center of our relations with the rest of the world.
Thanks to This ‘Biden Whisperer,’ the World Knows America’s Back
To understand what’s happening here, look to the work of our throwback secretary of state.
Updated Oct. 23, 2021 3:46AM ET / Published Oct. 22, 2021 11:54PM ET
opinion
Erin Scott/Bloomberg via Getty
A new Gallup poll shows a huge turnaround in how the world sees the United States. Under Donald Trump, our approval rating hit a record low. Under President Biden, it has rebounded to very nearly the highest level yet recorded, almost equal to that achieved during the presidency of Barack Obama.
What does the world see in America under Biden’s leadership that so many in the U.S. media have not? The answer is diplomacy. Often quietly, often in ways that do not drive ratings or generate clicks, the U.S. has put active, constructive diplomacy back at the center of our relations with the rest of the world.
At the center of this effort is U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Not just the country’s chief diplomat, Blinken is, in the eyes of one senior White House official, the senior foreign policy and national security team’s one true “Biden whisperer.” Blinken’s closeness to Biden, which dates back two decades to when Blinken served as his top aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, enables him to be the most credible messenger of the foreign policy of a president who has more international affairs experience than any previous occupant of the Oval Office. It also makes him Blinken just a trusted adviser but one who foreign leaders know has the ear and the full confidence of the president.
Such trust and closeness has been essential to many of the most influential and effective Secretaries of State in our modern history. James Baker, for example, widely regarded as the most effective Secretary of State of the past half century, was described by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft as having a relationship like that of a brother to the president he’d previously served at Foggy Bottom, George H.W. Bush. Condoleezza Rice’s closeness to George W. Bush gave her credibility as an interlocutor with the president that the late Gen. Colin Powell was never able to achieve despite all of his experience—because the “mind-meld” did not exist between him and his boss. (Which was, in retrospect, to Powell’s credit.)
In this respect, Blinken, 59, reveals himself to be a far cry from many recent occupants of the Secretary of State’s suite on the seventh floor of the State Department’s headquarters. He is not a wannabe presidential candidate like Mike Pompeo, John Kerry or Hillary Clinton. He is not an entitled corporate titan like former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson. He is in fact, something very different, a man who has devoted his entire life to the study and practice of foreign policy and diplomacy—often behind the scenes, not seeking the limelight.
From his days as an undergraduate at Harvard and law student at Columbia to his first government jobs on the staff of the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration through his tenure as staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 through 2008 to roles on the Obama foreign policy team ranging from serving as Vice President Biden’s national security adviser to his appointment as Deputy Secretary of State, for the past 30 years he has come to understand both the foreign policy apparatus of the U.S. and the challenges the U.S. faces worldwide.
This preparation has enabled him not only to swiftly settle into the top job at State but to rely on long-standing relationships around the world to begin to address key challenges. But much of what Blinken and the Biden foreign policy team have done has been the kind of work that does not garner media attention. The press is happy to cover crowds outside of Kabul airport because there is drama there, but months of laying the groundwork with allies for the exit or the heavy lifting that had the US coordinating nearly three dozen countries response to the challenges of the end to the 20-year war are hard to point a camera at and so, while appreciated abroad and consequential in both the short and longer run, do not get the attention they deserve.
This week, for example, Blinken flew to Latin America. His first stop, in Ecuador, was intended to stand up for democracy against the pressures it is feeling worldwide. Next, he headed to Colombia to work out concrete steps with regional partners to stem the flow of migrants including, notably, northward to the United States. In this respect, his effort was complementary to the earlier effort of Vice President Harris in Mexico and Central America and represents a reversal of Trump policies that killed programs intended to minimize migrant flows to the U.S.
“It is true that some of our most substantive, consequential work tends to fly under the radar,” said Blinken in a telephone conversation, listing numerous examples where he asserted that material advances with real consequence for the U.S. took place largely unnoticed. But he felt that other nations worldwide recognize that the U.S. is engaging constructively in a way that we did not during the Trump years.
One example he cited was a recent inaugural meeting of a U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council in Pittsburgh. He stated that the outcomes from the meeting—reflecting progress on the part of the U.S. and the European Union to work together to help address critical trade and technology challenges, including that posed by China—was “significant.” Other examples he cited also had to do with the kind of blocking and tackling diplomatic work that is essential to reshaping the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world—that between the U.S. and the PRC. They also included laying the foundation for the AUKUS submarine deal (and acknowledging that with regard to how the French were handled, “we could have done a better job”) or hosting the first ever summit of the leaders of the Quad, a foundation of our new Indo-Pacific security structure, which has already delivered in concrete arenas, including the battle against COVID-19.
“We are taking a three dimensional approach with China,” Blinken said. He described this as beginning with addressing foundational issues like establishing and enforcing rules for international behavior as illustrated by the technology security discussions with our allies and partners. It includes engaging China where our interests overlap, while fundamentally competing with China “across different dimensions.” He also spoke of putting forward an affirmative agenda, including a global version of “Build Back Better,” known as “Build Back Better World,”undertaken by the G7 countries to create an alternative to China’s high-profile Belt and Road Initiative to strengthen its influence worldwide.
From the very substantial leading role the U.S. is playing in vaccine diplomacy to working with major powers on the efforts to negotiate an updated nuclear deal with Iran, from climate talks to restoring the level of refugee flows to the U.S., Blinken has overseen a diplomatic effort that is a 24/7/365 business, one that notably recognizes the importance of American diplomats and civil servants rather than one that minimizes their role, as was often the case during the last administration.
Another of the work that also often goes unnoted is the framing of the efforts. It was no coincidence that the end of the U.S. involvement was followed immediately by announcements of expanded engagement—via the Quad, AUKUS, on trade, etc.—in the Asia Pacific region. At the same time, the shift from investing in foreign wars to investing in American strength was illustrated both by the juxtaposition of getting out of Afghanistan at the same time that Biden is pushing his infrastructure and Build Back Better initiatives in Congress.
In a speech in Baltimore in August that was overshadowed by the events in Afghanistan, Blinken laid out the thinking that was the foundation for these shifts. Titled Domestic Renewal as a Foreign Policy Priority, it underscored the carefully considered links between Biden’s domestic and foreign policy agendas. While it included an emphasis on competitiveness (“China is spending three times as much on infrastructure as we do every year. And it’s not just China. The United States now ranks 13th in the world in the total quality of infrastructure”) but on the tradition, going back to the Roosevelt and Eisenhower administrations, of seeing investment in ourselves as the most important foundation of our international leadership.
In this respect, the speech, like Blinken in some respects, was a throwback. In diplomat George Kennan’s famous 1946 Long Telegram, he described the Soviet threat before concluding that the only way to beat the Russians would be on the home front, via example and cultivating domestic strength. But Blinken’s speech was also an effort to set aside partisan concerns (perhaps that is why it was nearly invisible to the media) and focus on the common interests of Americans.
The grounding of the current Secretary of State and his president in the modern traditions of foreign policy as well as the recommitment of both to the ideal of placing diplomacy and the rule of law at the center of our foreign policy, was particularly resonant because not only did this week see the passing of former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, a man who deeply believed that our politics should stop at the water’s edge, but days ago, Blinken attended a memorial for another Secretary of State who recently died, George Shultz. At the event in California, Blinken was joined by former Secretaries of State like Henry Kissinger, James Baker, and Condoleezza Rice.
Blinken, who started in foreign policy when the ideal of a bi-partisan national interest-driven foreign policy consensus was still often achieved, says he saw the examples of both men as a reminder of what we should continue to strive for. He praised Shultz at his memorial for his clear priorities in this regard and concluded by saying, “He was a teacher. And many of us here today, in one way or another, were his students. Still are.”
Certainly those words are true of the man who spoke them. He and the president are remaking foreign policy for the 21st century without losing sight of the values that have worked for America in the past.
While Blinken’s reverence for diplomacy and diplomats and his commitment to the hard work they entail far from the glare of TV lights may not receive the coverage they warrant in the U.S. media, they are resonating around the world.
15. Is the Biden Admin Leading Us to War? by Patrick Buchanan
And for another view of the Administration. This is certainly a different interpretation of the Biden administration's diplomacy.
Excerpts:
Consider, then, a brief summation of the confrontational postures adopted by the Biden diplomats.
We are openly warning Russia that the U.S. may soon bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would entail a U.S. war guarantee to fight on those nations’ behalf in a future military clash with Moscow.
We are openly warning Iran that time is running out, that if Tehran does not return to negotiations on the nuclear deal and compliance with its terms, a U.S. attack on Iran cannot be ruled out.
We are putting China on notice that we do not accept its broad claims to the islets of the East and South China Seas, and we may be there to fight alongside our allies to sustain their claims.
Now congressional leaders in both parties are crafting measures to give Biden authorization to take us to war with China to protect Taiwan, whose declaration of independence, warns Beijing, would cross its “red line” and mean war.
Is the Biden Admin Leading Us to War? - The American Conservative
Before the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels this week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took a side trip to Georgia and Ukraine. Purpose: Assure these nations that America has their back and encourage their hopes of future admission to NATO. Austin, said the Pentagon, would tell both nations there is an “open door to NATO.”
“Ukraine … has a right to decide its own future foreign policy,” said Austin in Kiev, “and we expect that they will be able to do that without any outside interference.” He went on: “No third country has a veto over NATO’s membership decisions. Ukraine … has a right to decide its own future foreign policy, and we expect that they will be able to do that without any outside interference.”
The U.S. apparently backed up Austin’s words by sending B-1B bombers over the Black Sea. Said the Russian Defense Ministry: “Russian fighter crews identified the air targets as two B-1B supersonic strategic bombers accompanied by two KC-135 tanker aircraft of the US Air Force and escorted them over the Black Sea.”
Why are we sending nuclear-capable bombers over the Black Sea?
Why are we holding out to Kiev and Tbilisi hope that they will be invited to join NATO and receive a U.S.-NATO Article V war guarantee to have the U.S. fight alongside them if there is another crisis with Russia such as occurred in South Ossetia and Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014?
We did not fight Russia then. And we are not going to fight Russia now, or tomorrow, as these regions and these issues are not vital national interests of the United States.
Nor is the Black Sea the only region where the U.S. is hinting at confrontation and possible war. With Iran refusing to return to compliance with the nuclear deal from which President Donald Trump walked away in 2018, or renew talks to do so, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warns there are “other options if Iran does not change its course.”
“With every passing day, and Iran’s refusal to engage in good faith, the runway gets short. … Time is running short. We are getting closer to a point at which returning to compliance with the JCPOA (the nuclear deal) will not in and of itself recapture the benefits of the JCPOA.”
“We will continue to look at every option to deal with the challenge that is posed by Iran.” The phrase “every option” manifestly includes a war option.
After a recent meeting in Washington, D.C., Americans and Israelis began talking of a “Plan B” for dealing with a recalcitrant Iran, which sounds very much like a threat to go to war.
Under President Joe Biden as well as Trump, the U.S. has been ratcheting up the number of “freedom of navigation operations” by U.S. warships in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. And we have encouraged allies to send their warships to do the same, which several have done.
We have told Japan, the Philippines and the world that our mutual security treaties cover Manila’s claim to Chinese-occupied islets of the South China Sea and the Japanese-controlled Senkakus in the East China Sea.
When China, over a four-day period, sent 150 warplanes into the air defense identification zone south of Taiwan, U.S. leaders declared that our support of the island is “rock solid.”
Yet, the U.S. security treaty with Taiwan lapsed four decades ago.
In February, Republicans in Congress introduced a Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act to authorize Biden to use any military action required to repel an attack by China on Taiwan or its island possessions. Democrats are considering a similar measure to give Biden authority to resist a Chinese attack on the island or an attempt to overrun it or force its surrender to the mainland.
These congressional moves to cede new war powers to the president come as Congress is considering repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force used to take us into the 1991 Gulf War and to invade Iraq in 2003.
Consider, then, a brief summation of the confrontational postures adopted by the Biden diplomats.
We are openly warning Russia that the U.S. may soon bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would entail a U.S. war guarantee to fight on those nations’ behalf in a future military clash with Moscow.
We are openly warning Iran that time is running out, that if Tehran does not return to negotiations on the nuclear deal and compliance with its terms, a U.S. attack on Iran cannot be ruled out.
We are putting China on notice that we do not accept its broad claims to the islets of the East and South China Seas, and we may be there to fight alongside our allies to sustain their claims.
Now congressional leaders in both parties are crafting measures to give Biden authorization to take us to war with China to protect Taiwan, whose declaration of independence, warns Beijing, would cross its “red line” and mean war.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever and a founding editor of The American Conservative.
16. Facebook Increasingly Suppresses Political Movements It Deems Dangerous
A lot of anti-Facebook articles today. I wonder when I post my dispatches on Facebook if I will get censored!
Facebook Increasingly Suppresses Political Movements It Deems Dangerous
Reluctant to stifle viral content it helps amplify, the social-media giant is playing whack-a-mole with groups it believes are potentially harmful
WSJ · by Jeff Horwitz and Justin Scheck
Facebook engineers made it harder for organizers to share Patriot Party content, restricted the visibility of groups connected to the movement and limited “super-inviters” from recruiting new adherents, according to a March review.
“We were able to nip terms like Patriot Party in the bud before mass adoption,” said another memo.
The surgical strike was part of a strategy Facebook adopted early this year to stop what it calls “harmful communities” from gaining traction on its platform before they spread too far. Rather than just taking action against posts that violate its rules, or that originate with actors such as Russia-based trolls, Facebook began putting its thumb on the scale against communities it deemed to be a problem. In April, based on the same policy, it took aim at a German conspiracy movement called Querdenken.
Internal Facebook documents, part of an array of company communications reviewed by the Journal for its Facebook Files series, show that people inside the company have long discussed a different, more systematic approach to restrict features that disproportionately amplify incendiary and divisive posts. The company rejected those efforts because they would impede the platform’s usage and growth.
The reality is that Facebook is making decisions on an ad hoc basis, in essence playing whack-a-mole with movements it deems dangerous. By taking on the role of refereeing public discourse, Facebook has strayed from the public commitment to neutrality long espoused by Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.
And because of the enormous size of its global user base—the latest count is about 2.9 billion—its decisions about whom to silence, with no public disclosure or right of appeal, can have great impact.
A protester holds a Patriot Party flag outside the Washington state capitol on Feb. 6.
Photo: John Rudoff/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The issue sits in the middle of one of the most sensitive debates around Facebook. Activists on the left have been urging the company to more forcefully block what they see as harmful content. Other activists, largely on the right, accuse Facebook of censorship directed at conservative voices.
Matt Perault, a former director of global public policy for the company who left for an academic post at Duke University in 2019, said documents shared with him by the Journal suggest that Facebook’s commitment to being a neutral platform was slipping.
“It’s understandable that the immense pressure on tech companies would push them to develop aggressive solutions to combat misinformation,” Mr. Perault said. “But predictive, behavioral censorship seems fraught. In the absence of data suggesting otherwise, I think it’s appropriate to be skeptical that the benefits will outweigh the costs.”
Facebook spokesman Drew Pusateri acknowledged the tension in the company’s work to combat dangerous viral social movements. “To find those solutions, we’ve had to invent new technologies and balance difficult trade-offs that society has struggled with for a long time, and without needed guidance from lawmakers and regulators,” he said. “We know our solutions will never be perfect, but stories like these exist precisely because we confronted our toughest problems head-on.”
A senior security official at Facebook said the company would seek to disrupt on-platform movements only if there was compelling evidence that they were the product of tightly knit circles of users connected to real-world violence or other harm and committed to violating Facebook’s rules.
“When you start to think about authentic people organizing on the platform and contributing to harm, you have to be very careful,” the official said in an interview. “It’s very easy to get into a place where you’re picking and choosing. And that isn’t fair.”
One challenge for the company has been balancing concern about fairness with recent history, in which groups such as foreign trolls and small conspiracy movements have used Facebook to get their message out to millions of people.
The Patriot Party was a loose and fast-growing collection of people and groups that had supported Donald Trump’s false claim that last year’s presidential election was stolen from him. In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Facebook and other social-media platforms worked to suppress many such groups, especially those associated with the “Stop the Steal” movement. In response, thousands of members rallied behind the Patriot Party name, starting Facebook groups, websites and chapters around the country.
Facebook employees watched the Patriot Party movement grow in real time. The company’s automated systems showed that conversations about the proposed pro-Trump political movement were disproportionately heavy on hate speech and incitement to violence, and the company’s researchers had spotted links between the party’s promoters and armed movements, the documents show.
“We need to organize our militia to meet up with local police and weekend warriors. Wars are won with guns…and when they silence your commander in chief you are in a war,” one member wrote on Jan. 9 on a Facebook Patriot Party page. It has since disappeared from Facebook, but was archived by an advocacy group, the Tech Transparency Project.
Still, nothing about the idea of founding a new political party itself broke Facebook’s rules.
Larry Glenn, an Ohio man who is treasurer of the American Patriot Party of the U.S., said his group was growing early this year largely because of Facebook. The platform let it spread its message and directed like-minded people to it, some of whom were in turn directed to the party’s website. “The website was growing quickly. We had a lot of followers,” Mr. Glenn said in an interview.
Then Facebook started warning the group, according to Mr. Glenn, about divisive content posted to their group. He said his colleagues worked to take down rule-violating posts, but the group was still removed from Facebook. “They pulled the rug out from under us,” he said. Now, the party is dormant, he added.
Controversial approach
The targeted approach has been controversial within Facebook. Documents show employees have long championed “content agnostic” changes to the platform, which were both technically easier and less likely to raise free-speech concerns.
One such employee has been Kang-Xing Jin, who has been friends with Mr. Zuckerberg since their first day at Harvard University and now leads the company’s health-related initiatives. In late 2019, Mr. Jin warned colleagues: If the company didn’t dial back on automated recommendations and design features that disproportionately spread false and inflammatory posts, what he called “rampant harmful virality” could undermine Facebook’s efforts to prevent the spread of toxic content before the 2020 election.
“There’s a growing set of research showing that some viral channels are used for bad more than they are used for good,” he wrote in one note. Facebook wouldn’t have to eliminate virality to deal with the problem, he said, just dial it back.
Those suggestions were met with praise from other employees, the documents show, but generally didn’t get traction with executives, leaving the ad hoc approach as the company’s main weapon. A Facebook spokesman said the company took such concerns seriously, and that it adopted a proposal Mr. Jin championed to stop recommending users join groups related to health or political topics, and had taken steps to slow the growth of newly created groups.
“Provocative content has always spread easily among people,” said Mr. Pusateri, the spokesman. “It’s an issue that cuts across technology, media, politics and all aspects of society, and when it harms people, we strive to take steps to address it on our platform through our products and policies.”
Facebook’s trillion-dollar business is built largely on its unique ability to keep users coming back, in part by maximizing the viral spread of posts that people will share and reshare. Mr. Zuckerberg has often highlighted the benefits of virality. He points to the “ice-bucket challenge,” in which thousands of users in 2014 filmed themselves pouring freezing water over their heads to raise money for charity.
Executives were slow to think about the downsides and what to do about them. “For the first 10 years of the company, everyone was just focused on the positive,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in a 2018 interview with Vox.
The 2016 U.S. election changed that. Revelations of foreign interference, bot networks and false information left the company scrambling to identify how its platform could be abused and how to prevent it.
Its researchers found that company systems automatically and disproportionately spread harmful content, the internal documents show. Whatever content was shared, Facebook would recommend and spread a more incendiary mix.
Facebook took action against a German movement called Querdenken, whose supporters are shown protesting in November.
Photo: Omer Messinger/Getty Images
Particularly troublesome were heavy users, the kind of voices that Facebook’s algorithm had long helped amplify. In at least nine experiments and analyses beginning in 2017, Facebook researchers found links popular with heavy users were disproportionately associated with false information and hyperpartisan content, the documents show.
“Pages that share misinformation tend to post at much higher rate than other pages with similar audience size,” one research note states.
Researchers also found that efforts to boost the “relevance” of Facebook’s News Feed were making the platform’s problems with bad content worse.
Internal experiments
In dozens of experiments and analyses reviewed by the Journal, Facebook researchers, data scientists and engineers found viral content favored conspiracy theories, hate speech and hoaxes. And they discovered that as the speed and length of the sharing chain grew, so did the odds that content was toxic.
To demonstrate to colleagues how Facebook’s dynamics ended up promoting a toxic brew, a researcher created a Facebook account for a fictional 41-year-old named Carol Smith, according to a document describing the experiment. The researcher made Ms. Smith a “conservative mom” from Wilmington, N.C., interested in “young children, parenting, Christianity, Civics and Community.” Her tastes leaned right but mainstream.
On the first day of the experiment, Facebook recommended humorous memes and generally conservative groups, which the fictional Ms. Smith joined. By the second day, it was recommending almost exclusively right-wing content, including some that leaned toward conspiracy theories. By the fifth day, the platform was steering Ms. Smith toward groups with overt QAnon affiliations. Selected content included false claims of “white genocide,” a conspiracy-theory “watch party” and “a video promoting a banned hate group.”
A subsequent study of the platform’s recommendations to a liberal user found a similar distorting effect.
The documents show that employees pushed for the company to confront its reliance on virality, but that its leaders resisted.
One engineer in 2019 suggested killing the reshare button, which let users quickly spread posts across Facebook. Other suggestions were more incremental: to stop promoting reshared content unless it was from a close friend of the user; to moderately slow the platform’s fastest-moving posts; or to lower the limit on daily group invitations from 2,250 a day.
Facebook data scientists intensified their scrutiny of viral problems during the 2020 election run-up, putting in place measures to analyze how fast harmful content was spreading. They found the company had inadvertently made changes that worsened viral problems.
In Facebook’s internal communications system, called Workplace, Mr. Jin, Mr. Zuckerberg’s former schoolmate, said research suggested Facebook was in the wrong part of the “virality tradeoff curve.” He championed measures to damp virality on the platform. Many colleagues agreed that one attractive part of his suggestion was that slowing down the spread of viral information would affect everyone, no matter where they are on the political spectrum. It would help the company avoid the accusations of bias that comes when it targets a specific group.
Mr. Jin ran into skepticism from John Hegeman, Facebook’s head of ads. At the time, Mr. Hegeman oversaw recommendations in Facebook’s News Feed. He agreed with Mr. Jin’s assertion that Facebook’s systems appeared to magnify its content problems. But he contended that most viral content is OK, and asked whether it would be fair, or wise, to cut back.
“If we remove a small percentage of reshares from people’s inventory,” he wrote, “they decide to come back to Facebook less.”
Facebook didn’t follow Mr. Jin’s advice. By early 2020, executives responsible for Facebook’s election preparations were growing worried, the documents indicate. Facebook lacked even “a minimal level of reactive protection” against viral falsehoods when the fourth quarter began, according to one document, but the company wasn’t prepared to change course.
The company moved from crisis to crisis in 2020. The platform boosted divisive material from QAnon conspiracy theorists, violent armed groups and the Stop the Steal movement, according to the internal company analyses.
In each case, the documents indicate, Facebook’s tools turbocharged the growth of those movements, and the company stepped in to fight them only after they led to real-world violence or other harms. That thrust it repeatedly into messy arguments about whether its controls over speech on the platform were insufficient or overbearing and biased.
The company tried slowing its platform, but only as a temporary, emergency response, part of what Facebook referred to internally as “Break the Glass” measures. It first did so when false claims of election fraud took off in the immediate wake of the U.S. presidential election, then after the Jan. 6 riot.
In most cases, the company rolled those measures back afterward, according to the documents.
Patriot problem
In the days following the Capitol riot, critics accused social-media companies of fueling the insurrection. At Facebook, systems showed that conversations about the Patriot Party movement were disproportionately heavy on hate speech and incitement to violence. Some employees, though, worried that taking aim at a grass-roots movement would mean that Facebook was tipping the political scales.
Some movements are following Facebook’s rules but also spreading content the company deems “inherently harmful and violates the spirit of our policy,” one Facebook researcher wrote. “What do we do when that authentic movement espouses hate or delegitimizes free elections? These are some of the questions we’re trying to answer.”
One Patriot Party supporter was Dick Schwetz, a Pennsylvania salesman and member of a chapter of the Proud Boys, a violent, far-right group, who said in an interview he was banned from Facebook before the presidential election. Mr. Schwetz later promoted the Patriot Party.
Dick Schwetz, a Patriot Party supporter, said Facebook’s action against the group was unfair.
Photo: Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/Zuma Press
Mr. Schwetz said Facebook’s action against Patriot Party groups made it more difficult for the movement to grow. He said that was unfair. “Facebook opened itself up to say it’s a public platform,” he said, but the action against the Patriot Party shows that is untrue.
Internal reviews of Facebook’s performance around the election’s aftermath pointed to the company’s inability to keep pace with the speed of its own platform or separate out skepticism of the voting results from incitements to violence.
First reported by BuzzFeed News, one internal report acknowledged that Facebook had been unable to reliably catch harmful content that goes viral, with the broader Stop the Steal movement “seeping through the cracks” of Facebook’s enforcement systems.
The report was optimistic on one front: The company was able to suppress the growth of the Patriot Party.
In the weeks following the Capitol riot, Facebook began studying a data set of more than 700,000 Stop the Steal supporters, mapping out the way information traveled through them.
Armed with the knowledge from that and similar research, Facebook hoped it would be able to sabotage future “harmful topic communities” and redirect what it called “susceptible users” toward innocuous content.
Facebook’s strategy for dealing with movements it considers harmful are outlined in a series of internal documents from early this year, from a multidisciplinary group within the company called the Disaggregating Harmful Networks Taskforce.
Under Facebook policies, “an individual can question election results. But when it’s amplified by a movement, it can damage democracy,” said an April update from the task force. “There is harm in the way movements shift norms and an understanding of collective truth.”
Facebook scientists studied how such networks rise, and identified “information corridors”—networks of accounts, pages and groups—that create, distribute and amplify potentially harmful content. The networks span hundreds of thousands of users. Mapping them required artificial intelligence to identify users “most at risk of being pulled into the problematic community,” according to one document.
Once a dangerous information corridor is identified, the documents show, Facebook can undermine it. A movement’s leaders can be removed, or key amplifiers hit with strict limits on transmitting information.
Unless Facebook chose to disclose such coordinated action, users who weren’t themselves removed would never know of the company’s interventions.
Facebook deemed the Patriot Party experiment successful enough that the company decided to keep honing its ability to target individual groups, such as the German movement called Querdenken.
Though it shares some affinities with QAnon and anti-Semitism, Querdenken as a group isn’t chronically in violation of Facebook policies, according to the company. Officially it preaches nonviolence. But the group had been placed under surveillance by German intelligence after protests it organized repeatedly “resulted in violence and injuries to the police,” an internal presentation to Facebook’s public-policy team stated.
In April, some of the same employees who tamped down the Patriot Party got to work on an experiment to see if they could suppress Querdenken by depriving it of new recruits and minimizing connections between its existing members.
The Facebook senior security official said the company had acted against Querdenken accounts under a new “coordinated social harm” policy.
Facebook demoted Querdenken content in news feeds and prevented many users from receiving notifications about its posts.
“This could be a good case study to inform how we tackle these problems in the future,” one researcher wrote in a document describing the experiment.
The Facebook Files
A series offering an unparalleled look inside the social-media giant’s failings—and its unwillingness or inability to address them.
—Design by Andrew Levinson. A color filter has been used on photos.
Corrections & Amplifications
“There’s a growing set of research showing that some viral channels are used for bad more than they are used for good,” Facebook employee Kang-Xing Jin wrote in a note. An earlier version of this article dropped the word “some” from the quotation. (Corrected on Oct. 22)
WSJ · by Jeff Horwitz and Justin Scheck
17. Exclusive: U.S. hopes to soon relocate Afghan pilots who fled to Tajikistan, official says
I wonder if there is potential to develop a resistance to air. component. HJas that ever been done? Has a resistance organization ever had an organic air element? Of course where would they operate from? They would need a sanctuary that could provide maintenance and resupply capabilities. I know I am probably reaching here but we need to consider the resistance that may be developing inside Afghanistan (though I know most do not have the stomach for that).
Exclusive: U.S. hopes to soon relocate Afghan pilots who fled to Tajikistan, official says
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A member of the Afghan air force marshals in an A-29 Super Tucano at Hamid Karzai International Airport near Kabul, Afghanistan, January 15, 2016. U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Nathan Lipscomb/Handout via REUTERS//File Photo
WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - The United States hopes to soon relocate around 150 U.S.-trained Afghan Air Force pilots and other personnel detained in Tajikistan for more than two months after they flew there at the end of the Afghan war, a U.S. official said.
The State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to offer a timeline for the transfer but said the United States wanted to move all of those held at the same time. The details of the U.S. plan have not been previously reported.
Reuters exclusively reported first-person accounts from 143 U.S.-trained Afghan personnel being held at a sanatorium in a mountainous, rural area outside of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, waiting for a U.S. flight out to a third country and eventual U.S. resettlement.
Speaking on smuggled cell phones kept hidden from guards, they say they have had their phones and identity documents confiscated.
There are also 13 Afghan personnel in Dushanbe, enjoying much more relaxed conditions, who told Reuters they are also awaiting a U.S. transfer. They flew into the country separately.
The Afghan personnel in Tajikistan represent the last major group of U.S.-trained pilots still believed to be in limbo after dozens of advanced military aircraft were flown across the Afghan border to Tajikistan and to Uzbekistan in August during the final moments of the war with the Taliban.
In September, a U.S.-brokered deal allowed a larger group of Afghan pilots and other military personnel to be flown out of Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.
Two detained Afghan pilots in Tajikistan said their hopes were lifted in recent days after visits by officials from the U.S. embassy in Dushanbe.
Although they said they had not yet been given a date for their departure, the pilots said U.S. officials obtained the biometric data needed to complete the process of identifying the Afghans. That was the last step before departure for the Afghan pilots in Uzbekistan.
PREGNANT AFGHAN PILOT
U.S. lawmakers and military veterans who have advocated for the pilots have expressed deep frustration over the time it has taken for President Joe Biden's administration to evacuate Afghan personnel.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was pressed on the matter in Congress last month, expressing concern at a hearing for the pilots and other personnel.
Reuters had previously reported U.S. difficulties gaining Tajik access to all of the Afghans, which include an Afghan Air Force pilot who is eight months pregnant.
In an interview with Reuters, the 29-year-old pilot had voiced her concerns to Reuters about the risks to her and her child at the remote sanatorium. She was subsequently moved to a maternity hospital.
"We are like prisoners here. Not even like refugees, not even like immigrants. We have no legal documents or way to buy something for ourselves," she said.
The pregnant pilot would be included in the relocation from Tajikistan, the U.S. State Department official said.
Even before the Taliban's takeover, the U.S.-trained, English-speaking pilots had become prime targets of the Taliban because of the damage they inflicted during the war. The Talibantracked down the pilotsand assassinated them off-base.
Afghanistan's new rulers have said they will invite former military personnel to join the revamped security forces and that they will come to no harm.
Afghan pilots who spoke with Reuters say they believe they will be killed if they return to Afghanistan.
Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Grant McCool
18. The two most important ways to deter China
Excerpts:
This unprecedented level of interoperability with allies and partners — combined with common highly-advanced capabilities such as the F-35 — is the most effective, rapid way to create a powerful deterrent in commitment and capability, countering China’s hegemonic ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.
America and its allies must accelerate change. If not, where we still retain military overmatch with the PRC today, we will have parity at best tomorrow. Deterrence will be weakened, and the likelihood of conflict increased, along with the uncertainty of its outcome.
With China’s continued frenetic military buildup, accelerating change is a national security imperative. When it comes to next year’s defense budget, the White House, Pentagon and Congress should fully fund placing the most advanced capabilities in the hands of our warfighters and deepening interoperability with our allies and partners.
The two most important ways to deter China
The Hill · by Scott Swift, opinion contributor · October 22, 2021
“China, China, and China.” U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said those are his top three priorities. While he acknowledges being glib, Kendall nevertheless mentioned China 29 times in his recent speech to the Air Force Association.
The pacing threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will be deterred in large part by two major strategic efforts: accelerating the fielding of advanced capabilities, and deepening interoperability with allies and partners.
Progress has been made on both fronts, but in the words of Air Force Chief of Staff C.Q. Brown, we need to “accelerate change — or lose.”
China has become much more formidable in recent years, increasing its modernization efforts. On the conventional side, China has invested in precision weapons of steadily longer range, going from hundreds to thousands of miles, able to hit any American or allied asset anywhere in the world.
Today, China fields a growing arsenal of anti-satellite, anti-air and anti-ship missiles, as well as advanced cyber and electronic warfare capabilities — not to mention a growing hypersonic weapons program.
If China is to be deterred, then, we have to field the kinds of advanced capabilities in the Indo-Pacific that can actually blunt the threat. To quote Secretary Kendall again, “To achieve effective change we must keep our eye on the ball. For me that means focusing on the fielding of meaningful military capability into the hands of our operational users.”
Given the need for relevant, advanced capability in the hands of warfighters today, logic leads to a two-part conclusion: One, modernize our legacy forces, and two, accelerate the fielding of the next-generation capability available today.
The F-35 is the one advanced air capability in production right now that can be fielded on the front lines today — both by the United States and our allies and partners. But we still lack sufficient numbers of fifth-generation aircraft given today’s threat from the PRC.
In the competition with China, the United States has a key advantage: Like-minded allies and partners with the same concerns. The more that the United States can work in concert with allies and partners to deter the PRC, the better. Two developments are particularly noteworthy in this regard: The Quad and AUKUS.
The Quad, comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States, is increasing its activity through air and maritime exercises. The four countries’ leaders recently met in Washington, pledging to work together on a number of “soft power” initiatives in the Indo-Pacific.
AUKUS, comprising Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, grabbed headlines for the transfer of nuclear-powered submarine technology to Australia. While that is an important capability, AUKUS also pledged to “significantly deepen cooperation on a range of security and defense capabilities.”
This unprecedented level of interoperability with allies and partners — combined with common highly-advanced capabilities such as the F-35 — is the most effective, rapid way to create a powerful deterrent in commitment and capability, countering China’s hegemonic ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.
America and its allies must accelerate change. If not, where we still retain military overmatch with the PRC today, we will have parity at best tomorrow. Deterrence will be weakened, and the likelihood of conflict increased, along with the uncertainty of its outcome.
With China’s continued frenetic military buildup, accelerating change is a national security imperative. When it comes to next year’s defense budget, the White House, Pentagon and Congress should fully fund placing the most advanced capabilities in the hands of our warfighters and deepening interoperability with our allies and partners.
Scott Swift served 39 years in the U.S. Navy and retired as a four-star admiral. During his career, he served as commander of the Seventh Fleet, director Navy staff, and commander of the Pacific Fleet.
The Hill · by Scott Swift, opinion contributor · October 22, 2021
19. Can The United States Counter China’s Mounting Pressure On Taiwan? – Analysis
Excerpts:
On March 27, 2020, President Trump signed the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act, which authorizes the U.S. to increase economic, diplomatic, and military support to countries that improve their relations with Taiwan while decreasing support to those that do not. In October of the same year, the U.S. State Department sanctioned the sale of up to 400 Boeing-produced Harpoon anti-ship missiles and 100 RGM-84L-4 Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems and related equipment for an estimated cost of $2.4 billion.
In the event of a Chinese invasion, the fact that no U.S. military is officially stationed on the island of Taiwan benefits the U.S. There would be no direct participation of U.S. soldiers, sailors, or airmen in the conflict, leaving the U.S. command free to interfere if it deemed it necessary.
A plausible scenario would be for Washington to launch a remote attack on Chinese military installations located beyond its national borders, as recognized by the UN, the loss of which would have devastating economic ramifications for China. The surgical military strikes on the newly built islands of Mischief Reef, Subi Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, and Cuarteron Reef would leave Beijing unable to resolve the “Malacca dilemma,” i.e., the blockade of vital trade flows to China’s economy caused by the closure of the Malacca Strait. In a little over two years, China has constructed more than 3,000 acres of artificial land in the South China Sea and they have since become sites for both civil and military infrastructure projects. Its marine soldiers (militia, coast guard, and navy) would struggle to defeat Taiwan in the long run if it lacked bases and, consequently, logistics.
Can The United States Counter China’s Mounting Pressure On Taiwan? – Analysis
As military tensions between China and Taiwan resurface, it is vital to grasp China’s long-term strategy – and what it means for Taiwan and the United States.
On Friday, October 1, Beijing launched 38 fighter jets into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), followed by 39 more on Saturday, 16 on Sunday, and 52 on Monday, October 4, for a grand total of 145 aircraft in four days. The frequency of incursions into Taiwan’s (officially the Republic of China or ROC) airspace continues to climb. At the same time, the warnings from the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs are increasingly acerbic. “The one-China principle is the political foundation of Sino-U.S. relations,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on October 1 at a daily news briefing.
In mid-October, the United States and Canada sent a warship into the Taiwan Strait, a body of water roughly 180 kilometers wide that separates Taiwan from mainland China. The Chinese military slammed the move, saying Canada and the U.S. were “seriously threatening peace and stability.” This was in reaction to increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, which the People’s Republic of China considers to be a rebellious Chinese province. On the other hand, this frenzied military effort by China in early October is in response to a U.S. geostrategic policy that is slowly but surely emerging in South and East Asia through the strengthening of ties with reliable allies.
Time is running out for China, which knows that even with a strong navy, it will be unable to combat the American superpower once U.S. naval forces are redeployed in the region. While the Chinese industrial sector can mass-produce battleships of all shapes and sizes, the same cannot be said for troops, whose training is time-consuming and difficult. Furthermore, establishing a navy from the ground up requires China to discover everything on its own, without the benefit of traditions or actual friends.
If China is not yet ready for a fight with the United States, neither is the United States. President Biden is carrying out President Obama’s Asian pivot agenda while posing as a protector of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). To contain the Chinese juggernaut, he is establishing a network of local partners and supporters. The latter share democratic values with the U.S., but more importantly, the capacity to use armament compatible with that of the U.S., allowing them to share optimal battle logistics. Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Australia will soon get technologically sophisticated military systems from the United States, including the Aegis combat system, P-8A Poseidon multi-mission maritime patrol aircraft, and the fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets. The latter can be easily transported by U.S. aircraft carriers.
Most likely in response to China’s assertiveness towards Taiwan and other Asian states, an Anglo-Saxon US-led front against China is taking shape. On October 15, U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison had a video conference to sign an “Indo-Pacific security treaty,” known as AUKUS. The treaty includes, among other things, billions of dollars in nuclear submarine production. According to President Biden, the purpose of this alliance is to “ensure long-term peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.” While U.S. Republicans regard it as a “message of strength” to Beijing’s resurgent dictatorship, Johnson insists the pact is not aimed at China. Nonetheless, Beijing blasted it, saying it reflected the “Cold War mentality.” The establishment of the AUKUS allows for the formation of a central nucleus of countries around which other countries, such as India, Japan, and possibly South Korea, may rally. However, creating a powerful alliance takes time and a lot of financial and logistic resources, which the U.S. and its allies are most likely to lack after the Covid-19 crisis has passed.
Neither China nor the United States, along with their allies and partners, want to be involved in a massive showdown. However, President Xi Jinping may be tempted, for domestic political reasons, to use his nation’s nationalist sentiments in order to shift attention away from the country’s economic and health challenges. Even though recent big weaponry orders from the U.S. have reinforced Taiwan’s defenses, he may be tempted to launch a large-scale attack on the island in order to catch Taipei off guard.
The air operations conducted by the Chinese naval and air forces were precursor events that allow Beijing to assess Taiwan’s defense capabilities. By utilizing a large number of aircraft of all types at the same time, the Chinese are testing Taiwan’s defense reaction times, tracking fire-control and surveillance radars, and electro-optical systems. China’s strategy is to keep the intimidation continuing for as long and as fiercely as possible in order to lead Taipei to fear and drive it to act in an illogical way that would enhance China’s advantage. The ultimate goal of Chinese President Xi Jinping to recover Taiwan is inextricably tied to a national rejuvenation program known as the “China dream.” President Xi has set a goal of realizing the China dream by 2049, but he wants “solid, tangible progress” toward national rejuvenation by 2035. Time is on China’s side in its dispute with Taiwan. If the current trajectory of the economic and military power shift continues, it will be a cakewalk for China in a decade.
Should we expect Taiwan to declare an impending attack during these high-intensity operations?
The chance of an accident increases as the number of military operations is on the rise. A pilot or operator of Taiwan’s defense weapon system miscalculating the threat could result in the loss of a Chinese aircraft. Such an incident would give President Xi Jinping justification to interfere. It is not too Machiavellian to suppose that he seeks this in order to justify a large-scale surprise military strike that can be carried out quickly and declared a success?
Even if the treaties governing Washington-Taipei relations do not include an automatic intervention clause in the case of hostilities, China’s strategy is always at risk. The Taiwan Relations Act, which took effect on April 10, 1979, replaced the Mutual Defense Treaty signed on March 3, 1955, by the United States and the Republic of China (Taiwan). It formalizes the U.S.-Taiwan alliance and restricts U.S. military support to defensive weaponry only. In both treaties, the name “Taiwan” refers to both the main island of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands, an archipelago of 90 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait. Other islands or archipelagos ruled by the Republic of China are not mentioned in the treaty, including Jinmen, the Matsu, the Wuqiu Islands, the Pratas, and Taiping.
On March 27, 2020, President Trump signed the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act, which authorizes the U.S. to increase economic, diplomatic, and military support to countries that improve their relations with Taiwan while decreasing support to those that do not. In October of the same year, the U.S. State Department sanctioned the sale of up to 400 Boeing-produced Harpoon anti-ship missiles and 100 RGM-84L-4 Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems and related equipment for an estimated cost of $2.4 billion.
In the event of a Chinese invasion, the fact that no U.S. military is officially stationed on the island of Taiwan benefits the U.S. There would be no direct participation of U.S. soldiers, sailors, or airmen in the conflict, leaving the U.S. command free to interfere if it deemed it necessary.
A plausible scenario would be for Washington to launch a remote attack on Chinese military installations located beyond its national borders, as recognized by the UN, the loss of which would have devastating economic ramifications for China. The surgical military strikes on the newly built islands of Mischief Reef, Subi Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, and Cuarteron Reef would leave Beijing unable to resolve the “Malacca dilemma,” i.e., the blockade of vital trade flows to China’s economy caused by the closure of the Malacca Strait. In a little over two years, China has constructed more than 3,000 acres of artificial land in the South China Sea and they have since become sites for both civil and military infrastructure projects. Its marine soldiers (militia, coast guard, and navy) would struggle to defeat Taiwan in the long run if it lacked bases and, consequently, logistics.
20. Taiwan vows to "defend itself" amid U.S. reversal, here's how China compares
Taiwan vows to "defend itself" amid U.S. reversal, here's how China compares
Newsweek · by Tom O'Connor · October 22, 2021
Taiwan has said it would express the will to defend itself amid a quick U.S. reversal on an apparent promise to defend the self-ruling island and warnings from mainland China, which claims it as part of the People's Republic.
President Joe Biden stirred controversy during a Thursday evening town hall when he twice appeared to confirm that he had a commitment to protect Taiwan in the event of an attack, one that would presumably come from China, where President Xi Jinping has vowed to take reintegrate the rival government by diplomacy, or force, if necessary.
Asked directly by CNN host Anderson Cooper if Biden was "saying that the United States would come to Taiwan's defense" after the president affirmed as much in response to a previous question, Biden doubled down.
"Yes, we have a commitment to do that," he said.
Such a commitment would mark an end to decades of strategic ambiguity, an approach through which Washington has neither confirmed nor denied its willingness to back Taipei against Beijing.
Shortly afterward, however, a White House spokesperson backtracked from Biden's remarks, clarifying that the administration's position remained unchanged from the policy adopted in 1979 when the U.S. established relations with China and downgraded ties with Taiwan to an informal partnership.
"The U.S. defense relationship with Taiwan is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act," the spokesperson said. "We will uphold our commitment under the act, we will continue to support Taiwan's self-defense, and we will continue to oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo."
A graphic using the latest U.S. military assessment of Chinese and Taiwanese military strength shows the scope of the imbalance of power across the geopolitically sensitive Taiwan Strait. Statista
The office of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen then issued a response.
"Since President Biden took office, the US government has consistently demonstrated its rock-solid support for Taiwan through concrete actions," spokesperson Xavier Chang said in comments shared with Newsweek. "Taiwan's consistent position is that we neither bow to pressure nor act rashly when we have support."
"Taiwan will show a firm determination to defend itself," he added, "and continue to work with like-minded countries to be a force for good and to contribute to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the Indo-Pacific region."
And while promoting Taiwan's ability to defend itself has been the official policy of both Taipei and Washington, Beijing's upper hand has rapidly increased over the years.
The dispute between the two sides dates back to the Chinese civil war, in which the Communist Party emerged victorious on the mainland, forcing the nationalist government to flee to Taiwan. Washington recognized the administration now based in Taipei, but shifted these ties to Beijing three decades later.
The U.S. continues to provide advanced weaponry to Taiwan despite Chinese protests, but China has set out on an unprecedented drive to expand and modernize its forces.
According to the latest U.S. military assessment of Chinese military power released last September, the capabilities of the People's Republic, which boasts the world's largest population at $1.4 billion and the second-largest economy at $14.7 trillion GDP, far exceed those of the island that officially refers to itself as the Republic of China, which has roughly 23.6 million people and a GDP of around $710 billion.
The People's Liberation Army is also the world's largest standing army with around 2.2 million active personnel, around half of which constitute ground forces. Taiwan's armed forces, by comparison, host less than 300,000 personnel, of which 88,000 are considered active-duty ground troops.
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When it comes to tanks, China outnumbers Taiwan nearly 8 to 1 and wields nearly six times as many artillery pieces. China's 37 tank landing ships also outsize the fleet of 14 possessed by Taiwan.
Elsewhere at sea, China has deployed two aircraft carriers and is currently developing a third, while Taiwan has no such warship. China also has eight times as many destroyers, more than twice the amount of frigates and 28 times the amount of submarines as Taiwan, which only has two such underwater ships.
In the air, China has more than three times the amount of fighter jets and Chinese transport aircraft number 400 as opposed to Taiwan's 30. China also counts some 450 bomber and attack aircraft, whereas Taiwan has none.
In addition to these metrics, the People's Liberation Army possesses an array of other capabilities that Taiwan does not, owing largely to the massive size and wealth disparity between the two sides as well as Taiwan's close relationship with the United States, whose lead on military superiority over China has narrowed significantly in recent years.
Xi has declared his intention to establish a "world-class military" before the middle of this century, and the Pentagon's assessment interprets this to mean "that Beijing will seek to develop a military by mid-century that is equal to—or in some cases superior to—the U.S. military, or that of any other great power that the PRC views as a threat."
"China is already ahead of the United States in certain areas," the Pentagon found, such as shipbuilding, land-based conventional ballistic and cruise missiles, and integrated air defense systems.
And at a time when relations between Washington and Beijing were sharply deteriorating, the report noted that "China continues to view the Taiwan issue as the most important and sensitive issue between the United States and China."
Above, a reconnaissance unit of the People's Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command 72nd Army conducts training in an undisclosed location in this photo published on September 10, 2021. The Eastern Theater Command and the Southern Theater Command are considered to be frontline forces in a potential conflict over Taiwan. Eastern Theater Command/Chinese People's Liberation Army
That point was illustrated by the steadfast reaction issued by Beijing to Biden's comments on Thursday.
"Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during a press conference Friday. "The Taiwan question is purely China's internal affairs that allow no foreign interference. On issues that bear on China's sovereignty, territorial integrity and other core interests, no one shall expect China to make any compromise or trade-offs. No one should underestimate the resolve, the will and the ability of the Chinese people to defend their national sovereignty and territorial integrity."
"Do not stand on the opposite side of the 1.4 billion people," he added.
And while the White House has vowed to adhere to the Taiwan Relations Act that allows for U.S. military assistance to Taiwan and provided the cornerstone to their informal ties, Wang called on Washington not to violate the founding agreements of its relationship with Beijing.
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"We urge the U.S. to earnestly abide by the one-China principle and stipulations in the three China-U.S. joint communiques, be prudent with its words and actions on the Taiwan question, and avoid sending wrong signals to the 'Taiwan independence' separatist forces, lest it should seriously damage China-U.S. relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," he said.
Wang's message was echoed in remarks by Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson of the Chinese State Affairs Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, who also "pointed out that the historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland must be fulfilled, and it will definitely be fulfilled," according to his office.
Ma also castigated Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for seeking outside support.
"The attempt by the DPP authorities to betray the interests of the Chinese nation and the well-being of the people on the island and to collude with external forces to seek 'independence' will not succeed," he said.
DPP lawmakers recently introduced six proposals to amend Taiwan's constitution, including reforms that would remove references to the island as a "province" and scrap the concept of "national unification," according to local outlets. Such moves also drew a strong reaction from Ma, who saw a "conspiracy" to pave the way for independence.
"The provocateurs will be subject to severe punishment in accordance with the law," he said, asserting that "Taiwan compatriots should also oppose and resist all attempts of seeking 'Taiwan independence' through so-called constitutional amendments."
The armed forces of Taiwan conduct the annual Han Kuang Exercise in this photo published September 14, 2021. The drills are organized to prepare for a potential Chinese incursion onto the island. Taiwan Ministry of Defense Press
The Biden administration has followed in the footsteps of former President Donald Trump by expanding U.S. ties with Taiwan and has also sent warships to transit China-claimed waters in the Taiwan Strait and the nearby South China Sea. China, for its part, has also conducted shows of power through military exercises in the region and fly-bys through Taiwan's claimed Air Defense Identification Zone.
In light of Biden's recent comments, a spokesperson for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office said the de facto embassy could not weigh in on the president's intentions but expressed confidence in U.S. policy.
"We're not really in the position to clarify what the US President says or if there're any changes to US foreign policies," the spokesperson told Newsweek. "However, we have been assured repeatedly by US officials that US relations with Taiwan has been rock solid. We believe the US will honor its commitments to Taiwan in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act."
Speaking Friday in Brussels after a summit of the U.S.-led NATO military alliance, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Biden administration was seeking to avoid a conflict with China over Taiwan.
"Nobody wants to see cross-strait issues come to blows, certainly not President Biden, and there is no reason it should," Austin said.
And he reiterated existing U.S. commitments, including to the Taiwan Relations Act and the assurances that detail a lasting nature to Washington's relationship with Taipei, as well as communiques that set the course for the ongoing relationship with Beijing. He too appeared to have erred, however, as he referred to "Three Assurances" and "Six Communiques," while, as the Pentagon later noted in the transcript, there are Three Communiques and Six Assurances.
"As we've done over multiple administrations, we'll continue to help Taiwan with the sorts of capabilities that it needs to defend itself," Austin said, "and so we'll stay focused on those things."
Newsweek · by Tom O'Connor · October 22, 2021
21. Afghanistan Fallout: An Invitation to America's Enemies
Excerpts:
President Biden has taken a gamble. He believes that ending American involvement in Afghanistan is necessary and worthwhile, no matter the cost. With American resources and attention freed up from Afghanistan, US foreign policy can shift to more pressing objectives, like the AUKUS alliance. He believes a critical lesson was learned in Vietnam: There will not be political repercussions for ending support to a stricken client, even if that means leaving behind tens of thousands of allies to death or imprisonment.
Biden may prove to be right. But the cost of his gamble will be borne by the thousands of Afghans who worked to build a new Afghanistan with American support, who have been left behind to face the brutal retribution of their new masters. Millions of Afghan girls will now be denied the chance to become literate and go to school, and Afghan women will be relegated to chattel property. The Afghan people will be dragged backward into a brutal, feudal state under Taliban control.
Meanwhile, for the US this is a time to be vigilant. Our enemies will calculate that the US’ rapid abandonment of Afghanistan is a signal of weakness and irresolution. Even putting principles aside, the US will run a terrible risk if it slackens its commitments to shepherding Western values and standing by our allies. Planners in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran, as well as terrorist cells around the world, will see an opportunity to advance their view of the future in place of ours. In the wake of US withdrawal from Afghanistan, this is an invitation that should not be sent.
Afghanistan Fallout: An Invitation to America's Enemies
The United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was a watershed event in 21st-century geopolitics. In leaving Afghanistan, President Biden intended to free the US from unwanted and far-flung obligations. But the end of American presence in Afghanistan will invite a new host of challenges for American policymakers. Our disastrous finale in Afghanistan will stand as an invitation to aggression for America’s enemies.
The US has shown a total lapse in geo-strategic competence, combined with a political surge of neo-isolationism. This combination will put tremendous pressure on our rivals to test American resolve. Our allies, particularly those who are geographically vulnerable like Ukraine and Taiwan, must reassess whether they can stake their survival on US commitments. The world is watching to see whether the fiasco in Afghanistan was a blunder or a signal of the end of American resolve in foreign affairs.
What Went Wrong
The root cause of US failure in Afghanistan was lack of focus. After the escape of Osama Bin Laden in 2001 and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, no one could clearly articulate the goals of the American project in Afghanistan. Over time, the practical purpose of American intervention became the maintenance of an unhappy but highly beneficial status quo: The Afghan central government controlled most of the population centers, while the Taliban controlled the hinterland. US military and economic aid propped up the Afghan Republic, which, despite its profound corruption and ineptitude, was a step forward from the fundamentalist theocracy of the Taliban. The US maintained a strategic listening post in Central Asia and could stymie terrorist operations before they matured.
But a narrative had formed and hardened in American domestic politics: Afghanistan was a failure, a quagmire, an example of hubristic distraction from America’s real problems. Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden all promised that the US would leave Afghanistan as soon as possible. American insistence on a near-term withdrawal demoralized our Afghan allies and encouraged the resurgent Taliban.
But American pessimism belied the reality on the ground. Despite frequent condemnation of ‘forever wars’ by politicians and pundits, US and NATO forces were rarely in combat in Afghanistan, and had shifted to a supporting role of Afghan forces. No US personnel were killed in Afghanistan from March 2020 to August 2021, and US expenditures had dropped precipitously since 2012. Afghans were beginning to enjoy the stability and progress of urbanization, public health access, and education. US involvement in Afghanistan was progressing to become a lightweight commitment, similar to what the US provides in Middle Eastern countries and across the Sahel. Nevertheless, President Biden decided the US needed to leave at all costs, so in August 2021, the US left – at great cost indeed. Within weeks, the Taliban overran the country and re-established despotic rule over the Afghan people.
What’s Next for Afghanistan
The Taliban is not interested in governance in the traditional sense. They do not care much about taxation and the administration of government services. They are much more concerned with judicial power. The primary goal of the Taliban Emirate is to promote and safeguard the piety of their subjects under an extremely narrow, fundamentalist reading of Sharia law. To protect the spiritual purity of the Afghan people, the Taliban has indicated they will reinstate the rules they put in place in the 1990s: Banning music, haircuts, and women leaving the home alone. Enforcement of Taliban religious rule will be severe: One of the few opportunities for entertainment, when the Taliban was last in power, was to go to a soccer stadium to watch mass executions and public torture of ‘heretics.’
The Taliban may not grant safe haven to terrorist groups as they did before the World Trade Center attacks. As journalist Peter Bergen documented, the Taliban had a very rocky relationship with al-Qaeda in the days leading up to September 11, 2001. Afghanistan’s leader Mullah Omar had given shelter to al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, but Omar came to regret this decision. Bin Laden’s insatiable desire for media attention and bellicose declarations against Saudi Arabia and the US were destabilizing to Taliban rule even before the 9/11 attacks.
Both the Taliban and terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS despise Western liberal values and want to enshrine Taliban-style Emirates across the Muslim world. But the Taliban is fundamentally inward-looking, and is not driven by a need to export terrorism to the West. Nevertheless, much of Afghanistan is inaccessible mountain tribe land, geographically difficult to govern. A haphazard and disorganized central Taliban government that is permissive of Islamic extremism may create a safe haven for terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, whether it explicitly means to or not.
More broadly, the Taliban’s ‘victory’ over the US in Afghanistan is already being used far and wide as a propaganda material for terrorist groups. The Biden administration may learn the painful lesson that you cannot single-handedly decide a war is over if your enemy disagrees.
The Cost of Dishonor
The concept of honor may seem sentimental and squishy in the bareknuckle world of international politics. But people around the world perceive honor as a stand-in for other values: Self-respect, keeping one’s word, fighting for principles. The policy and planning that led to the blundered abandonment of Afghanistan was dishonorable in every sense of the word.
People around the world take note of how the US behaves. Our failures are not our own; they are the failures of liberal democracy, republican values, human rights, and Western ideals. When we break our word and abandon our friends, the betrayal echoes and reverberates through history, far beyond the schemes and plans of policymakers. Our enemies have taken note, too: if the US is a paper tiger, then free people everywhere are less safe than they used to be.
The Withdrawl Gamble
President Biden has taken a gamble. He believes that ending American involvement in Afghanistan is necessary and worthwhile, no matter the cost. With American resources and attention freed up from Afghanistan, US foreign policy can shift to more pressing objectives, like the AUKUS alliance. He believes a critical lesson was learned in Vietnam: There will not be political repercussions for ending support to a stricken client, even if that means leaving behind tens of thousands of allies to death or imprisonment.
Biden may prove to be right. But the cost of his gamble will be borne by the thousands of Afghans who worked to build a new Afghanistan with American support, who have been left behind to face the brutal retribution of their new masters. Millions of Afghan girls will now be denied the chance to become literate and go to school, and Afghan women will be relegated to chattel property. The Afghan people will be dragged backward into a brutal, feudal state under Taliban control.
Meanwhile, for the US this is a time to be vigilant. Our enemies will calculate that the US’ rapid abandonment of Afghanistan is a signal of weakness and irresolution. Even putting principles aside, the US will run a terrible risk if it slackens its commitments to shepherding Western values and standing by our allies. Planners in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran, as well as terrorist cells around the world, will see an opportunity to advance their view of the future in place of ours. In the wake of US withdrawal from Afghanistan, this is an invitation that should not be sent.
Lance Hackney works in Silicon Valley technology startups, runs his own company, and consults on global supply chain logistics. He can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.
22. South Korea’s People Power Party has a Final Four: Can Any of Them Win the Presidency?
For the PPP: how do you think tactical nuclear weapons willenahnce the security of the ROK? Please lay out the military necessity and the strategic benefits versus the costs.
South Korea’s People Power Party has a Final Four: Can Any of Them Win the Presidency?
Will a PPP victory lead to a deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on the peninsula?
Two of the leading opposition contenders for the 2022 Korean presidential election attacked each other fiercely after their party, People Power, narrowed the primary down to the final four.
Long-time party leader and 2017 presidential candidate Hong Jun-pyo called former prosecutor and party newcomer Yun Seok-youl, a member of a “criminal community,” after Yun declared victory in the final elimination round. Yun responded that Hong should “wash his hair and mouth.”
Hong and Yun, along with five-term representative Yu Seung-min and former governor of Jeju province Won Hee-ryong, were all announced as the four finalists in the race for the nomination of the People Power Party. But national election law prevents the full tallies and even the order of the rankings from being released.
Nonetheless, Yun’s camp quickly issued a statement thanking his supporters for their “overwhelming victory.” Hong’s camp pushed back, claiming that Hong received “overwhelming support,” and an anonymous aide told the Dong-A Ilbo that the results were within the margin of error. The Dong-A Ilbo, citing widespread rumor and anonymous sources, reported that Yun placed first, followed by Hong, Yu, and Won, in respective order. Those results are in line with surveys of the public, which show Yun and Hong in a tight race, followed by Yu and Won considerably behind.
“I don’t attack people for anything but the facts. ... I said what I said because it is an infringement of the rules to make false claims about the unconfirmed results of a primary,” Hong posted to Facebook.
Hong and Yun are both known for their sharp tongues and refusals to back down from making controversial statements. In his acceptance speech for the 2017 nomination, Hong called himself a “resolute strongman.” Yun made a name for himself investigating high-profile corruption of politicians and corporations, including Samsung and former conservative president Park Geun-hye. However, while serving as prosecutor general since 2019, his investigations into allies of President Moon Jae-in caused the Moon administration to push for his ouster.
Now the nomination battle enters its final month. Candidates will participate in a series of discussion days across the country before the ultimate nominee is announced on November 5. Party officials’ votes will be combined with a weighted sample of public opinion polls.
The outcome could result in a shift of policy on North Korea issues and the economy. All four candidates for the People Power Party support strengthening relations with the United States and slowing down the current Moon administration’s push for detente with North Korea. Hong and Yu have both called for the deployment of American tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea. Yun also said he would be open to the idea if security conditions demanded it. On the other side, Democratic Party nominee Lee Jae-myung said South Korea should take the lead in pushing for “peace”—including easing certain sanctions—with or without American approval.
After the victories of the People Power Party in the Seoul and Busan mayoral elections, optimism is with the PPP. Moon’s approval rating has dropped below 40 percent, and the PPP’s approval rating is at a five-year high, though still only 34 percent. (The party, which has reformed itself and changed its name multiple times, has struggled to recover from the Park scandal in 2016-17.) Since the beginning of 2021, a plurality of voters has consistently said they support a change from the current administration.
Yet when Koreans are polled on hypothetical matchups between real candidates, the Democratic nominee usually comes out ahead of the PPP challengers. The Korean Society Opinion Institute polling reported on October 11 shows Lee leading Yun by three points and leading Hong by 2 points.
The fact that most Koreans want change but a plurality prefers to keep the same party in the Blue House is not as much of a contradiction as it may seem. Lee Jae-myung’s victory over Lee Nak-yeon in the Democratic Party primary, which was made official on October 10, is a change of sorts. Lee Nak-yeon, who hails from South Jeolla province and was Prime Minister for Moon’s first three years in office, was the clear favorite of the Moon faction.
Lee Jae-myung, on the other hand, has fashioned a populist image and clashed with Moon hardliners. He supports implementing universal basic income nationwide. As governor of Gyeonggi, the most populous province in the country, which surrounds Seoul, he had a chance to experiment with it, implementing the largest coronavirus stimulus program in the country. During the course of the primary he attracted more support from independents and third-party voters than any other candidate, surveys showed.
While Lee might be expected to do better than a generic Democrat in a general election, Yun and Hong each carry baggage that could weigh them down. Yun has made a series of controversial remarks, saying he opposes any kind of regulation of the economy, including limits on hours employees can work or the safety of food available for human consumption, citing Milton Friedman’s ideas. His mother has been charged with allegedly defrauding the National Health Insurance Service of 2.3 billion won ($20 million), and he has been accused of abusing his power as a prosecutor to file criminal complaints against Democratic candidates for Assembly in 2020. Party leadership, however, came to support Yun and believes he has his own Teflon shield.
Hong, who was first elected to the Assembly in 1996, risks being viewed as a retread when the PPP, led by the youngest party chairman in history, is trying to revitalize its image. He would be the oldest president-elect since Kim Dae-jung was elected twenty-four years ago. He has his own reputation as a firebrand, branded as “Korea’s Trump.” But that can also be a source of strength for his appeal to young men who appreciate his brashness.
Mitchell Blatt is a former editorial assistant at the National Interest, Chinese-English translator, and lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong. He has been published in USA Today, The Daily Beast, The Korea Times, Silkwinds magazine, and Areo Magazine, among other outlets. Follow him on Facebook at @MitchBlattWriter.
Image: Reuters.
23. A paratrooper turned movie advisor explains why shootings like Alec Baldwin’s shouldn’t happen
As an aside I saw a comment on social media that from here on all negligent discharges or accidental discharges (they are always the former) will be forever known as an "Alec Baldwin."
A paratrooper turned movie advisor explains why shootings like Alec Baldwin’s shouldn’t happen
A deadly shooting on a New Mexico film set involving actor Alec Baldwin has raised a number of questions about safety procedures during film production. For one film expert, the tragedy underscores the importance of training and oversight during sequences involving firearms.
“With the sets I work on, I work with very large crowds, up to 500 people,” Paul Biddiss, a former British Army paratrooper turned-military advisor, told Task & Purpose. “Weapons safety is always going to be paramount when you’re working with any sort of weapon.”
Baldwin, a producer and the star of the western film “Rust,” fired a prop gun while filming at Bonanza Creek Ranch, in Santa Fe County, around 1:50 p.m. on Thursday, killing Halyna Hutchins, 42, the film’s director of photography, and injuring director Joel Souza, 48.
“This investigation remains open and active,” the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. “No charges have been filed in regard to this incident. Witnesses continue to be interviewed by detectives.”
The New York Times reported on Friday that the shooting took place during a scene that was either being actively filmed or was rehearsed.
“My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna,” Baldwin said after the incident, adding that he was “fully cooperating with the police investigation.
Such incidents are rare in the film industry due to extensive safety protocols typically followed during film sequences involving firearms, and has resulted in a flurry of discussion about safety measures on set when firearms are used.
A couple things about guns and safety on movie sets.
First of all, there’s no reason for “prop” guns to be real.
Most muzzle flashes you see these days are VFX.
At least three departments are vested in making sure the “prop” gun is either real, fake, or disabled.
— Darwin Brandis (@dtbbythesea) October 22, 2021
To get a better sense of those safety protocols, Task & Purpose spoke with Biddiss, who served 24 years in the British Army before segueing to a career as a military advisor in film and television. Biddiss has worked on numerous action, and firearms-heavy projects, from the World War I epic “1917” to the crime caper “Wrath of Man” and “Fury,” which followed a tank crew in World War II.
While some sets use prop weapons that don’t fire anything at all, many of the weapons used are actual firearms that have been modified to fire only blanks, Biddiss said. Blank ammunition has all the components of a normal round, except for the projectile, and the shell casing is crimped at the round’s tip.
A belt of 5.56 mm standard blank rounds. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Anthony Bryant)
But even though a weapon can only fire blanks, they can still be dangerous, and so film crews take extensive steps to ensure the safety of the crew.
“Although they’re blanks, there are still bits and pieces that will come out — sparks and bits of dust that will fly out, and some pressure,” Bidess said. “A blank can actually do you a huge amount of damage. If it was pressed right up against your head, it could probably kill you.”
When filming with semi- and fully automatic weapons that are gas-operated, meaning the combustion gas from firing a round is what reloads the weapon, the barrel typically has a mechanism called a “restrictor.”. Restrictors function similarly to the blank-firing adapters (BFAs) used in the military, except that the device is internal, rather than attached to the exterior of the muzzle.
“They have it down the barrel to conceal that there’s an actual restrictor,” said Biddiss. “That helps to recycle the rounds so you’ve got the automatic effect and the recoil and everything else.”
Military advisor and former British Army paratrooper Paul Biddiss. (Photo courtesy of Paul Biddiss)
Devices like BFAs or restrictors do two things: they help prevent debris from escaping the barrel through the muzzle when a blank round is fired; and they help the weapon chamber another round by preventing the combustion gases from escaping the barrel.
But weapons that are not gas-operated, like revolvers, don’t require a restrictor to help chamber another round. Which means that there is no physical barrier between the blank round fired and whatever the weapon is pointed at.
“So there’s always more safety measures on those because you need to make sure that the barrels are completely cleared because they don’t need restrictors in them, because obviously you actually recock the weapon and reload another round in yourself,” Biddiss said.
In March 1993, actor Brandon Lee, son of renowned martial artist Bruce Lee, died in a firearms incident on the set of “The Crow.” During filming, a prop gun — a revolver — had been loaded with dummy rounds for a close-up shot. Dummy rounds have “the casing and it’s got the bullet inside, but it doesn’t have the gunpowder and the percussion cap has already been fired off, so there’s nothing inside that,” Biddiss said.
After filming the sequence that firearm was used again to fire blanks. But one one of the projectiles from the dummy rounds had come loose and gotten lodged in the chamber, Biddiss said.
“What they didn’t do, is they didn’t look at each prop round that came out of that weapon because one of the rounds was missing the actual lead bullet,” Biddiss said. “And that lead bullet, for whatever reason, had managed to wedge itself into the chamber of that weapon.”
When the trigger was pulled, the pressure from the blank propelled the projectile from the dummy round out of the weapon. “Effectively that was like a live round,” Biddiss said.
Our hearts go out to the family of Halyna Hutchins and to Joel Souza and all involved in the incident on “Rust”. No one should ever be killed by a gun on a film set. Period.
— Brandon Bruce Lee (@brandonblee) October 22, 2021
“The same can happen if, for whatever reason, an actor has just put the barrel into dirt and there’s a stone … and it only has to be a very small stone that’s managed to get into the barrel and it’s not been checked, or someone didn’t see it,” he continued. “Then he fires a blank: that little stone will act as a projectile.”
Film sets for major effects-driven features like war dramas can sometimes involve an army of extras. “Saving Private Ryan,” for example, required 1,000 extras for its opening D-Day landing sequence — in addition to the core cast of characters — all armed with rifles and charging across the camera’s view doing mock battle. If poorly executed, it could result in a chaotic and potentially dangerous situation, which is why many films follow a strict set of guidelines, Biddiss said.
“I train guys in the safe use of weapons and trigger discipline, muzzle discipline, never pointing the weapon in jest, always making sure they know the state of their weapon. All those things,” Biddiss said. “And I do that with actors, I do it with stunts, and that’s one of the processes.”
In many ways, preparing for a firefight on screen is similar to training on the range in the military: Weapons are carefully inspected to ensure the chamber is clear prior to being issued; rounds are allocated and counted; weapons handling and muzzle awareness are enforced; and weapons are cleared and inspected prior to being handed back in and cleaned.
Paul Biddiss advising a cast member on a film set. (Photo courtesy of Paul Biddiss)
It’s also become par for the course for war films, in particular, to put the cast through a very compressed version of boot camp, during which time they’re trained by the film’s military advisors on weapons handling.
In addition to military technical advisors, film crews typically have armorers on hand to oversee the production’s weapons and provide oversight during sequences that require the use of firearms.
According to Insider, the armorer for “Rust” was among the witnesses interviewed by police in their investigation into Thursday’s shooting on set at Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Prior to filming a scene that involves the use of blanks, the cast will typically do a dry rehearsal, during which time the film’s armorers will observe and make recommendations.
“The armorers are there to make sure that everything is safe: that people are a safe distance when firing a blank in close proximity to another person,” he said. “He’s like the range safety officer.”
“It’s a time consuming process and sometimes directors can [say] ‘oh Christ, come on, hurry up, hurry up,’ but I’ve always known armorers to turn around and go ‘I don’t really care about your time schedule, I need to make sure everything’s safe,’” he added.
Of Thursday’s shooting incident, Biddiss cautioned against speculation about what happened until the investigation is complete, saying that “If there’s lessons to be learned by everybody, then there’s lessons to be learned. I’d like to think that the whole industry, globally, will take those lessons on board.”
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David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
