Quotes of the Day:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we've been bamboozled, long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We are no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give us charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” 

- Carl Sagan.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…the man who never reads lives only one.” 

- George R.R. Martin

“What we don’t know about North Korea is so vast that it makes the Kremlin of the 1950’s look like an open book. The communist northern tier of the peninsula once known as the Hermit Kingdom has lived up to that name with a vengeance, enveloping its 22 million people in a bell jar of propaganda, thought control and mythology glorifying the Kims, often in public pageants that would dwarf a Cecil B. DeMille production.”

- Arnold Kantor, Former U.S. Undersecretary of State 

1. DOD Announces Release of 2023 Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment

2. Sequencing Burma’s Resistance: A Three-Phase Approach to Defeating the Junta

3. Countering complaints about Biden’s China strategy

4. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, November 17, 2023

5. Hurlburt Field U-28A crews awarded Distinguished Flying Cross - first ever for Draco community

6. Don't be fooled by Biden and Xi talks

7. Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine vanishes from news coverage amid raging conflict in Gaza

8. Uncivil Servants: Foreign Policy Bureaucrats Target Israel

9. American Musicians Are Doing Something Profound in Beijing Right Now

10. How Joe Biden Can Deter China

11. How Social Media Is Turning Into Old-Fashioned Broadcast Media

12. How the GOP muzzled the quiet coalition that fought foreign propaganda

13. NewsGuard: Surrogate the Feds Pay to Keep Watch on the Internet and Be a Judge of the Truth

14. Myanmar junta attacks by air, river during Arakan Army clash

15. LTTE and Hamas: Equal Champions of Asymmetric Warfare

16. 75th Ranger combat camera releases video on Afghan withdrawal

1. DOD Announces Release of 2023 Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment

The 24 page strategy can be downloaded here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/17/2003342901/-1/-1/1/2023-DEPARTMENT-OF-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-FOR-OPERATIONS-IN-THE-INFORMATION-ENVIRONMENT.PDF

Excerpt:

The purpose of the 2023 Department of Defense (DoD) Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment (SOIE) is to improve the Department’s ability to plan, resource, and apply informational power to enable integrated deterrence, campaigning, and building enduring advantages as described in the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS). The 2023 DoD SOIE provides a DoD-enterprise approach to ensure improved integration and oversight of information forces and information capabilities, operations, activities, programs, and technologies. This will allow the Department to refine its abilities to campaign in and through the information environment (IE), across all domains, in a global context, using the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) to enable achievement of enduring strategic outcomes. 

Effective application of informational power must be more broadly understood and deliberately incorporated into the full range of DoD strategies and operations, activities, and investments (OAIs) to support the advancement of national interests across the diplomatic, information, military, and economic instruments of national power in support of specific defense policy objectives. DoD must embrace a cultural shift wherein information is a foundational element of all military strategies and OAIs, and where the consistent integration of informational and physical power becomes the norm (see Figure 1). This change ensures DoD’s capability to positively affect the drivers of human and automated system behaviors, shaping operational environments, and reinforcing the strength and credibility of the United States.

Information Environment (IE): The aggregate of social, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technical, and physical factors that affect how humans and automated systems derive meaning from, act upon, and are impacted by information, including the individuals, organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or use information.

- JP 3-04, Information in Joint Operations, SEP 2022

Note that JP 3-24 is not available in the public domain. Official access to the Joint Electronic Library is required.

north Korea (and Iran) excerpts (just lifts from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2023 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, February 6, 2023)

Iran and North Korea use tactics designed to create regional instability and threaten United States’ interests, allies, and partners. Iran and North Korea have increased their informational capabilities, operations, and activities focusing heavily on the cyber domain, deception, and malign influence. Both Iran and North Korea employ civilian, military, and third-party resources in their attempts to manipulate the IE and often link their efforts to diplomatic and/or strategic actions. 

“Iran will continue to threaten U.S. interests as it tries to erode U.S. influence in the Middle East, entrench its influence and project power in neighboring states, and minimize threats to the regime. Tehran will try to leverage diplomacy, its expanding nuclear program, its conventional, proxy, and partner forces, and its military sales and acquisitions to advance its goals. The Iranian regime sees itself as locked in an existential struggle with the United States and its regional allies, while it pursues its longstanding ambitions for regional leadership.”4 

“North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is continuing efforts to enhance North Korea’s nuclear and conventional capabilities targeting the United States and its allies, which will enable periodic aggressive actions to try to reshape the regional security environment in his favor. Kim probably is attempting to secure North Korea’s position in what he perceives to be an international environment conducive to his brutal authoritarian system, as demonstrated by North Korea’s repeated public support for Beijing and Moscow’s foreign policy priorities.”5 

NORTH KOREA DECEPTION ACTIVITES: In 2012, North Korea gave indications of a missile launch, but then announced it was experiencing technical issues. Open-source reports indicated parts of the rocket were taken from the launch pad, reinforcing the understanding that the launch was canceled. The missile was then indeed launched on its originally scheduled day and time, deceiving intelligence communities, and thereby limiting intelligence collection opportunities. 

Here is what I do not read in the strategy or in these key principles - there is no outline of unity of effort and who is in charge of synchronizing information activities and themes and messages.  From these principles we learn that it is the joint force commander that is responsible for all operations in the information environment. If that is so then we need to give the Joint Force Commander greater authority and permissions to employ information across the spectrum of conflict and most importantly BEFORE conflict occurs.  If we are not going to have central control (which is likely impossible) then we need to reduce restrictions and empower commanders and leaders to execute without the heavy handed restrict approach that has persisted in the US government. REmember that as currently constructed with our authorities and permissions it is easier to get permission to put a hellfire missile on the forehead of a terrorist than it is to get permission to put an idea between his ears. I am not sure this strategy has improved upon that.

OIE must be aligned within a spectrum of other government informational capabilities, operations, and activities that span public diplomacy and public affairs to intelligence. The key planning considerations of the 2023 DoD SOIE include: 

► The Department of State is lead for public diplomacy. DoD collaborates with interagency partners and offers planning and synchronization support and other resources to enable the effective, whole-of-government integration of informational power. 

► Joint force commanders’ requirements for organic capability and capacity to conduct OIE as part of campaigning and integrated deterrence require informed resource prioritization or offsets. 

► All military operations and activities affect the information environment. The integration of informational power into strategy, strategic art, operational art, operational design, and operational planning, from the onset of planning initiation, enables effective OIE and information advantage. 

► Maintaining an updated joint lexicon for terms related to OIE is critical. 

► DoD integration of PA is a key component of OIE across the competition continuum. 

► Military Departments/Services continue to provide forces and capabilities for integration into the joint force including for the information joint function. Future joint integration models for effective, efficient, and agile information capability and capacity are continually maturing to match DoD needs. 

► Each Service has defined and organized their information forces and capabilities differently. Therefore, OIE units may be comprised of varying information forces and associated capabilities and competencies that include but are not limited to psychological operations (PSYOP) forces, Civil Affairs (CA), Public Affairs (PA), Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations (JEMSO) elements, cyberspace forces, space operations elements, with information planners skilled in Special Technical Operations (STO), DoD deception activities (DDA), and Operational Security (OPSEC). 

► Maintaining up-to-date architectures and standards in order to assess the efficacy of DoD activities in this space and to enable interoperability, efficiency, information sharing, and cybersecurity8. 

Finally do we have Psychological Operations (PSYOP) or Military Information Support Operations (MISO)? Both are mentioned in two places without reference to the other but lumped together will the other functions. Is this an editing issue? Should it be PSYOP or MISSO in both places. And oh by the way these are the only mentions of PSYOP (or MISO) in the entire document. The strategy does not recognize that it is only US Army PSYOP forces that are organized, equipped, trained, educated, and (hopefully) optimized to influence foreign target audiences. That is surely the main effort of all operations in the information environment and yet PSYOP (or MISO) have no substantive mention in the 24 pages of the strategy. I just don't think we get it. Or maybe the future implementation plaan hav more substantive discussion of the importance of PSYOP.

Each Service has defined and organized their information forces and capabilities differently. Therefore, OIE units may be comprised of varying information forces and associated capabilities and competencies that include but are not limited to psychological operations (PSYOP) forces, Civil Affairs (CA), Public Affairs (PA), Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations (JEMSO) elements, cyberspace forces, space operations elements, with information planners skilled in Special Technical Operations (STO), DoD deception activities (DDA), and Operational Security (OPSEC). 

The 2023 DoD SOIE aligns with the 2022 NDS and Joint Publication 3-04, Information in Joint Operations. The 2023 DoD SOIE focus is on increasing and balancing the institutional and operational synergy among military information support operations, civil affairs (CA), public affairs (PA), joint electromagnetic spectrum operations (JEMSO), cyberspace operations, space operations, special technical operations (STO), defense deception activities (DDA), operations security (OPSEC), new and emerging information activities, and other disciplines and the informational aspects of physical power. The 2023 DoD SOIE and the forthcoming OIE I-Plan will address opportunities to strengthen contemporary programs, support the development of new ones, and simultaneously increase DoD OIE efficiency, effectiveness, and unity of effort, while also integrating the IC much more deeply into the planning, execution, and assessment of OIE. 

 Finally we do need this cultural shift. But who is going to drive that shift? Who is responsible for driving cultural change in DOD about operations in the information environment?  

"DoD must embrace a cultural shift wherein information is a foundational element of all military strategies and OAIs, and where the consistent integration of informational and physical power becomes the norm"

DOD Announces Release of 2023 Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment

defense.gov

Today, the Department of Defense released the 2023 Department of Defense Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment (SOIE).

The 2023 DOD SOIE will improve the Department's ability to plan, resource, and apply informational power toward integrated deterrence, campaigning, and building enduring advantage as described in the 2022 National Defense Strategy. This will enable the DOD to deter challenges to U.S. vital national interests in any arena or domain.

The 2023 DOD SOIE identifies four lines of effort to enable the Department to fully integrate and modernize operations in the information environment:

• People and Organizations
• Programs
• Policies and Governance
• Partnerships

This Strategy is an important step forward in swiftly and seamlessly synchronizing and integrating our operations in the information environment to strengthen integrated deterrence, as well as gain and sustain information advantages for DoD activities and operations.

The 2023 Department of Defense Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment can be found here.

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2. Sequencing Burma’s Resistance: A Three-Phase Approach to Defeating the Junta

Fri, 11/17/2023 - 10:39am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/sequencing-burmas-resistance-three-phase-approach-defeating-junta

Sequencing Burma’s Resistance: A Three-Phase Approach to Defeating the Junta

By Dr. Lumpy Lumbaca

This paper proposes that a three-phase approach is necessary for Burma’s resistance movement to be victorious. Phase One requires all ethnic minority groups to put differences aside and mass kinetic and non-kinetic efforts to defeat the junta. Phase Two demands both substantial international support for the resistance we well as increased global pressure on the junta. Phase Three involves minority groups agreeing to a common strategic vision for post-junta Myanmar. It is critical that Phase One takes priority and reaches a certain level of success before any subsequent phases can effectively occur. Phases Two and Three may take place simultaneously. 

February 2024 will mark three years since the Burmese military launched a coup under the leadership of army chief Min Aung Hlaing to overthrow the civilian government of the country. State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) officials were arrested on questionable charges of election fraud just hours before the newly elected parliament was to convene. Almost immediately after the coup, riots and protests began on the streets. Since then, the situation in Myanmar has continued to deteriorate with open conflict happening throughout the country. It's difficult to estimate the number of casualties but it can safely be placed in the thousands, with millions displaced inside the country and into bordering states. Violence, humanitarian struggle, food insecurity, internet blackouts, and failing economic conditions are commonplace. In April of 2021, the National Unity Government (NUG) of Myanmar was formed, representing the exiled shadow government in Washington, DC. It was created by a group of elected lawmakers and members of parliament ousted in the coup and includes representatives of NLD, various ethnic minority groups, and other minor parties. Its stated goal is to restore democracy in Myanmar and defeat the junta. It has also called for the international community to impose sanctions on the junta and to provide support to the resistance.

Resistance efforts in Burma have yet to achieve a tipping point for several reasons. First, the rise of groups willing to fight the military on the battlefield is considerable but there is no united front nor coherent strategy amongst the groups themselves, nor between the groups and the NUG. The groups share countless historical grievances and divisions on top of differing political and ideological agendas. Second, the junta is a brutal and well-equipped military regime. The military has a long history of suppressing dissent and is one of the largest militaries in Southeast Asia, although its size is smaller than originally thought. Defections from the military were common early on, then went through a period of decline as commanders tightened their grip on conscripts and others to support the junta, but are now seeing an uptick once again. Overall, the Myanmar military retains a significant advantage in terms of firepower and training compared to the ethnic groups, although its reported size is now in question and likely shrinking. Third, while tactical successes inflicted on the military are now an everyday occurrence, the resistance has been unable to translate small kinetic accomplishments into strategic victory. Fourth, there is a lack of substantial international support for the movement. From the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BC, which is commonly referred to as one of the earliest successful resistance movements that attracted international support, to Ukraine in 2022, internal success in resistance has time and again attracted greater external support. While the United Nations and other international organizations have condemned the junta's atrocities, they have simultaneously stopped short of providing direct support to the resistance for fear of further destabilizing the region. Dr. Zach Abuza from the National War College wrote that despite the military’s incompetence which has led to defections, a shortage of economic resources, and territorial losses, the resistance will likely only defeat the junta if the global community gets more involved. While Abuza is correct that international support is almost assuredly needed to push the resistance over the tipping point, this paper proposes that the sequencing will first require the ethnic groups to put aside differences, mass efforts, and make gains before the international community considers providing increased levels of assistance. Unfortunately for any resistance, as time passes and new global events overtake headlines, international interest wanes. Even today, for example, President Zelensky of Ukraine has expressed worries that the recent eruption of violence between Israel and Hamas may draw attention and support away from Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion. This phenomenon is even more significant for Burma since nearly three years have passed, and the international community has largely forgotten about the struggle. And while global interest in the resistance has lessened, China, Russia, and possibly up to 60 other foreign governments and international organizations, continue to prop up the junta.

The good news for the resistance movement is that there is already more than mere interest in overthrowing the junta. The people of Myanmar have already taken up arms and demonstrated a willingness to lay down their lives to free their country from oppression. And while resistance in Burma dates back decades, one journalist observed that the current movement is quite different since it involves a “tech-savvy middle-class youth who have tasted democracy and will not rest till it is restored.”  The demand now is to collectively advance the effort with strategic intent. What does that look like? First and foremost, the various groups must decide to rally around a common goal: defeat of the junta. It must be the sole purpose of all kinetic and non-kinetic actions in Burma. “Defeat” is defined here as the military's withdrawal from government positions. While there are many ways to define defeat, this definition is the most pragmatic since it is clear and measurable. Unfortunately, today’s various resistance groups are preoccupied instead with promoting differing political and ideological agendas, as well as with what the new government of Myanmar should look like after the junta is displaced. 

For the time being, agreeing on a common vision of post-junta Burma must be put to the side. This is not to say that the matter of post-junta governance of the country should not be a concern and should not be carefully planned. The point is that post-junta governance should not be the top priority simply because it is unlikely that it will be realized if the junta is not defeated first. Moreover, the junta has been able to exploit divisions within the resistance movement. For example, the junta meets or recognizes some groups like the Arakan Army (AA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), or the Karen National Union (KNU), but not others. They have has also offered amnesty to political prisoners to win the support of the people. By focusing on the primary goal of defeating the junta, resistance groups can collaboratively overcome these obstacles.

The matter of whether armed ethnic groups should defeat the junta first or instead try to overcome differences and agree on a vision of post-junta Burma is a complex issue with no easy answer. On the one hand, defeating the junta is a necessary first step to realizing change. On the other, it is important for armed ethnic groups to agree on a strategic vision for what the country will look like after that defeat. If resistance groups are unable to eventually agree on a shared vision for the future, it is likely that Burma will descend into civil war after the junta is defeated. While the ultimate decision of whether to prioritize collectively defeating the junta or agreeing on a post-junta vision is up to the resistance groups themselves, the two different goals may not be mutually exclusive. Armed ethnic groups can work to achieve both objectives, but the author suggests they must be sequenced. Groups must first give priority to collectively fighting the junta while building and expanding the opposition coalition. This will require tactical to strategic communication for success and be executed in coordination with the NUG and the international community, when possible. 

United under the umbrella of collectively defeating Min Aung Hlaing and his forces and proxies, resistance groups must cooperate on the battlefield and seek out opportunities to build trust between themselves. Cooperating requires joint and combined unity of military effort. Traditional military hierarchy typically requires a leader on top. While everyone may have a voice, someone must be the final decision-maker. In the case of the resistance movement in Myanmar, such a command structure has proven nonviable. According to the author’s interview with Dr. Miemie Byrd, a native of Burma and retired US Army officer, accepting a single person or group as the lead for the resistance has been a challenge since the outset. If a standing, unified chain of command with one leader of ethnic groups is not possible, which seems to be the case, the author suggests that a rotational chain of command be adopted. Regardless of the size or any perceived prestige of a particular group, rotating commanders and deputy commanders on an established timeline will allow for equal representation. Unity of effort in combined military operations can enable minority groups to synergize tactical successes and create opportunities and space for operational and strategic victories.

October 27, 2023, witnessed a small but significant demonstration of what cooperating ethnic forces could achieve against the military. Now known as “Operation 1023,” the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BTA) comprised of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and the Arakan Army (AA), launched a coordinated attack to combat the junta’s armed forces and allied militias in northern Shan State, close to the Myanmar-China border. 3BTA stated that the operation was driven by a collective desire to safeguard the lives of civilians, assert the group’s right of self-defense, maintain control of its territory, and respond resolutely to ongoing artillery attacks and airstrikes from the Myanmar military. It further declared that it was “dedicated to eradicating the oppressive military dictatorship, a shared aspiration of the entire Myanmar populace.” In the aftermath of the combined attack, all 41 members of Light Infantry Battalion 143, including a deputy commander and two company commanders, agreed to lay down their arms. It is precisely this type of operation, albeit on a national level, that this author suggests should be the objective of Phase One. It is also worth highlighting that, as mentioned earlier, the Myanmar military may be smaller than previously believed. The fact that an entire battalion only consisted of 41 members is telling. Just for comparison, an American army battalion can contain between four and seven companies with a total battalion strength between 300 and 1,200 soldiers. Subsequently, an early November 2023 operation launched by at least three local resistance groups including the Kawlin People’s Defense Force seized a district capital in northern Myanmar after taking state offices and a police station in a four-day offensive. Kawlin in Sagaing region was the first administrative capital seized by resistance forces. It is operations such as these that can cause a tipping point for the resistance, but they must be coordinated and executed near simultaneously across the entire country with unity of effort.

In the initial phases of combined ethnic group operations, smaller, “softer” targets are recommended. These are referred to as confidence targets and carry a high probability of success and low risk to the force. As combined operations progress and ethnic group interoperability increases, more complex targets can be eliminated, such as critical junta logistics and transportation hubs. Some of the highest-yield junta destruction inflicted upon resistance groups has been caused by airstrikes. Resistance attacks on airfields should be considered high-risk but high-payoff targets. April 2023 witnessed such an attack on a small scale when opposition fighters launched rocket-propelled grenades against Mingaladon Air Base in the commercial city of Yangon. As proof of the fear that the attacks had on the junta, the military forced locals to leave their homes in the neighborhoods surrounding the airfield. The junta’s public excuses for the population relocations were concerns for fire hazards, land encroachment, and traffic, but the reality was that the attacks shook the military. Future resistance operations of this nature, especially if well-coordinated amongst ethnic groups against key air bases, may prove decisive.  In Magway Region in Central Burma, for example, lies Magway Air Base. It is a major air base for the Myanmar Air Force and home to a variety of military aircraft. It is simultaneously vulnerable, located in a relatively flat and open area, making it easy an easy target for direct and indirect fires. In the past this airfield and other junta facilities in the area have been targeted by the Chin National Army (CNA) and the People’s Revolution Alliance (PRA-Magway), a local anti-junta defense team. Rendering an airbase such as Magway inoperable would serve several strategic purposes. It would demonstrate combined operations proficiency, bolster recruiting, disrupt junta air and ground logistics, and have psychological impacts for both the attackers and the junta. As operations such as this succeed, the complexity and geography for follow-on missions should be expected to grow around the country.

Demonstrating acts of good faith between groups can further be accomplished by establishing regular dialogues to discuss concerns, sharing information, coordinating activities, and honoring the agreement to rotate commanders. Dialogues can be done in person, online, or through intermediaries. Groups may also execute joint military operations to attack the junta and seize territory. This will also help pool limited resources and expertise and increase chances of success. With ethnic groups combining forces, the odds of success increase. Finally, as operations develop, groups may provide more complex mutual support to each other. This may be achieved not just by sharing weapons, ammunition, and supplies, but also through combined combat maneuvers and training assistance to each other's forces.

At some point after achieving battlefield successes and massing effort, ethnic groups and the NUG may engage in dialogue to outline a post-junta vision for Myanmar. This objective cannot be allowed to hinder the first, which is unfortunately what has happened up to this point. In an ideal environment the armed ethnic groups and NUG would agree to a common vision of what the country would look like prior to joining forces on the battlefield.  Doctrine and history warn us that engaging in war without a unifying strategic vision of success, often called the “end-state” in military terminology, will be doomed to failure or protracted conflict. In the specific case of Burma today, this principle remains true, but the author suggests it should be secondary to the defeat of the junta. Should groups continue to prioritize and argue over what they believe Burma should look like after the junta is defeated, they will likely never cooperate at a level that effects said defeat. The NUG has stated it wants a Myanmar government free of the military. The minority ethnic groups, according to Byrd, want a true federal democracy and more autonomy, both of which were promised since the days when the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi were in office. The noteworthy difference is that the ethnic groups could realize democracy and autonomy under a military government. While theoretically possible, the reality is that the military has promised ethnic groups greater autonomy since independence in 1948 but to this day has not lived up to their word. As soon as natural resources we discovered in ethnic areas, or other disagreements arose, the military took or maintained control with force. The ethnic armed organizations must remember that as they consider dealing with the junta. The NUG, on the other hand, has made it clear that it will not accept any military involvement in the future government of Myanmar. This is the unfortunate reality of the situation and one of the main reasons why the NUG and ethnic groups have not been able to fully integrate their efforts. It is also precisely why the author posits that this issue of future governance must be put aside for the time being if progress is to be made. All resistance elements must focus solely on defeating the junta first. 

There is admittedly a risk in this strategy of moving forward together without a vision of the future. Should the resistance succeed, and the junta is defeated without an established agreement between ethnic groups and the NUG that outlines what post-junta Burma looks like, the country may sink into civil war given the power vacuum. The author suggests that this outcome is still better than what Myanmar faces now. Minority groups do not have the capacity nor the will to inflict concentrated, centralized terror across the entire population of 54 million the way that the junta does today. The author therefore proposes that even if the result of subverting the junta is displaced conflict between minority groups, it would be a tragedy but nevertheless an improvement over the current state of mass killings. This may be a controversial position but nevertheless one that that Dr. Byrd, a Burma security expert, agreed with in an interview with the author. 

Up to this point, this paper has focused primarily on the defeat of the junta in terms of tactical and operational successes of armed ethnic groups fighting the military in combat. In addition, there have been non-violent forms of resistance, such as civil disobedience and boycotts. These forms of resistance by women’s groups, teachers, doctors, and others have been effective in putting pressure on the junta and making it more difficult for it to rule. Reactions from the military to such civil obedience, however, have been brutal with death squads, extrajudicial killings, and bombing of civilian populations a common occurrence. Unfortunately, international sanctions and a crumbling economy have had little effect in curbing junta atrocities exacted on the population. As a result, the author suggests that defeating the junta may be the only viable path to restoring self-determination for the Burmese and ethnic minority people.

Combined and effective resistance to erode whatever popular support and influence the junta has among the people will help speed the outcome of the conflict. Backing from the population is the heart of any resistance and without it, victory is unachievable. The junta has been able to maintain its influence by suppressing the media and cracking down on communications, so even small resistance victories become critical to demonstrate to the people of Myanmar that the movement is legitimate and can succeed. Overall defeat of the junta may take months or years. Resistance movements that are fast are typically ones that involve the state quickly crushing the resistance. 

If Ukraine serves as an example for what to expect, the international community may play an increasing role as resistance successes mount in Myanmar. There are countless differences between Ukraine and Burma, the most obvious being that Burma has not been occupied by a foreign invader. Regardless, the NUG has already received varying levels of external support, and this may grow as the international community gains confidence in the possibility of a junta defeat. While it has not been officially recognized by the United Nations or most countries, The NUG has already received support from several governments, including the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. It has also been recognized by the European Parliament as the legitimate government of Myanmar. Accepting that international involvement may never involve direct ground or lethal support, nations supportive of the NUG and ethnic groups may nevertheless provide diplomatic support, financial assistance, increased sanctions on the junta, military fuel bans, weapons bans, and create an environment for groups to engage in dialogue and continue building trust.

Resistance in Burma can succeed but it will require ethnic groups to overcome political, historical, cultural, ideological, and numerous other divisions to embrace the common objective of defeating the junta. This is a tall order but a necessary one. Contrary to what some commentators have observed, the resistance is not caught in a stalemate and considerable progress has been made in 2023. The late October and early November resistance attacks in the north are noteworthy but require country-wide exploitation. A resistance coalition now focus entirely on Phase One – unanimously or near-unanimously - to defeat the junta. After a level of success is realized in Phase One, increased international support to the resistance and pressure on the junta – labeled here as Phase Two - can realistically be expected. Without gains in Phase One, however, it is unlikely for the resistance to see any substantial global support. Finally, Phase Three will involve minority group consultations to devise a strategic, diplomatic vision for what post-junta Burma will look like. Phases Two and Three may occur at the same time. The sequencing of the resistance movement is critical but if followed, Myanmar has a genuine chance of defeating Min Aung Hlaing and freeing the oppressed.   

The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the United States Government.

About the Author(s)

J. “Lumpy” Lumbaca

Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca, PhD, is a retired US Army Green Beret officer and current Department of Defense professor of irregular warfare, counterterrorism, and special operations at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (DKI APCSS). He can be found on X/Twitter @LumpyAsia.

3. Countering complaints about Biden’s China strategy

Excerpts:

Lessons for today

China is much more powerful today than it was in the 1980s and the 2000s. Nevertheless, China had profound leverage in those periods, which it employed to have its way at US expense. US strengthening and firm resolve effectively curbed Chinese assertiveness in those instances.

Against this background, the Biden administration’s impressive strengthening at home and building of power and influence abroad represents a proven approach that has strong momentum for sustained competition in the period ahead.

On the recent complaint that the United States is not sufficiently reassuring China, it is notable that US reassurance on Taiwan and other sensitive issues was infrequent in the first episode of Asia-first policy and was not much evident in the second.

Among other negative consequences, special reassurance of China risked weakening resolve in the United States and among allies and partners. The Biden government avoided such measures even when the crisis posed by China’s military actions after the Pelosi visit prompted a spike in commentators’ urging of greater accommodation of Chinese interests.

That crisis passed after a few weeks and US hardening to counter Chinese challenges intensified.

An added reason for the Biden administration to avoid special reassurance to China is the likelihood of strong criticism from Congress, threatening the bipartisan unity on China policy that has sustained a strong and unified America facing the Chinese challenges.

Past experience and current conditions argue against special reassurance of China at this time.

Countering complaints about Biden’s China strategy

Past experience and current conditions argue against special reassurance of China at this time

asiatimes.com · by Robert Sutter · November 18, 2023

One of the most important criticisms of the Biden administration’s efforts to oppose serious challenges coming from Chinese government behavior is that the strategy is vague and dangerous because it does not sufficiently reassure China.

Such criticism is unrealistic and at odds with past US success in following similar policies against Chinese challenges.

US objectives and achievements

The Biden government’s efforts resemble the Asia-first strategies – explained below – that were used successfully by the Reagan and George W Bush administrations to curb Chinese challenges and assertiveness.

Biden’s main objectives focus on strengthening America at home and establishing power and influence abroad to change circumstances influencing Chinese interests, thereby prompting Beijing to curb its challenging behavior.

Calling for a clear end-state in these efforts is unrealistic as the process is subject to unpredictable changes over a prolonged period of acute competition.

The record this time around shows growing US achievements in strengthening against China with impressive momentum for six years. The policies have sustained backing from two very different US administrations and bipartisan majorities in Congress, along with broad approval in pubic opinion and US media.

The Biden administration has successfully completed a first stage of strengthening America at home and building power and influence abroad with a growing array of allies and partners.

The passage of the $1 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021 and two massive bills in 2022 were important in competing with China, especially in high technology.

With strong congressional backing, the administration in 2022 imposed a ban on the export of US advanced computer chip technology to China. In 2023 an Executive Order with broad congressional support proposed restricting high technology investments by US companies in China.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s strong military reaction to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022 advanced US strengthening aboard.

Biden and his aides built on US-backed NATO resolve to counter Russia and its partner, China. They connected NATO with Japan and other Indo-Pacific powers like Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand.

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Led by Biden, the G-7 countries and NATO showed unprecedented concern with China’s adverse impact on Asian security, including coercive behavior over South China Sea disputes and Taiwan.

The Biden administration’s success saw the Philippines, South Korea, and Vietnam advance ties with the United States despite risks of Chinese retaliation. The absence of traditional trade agreements giving greater access to US markets was offset as the US accommodated allies and partners using multi-billion-dollar high technology and climate change expenditures and other measures under the Indo-Pacific Economic Policy Framework.

Reagan background of US Asia-first policy toward China

What came to be called the US Asia-first policy emerged after two years during the first term of the Reagan administration. It countered Chinese efforts to leverage acute concern by US leaders in the late 1970s and early 1980s in sustaining strong Chinese backing as the United States faced powerful challenges from the Soviet Union.

Beijing repeatedly threatened to downgrade the US relationship over continued US arms sales to Taiwan and a host of other issues. Also making leading US leaders nervous, Beijing began talks with Moscow to ease tensions.

In response, US policy under the leadership of Secretary of State George Shultz (1982-1989) and backed by senior Asia policymakers Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage and Gaston Sigur reversed the heretofore top US priority of advancing closer ties with China.

Eventually scholars tagged Washington’s previous policy, which had been followed since the Nixon administration, with the term “China-first policy.”

Reagan, Shultz and George Bush Sr. Photo: The Telegraph

Shultz’s predecessor Alexander Haig and Haig’s subordinates had strongly advocated the old policy of accommodating Chinese demands to ensure Beijing’s alignment with the United States against the USSR.

The new US policy leaders took advantage of a massive buildup of US military strength and stronger alignment with allies, especially Japan and NATO powers, to deal effectively with Soviet expansionism.

The new leaders downgraded China’s importance as they rebuilt strong relations with Japan and other allies and partners including Taiwan. They remained unmoved by Chinese demands. Countering longstanding Chinese pressure against the sale of fighter aircraft, they went forward with the sale and assembly in Taiwan of 130 advanced fighter aircraft.

The result was a Chinese grudging adjustment, leading to much smoother US-China relations for the rest of Reagan’s term.

George W Bush administration picks it up again

A second episode of the Asia-first policy occurred at the outset of the George W Bush administration.

Incoming administration leaders included veterans from the Reagan years like Wolfowitz and Armitage. They viewed the Clinton government as passive and intimidated by Chinese pressures that might lead to a repeat of the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1995-96.

Taking advantage of Clinton administration preoccupations, Chinese leaders advanced military assertiveness in the Taiwan Strait and stridently exerted pressure against US missile defense, NATO expansion and security ties with Japan.

Bush policymakers enhanced US military strength along with strengthening alliances in the Asia-Pacific as they scrapped Clinton’s approach. China recalculated, resulting in Beijing’s new “peaceful rise” approach, which gave top priority to reassuring the United States.

Authoritative Chinese experts told this interviewer that there was a genuine concern that to do otherwise would have risked a repeat of the US response to Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Beijing stuck to the peaceful rise approach until the end of that decade, although the unsuccessful US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq tended more and more to confirm a Chinese assessment of declining US power and resolve.

Lessons for today

China is much more powerful today than it was in the 1980s and the 2000s. Nevertheless, China had profound leverage in those periods, which it employed to have its way at US expense. US strengthening and firm resolve effectively curbed Chinese assertiveness in those instances.

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Against this background, the Biden administration’s impressive strengthening at home and building of power and influence abroad represents a proven approach that has strong momentum for sustained competition in the period ahead.

On the recent complaint that the United States is not sufficiently reassuring China, it is notable that US reassurance on Taiwan and other sensitive issues was infrequent in the first episode of Asia-first policy and was not much evident in the second.

Among other negative consequences, special reassurance of China risked weakening resolve in the United States and among allies and partners. The Biden government avoided such measures even when the crisis posed by China’s military actions after the Pelosi visit prompted a spike in commentators’ urging of greater accommodation of Chinese interests.

That crisis passed after a few weeks and US hardening to counter Chinese challenges intensified.

An added reason for the Biden administration to avoid special reassurance to China is the likelihood of strong criticism from Congress, threatening the bipartisan unity on China policy that has sustained a strong and unified America facing the Chinese challenges.

Past experience and current conditions argue against special reassurance of China at this time.

Robert Sutter (sutterr@gwu.edu), a former US national intelligence officer for East Asia and the Pacific, is a professor of practice of international affairs at George Washington University. This assessment draws from his new book: Congress and China Policy: Past Episodic, Recent Enduring Influence.

This article was originally published by Pacific Forum. It is republished with permission.

asiatimes.com · by Robert Sutter · November 18, 2023

4. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, November 17, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-november-17-2023

Key Takeaways

1. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is expanding its suppression of dissents by targeting overseas Chinese expatriate critics.
2. Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam will participate in the Aman Youyi 2023 military exercise with People’s Liberation Army forces for the first time, which buttresses CCP efforts to construct a Sino-centric regional security order.
3. US President Joe Biden and PRC President Xi Jinping announced the resumption of US-PRC military-to-military talks and cooperation to combat illegal fentanyl production after their meeting in San Francisco.
4. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and Kuomintang (KMT) overcame the biggest hurdle to forming a joint presidential ticket on November 15 and plan to announce the ticket order on November 18.
5. The PRC continued using the Israel-Hamas War to bolster its image as a fair, responsible broker in contrast to the “biased” United States while framing Israel as the driver of the war. The PRC has also expanded its diplomatic outreach in the Middle East while building its image as an important and fair broker in the region.

CHINA-TAIWAN WEEKLY UPDATE, NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Nov 17, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, November 17, 2023 

Authors: Nils Peterson, Matthew Sperzel, and Daniel Shats of the Institute for the Study of War 

Editors: Dan Blumenthal and Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute 

Data Cutoff: November 16 at Noon ET

The China–Taiwan Weekly Update focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s paths to controlling Taiwan and relevant cross–Taiwan Strait developments. 

Key Takeaways

1. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is expanding its suppression of dissents by targeting overseas Chinese expatriate critics.
2. Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam will participate in the Aman Youyi 2023 military exercise with People’s Liberation Army forces for the first time, which buttresses CCP efforts to construct a Sino-centric regional security order.
3. US President Joe Biden and PRC President Xi Jinping announced the resumption of US-PRC military-to-military talks and cooperation to combat illegal fentanyl production after their meeting in San Francisco.
4. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and Kuomintang (KMT) overcame the biggest hurdle to forming a joint presidential ticket on November 15 and plan to announce the ticket order on November 18.
5. The PRC continued using the Israel-Hamas War to bolster its image as a fair, responsible broker in contrast to the “biased” United States while framing Israel as the driver of the war. The PRC has also expanded its diplomatic outreach in the Middle East while building its image as an important and fair broker in the region.

China

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is expanding its suppression of dissents by targeting overseas Chinese expatriate critics. The party previously targeted the owner of the “Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher” X account in December. The owner is a PRC national living in Italy who published videos of dissent in the PRC amid the end of the Zero-Covid policy from November to December 2022.[1] The party has since expanded its reach to also target dissidents in the United States, such as Jiajun Qiu, by a combination of internet and potential overseas in-person harassment. The Chinese Ministry of Public Security complements these threatening messages by running secret police stations in locations such as New York City to induce fear into diaspora communities and coerce dissidents into silence.[2] These police stations serve as the enforcement mechanism to induce fear into individuals, such as Qiu. Their presence, regardless of whether undercover agents follow dissidents, such as Qiu, presents an omnipresent sense of fear and tension to these individuals to coerce them into silence.

• The local police visited the “Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher” X account owner’s parents’ house in the PRC at midnight to intimidate them into persuading their son to stop posting. The police repeated these visits at differing hours, but the X account owner continued to post despite his parents’ pleas.[3] This demonstrates that the party previously used domestic harassment to achieve political goals that involved overseas expatriate critics.
•  
• CNN reported on November 13 that Qiu faces dozens of accounts impersonating him as well as threats to his safety from unidentified sources that he claims have ties to the CCP.[4] Qiu said that “every day I live in a sense of fear,” which reflects the persistent pressure that the CCP aims to inflict on expatriate citizens.[5]

Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam will participate in the Aman Youyi 2023 military exercise with the People’s Liberation Army forces for the first time, which buttresses CCP efforts to construct a Sino-centric regional security order. [6] The CCP seeks to develop a regional security architecture where it is the primary power broker rather than the United States.[7] The trend of growing military to military relationships between the PRC and these three countries fits into this regional vision. Aman Youyi began as a bilateral Sino-Malaysian exercise in 2014, before Thailand joined in 2018.[8] The expansion of the exercise to include Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam demonstrates and messages the tangible impacts of this architecture. The 2023 iteration is also the first year that Aman Youyi will occur in Chinese waters, off the coast of Zhanjiang, Guangdong.[9] The exercise occurring in Chinese waters reinforces the image of a Sino-centric security architecture.

• Cambodia already conducts periodic military exercises with the PLA, such as Golden Dragon.[10] Laos began to do so in 2023 with the Friendship Shield exercise.[11] Vietnam also conducted a joint patrol with the People’s Republic of China Coast Guard in April. This was the first time the two countries' coast guard leaders jointly commanded a patrol.[12]

US President Joe Biden and PRC President Xi Jinping announced the resumption of US-PRC military-to-military talks and cooperation to combat illegal fentanyl production after their meeting in San Francisco. PRC President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden met in San Francisco on November 15 on the sidelines of the APEC Leaders’ Meeting to discuss a variety of issues affecting US-China relations. The two had not met since November 14, 2022, in Bali, Indonesia. A White House official readout after the meeting and PRC state media said the two had agreed to resume bilateral cooperation to combat global illicit drug manufacturing and trafficking and high-level military-to-military talks. PRC officials and state media described the meeting as “positive, comprehensive, and constructive.”[13] The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs also strongly criticized Biden’s comment after the meeting that Xi was a “dictator” but did not publicize the controversy.

• Biden and Xi announced they would resume cooperation to combat global illicit drug manufacturing and trafficking, including synthetic drugs like fentanyl, and establish a working group for ongoing communication and law enforcement coordination on counternarcotics issues.[14]
• Biden and Xi agreed to resume high-level military-to-military communications, the U.S.-China Defense Policy Coordination Talks, and the U.S.-China Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meetings, as well as telephone conversations between theater commanders.[15] The PRC severed such talks with the United States in August 2022 following then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. President Biden said before the meeting that resuming military-to-military talks was his goal.[16]
• President Biden maintained that Xi Jinping was a “dictator” in comments after his meeting with Xi. Reuters reported the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson called these comments “extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation” during her November 16 press conference.[17] The spokesperson’s comments on this topic were omitted from the MFA’s readouts of the press conference.[18]

Biden and Xi affirmed the need to address the risks of advanced AI systems and improve AI safety through US-PRC government talks and agreed to establish an inter-governmental dialogue on artificial intelligence.[19] The PLA has invested billions of dollars in AI systems for military use.[20] Differences between the United States and PRC in ethical and operational regulatory limits for AI systems remain unclear and are a potential point of friction.

• The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post exclusively reported on November 11 that “sources familiar with the matter” said the two sides would pledge a ban on artificial intelligence in autonomous weaponry and in the control and deployment of nuclear warheads.[21] No such ban was announced after the meeting as of noon Eastern Time on November 16.
•  
• The PRC also has not endorsed the US-led Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, which aims to build international consensus on regulating military AI.[22]

Biden and Xi also discussed a wide range of other issues affecting US-China relations, including Taiwan, human rights, trade, climate change, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Israel-Palestine conflict.[23] They praised agreements reached by the US and PRC climate envoys before the meeting but did not announce agreements on any of these other topics.

• U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and China Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua met in Sunnylands, California from November 4-7 and released a joint statement on November 14. They agreed to resume talks on climate cooperation, including curbing methane and plastic pollution, and to operationalize the Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s.[24]

Taiwan

The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and Kuomintang (KMT) overcame the biggest hurdle to forming a joint presidential ticket on November 15 and plan to announce the ticket order on November 18. TPP candidate Ko Wen-je and KMT candidate Hou Yu-ih agreed on a method to determine the ticket order for the joint ticket. The issue was a key sticking point that stalled progress on cooperation since the two parties entered formal negotiations on October 14.[25] The two parties agreed to use opinion polls from November 7-17 to determine the selection of a joint candidate but did not specify which polls they will consider.[26] The parties will appoint their own polling statisticians to contribute additional internal polls and determine which public polls qualify.[27] This outcome is consistent with ISW’s earlier assessments that the two parties would unite under a joint ticket before the candidate registration deadline on November 24.[28]

• The parties agreed to a point system in which a candidate will receive one “point” for each poll in which he has more support than the other candidate. This means that the candidate leading in a poll wins one point.
• The November 15 agreement provides Hou with an advantage in the selection process in polls where he is trailing behind Ko by a number of percentage points smaller than the margin of error.[29] If, for example, a poll shows Ko ahead of Hou by 2.5 percentage points but the margin of error is 3 percentage points, Hou would take the point.
• The data from several polls within the November 7-17 timeframe indicates the advantage provided to Hou could be the deciding factor in the evaluation process. A landline poll from CNEWS released on November 13 showed Ko polling at 0.2 percentage points higher than Hou.[30] This difference is less than the poll’s 2.17 percent margin of error. As a result, Hou would win the point for this poll. A poll from United Daily News released on November 14 shows support for a Ko-led ticket is one percentage point higher than support for a Hou-led ticket.[31] This difference is less than the poll’s 2.9 percent margin of error. Hou would once again win the point for this poll.

The polls that the parties decide to use could have a significant role in selecting the presidential candidate for the joint ticket. Levels of candidate support vary widely across polls according to each polling organization’s specific survey scenarios and methods. These considerations will affect the outcome of the evaluation process.

• Taiwan’s election authorities confirmed independent candidate Terry Gou’s eligibility to run on November 14.[32] However, some polls do not consider Gou’s candidacy when surveying respondents. Gou’s inclusion in the polls to determine the presidential candidate could be disproportionately helpful or harmful to Ko or Hou, depending on the poll.
• Differences in polling numbers are wider in polls that measure individual candidate support. Differences in polling numbers are narrower in polls that compare support for a Ko-led joint ticket versus a Hou-led joint ticket. Using polls that compare support between Ko-led and Hou-led joint tickets is more favorable to Hou because the difference is more likely to fall within a given poll’s margin of error.[33]
• Polling methodology has implications for the evaluation process. Generally, polls conducted by mobile phone emphasize Ko’s popularity over Hou, while polls that use a higher proportion of landline phones reflect higher levels of support for Hou.[34]

The formation of a KMT-TPP joint ticket will significantly diminish Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate and frontrunner Lai Ching-te’s chances of victory. Most polls suggest that a KMT-TPP joint ticket would outperform the DPP in the elections, regardless of the presidential candidate on the joint ticket.[35] A Ko-led ticket will likely pose an especially difficult challenge for the DPP, which shares a similar voter demographic to the TPP.[36]

The KMT and TPP would need to form a coalition government in the case their joint ticket wins in the presidential election. Such a coalition is unprecedented in Taiwan’s history. The agreement that the two parties reached on November 15 arranged for a joint TPP-KMT committee to manage the presidential ticket and selection of legislative candidates for the coalition. The agreement also stipulates that positions in policymaking institutions will be allocated based on proportional representation in the legislature, except for matters of defense, diplomacy, and cross-strait relations.[37] The KMT currently holds 38 seats in the Legislative Yuan and the TPP holds 5 seats. Reconciliation over policy differences will be an obstacle for the two parties in a coalition government because they hold disparate views on cross-strait policy and engagement with the Chinese Communist Party.[38]

Israel-Hamas War

The PRC continued using the Israel-Hamas War to bolster its image as a fair, responsible broker in contrast to the “biased” United States while framing Israel as the driver of the war. The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and state propaganda outlets have repeatedly condemned violence between Palestine and Israel since October 7 but never condemned Hamas. They continued to call for an immediate ceasefire and promoted a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.[39] PRC MFA officials maintained their strong condemnation of Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip and called them beyond the scope of self-defense.[40] The MFA strongly condemned the violence around the al-Shifa Hospital and the bombing of the UN compound in Gaza.[41] State media outlet Global Times strongly implied Israel was responsible for bombing the al-Shifa hospital and criticized the United States and its allies for their “perfunctory” response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.[42] The PRC’s targeted criticism of Israel and call for an immediate ceasefire align with the views of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Arab states.[43]

• The PRC’s call for a two-state solution aligns with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states but differs from Iran. Iran rejects a two-state solution.[44] 

PRC Deputy Representative to the UN Geng Shuang condemned comments by an Israeli official about using nuclear weapons in Gaza.[45] Israel Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said on November 5 that Israel could drop a nuclear bomb in the Gaza Strip.[46] Geng criticized the comment as “extremely irresponsible and disturbing.” Geng’s statement did not mention that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disavowed Eliyahu’s comments and indefinitely suspended him from his post.[47] Geng further urged Israel to accede to the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons as a non-nuclear weapon state and to place all its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards.[48]

The PRC has also expanded its diplomatic outreach in the Middle East while building its image as an important and fair broker in the region. PRC officials have highlighted the PRC’s diplomatic efforts to meet with Middle Eastern states and other relevant actors to bring an end to the violence.[49] These actions also serve to garner support as a leader in the international system, especially with the Global South. The PRC also backed the first United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution about the Gaza Strip.

• The MFA said on November 8 that Foreign Minister Wang Yi had met with officials from 18 countries and international organizations to discuss the Gaza war.[50] Wang had meetings or calls with only two high-ranking Middle Eastern officials in the two months prior to October 7.[51]
• MFA Department of West Asian and North African Affairs Director-General Wang Di met with Iran’s Foreign Ministry Deputy for Political Affairs Ali Bagheri and other Iranian officials on November 11. The event was the first bilateral meeting between PRC and Iranian officials since the war in Gaza began. Iranian officials said they hoped to work with the PRC to de-escalate the war.[52]
• The UN Security Council passed its first resolution on the Gaza war on November 15. The resolution called for “urgent and extended” humanitarian pauses and corridors in the Gaza Strip to allow the provision of essential goods and services. It also called for Hamas and other groups to release all hostages. The PRC voted for the resolution and promoted its implementation in official statements and state media. The PRC is the rotating president of the UN Security Council in November.[53] The United States, UK, and Russia abstained from the vote.[54]

The MFA did not confirm claims by senior Hamas official Ali Baraka on November 2 that a Hamas delegation will soon visit Beijing but said the PRC “maintained close communication with relevant parties.” In the same statement, Baraka also claimed that “China and Russia met with the leaders of Hamas,” possibly referring to Russian and Chinese Middle East envoys visiting Doha, Qatar, on October 20.[55] ISW cannot confirm a direct meeting between PRC and Hamas officials. Doha hosts a Hamas political office and has been the site of ongoing Qatar-mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas since the war in Gaza began, however.[56]

5. Hurlburt Field U-28A crews awarded Distinguished Flying Cross - first ever for Draco community

Hooah and BZ. We never hear about the exploits of U-28 crews (for obvious reasons).

Hurlburt Field U-28A crews awarded Distinguished Flying Cross - first ever for Draco community

hurlburt.af.mil · November 17, 2023

• Published
• By U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Natalie Fiorilli
• 1st Special Operations Wing Public Affairs

HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. --

The sounds of gunfire woke U.S. Air Force Captain James Ryan on an early August morning in 2021.

“There’s a problem, we have to go now,” his aircraft commander, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Scott Hardman, told Ryan from their deployed location in Afghanistan.

The city of Kabul, Afghanistan would soon fall to Taliban Forces and a group of U-28A Draco units from Hurlburt Field, Florida, had been tasked with supporting the ongoing evacuation of roughly 2,000 Americans.

Two years later, on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, those members received the nation’s highest honor for aerial achievement – the Distinguished Flying Cross.

The presentation of the Distinguished Flying Cross represented a milestone for the U-28A community as it was the first-ever awarded to a Draco aircrew.

Col. Allison Black, 1st Special Operations Wing commander, presided over the ceremony held inside the Freedom Hangar at Hurlburt Field.

“They were ready to execute, they were ready to save lives and they were ready to answer the nation’s call,” Black said. “For its entire existence, the U-28 community has lived in the shadows of recognition, but today there are no shadows.”

Team No. 1: Draco 42 Dayline

The three teams began their two-day mission on the morning of August 15, 2021. As one crew would land, another would take off to provide constant intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance support over the next 24 hours.

While the Draco 42 dayline crew prepared to depart for a sortie supporting the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, a firefight involving Afghan security forces broke out roughly 100 yards from their aircraft.

Knowing the urgency of their mission, U.S. Air Force Capt. Max Arnold said their team decided to proceed, taking off from their deployed location toward the U.S. Embassy.

“The sounds of the gunfire and the situation at the embassy only made us more eager to get after it and make sure we did our jobs,” explained Arnold, a 319th Special Operations Squadron U-28A Draco pilot. “All of our training and instinct kicked in and we almost did our jobs subconsciously at that point.”

Moments into their flight, opposing forces fired a rocket toward the U-28A. Realizing they had no time to spare, the pilots performed a quick descent as the rocket passed just above the aircraft.

“That encounter only bolstered the tenacity that we had to try and get after the mission and counter these threats that we faced and we knew our partner forces were facing,” Arnold added. “It really set the tone for the rest of the flight.”

The Draco 42 team continued its mission, providing overhead support of the ongoing embassy evacuation. Their initial flight ended with the crew landing in a recovery airfield, swarmed by crowds of unidentified and armed personnel.

Later that night, Draco 42 would be tasked with an additional sortie, providing support for the ongoing evacuation efforts at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Team No. 2: Draco 43 Nightline

Standing by to relieve their teammates, the Draco 43 nightline team took off into the night sky on Aug. 15, 2021.

Traveling toward the airport, enemy anti-aircraft artillery targeted their U-28A - forcing the pilots to perform low-level defensive maneuvers to evade the surrounding threats.

Flying above Hamid Karzai International Airport, Draco 43, served as an “eye in the sky,” searching the area below for potential security breaches.

As their mission progressed, they could see large numbers of Afghans surrounding the perimeter of the airfield. Eventually, the crowd went on to surge the perimeter.

“There were just packs of people pushing onto the airfield,” said U.S. Air Force Capt. Nicklaus Lutz, a 319th SOS combat systems officer. “There was a lot of movement and a lot of craziness going on.”

Lutz added that to make matters even worse, his crew realized that members inside the air traffic control tower below had fled.

“That’s not a conversation you expect to have after takeoff, especially after you’ve already been shot at,” he said. “One situation we thought about was that when we landed we were going to be on our own.”

Without a functional control tower on the ground, the crews also helped to de-conflict inbound air traffic, which consisted mostly of C-17 Globemaster III aircraft assisting with the evacuation efforts.

As chaos ensued, Lutz recalled one moment of hope for his team.

“A group of U.S. Marines walked out on the airfield with their arms spread out,” Lutz described. “They cleared the airfield and there was a moment where we realized that we should be able to land and that we would be fine.”

Roughly an hour later, the Draco 43 nightline landed.

Walking away from the aircraft that night, the reality of what occurred sank in with their team, Lutz said.

“It dawned on us that we almost died,” Lutz explained. “It was a dire situation. There were so many variables. Getting shot at on takeoff, losing your landing base, not knowing who is hostile or who is a refugee, and then the possibility of getting shot at again. I was lucky to be on the crew I was on.”

Team No. 3: Draco 43 Dayline

As the sun began to peak over the horizon, the Draco 43 dayline crew climbed to a cruising altitude, heading directly for Hamid Karzai International Airport on the morning of Aug. 16, 2021.

Ryan, a 319th SOS combat systems officer, scanned their surroundings through a window toward the back of the U-28A.

“I remember hearing both pilots talking about avoiding the threats around us,” Ryan described. “We didn’t have time to really think about the situation. We had a job to do and we knew we needed to be there to support the guys on the ground.”

Upon arrival, the team found the airfield below littered with abandoned burning vehicles, debris and other signs of the destruction that occurred in the hours prior.

Draco 43 worked to maintain oversight, providing security information for the ground forces below. By sunrise, more and more people began crowding the airfield’s perimeter once again.

“People were piling up around the airfield, trying to flee,” Ryan explained. “They eventually surged past the breaking point, and all of a sudden there were thousands of people rushing the airfield.”

In an effort to manage the crowds, Draco 43 assisted with de-escalation and deterrence efforts until they reached critically-low fuel levels. However, the crew noted that landing would be a challenge in and of itself.

“There were just too many people on the airfield,” Ryan said. “We were lining up on the taxiway, because there was just nowhere else to land.”

Just before touching down, a small opening on the runway widened and Draco 43 pivoted to avoid landing near the largest parts of the crowd. The crew then quickly powered down their aircraft and barricaded their doors.

Shortly after, ground forces arrived to escort the crew through the chaotic scene on the airfield.

After nearly 24 hours of continuous flying, the mission of Draco 42 and 43 was complete.

“Being a real teammate”

It wasn’t until after they returned home that Ryan said his unit completely reflected on the severity of the events.

“It was really when I got back and got to listen to our tapes from the flights that some of the more serious moments really resonated with me,” he said, adding that the crews sounded more calm than he would have expected.

“In those moments, you could tell that training kicked in,” Ryan added. “We were well prepared and we worked well together. Every part of the U-28A mission set is a crew effort, and I’m incredibly fortunate and proud to have been surrounded by such outstanding aviators.”

For Lutz, the award reflects the crew’s ability to be tested beyond their limits.

“It means being a real teammate,” Lutz explained. “We all understood that what we were doing was dangerous and we made the decision to stay. I’m proud that I have a tangible moment where I was tested and I was able to be a part of something where my teammates knew that they could rely on me and that I could rely on them.”

hurlburt.af.mil · November 17, 2023

6. Don't be fooled by Biden and Xi talks

Excerpts:

The point of diplomacy

This isn’t to say that diplomacy and face-to-face talks are pointless. They do, in fact, serve a number of interests.

For both men involved, there is a domestic upside. For Biden, playing nice with China projects the image of a statesman – especially at a time when, due to US positions on Ukraine and the Middle East, he is facing accusations from the political left of being a “warmonger.”

And encouraging Beijing to tread softly during the US election year may blunt a potential line of attack from Republicans that the administration’s China policy is not working.

Meanwhile, Xi is able to showcase his own diplomatic skills and present China as an alternative superpower to the US and to potentially cleave the Western business community – and perhaps even major European nations – from what he would see as the US anti-China coalition.

Moreover, summits like the one in San Francisco signal that both the US and China are jointly committed to at least keep talking, helping ensure that a rocky relationship doesn’t descend into anything more belligerent – even if that doesn’t make them any friendlier.

Don't be fooled by Biden and Xi talks

China and the US are enduring rivals, not engaged partners, and that won’t change any time soon

asiatimes.com · by Michael Beckley · November 18, 2023

But beyond the optics of the first meeting in over a year between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies, not an awful lot had changed: There was nothing to suggest a “reset” in US and China relations that in recent years have been rooted in suspicion and competition.

President Joe Biden hinted as much just hours after the face-to-face talks, confirming that he still considered his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, a “dictator.” Beijing hit back, with foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning telling reporters Biden’s remark was “extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation.”

As a scholar of US-China relations, I believe the relationship between the two countries can be best described as an “enduring rivalry” – a term used by political scientists to denote two powers that have singled each other out for intense security competition. Examples from history include India and Pakistan, France and England, and the West and the Soviet Union.

Over the past two centuries, such rivals have accounted for only 1% of the world’s international relationships but 80% of its wars. History suggests these rivalries last around 40 years and end only when one side loses the ability to compete – or when the two sides ally against a common enemy.

Neither scenario looks likely any time soon in regards to China and the US.

How enduring rivalries end

China “is a communist country … based on a form of government totally different than ours,” Biden said after his meeting with Xi.

That comment gets to the heart of why diplomacy alone cannot reset the US-China relationship. Washington and Beijing are not rivals due to any misunderstanding that can be sorted out through talks alone.

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping greet each other as they hold their first direct meeting in a year. Picture: YouTube Screengrab

Rather, they are rivals because of the opposite reason: They understand each other only too well and have come to the conclusion that their respective world outlooks cannot be reconciled.

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The same is true for many of the issues that divide the two countries – they are framed as binary win-lose scenarios. Taiwan can be governed from Taipei or Beijing, but not both. Similarly, the East China and South China seas can be international waters or Chinese territory; Russia can be crippled or supported.

For the United States, its Asian alliances are a force for stability; for China, they’re hostile encirclement. And both countries are right in their respective assessments.

Diplomacy alone is insufficient to resolve a rivalry. At best, it can help manage it.

When the US calls, who picks up?

Part of this management of the US-China rivalry involves finding areas of agreement that can be committed to.

And on November 15, Biden and Xi announced deals over curbing China’s production of the deadly drug fentanyl and the restoring of high-level, military-to-military dialogue between the two countries.

But the fentanyl announcement is very similar to the one Xi gave to then-President Donald Trump in 2019. The US administration later accused China of reneging on the agreement.

Similarly, committing to restarting high-level dialogue is one thing; following up on it is another. History is dotted with occasions when having an open line between Beijing and Washington hasn’t meant a whole lot in times of crisis.

In 2001, when a US surveillance aircraft collided with a Chinese jet over Hainan Island, Beijing didn’t pick up the phone. Likewise, during the Tiananmen Square massacre, then-President George H W Bush urgently tried to call his counterpart Deng Xiaoping but was unable to get through.

Moreover, focusing on what was agreed to in talks also highlights what wasn’t – and is unlikely to ever be – agreed to without a substantial shift in power that forces one side to concede to the other.

For example, China wants the US to stop selling arms to Taiwan. But Washington has no intention of doing this, as it knows that this will make the disputed island more vulnerable to Beijing. Washington would like China to end its military displays of strength over the Taiwan Strait; Beijing knows doing so risks seeing Taiwan drift toward independence.

American policymakers have long said what they want is China to “change” – by which it means to liberalize its system of governance. But the Chinese Communist Party knows that doing so means self-liquidation – every communist regime that has allowed space for alternative political parties has unraveled.

Which is why American attempts to engage China are often met with suspicion in China. As former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin commented, engagement and containment policies have the same aim: to end China’s socialist system.

For similar reasons, Xi has shunned attempts by the US to bring China further into the rules-based international order. The Chinese leader saw what happened when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to integrate the Soviet Union into the Western order in the late 1980s – it only hastened the demise of the socialist entity.

Instead, Xi calls for a massive military buildup, the reassertion of Chinese Communist Party control and an economic policy based on self-reliance.

Actions speak louder …

The encouraging words and limited agreements hammered out in the latest meeting between Xi and Biden should also not distract from the actions that continue to push the US and China further apart.

China’s show of force in the Taiwan Strait has been sustained for three years now and shows no sign of abating. Meanwhile, Beijing’s navy continues to harass other nations in the South China Sea.

Similarly, Biden has continued the US path toward military alliances aimed at countering China’s threat. It recently entered a trilateral agreement between the US, Japan and South Korea. And that came two years after the establishment of AUKUS, a security partnership between the US, Australia and the UK that has similar aims.

The AUKUS nuclear submarine deal is making ripples across the Indo-Pacific. Image: US Embassy in China

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Meanwhile, the US administration will continue to tighten the screws on China’s economy through investment restrictions. Biden is well aware that easy-flowing money from Wall Street is helping China weather choppier economic waters of late and is keen to turn off the tap.

The point of diplomacy

This isn’t to say that diplomacy and face-to-face talks are pointless. They do, in fact, serve a number of interests.

For both men involved, there is a domestic upside. For Biden, playing nice with China projects the image of a statesman – especially at a time when, due to US positions on Ukraine and the Middle East, he is facing accusations from the political left of being a “warmonger.”

And encouraging Beijing to tread softly during the US election year may blunt a potential line of attack from Republicans that the administration’s China policy is not working.

Meanwhile, Xi is able to showcase his own diplomatic skills and present China as an alternative superpower to the US and to potentially cleave the Western business community – and perhaps even major European nations – from what he would see as the US anti-China coalition.

Moreover, summits like the one in San Francisco signal that both the US and China are jointly committed to at least keep talking, helping ensure that a rocky relationship doesn’t descend into anything more belligerent – even if that doesn’t make them any friendlier.

Michael Beckley is Associate Professor of Political Science, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

asiatimes.com · by Michael Beckley · November 18, 2023

7. Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine vanishes from news coverage amid raging conflict in Gaza

Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine vanishes from news coverage amid raging conflict in Gaza

cnn.com · by Oliver Darcy · November 17, 2023

DONETSK OBLAST, UKRAINE - NOVEMBER 06: Ukrainian soldier is seen in his combat position at a trench on the frontline as the Russia-Ukraine war continues in Niu York, Ukraine on November 06, 2023. (Photo by Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

CNN —

When was the last time you saw a live television news report from Ukraine? It’s likely been a while.

The raging war in the Middle East has put the prolonged war in Eastern Europe largely on the back burner, in terms of media coverage, with Vladimir Putin’s campaign of brutality against Ukraine receiving much less attention from the press than it did prior to the Israel-Hamas conflict breaking out.

Closed-captioning data from the Internet Television Archive, which was analyzed by the GDELT Project, showed that on cable news, coverage of the Ukraine war plummeted dramatically after Hamas’ shocking Oct. 7 terror attack. In the days before the Israel-Hamas war, the battle in Ukraine amounted to about eight percent of CNN’s television coverage. After the attacks, CNN —the cable news network that provided the most Ukraine coverage — fell to under one percent.

As the chaos to elect a new House speaker ensnared Washington, there was a notable uptick in mentions of Ukraine on cable news networks — but the focus of the coverage mostly pertained to U.S. funding of the embattled nation, not the actual state of play in the war.

Data provided by ComScore, an Internet analytics firm, showed a similar trend play out online. The data indicated that there has been a significant drop in discussion on social media about the Ukraine war since the onset of the Israel-Hamas conflict, though it also indicated that in general, there had been a lull in attention to Putin’s invasion in recent months.

The noted drop in Ukraine war coverage from the press, given the fresh violence in the Middle East, is not completely surprising. The horrific acts of violence Hamas carried out in Israel has shocked the world, arresting the attention of those who normally pay little regard to global affairs. U.S. outlets have also been juggling several other important stories in the last several weeks, including disarray in Congress, Donald Trump’s legal issues and a monstrous mass shooting in Maine.

But, at the same time, the drop in attention paid to Ukraine has been nothing short of a boon for Putin. The authoritarian Russian leader, who has committed unspeakable atrocities as his forces invade a sovereign nation, has been able to wage his war with far less scrutiny on his appalling actions.

Paul Kolbe, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in Harvard Kennedy School, who served for 25 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, told me that Putin must be “delighted” that the war between Israel and Hamas “is diverting US attention” as Russia “continues to strike Ukrainian cities and civilian targets.”

“Even as Western press coverage of war in Ukraine wanes, Russia fills the vacuum in reporting with its own campaign of distributing lies and disinformation,” Kolbe said. “Putin’s strategy is to wear down Western patience and support, play upon U.S. domestic divisions, and to prey upon those in NATO which harbor latent Russian sympathies.”

In addition to the kinetic military action, Putin is also waging an information war, using all the tools at his disposal to lie about and sanitize the acts of savagery being committed against a civilian population under his orders. As Kolbe told me, “Putin’s media campaign to paint Ukraine as divided, corrupt, and a puppet of the U.S. and NATO, is a central part” of his strategy.

The lack of press attention makes that all the more easier.

cnn.com · by Oliver Darcy · November 17, 2023

8. Uncivil Servants: Foreign Policy Bureaucrats Target Israel

Can we ever have a non-partisan civil service? Have we ever had one? Of course not. There is always partisanship.

I listened to a journalist recently say from her experience overseas that the US is the envy of many countries because of our professional civil service. While there are always partisan views among the civil service for the most part civil servants continue to serve by doing their jobs. Or do they take bureaucratic actions (or non-action) to block foreign policies they do not agree with?

But what would gutting the civil service every 4 to 8 years do as a president tries to install only loyalists throughout the civil service. It is the job of the political appointees in the agencies to moderate the partisan views and keep the civil service train from running on time. I heard another pundit put the blame on political appointees for not leading and neglecting the civil service and then blaming civil servants for the friction. Good political appointee leadership could overcome the partisan tendencies. Or could it?

Uncivil Servants: Foreign Policy Bureaucrats Target Israel

Government employees take up petitions—sometimes anonymously—against the Jewish state.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/uncivil-servants-foreign-policy-bureaucrats-target-israel-war-gaza-3bb7ceff?utm_medium=social

By Elliott Abrams

Nov. 17, 2023 5:43 pm ET

Secretary of State Antony Blinken holds a press conference in Tokyo, Nov. 8. PHOTO: JONATHAN ERNST/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Biden administration faces a wave of internal dissent against its support of Israel. On Nov. 14, more than 500 staff members and political appointees from about 40 government agencies sent a joint letter to President Biden criticizing his administration’s policy on the Gaza war, according to the New York Times.

It was the latest of several protest letters. The Times reported that the administration has received similar messages, including three internal memos addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a letter “signed” by more than 1,000 employees of the Agency for International Development. The State Department requires that employees sign their names to dissent cables, but the other two letters have no signatures. The Times reported that these government employees wrote anonymously out of “concern for our personal safety and risk of potentially losing our jobs.”

The internal memos, two of which were sent during the first week of the war, called on Mr. Biden to press for an immediate cease-fire. One State Department memo, Axios reported, accused the president of “spreading misinformation.” Signed by 100 State Department and Agency for International Development employees, the memo said members of the White House and National Security Council showed a “clear disregard for the lives of Palestinians.”

Mr. Blinken responded to government employees’ protests in an email, according to Reuters. Mr. Blinken said the administration was organizing forums and “candid conversations” to hear employees’ feedback and ideas. “We’re listening,” he wrote. “What you share is informing our policy and our messages.” It would seem that the fear of losing one’s government job, or of angry mobs threatening the safety of the “signers,” was overblown.

The proper reaction would have been to squash the mutiny. Those who called for a cease-fire in week one were essentially saying Israel had no duty or right to protect itself after Hamas’s brutal attack on its civilians. Mr. Blinken should have told these government workers that he and the president reject their views as entirely wrong and contrary to U.S. national interests. Instead of encouraging the dissenters to offer more “feedback and ideas,” he should be wondering if he can count on such people to offer any sound advice on foreign policy—or even to implement a policy that he sets.

This wave of protests is anomalous. Between 2011 and 2021, according to the United Nations, more than 300,000 Syrian civilians died due to the conflict there. The highest death counts were between 2012 and 2015. Frederic Hof, the Obama administration’s special adviser on Syria policy, wrote in 2017 that “during 70 months of chaos in Syria, the United States had protected not one Syrian civilian from the homicidal rampages of Bashar al-Assad and his remorseless regime.” Yet in 2016 only 50 State Department officers protested Barack Obama’s Syria policy in a non-anonymous signed letter.

Mr. Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 abandoned thousands of Afghans who risked their lives for the U.S. and created tens of thousands of refugees. Internal protests were minimal then too; a classified “dissent channel message” opposing the Biden policy was signed—again, with real names—by only 23 State Department employees working at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Why the widespread protest only when Israel is involved? The most likely explanation is that many government employees hold the foreign-policy view once articulated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, who dismissed Israel as “the millstone around our necks.” Those who share Dulles’s perspective see Israel as a burden and an obstacle rather than as the key ally in the Middle East and the only country in the region with a reliably pro-American population.

It’s impossible to escape the thought that anti-Semitism also plays a role. How is it possible that we saw only tiny protests against the mass murder of Syrians or the abandonment of Afghans, but more than 1,000 federal employees are now protesting Israel’s right to defend itself? Mr. Blinken ought to recognize that prejudice against Jews may be a problem in his own building.

Instead of coddling the staff with listening sessions, he should have reminded them who sets the policy—and even challenged those protesting to re-examine their hostile attitudes toward the Jewish state.

The problem of having staff members who think they know best and should determine policy is an old one. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in his history of the Kennedy administration that career military, intelligence and diplomatic officials often come to see American foreign policy as “their institutional, if not their personal, property, to be solicitously protected against interference from the White House and other misguided amateurs.” In his memoirs, Harry S. Truman noted that too many bureaucrats “look upon the elected officials as just temporary occupants.”

Mr. Blinken should have had the rebellious staffers read Truman’s words: “The civil servant, the general or admiral, the foreign service officer has no authority to make policy. They act only as servants of the government, and therefore they must remain in line with the government policy that is established by those who have been chosen by the people to set that policy.”

Civil servants need to remember their place in the American system of government.

Mr. Abrams, a former assistant secretary of state, is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

9. American Musicians Are Doing Something Profound in Beijing Right Now

American Musicians Are Doing Something Profound in Beijing Right Now

Opinion | Cultural Diplomacy May Seem Pointless. That Won’t Stop Me.

The New York Times · by Matías Tarnopolsky · November 16, 2023

Guest Essay

Cultural Diplomacy May Seem Pointless. That Won’t Stop Me.

Nov. 16, 2023, 7:11 p.m. ET

Credit...Illustration by Vanessa Saba. Photograph by The New York Public Library

By

Mr. Tarnopolsky is the president and chief executive of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Kimmel Center.

While presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping were drawing the world’s attention for their talks in San Francisco this week, a different kind of summitry is happening in China. There, representatives from their two countries are speaking through violins, cellos, oboes and clarinets.

I write from Beijing, almost exactly 50 years after the Philadelphia Orchestra arrived as the first American orchestra to perform in China in a key moment of Ping-Pong diplomacy. I traveled there to be with a group of its musicians for two weeks of concerts mingling American and Chinese musicians, master classes, chamber music performances and panel discussions.

It may seem naïve to argue that a symphony orchestra can help solve the world’s problems. But a lifetime in music has convinced me that it’s not only worth the effort to try to do our part, it is our responsibility. Certainly the American government supports the idea: Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently announced the Global Music Diplomacy Initiative, reinforcing the idea that cultural diplomacy is a powerful force for good in the world. Our visit here is one of the initiative’s first projects.

Since the Philadelphia Orchestra’s historic 1973 visit to China, we have returned 12 times. That decision is not a signal of approval of China’s policies. Rather, our journeys to China signify a belief in the possibility of change through dialogue. They make real the principle that music communicates shared ideas and feelings that words alone cannot convey.

The Asia Society honored the orchestra last month as an Asia Game Changer in recognition of its perseverance, for returning to China as often as it has to continue the musical conversation even at the most difficult periods in the relationship between our two countries. Diplomacy is a slow process. Like the centuries-old and ever-evolving art form of classical music, it teaches patience.

At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, where the presidential encounter took place, U.S. officials were certainly projecting American values. How does an orchestra project them?

Happily, we don’t have to worry about bans on high-tech trade, investment restrictions or threats to access to critical raw materials. But an orchestra is a microcosm of society and of democratic ideals, where our aims can be achieved only through collaboration, listening and dialogue. Our mere presence in countries with autocratic regimes can seem miraculous.

The concert hall provides a democratizing space. The lights dim, the conductor gives the downbeat, and the orchestra starts to play. From that moment, we are all equals immersed in the same experience, with focused, willing cooperation and commitment to the best possible outcome.

If there is a single essential point about an orchestra, it is that to achieve any kind of impact and to convey the passion and beauty of the music, every musician and every audience member must be connected. When one musician gives a little more, another must give a little less, a constant shaping of music in real time — a shared intuitive conversation. All must be absolutely in tune with one another.

Can music pull the world back from the brink? In early 2008, I was working on the New York Philharmonic’s concert in Pyongyang, a project conceived to enhance the atmosphere of the six-party talks on the denuclearization of North Korea. At the time, observers and even many of the musicians themselves questioned whether any potential good would come of the effort. But for those present — a delegation of some 400 Americans including the orchestra, supporters and the largest contingent of foreign journalists to visit North Korea since Madeleine Albright’s 2000 visit as secretary of state — it turned out to be a profoundly inspiring journey.

What happened in Pyongyang, at minimum, was a group of Americans and North Koreans, citizens of sworn enemies, sat in a room together for a couple of hours and listened to Dvorak, Gershwin and, as an encore, the Korean folk song “Arirang,” which is part of the soul of every Korean on either side of the Demilitarized Zone and caused many members of the audience to tear up.

But it was so much more than that. The emotion of that shared occasion in the concert hall is forever etched in my mind, and, I am sure, in the memory of all who were there. Diplomatically, politically and socially, we were far apart, but because of the music, we were humanized for each other, even for a short time. That is real progress.

As we were leaving Pyongyang after two days of music and discussion, a senior orchestra administrator reminisced about the Philharmonic’s 1959 journey to the Soviet Union with Leonard Bernstein, noting that after that tour, it was still another 30 years before the Berlin Wall came down. I think the end of the North Korea story is not yet written.

Born in Buenos Aires, I was raised in London and embarked on a career in arts administration. My first job in the United States came in 1999, in the artistic department of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, then led by the conductor Daniel Barenboim. I witnessed the founding of his most consequential creation, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Mr. Barenboim formed the orchestra with his longtime friend and intellectual partner, the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, who died in 2003. I arranged the first U.S. visit of the orchestra, which brings young Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab musicians together to make music.

The Divan orchestra’s associated conservatory, the Barenboim-Said Academy, with music students from these same backgrounds, now has a permanent home in Berlin. These students keep making music together during one of the most desperate times for the Middle East. There, beyond the notes, technique and theory, the students learn musical citizenship, forming a new generation of ambassadors for positive change in the world.

When I was in China in 2019, I had the opportunity to speak with a senior Chinese official, a member of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, who conveyed in proud terms the success of the growing presence of Western classical music in China. His intent was to demonstrate China’s increasing global influence.

It was a party line talking point, and I was expected to simply praise their success. (I remained silent.) However, as we walked away from the formal meeting, he took me to one side, gently, and congratulated the Philadelphia Orchestra for its quiet commitment to China over the past 50 years.

The bluster was gone. He reminisced about how the orchestra’s 1973 visit had been the subject of joyful dinner table conversation throughout his childhood. He said it had been moving to share the experience with his children.

“Keep doing what you are doing,” he said. “It’s beautiful, and I feel like it’s the only thing that’s working.”

Matías Tarnopolsky is the president and chief executive of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Kimmel Center.

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

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The New York Times · by Matías Tarnopolsky · November 16, 2023

10. How Joe Biden Can Deter China

Conclusion:

The Pacific is a higher-risk theater than the public appreciates, but the U.S. can still prevent a war over Taiwan. Mr. Biden doesn’t want to be remembered as the President who squandered America’s precious time to prepare.

How Joe Biden Can Deter China

Here are some ways Congress can prevent a war in the Pacific over Taiwan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-taiwan-pacific-war-deterrence-joe-biden-u-s-military-congress-fe0af8b1?st=9odq6piolycxk0e&utm

By The Editorial Board

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Nov. 17, 2023 6:41 pm ET

Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, San Francisco, Nov. 17. PHOTO: CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS

Whatever else came out of this week’s meeting between Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping, there was no sign that China intends to cease its military aggression in the western Pacific. That raises the stakes for Mr. Biden to offer at long last a plan to deter an attack on Taiwan.

Mr. Biden has asked Congress for more than $105 billion in emergency funding for Ukraine and Israel, but Pacific deterrence is an afterthought. He is seeking a mere $2 billion in military sales for partners across the region. There’s also some money for American submarines and U.S. financing alternatives for developing countries pondering a loan from China.

Mr. Biden low-balled Taiwan and friends to try to conciliate Mr. Xi ahead of handshakes in San Francisco. But Beijing is responding to U.S. restraint by harassing American aircraft and unleashing water cannons on allied vessels from the Philippines. Mr. Biden’s diplomacy would be stronger if backed up by hard power. Here’s what a Pacific deterrent package might look like:

• More authority for Taiwan to buy weapons and draw down U.S. stocks. The U.S. has propped up Ukraine’s fight against Russia by pouring weapons over friendly borders for nearly two years. America will have no such strategic luxury in Taiwan. The window to arm the island is before sparks go up in the Strait. The $2 billion for regional friends isn’t sufficient for a fight that could happen at any time, and a serious request would add at least $2 billion more—directly for Taiwan.

These sales can be complemented by money for direct drawdowns from U.S. inventory. Eric Sayers and Dustin Walker of the American Enterprise Institute note that $650 million of such drawdown authority for Taiwan expired in fiscal 2023. Congress can approve more and include funding to replenish U.S. military stocks with newer weapons.

• A road map to speed up weapons deliveries.As a letter from Congress recently noted, the U.S. announced the sale of 400 Harpoon antiship missiles to Taiwan in October 2020. But the Navy didn’t enter a contract until April 2023. Press reports say deliveries may not be complete until 2029. One helpful item at the margin could be codifying that Taiwan can cut in line ahead of other partners for weapons deliveries.

• Buying bombs and missiles for U.S. forces in bulk. The first obligation of a Commander in Chief is to make sure U.S. forces are never unprepared for a fight. The U.S. doesn’t have enough long-range fires to prevail decisively in the Pacific, which weakens America’s ability to deter the Chinese Communist Party.

The U.S. still produces excellent weapons—such as the long-range antiship missile, which can skim the sea to elude missile defenses. The job now is to make thousands. Another crucial munition is Patriot interceptors, as air defense is now in high demand from the Middle East to Europe. Larger buys of everything from Stingers to the Army tactical missile system are insurance against another surprise like Ukraine and Israel.

• A plan to get the U.S. Navy to 66 attack submarines. Mr. Biden proposed $3.4 billion for the U.S. submarine industrial base, and the Australians are chipping in as part of the Aukus agreement. But the Biden Administration touts Aukus as a great success even as it’s at risk of collapsing absent a plan for the U.S. submarine fleet.

The U.S. Navy has only 49 attack hulls even as it says it needs 66, and the 30-year shipbuilding plan doesn’t expect the fleet to reach even 54 hulls until 2036. What’s missing as much as money is a Commander in Chief who tells voters why these stealthy subs are vital to deterring war with China.

Some in the Administration will argue that stiffening the U.S. Pacific deterrent is provocative. But the empirical record is the opposite: Beijing exploits U.S. timidity, whether by militarizing islands in the South China Sea or routinely crossing the median line in the Taiwan Strait to menace Taipei.

The Pacific is a higher-risk theater than the public appreciates, but the U.S. can still prevent a war over Taiwan. Mr. Biden doesn’t want to be remembered as the President who squandered America’s precious time to prepare.

WSJ Opinion: Nikki Haley Stands Out on Foreign Policy

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Appeared in the November 18, 2023, print edition as 'How Joe Biden Can Deter China'.

11. How Social Media Is Turning Into Old-Fashioned Broadcast Media

​Operations in the information environment - strategic competition in the gray zone on the battlefield of human terrain. Politics is war by other means to our adversaries.

A handful of accounts create most of the content that we see. Everyone else?

How Social Media Is Turning Into Old-Fashioned Broadcast Media

TikTok, YouTube and the rest of social media is looking a lot like mass media with content created with high production values

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/a-handful-of-accounts-create-most-of-what-we-see-on-social-media-bdafa8f3?utm

By Christopher Mims

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Nov. 17, 2023 9:28 pm ET

Social media is turning into old-fashioned network television.

A handful of accounts create most of the content that we see. Everyone else? They play the role of the audience, which is there to mostly amplify and applaud. The personal tidbits that people used to share on social media have been relegated to private group chats and their equivalent.

The transformation of social media into mass media is largely because the rise of TikTok has demonstrated to every social-media company on the planet that people still really like things that can re-create the experience of TV. Advertisers also like things that function like TV, of course—after all, people are never more suggestible than when lulled into a sort of anesthetized mindlessness.

In this future, people who are good at making content with high production values will thrive, as audiences and tech company algorithms gravitate toward more professional content.

Meta’s products are a case study in this shift. On the one hand, Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said that in terms of news on Instagram, his focus is to “empower creators.” (He has also indicated that one of his priorities for Meta’s new Twitter-like social Threads is creators, and in a 2022 TED talk, highlighted their ascension.) Meanwhile, his boss Mark Zuckerberg has said that WhatsApp, the messaging app owned by Meta, is the “next chapter” for his company, and since 2019 he has emphasized that, in terms of people connecting through its services, the company will focus on private messaging. Taken together, it’s clear Meta is following the broader industry trend of separating social into private channels, and turning what were once social apps into entertainment feeds.On these formerly-social platforms, whether content is coming from creators with better equipment and more skills, or Hollywood studios testing the waters, hardly matters. In the end, it will all look remarkably similar to the consumer. It will look, says Daniel Faltesek, a media researcher at Oregon State University, like flipping through cable channels does, only our thumb on the remote has been replaced by our thumb on the screen of our phone, swiping from one TikTok, YouTube Short, or Instagram Reel to the next.

A telling indicator is the rise of a new kind of entertainment professional—the “creator.”

A creator is anyone who records or makes something that can go viral on the internet, says Ursus Magana, chief executive of the creator talent management agency 25/7. His agency gets involved with creators and musicians at the earliest stages of their careers, helping them plan content, update their style, understand what the algorithms of different platforms demand, and connecting them with potentially lucrative brand deals. The company, which was founded in 2021, represents 34 creators and 18 “artists” – that is, musicians.

Six months after signing with a talent agency for creators, Anthony Jabro—Sherman the Verman on YouTube—says, “everything took off, and I went from making no money to making five figures a month.” His videos now garner views in the millions, and between ad revenue from YouTube and paid placement for things like Gillette’s Manscaping line of personal grooming products, he’s now making six figures a year.

A screenshot of Anthony Jabro’s Sherman The Verman Youtube page. PHOTO: SHERMANTHEVERMAN/YOUTUBE

While YouTube and TikTok have always been about video, just about every other social-media platform that wants to keep people engaged is emphasizing it more than ever, so that’s what creators have to make, says Magana.

Posting videos to TikTok consistently is essential to getting your songs noticed, says Cade Clair, an emerging musician managed by 25/7, who promotes his work on the platform for up to two weeks before finally announcing on Instagram that it’s being released.

And then there are the actual television shows, and even movies, migrating to social platforms.

On TikTok, there are accounts that shamelessly pirate clips from TV. A good example is all of the clips from the show “House” on TikTok, a show that made its debut before many members of Gen Z were even born. Paramount recently posted the entirety of the movie “Mean Girls” to TikTok for 24 hours as a promotion for the forthcoming reboot of the 2004 film.

TikTok is now more popular than 

Netflix among consumers younger than 35, according to an October 2022 report from technology-research firm Omdia. Even more telling: In first place is YouTube, the original online TV analog.Where attention flows, money—and content—must also. In 2023 brands will spend an estimated $6 billion on marketing through influencers—a subspecies of creators—according to Emarketer. Globally, the total addressable market for this kind of marketing is currently $250 billion, according to Goldman Sachs.

Promo art for “Cobell Energy” PHOTO: YELLOW DOT STUDIOS

Then there is a new generation of shows that are going straight to TikTok, bypassing even streaming services. “Cobell Energy” is a new TV series that is being serialized on TikTok, Instagram and other social platforms. The production company behind Cobell, Yellow Dot Studios, is no mere influencer hype house or fly-by-night creator collective. Yellow Dot was founded by Adam McKay, who wrote and directed the 2021 film “Don’t Look Up,” which was released in theaters and streamed on Netflix, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio.

In the wake of the success of YouTube and TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn are all pushing more and more content made by professionals into our feeds, says Simon Owens, a trade journalist who studies the intersection of traditional media and the growing creator economy.

In order to quantify how TikTok has mastered the art of discerning our interests and feeding us the most compelling possible content, Faltesek, of Oregon State University, conducted a two-year project to study exactly what kind of content TikTok pushes. With a team of students, he created dozens of fresh TikTok user accounts that didn’t like or interact with content in any way—they just let the algorithm play one video after another.

The idea was to see what the base TikTok algorithm tries to hook people with, he says, and the result was transcripts of more than 28 hours of TikTok videos, which his team then classified into different types of content. 

At the end of this exhaustive process of gathering data on TikTok’s algorithm, the conclusion became obvious, says Faltesek. “TikTok is television. It flips channels like TV, it provides a flow like TV.”

By this logic, Instagram’s move to copy TikTok, which is in turn encroaching on the turf of YouTube by allowing longer videos, and the increasing dominance of professional content on all three, means they’re all turning into TV. Even Threads, the new offering from Facebook parent company Meta, is fast becoming a broadcast medium for news, as Twitter was before it.

In every case, the structure of social networks has become one in which a handful of accounts create most of the content that others see, and the role of everyone else on the network is, primarily, to amplify and consume that content, says David Rand, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management.

Where is all this headed? Some, like Magana, believe we’ll eventually see an ever more complete blending of what were once “social” platforms with the traditional television networks and even film studios.  

Others, like Staci Roberts-Steele, managing director of Yellow Dot, are finding success on platforms, but aren’t convinced they’ll eat the rest of the entertainment industry. “It’s hard to say this kind of short-form video will be the only kind of TV,” she reflects. “A long time ago, the internet became the new thing, but we still have the other forms on television, and scripted streaming shows. It’s almost like this is just another avenue for that—of watching shows and movies on your phone.”

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Write to Christopher Mims at christopher.mims@wsj.com

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the November 18, 2023, print edition as 'Social Media Is Warping Into Old-Fashioned Mass Media'.

12. How the GOP muzzled the quiet coalition that fought foreign propaganda

​Who is in charge of defense in the information environment?

How the GOP muzzled the quiet coalition that fought foreign propaganda

The FBI put a pause on briefings with tech companies due to an ongoing lawsuit, adding to a broader breakdown in a system meant to guard against influence operations and to ensure election integrity.

NBC News · by Kevin Collier and Ken Dilanian

A once-robust alliance of federal agencies, tech companies, election officials and researchers that worked together to thwart foreign propaganda and disinformation has fragmented after years of sustained Republican attacks.

The GOP offensive started during the 2020 election as public critiques and has since escalated into lawsuits, governmental inquiries and public relations campaigns that have succeeded in stopping almost all coordination between the government and social media platforms.

The most recent setback came when the FBI put an indefinite hold on most briefings to social media companies about Russian, Iranian and Chinese influence campaigns. Employees at two U.S. tech companies who used to receive regular briefings from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force told NBC News that it has been months since the bureau reached out.

In a testimony last week to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray signaled a significant pullback in communications with tech companies and tied the move to rulings by a conservative federal judge and appeals court that said some government agencies and officials should be restricted from communicating and meeting with social media companies to moderate content. The case is now on hold pending Supreme Court review.

“We’re having some interaction with social media companies,” Wray said. “But all of those interactions have changed fundamentally in the wake of the court rulings.”

Wray didn’t elaborate, but sources familiar with the matter told NBC News that all the FBI’s interactions with tech platforms now have to be pre-approved and supervised by Justice Department lawyers.

The FBI told the House Judiciary Committee that, since the court rulings, the bureau had discovered foreign influence campaigns on social media platforms but in some cases did not inform the companies about them because they were hamstrung by the new legal oversight, according to a congressional official.

“This is the worst possible outcome in terms of the injunction,” said one U.S. official familiar with the matter. “The symbiotic relationship between the government and the social media companies has definitely been fractured.”

The FBI declined to comment.

More than a dozen current and former government and tech employees who have been involved in fighting online manipulation campaigns and election falsehoods since 2020 echoed those concerns. Most agreed to speak only on the condition that they not be named, all citing the current climate of harassment against people who work in election and information integrity.

A common theme among those interviewed: The chilling effect that Republican attacks had on the sharing of information about possible interference, which could make it easier for foreign adversaries to manipulate U.S. public opinion and harder for 2024 voters to sort out what’s real from what’s fake.

Beyond the FBI briefings, other coordination efforts have folded after facing pressure from conservatives. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which oversees federal election cybersecurity and has become a favorite target of Republicans, has halted its outreach to Silicon Valley, and the Department of Homeland Security has shuttered a board designed to coordinate its anti-disinformation programs.

“Some of these efforts really are designed to isolate people and make them feel like they can’t communicate with CISA, like they can’t communicate with their peers in other states,” a person who works in state election administration said.

“People feel that things are really, really fraught, and common sense does not rule today,” the person added.

Some politicians are sounding the alarm. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said efforts to stop foreign manipulation of U.S. politics are well within the government’s remit.

“I understand we don’t want to interdict constitutionally protected speech, but what is constitutionally protected speech?” he said. “Certainly foreign agents don’t have constitutionally protected speech because they’re not subject to our Constitution. I presume bots don’t have constitutionally protected speech. American citizens do.”

Microsoft recently said it expects Russia, Iran and China to engage in sophisticated influence operations ahead of the 2024 election.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee who had vocally pushed for election security coordination after 2016, told NBC News he had “grave concerns” about the setbacks of the system that defends against social media and election manipulation.

“We are seeing a potential scenario where all the major improvements in identifying, threat-sharing, and public exposure of foreign malign influence activity targeting U.S. elections have been systematically undermined,” Warner said.

Before 2016, there was little political will in the U.S. for the government or for tech companies to share intelligence with each other or protect voters from foreign influence campaigns. That year, Russia launched a multifaceted interference campaign that included the Kremlin-tied Internet Research Agency reaching tens of millions of Facebook and Twitter users. Hackers working for Russian intelligence stole and leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, probed an election machine company and stole voter information from the state of Illinois.

In the aftermath, President Barack Obama’s outgoing secretary for the Department of Homeland Security declared elections to be critical infrastructure, a move that drew immediate criticism from conservative election officials. Congress voted for the Department of Homeland Security to spin out its cyber and infrastructure protection efforts into CISA.

Meanwhile, the FBI created the Foreign Influence Task Force, meant to act as an intermediary that ferried information between the U.S. intelligence community and tech companies. The National Security Agency declined to comment for this story, but its director said in 2022 that the agency had fed intelligence about foreign propagandists to the task force to share with tech platforms.

CISA started holding its own meetings with tech companies, briefing them on election administration nuances and helping set up a “switchboard” system to flag election falsehoods online. The new system allowed a local election official to, for example, communicate to Facebook that a local group was directing people to the wrong polling site, in violation of the company’s policies.

These partnerships between government, corporations and legal and academic researchers were praised after 2020 as a crucial part of ensuring a secure election.

After the election, a victory for the Democrats and Joe Biden, President Donald Trump and many other conservatives refused to accept the loss and lashed out at political enemies. They targeted a number of election integrity operations, including the channels that shared information on disinformation, often accusing them of censoring conservative voices.

Many of them focused on Twitter and Facebook’s decision to temporarily limit the reach of a New York Post story about Biden’s son, Hunter. Published a few weeks before the election, to the tech platforms it had echoes of when Russia leaked Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016. While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg said FBI statements about certain threats fit the pattern of the Hunter Biden story, both later said the agency didn’t specifically say the Biden emails were a foreign intelligence campaign. Digital forensics experts have verified that at least some of those emails were authentic but much remains unknown about the origins of the files.

Since then, Republicans have sent many election integrity efforts into retreat.

Last year, the attorneys general offices of Missouri and Louisiana filed a joint lawsuit against the Biden administration, alleging that federal government outreach to tech companies about content on their platform — including law enforcement tips about election integrity and Covid-19 — constituted intimidation and a violation of First Amendment protections to free speech.

The case is still winding its way through the courts. Last month, the Supreme Court blocked a lower court’s ruling in favor of the conservative states’ case while it hears an appeal.

Other efforts have been stopped before they could get started. In March 2022, the Department of Homeland Security created a board to help coordinate its own response to viral falsehoods, prompting outcry from conservatives who claimed the government was policing speech. Nina Jankowicz, a researcher who studies disinformation and technology, was brought in to run the board and quickly became the target of a debilitating harassment campaign. Homeland Security shut down the board five months later.

Jankowicz said that the decision likely sent a message to federal workers that they might face retaliation for speaking out in a way that upset vocal critics.

“If you’re the one who’s raising the alarm about foreign interference or about something that is disenfranchising people and letting the platforms know, but it might cost you your job or your safety and security, you think twice about doing that,” Jankowicz said.

Biden’s head of CISA, Jen Easterly, a decorated intelligence official who had no prior experience in a public government role, started her tenure with optimism that her agency played a major role confronting disinformation.

“One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” she said at a talk hosted by Wired magazine in her first year on the job.

But Easterly, who frequently characterizes herself as nonpartisan, soon withdrew the agency from roles that most actively fought disinformation. Aside from maintaining a webpage that corrects common misconceptions about how elections work, CISA now focuses more on goals like protecting poll workers’ physical safety, connecting election officials with cybersecurity resources, and pushing software companies to do a better job building secure programs.

CISA stopped briefing platforms about how U.S. elections are administered after the 2022 midterms, a current CISA employee said, though they did not attribute the move to Republican pressure. Two people familiar with the agency said Easterly had pulled back from outreach to social media companies after being surprised by the severity of conservatives’ attacks

Republican demonization of the agency hasn’t abated. After the GOP took the House of Representatives in 2022, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has spent much of this term focused on grievances from the 2020 election. It subpoenaed Easterly earlier this year, then issued a report that claimed “CISA metastasized into the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media.”

In a podcast interview on “On with Kara Swisher” in June, Easterly explained that CISA will also no longer help flag state and local election officials’ concerns to social media companies.

“I need to ensure we are able to do our core mission, to reduce risk to critical infrastructure. And at this point in time, I do not think the risk of us dealing with social media platforms is worth any benefit, quite frankly,” Easterly said, though she did not specify the source of the risk.

“I made a decision not to do that. So we are not doing that. Local election officials can give that to the platforms themselves, and I think that’s the right place for us to be,” she said.

Through an agency spokesperson, Easterly declined to comment. In an emailed statement, she said: “Election security is one of CISA’s top priorities, and along with our interagency partners, we’re fully focused on supporting state and local election officials as they prepare for the 2024 election cycle. As we have since 2017, CISA will continue to lean forward and do our part to ensure the American people can have confidence in the security and resilience of our most sacred democratic process.”

Meanwhile, some platforms have cut back on trust and safety teams. Tech companies are still sharing their findings with each other, a Meta spokesperson told NBC News. The exception is X, whose owner Elon Musk released a giant cache of emails and company documents related to its previous trust and safety efforts and also made huge cuts to its trust and safety and election integrity teams. During the Israel-Hamas war, X has left viral terror videos from Hamas go viral and linger on the site for days.

One current X employee, who wasn’t authorized to speak for the company, said they had no remaining faith that the company could handle propaganda campaigns.

“The company no longer has the team, the tools, or the capabilities to identify and mitigate these attacks,” they said.

NBC News · by Kevin Collier and Ken Dilanian

13. NewsGuard: Surrogate the Feds Pay to Keep Watch on the Internet and Be a Judge of the Truth

Long read.

Excerpt:

For example, as is public, our work for the Pentagon’s Cyber Command is focused on the identification and analysis of information operations targeting the U.S. and its allies conducted by hostile governments, including Russia and China. Our analysts alert officials in the U.S. and in other democracies, including Ukraine, about new false narratives targeting America and its allies, and we provide an understanding of how this disinformation spreads online. We are proud of our work countering Russian and Chinese disinformation on behalf of Western democracies.

NewsGuard: Surrogate the Feds Pay to Keep Watch on the Internet and Be a Judge of the Truth

By Lee Fang, RealClearInvestigations, leefang.com

November 15, 2023

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/15/newsguard_surrogate_the_feds_pay_to_keep_watch_on_the_internet_and_be_a_judge_of_the_truth_992214.html?utm

In May 2021, L. Gordon Crovitz, a media executive turned start-up investor, pitched Twitter executives on a powerful censorship tool. 

A self-described “vaccine against misinformation.”

NewsGuard Technologies

In an exchange that came to light in the “Twitter Files” revelations about media censorship, Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, touted his product, NewsGuard, as a “Vaccine Against Misinformation.” His written pitch highlighted a “separate product” – beyond an extension already on the Microsoft Edge browser – “for internal use by content-moderation teams.” Crovitz promised an out-of-the-box tool that would use artificial intelligence powered by NewsGuard algorithms to rapidly screen content based on hashtags and search terms the company associated with dangerous content.

Verbatim: NewsGuard's Inquisitiveness, and RCI's Reply

L. Gordon Crovitz, ex-Wall Street Journal publisher and co-CEO of NewsGuard.

Rex Hammock/Wikimedia

How would the company determine the truth? For issues such as COVID-19, NewsGuard would steer readers to official government sources only, like the federal Centers for Disease Control. Other content-moderation allies, Crovitz’s pitch noted, include “intelligence and national security officials,” “reputation management providers,” and “government agencies,” which contract with the firm to identify misinformation trends. Instead of only fact-checking individual forms of incorrect information, NewsGuard, in its proposal, touted the ability to rate the "overall reliability of websites" and “’prebunk’ COVID-19 misinformation from hundreds of popular websites.”

NewsGuard’s ultimately unsuccessful pitch sheds light on one aspect of a growing effort by governments around the world to police speech ranging from genuine disinformation to dissent from officially sanctioned narratives. In the United States, as the Twitter Files revealed, the effort often takes the form of direct government appeals to social media platforms and news outlets. More commonly the government works with through seemingly benign non-governmental organizations – such as the Stanford Internet Observatory – to quell speech it disapproves of. 

Steven Brill, journalist and co-CEO of NewsGuard.

Steve Fosdal/Wikimedia

Or it pays to coerce speech through government contracts with outfits such as NewsGuard, a for-profit company of especially wide influence. Founded in 2018 by Crovitz and his co-CEO Steven Brill, a lawyer, journalist and entrepreneur, NewsGuard seeks to monetize the work of reshaping the Internet. The potential market for such speech policing, NewsGuard’s pitch to Twitter noted, was $1.74 billion, an industry it hoped to capture.

Instead of merely suggesting rebuttals to untrustworthy information, as many other existing anti-misinformation groups provide, NewsGuard has built a business model out of broad labels that classify entire news sites as safe or untrustworthy, using an individual grading system producing what it calls “nutrition labels.” The ratings – which appear next to a website’s name on the Microsoft Edge browser and other systems that deploy the plug-in – use a scale of zero to 100 based on what NewsGuard calls “nine apolitical criteria,” including “gathers and presents information responsibly” (worth 18 points), “avoids deceptive headlines” (10 points), and “does not repeatedly publish false or egregiously misleading content” (22 points), etc. 

Numerically precise, but subjective: NewsGuard's "nutrition labels." 

NewsGuard

Critics note that such ratings are entirely subjective – the New York Times, for example, which repeatedly carried false and partisan information from anonymous sources during the Russiagate hoax, gets a 100% rating. RealClearInvestigations, which took heat in 2019 for unmasking the “whistleblower” of the first Trump impeachment (while many outlets including the Times still have not done so), has an 80% rating. (Verbatim: the NewsGuard-RCI exchange over the whistleblower.) Independent news outlets with an anti-establishment bent receive particularly low ratings from NewsGuard, such as the libertarian news site Antiwar.com, with a 49.5% rating, and conservative site The Federalist, with a 12.5% rating.

As it stakes a claim to being the Internet’s arbiter of trust, the company’s site says it has conducted reviews of some 95% of news sources across the English, French, German, and Italian web. It has also published reports about disinformation involving China and the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars. The model has received glowing profiles in CNN and the New York Times, among other outlets, as a viable solution for fighting fake news. 

Above, NewsGuard product offerings: The BrandGuard tool provides an “exclusion list” to deter advertisers from buying space on sites NewsGuard deems problematic. 

NewsGuard

NewsGuard is pushing to apply its browser screening process into libraries, academic centers, news aggregation portals, and internet service providers. Its reach, however, is far greater because of other products it aims to sell to social media and other content moderation firms and advertisers. “An advertiser’s worst nightmare is having an ad placement damage even one customer’s trust in a brand,” said Crovitz in a press release touting NewsGuard’s “BrandGuard” service for advertisers. "We're asking them to pay a fraction of what they pay their P.R. people and their lobbyists to talk about the problem,” Crovitz told reporters.

NewsGuard’s largest investor and the biggest conglomerate of marketing agencies in the world. Its clients include Pfizer, whose COVID vaccine has been questioned by some news outlets that have received low scores. 

Publicis Groupe

NewsGuard’s BrandGuard tool provides an “exclusion list” that deters advertisers from buying space on sites NewsGuard deems problematic. But that warning service creates inherent conflicts of interest with NewsGuard’s financial model: The buyers of the service can be problematic entities too, with an interest in protecting and buffing reputations.

A case in point: Publicis Groupe, NewsGuard’s largest investor and the biggest conglomerate of marketing agencies in the world, which has integrated NewsGuard’s technology into its fleet of subsidiaries that place online advertising. The question of conflicts arises because Publicis represents a range of corporate and government clients, including Pfizer – whose COVID vaccine has been questioned by some news outlets that have received low scores. Other investors include Bruce Mehlman, a D.C. lobbyist with a lengthy list of clients, including United Airlines and ByteDance, the parent company of much-criticized Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok. 

NewsGuard has faced mounting criticism that rather than serving as a neutral public service against online propaganda, it instead acts as an opaque proxy for its government and corporate clients to stifle views that simply run counter to their own interests. 

The criticism finds support in internal documents, such as the NewsGuard proposal to Twitter, which this reporter obtained during Twitter Files reporting last year, as well as in government records and discussions with independent media sites targeted by the startup. 

And although its pitch to Twitter (now Elon Musk’s X) "never went anywhere," according to Matt Skibinski, the general manager of NewsGuard, his company remains "happy to license our data to Twitter or any platform that might benefit." Coincidentally (or not), X comes in for criticism in NewsGuard’s latest “misinformation monitor” headlined: “Blue-Checked, ‘Verified’ Users on X Produce 74 Percent of the Platform’s Most Viral False or Unsubstantiated Claims Relating to the Israel-Hamas War.”

Meanwhile, one of the sites targeted by NewsGuard earlier, Consortium News, has filed a lawsuit against it claiming “First Amendment violations and defamation.”

Beginning last year, users scanning the headlines on certain browsers that include NewsGuard were warned against visiting Consortium News. A scarlet-red NewsGuard warning pop-up said, “Proceed With Caution” and claimed that the investigative news site “has published false claims about the Ukraine-Russia war.” The warning also notifies a network of advertisers, news aggregation portals, and social media platforms that Consortium News cannot be trusted.

But Consortium News, founded by late Pulitzer Prize finalist and Polk Award winner Robert Parry and known for its strident criticism of U.S. foreign policy, is far from a fake news publisher. And NewsGuard, the entity attempting to suppress it, Consortium claims, is hardly a disinterested fact-checker because of federal influence over it. 

NewsGuard attached the label after pressing Consortium for retractions or corrections to six articles published on the site. Those news articles dealt with widely reported claims about neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian military and U.S. influence over the country – issues substantiated by other credible media outlets. After Consortium editors refused to remove the reporting and offered a detailed rebuttal, the entire site received a misinformation label, encompassing over 20,000 articles and videos published by the outlet since it was founded in 1995.

Above, NewsGuard's warning label as found on Consortium News. It's suing NewsGuard and letting readers know.

NewsGuard via Consortium News

The left-wing news site believes the label was part of a pay-for-censorship scheme. It notes that Consortium News was targeted after NewsGuard received a $749,387 Defense Department contract in 2021 to identify “false narratives” relating to the war between Ukraine and Russia, as well as other forms of foreign influence.

Joe Lauria, Consortium News editor: "Every news article we publish is defamed with that label of misinformation." 

X

Bruce Afran, an attorney for Consortium News, disagrees. “What’s really happening here is that NewsGuard is trying to target those who take a different view from the government line,” said Afran, He filed an amended complaint last month claiming that NewsGuard not only defamed his client, but also acts as a front for the military to suppress critical reporting. 

"There's a great danger in being maligned this way," Afran continued. "The government cannot evade the Constitution by hiring a private party." 

Joe Lauria, the editor in chief of Consortium News, observed that in previous years, anonymous social media accounts had also targeted his site, falsely claiming a connection to the Russian government in a bid to discredit his outlet. 

“NewsGuard has got to be the worst,” said Lauria. “They're labeling us in a way that stays with us. Every news article we publish is defamed with that label of misinformation." 

Both Lauria and Afran said that they worry that NewsGuard is continuing to collaborate with the government or with intelligence services. In previous years, NewsGuard had worked with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. It’s not clear to what extent NewsGuard is still working with the Pentagon. But earlier this year, Crovitz wrote an email to journalist Matt Taibbi, defending its work with the government, describing it in the present tense, suggesting that it is ongoing:

For example, as is public, our work for the Pentagon’s Cyber Command is focused on the identification and analysis of information operations targeting the U.S. and its allies conducted by hostile governments, including Russia and China. Our analysts alert officials in the U.S. and in other democracies, including Ukraine, about new false narratives targeting America and its allies, and we provide an understanding of how this disinformation spreads online. We are proud of our work countering Russian and Chinese disinformation on behalf of Western democracies.

The company has not yet responded to the Consortium News lawsuit, filed in the New York federal court. In May of this year, the Air Force Research Lab responded to a records request from journalist Erin Marie Miller about the NewsGuard contract. The contents of the work proposal were entirely redacted.  

Asked about the company’s continued work with the intelligence sector, Skibinski replied, “We license our data about false claims made by state media sources and state-sponsored disinformation efforts from China, Russia and Iran to the defense and intelligence sector, as we describe on our website.”

The Daily Sceptic

Other websites that have sought to challenge their NewsGuard rating say it has shown little interest in a back-and-forth exchange regarding unsettled matters. 

Toby Young, Daily Sceptic: Hoped to improve his site's rating, to no avail.

X

Take the case of The Daily Sceptic, a small publication founded and edited by conservative English commentator Toby Young. As a forum for journalists and academics to challenge a variety of strongly held public-policy orthodoxies, even those on COVID-19 vaccines and climate change, The Daily Sceptic is a genuine dissenter. 

Last year, Young reached out to NewsGuard, hoping to improve his site’s 74.5 rating. 

In a series of emails from 2022 and 2023 that were later forwarded to RealClearInvestigations, NewsGuard responded to Young by listing articles that it claimed represent forms of misinformation, such as reports that Pfizer’s vaccine carried potential side effects. The site, notably, has been a strident critic of COVID-19 policies, such as coercive mandates. 

Anicka Slachta, an analyst with NewsGuard, highlighted articles that questioned the efficacy of the vaccines and lockdowns. The Daily Sceptic, for example, reported a piece casting COVID-19 lockdowns as "unnecessary, ineffective and harmful,” citing academic literature from Johns Hopkins University.

Anicka Slachta, NewsGuard analyst: Favored one side on COVID lockdowns, an issue still under debate.

Muck Rack

Rather than refute this claim, Slachta simply offered an opposing view from another academic, who criticized the arguments put forth by lockdown critics. And the Hopkins study, Slachta noted, was not peer-reviewed. The topic is still, of course, under serious debate. Sweden rejected the draconian lockdowns on schools and businesses implemented by most countries in North American and Europe, yet had one of the lowest "all-cause excess mortality" rates in either region. 

Young and others said that the issue highlighted by NewsGuard is not an instance of misinformation, but rather an ongoing debate, with scientists and public health experts continuing to explore the moral, economic, and health-related questions raised by such policies. In its response to NewsGuard’s questions about the lockdown piece, Young further added that his site made no claim that the Hopkins paper was peer-reviewed and added that its findings had been backed up by a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

Yet to NewsGuard, Young’s site evidently posed a misinformation danger by simply reporting on the subject and refusing to back down. Emails between NewsGuard and the Daily Sceptic show Young patiently responding to the company’s questions; he also added postscripts to the articles flagged by NewsGuard with a link to the fact checks of them and rebuttals of those fact checks. Young also took the extra step of adding updates to other articles challenged by fact-checking non-governmental organizations. "I have also added postscripts to other articles not flagged by you but which have been fact checked by other organisations, such as Full Fact and Reuters,” Young wrote to Slachta.

Matt Skibinski, NewsGuard: "We simply call them for comment and ask questions about their editorial practices. This is known as journalism.”

LinkedIn

That wasn’t enough. After a series of back-and-forth emails, NewsGuard said it would be satisfied only with a retraction of the articles, many of which, like the lockdown piece, contained no falsehoods. After the interaction, NewsGuard lowered the Daily Sceptic’s rating to 37.5/100.

“I’m afraid you left me no choice but to conclude that NewsGuard is a partisan site that is trying to demonetise news publishing sites whose politics it disapproves of under the guise of supposedly protecting potential advertisers from being associated with ‘mis-’ and ‘disinformation,’” wrote Young in response. “Why bother to keep up the pretence of fair-mindedness John? Just half my rating again, which you’re going to do whatever I say.”

NewsGuard's Skibinski, in a response to a query about the Daily Sceptic's downgrade, denied that his company makes any "demands" of publishers. "We simply call them for comment and ask questions about their editorial practices," he wrote. “This is known as journalism.”

The experience mirrored that of Consortium. Afran, the attorney for the site, noted that NewsGuard uses an arbitrary process to punish opponents, citing the recent study from the company on misinformation on the Israel-Hamas war. "They cherry-picked 250 posts among tweets they knew were incorrect, and they attempt to create the impression that all of X is unreliable," the lawyer noted. "And so what they're doing, and this is picked up by mainstream media, that's actually causing X, formerly Twitter, to now lose ad revenue, based literally on 250 posts out of the billions of posts on Twitter."

The push to demonize and delist the Daily Sceptic, a journalist critic of pharmaceutical products and policies, reflects an inherent conflict with the biggest backer of NewsGuard: Publicis Groupe. 

Publicis client Pfizer awarded Publicis a major deal to help manage its global media and advertising operations, a small reflection of which is the $2.3 billion the pharmaceutical giant spent on advertising last year. 

The NewsGuard-Publicis relationship extends to the Paris-based marketing conglomerate’s full client list, including LVHM, PepsiCo, Glaxo Smith Kline, Burger King, ConAgra, Kellogg Company, General Mills, and McDonalds. "NewsGuard will be able to publish and license ‘white lists’ of news sites our clients can use to support legitimate publishers while still protecting their brand reputations,” said Maurice Lévy, chairman of the Publicis Groupe, upon its launch of NewsGuard. 

Put another way, when corporate watchdogs like the Daily Sceptic or Consortium News are penalized by NewsGuard, the ranking system amounts to a blacklist to guide advertisers where not to spend their money. 

"NewsGuard is clearly in the business of censoring the truth," noted Dr. Joseph Mercola, a gadfly voice whose website was ranked as misinformation by NewsGuard after it published reports about COVID-19's potential origin from a lab in Wuhan, China. 

"Seeing how Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world and funded the creation of NewsGuard, it's not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard's ratings of drug industry competitors,” Mercola added, in a statement online.

Lee Fang is an independent journalist based in San Francisco. He writes an investigative newsletter on Substack via www.leefang.com.

Correction, 11:55 PM, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

An earlier version misstated an accolade of late Consortium News founder Robert Parry. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, not a winner.

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14. Myanmar junta attacks by air, river during Arakan Army clash

Myanmar junta attacks by air, river during Arakan Army clash

More than 26,000 people have fled after the ethnic army captured a junta police station.

By RFA Burmese

2023.11.17

rfa.org

Updated Nov. 17, 2023, 2:51 p.m. ET

Clashes this week in western Myanmar between the Arakan Army and junta troops have driven more than 26,000 people from their homes, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said on Friday.

After the ethnic armed forces seized a police station in Rakhine state Thursday morning, junta forces retaliated with airstrikes.

The military regime also brought in navy ships, one Pauktaw township resident told Radio Free Asia. Gunfire continued until Thursday afternoon, when locals began to leave en masse.

“I am not sure whether all the residents could get out of the city,” he said, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “I think parts of the city are blocked as [junta troops] are shooting from both air and sea.”

The escalated hostilities in Rakhine and neighboring southern Chin state have restricted key transport routes and waterways between Rakhine’s state capital of Sittwe and Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital, according to Friday’s update from OCHA.

Fighting has been especially intense in Rakhine’s Pauktaw and Maungdaw townships and in Chin’s Paletwa township, according to OCHA.

Since Monday, 11 deaths and more than 30 injuries have been reported, and more than 100 people have reportedly been detained by junta forces, OCHA said.

Humanitarian aid suspended

The attack on the police station ended a ceasefire brokered in 2022 after fighting led to shortages in food, medicine and access to health care for more than 2 million residents.

In May, Cyclone Mocha devastated much of Rakhine. Hungry and shelterless residents have complained for months of slow or nonexistent aid delivery in the aftermath of the storm.

OCHA said Friday that most humanitarian activities have been suspended “due to the resurgence of conflict, increased security scrutiny, road and waterway blockades, and movement restrictions between urban and rural areas.”

Tensions between the junta and the Arakan Army had resurfaced in recent months, according to Richard Horsey, the International Crisis Group’s senior Myanmar adviser.

“Both sides knew that fighting could resume at any time,” he said on Friday. “The regime kept sizable forces deployed in the state for that eventuality.”

On Thursday, two junta warships traveling along the Kaladan River fired more than 10 shots with heavy weapons.

The ships continued to Pauktaw along the Kwe Ku River as a helicopter from Sittwe continued firing.

“Two of three navy ships docked and one remained on the river. Now the helicopter is hovering and shooting,” the Pauktaw resident said. “Residents from the city are fleeing to nearby places.”

A new hotspot

The Pauktaw police station, previously under junta control, was seized by the Arakan Army, said another Pauktaw resident, but the city continued to be attacked by the junta airforce and navy.

“The residents from the city are fleeing and [junta soldiers] are shooting. I know there is damage and that there have been casualties, but we are still hiding,” he told RFA, asking to remain anonymous.

Pauktaw’s residents escaped on foot, by cars and on motorcycles, according to a video uploaded to Facebook on Thursday afternoon.

The Arakan Army “has seized the moment to press its advantage” following the Operation 1027 offensive that began three weeks ago, Horsey said.

The Arakan Army is part of the “Three Brotherhood” Alliance of rebels that has seen notable gains against the military in several key cities in Shan state in the country’s northeast.

This week’s attacks by the Arakan Army in western Myanmar have created a new hotspot that “the regime can ill afford to get bogged down in,” according to Horsey.

“It also will not welcome the idea of renewed conflict with the AA, which it has struggled to overcome even when other parts of Myanmar were quiet, back in 2019-2020,” he said.

The junta has yet to release any information on the incidents in Pauktaw. RFA called Rakhine state’s junta spokesperson Hla Thein, but he did not answer the phone.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn and Matt Reed.

This story has been updated with details from the U.N. and comments from the ICG's Richard Horsey.

rfa.org

15. LTTE and Hamas: Equal Champions of Asymmetric Warfare

LTTE and Hamas: Equal Champions of Asymmetric Warfare

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/spotlights/ltte-and-hamas-equal-champions-of-asymmetric-warfare/

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LTTE and Hamas: Equal Champions of Asymmetric Warfare

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Issue Net Edition | Date : 17 Nov , 2023

The carnage perpetrated by Hamas on the 7th of October by slaughtering more than 1300 Israelis gutted the Israel administration as the whole event exposed the massive pitfalls in the country’s security nexus. Israel ranked 20th in the list of 140th countries considering the annual GFP (Global Fire Power) review in 2019. It holds a nation’s Power Index (PwrIndx) score of 0.3464 (a score of 0.0000 is considered perfect). Its most trusted air defense system established in 2011, the Iron Dome, boasts of having the capacity to intercept 90% of the rockets. But none of the military sophistication owned by the state of Israel could decimate the greatest debacle they faced after the inception of the Jewish state in 1948.

In military strategic jargon the term “asymmetric warfare” describes a conflict where there is a significant disparity in power between the opposing actors, causing the weaker power to use indirect and innovative ways and means to compensate.

The key to fathoming how Hamas outmatched Israeli military machinery lies in the mastery of asymmetric warfare by Hamas, which is a stark emulation of how LTTE used to stun the Sri Lankan government during the civil war from 1983 to 2009. Perhaps it would be a timely analysis to compare the reliance of both Hamas and LTTE towards asymmetric warfare in combating the symmetric nature of war, in which both organizations adopted unconventional war technologies and techniques to hit the enemy astonishingly.

In military strategic jargon the term “asymmetric warfare” describes a conflict where there is a significant disparity in power between the opposing actors, causing the weaker power to use indirect and innovative ways and means to compensate. Theoretical conception of this phase was articulated by Andrew J.R. Mack in the journal World Politics in 1975.

It is not an exaggerative remark to state that LTTE laid down the starting precedent for all the terrorist groups by indulgently utilizing war asymmetries in favor of them, which fastened their early victories against the Government of Sri Lanka. The Anuradhapura massacre of 1985 and attacking the Sinhalese farmers settled in the Northern and Eastern parts of Sri Lanka are akin to what Hamas perpetrated on the 7th of October as both acts contained sentiments filled with antipathy towards their rival communities. As how LTTE considered the Sinhalese settlers from Welioya to Bakki Ela to be the occupants of Tamil homeland, Hamas was convinced of their atrocity as they perceived the Jewish settlers in Kibbutz and NetivHaAsara in South Israel as the enemy possessing their homeland.

In the ‘80s LTTE showed much more astuteness than the Sri Lankan government forces in terms of using creative military technology for their means. In its infancy stage, LTTE relied on whatever military aid they received , but it gradually developed its own arms trade network based in Africa and Thailand. LTTE aptly exploited the internal vulnerabilities in South Africa and Angola but later improvised their indigenous technology by manufacturing their own varieties of mortar bombs and artillery shells.

The adaptability of different boat technologies bypassing the conventional naval strength of the Sri Lankan navy was another notable phenomenon of LTTE as a non-state armed group. LTTE’s naval brigade known as “Sea Tigers” displayed its finest strength of asymmetrical tactics. LTTE was well aware of the technological superiority of the Sri Lankan navy, who owned FAC (Fast Attack Craft), which appeared to be a fatal threat to the budding Sea Tigers and chose a unique asymmetric maneuver by adopting the swarm tactic (known as Wolfpack attacks).

LTTE often used a complex base of bunkers in the forests of Wanni and Mullaitivu to avoid air raids. In that case, LTTE experienced the asymmetric advantage by digging the bunkers before Hamas built their web of tunnels.

Swarming contains autonomous or semi-autonomous behavior with a well-coordinated attacking posture which disrupts the cohesion of the adversary. To counter FACs of the Sri Lankan navy LTTE brought 10 to 15 small boats along with at least two suicide crafts in the pack.

LTTE military technology had the unique feature of adaptability following the different challenges they encountered. LTTE often used a complex base of bunkers in the forests of Wanni and Mullaitivu to avoid air raids. In that case, LTTE experienced the asymmetric advantage by digging the bunkers before Hamas built their web of tunnels. Notwithstanding the formidable security nexus built by the Israelis, Hamas could infiltrate Israeli territory and the day they chose to perpetrate the macabre act was the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur, which is a holy day in the Jewish calendar.

Indeed, LTTE was known for conducting the same pattern of attacks by choosing the special days of Sinhalese religious or cultural festivals, which extremely bemused the government forces. The Fall of Elephant Pass was one of the greatest military debacles in Sri Lankan war history in the year 2000 and LTTE chose a few days after the Sinhala new-year vacation to strike this large military compound of the Sri Lanka army.

LTTE was the only terrorist group that operated a combat air fleet globally, which pestered and mortified the Sri Lankan Air Force regardless of its superior air power. LTTE owned three single-engine Zlin-143 light aircraft and they flew in the night as the Sri Lankan Air Force lacked the airpower to chase LTTE aircraft in the night.

Hamas’s use of Paragliders is akin to the LTTE aircraft as both terrorist groups championed the use of asymmetry against the mighty airpowers of the enemy. Paragliders may have attracted Hamas due to its ability to fly low and slow while providing an open feeling, minimal equipment and low cost. Flying at low heights, Hamas evaded the Israeli radar system and penetrated the Israeli military apparatus.

The other salient parallel that both the LTTE and Hamas deployed in their asymmetric warfare is the apt use of noncombatants to the military objectives. The Gray Area phenomenon coined by the French Anti-Terrorist specialist Xavier Rafuer indicates gray area groups such as terrorist organizations make the best of use of the terrain and civilians by providing services in hospitals and schools.

Israelis should revisit the counter-asymmetric strategies developed by the Sri Lankan government forces in the last stage of the Sri Lankan civil war.

LTTE controlled the school networks in their captured territories, which forged the warlike mentality among the Tamil children resulting in the initiation of the “Child Soldiers” concept and its Middle Eastern sequel can be seen in Gaza, where Hamas maintains a rapport with the Islamic University to forge a vendetta against the Jews.

The initial reaction of Tel Aviv in the aftermath of the 7th of October attack was a paroxysm of embarrassment as Israel rushed quickly to strike the targets in Gaza. At the moment, Israeli forces are on the march to annihilate Hamas from the face of the earth, which stands as the grand objective of Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet the legal and moral imperatives to safeguard the civilians hinder Tel Aviv’s ambitious project of complete obliteration of Hamas as it does not abide by any constraints.

David Pan describes this situation as a moral asymmetry in which Israel’s choices are being confined to choosing between achieving military objectives and protecting civilians. Perhaps, Israelis should revisit the counter-asymmetric strategies developed by the Sri Lankan government forces in the last stage of the Sri Lankan civil war. Gutted by the constant waves of surprise attacks of LTTE, finally, Sri Lankan government forces clung to the same strategies as their foe such as using the small boat concept and eight-man team, which helped them to subdue LTTE successfully.

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The views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of the Indian Defence Review.

About the Author

Dr Punsara Amarasinghe

is a post-doctoral researcher affliated to the Institute of Law, Politics and Development at Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, Pisa.

16. 75th Ranger combat camera releases video on Afghan withdrawal

75th Ranger combat camera releases video on Afghan withdrawal

The video shows US troops leaving Bagram Airfield little more than a month before Kabul fell.

BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED NOV 16, 2023 4:07 PM EST

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · November 16, 2023

A new video produced by the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment features never-before-seen images of the elite unit’s final days at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, along with interviews with Ranger leaders who spent most of their careers at war.

Command Sergeant Major Curt Donaldson, the regiment’s senior enlisted leader at the time, was on his 18th deployment to Afghanistan during the Bagram withdrawal. He reflects on the generations of Rangers that served in Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001.

“They’ve done so honorably, and they’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do,” Donaldson says. “You had 20 years of Rangers who have answered the nation’s call in Afghanistan. Looking back, I couldn’t have done it any better with better folks. I’ve had the opportunity to serve with some absolute great Americans over here.”

The video was made by Army Sgt. Landon Carter, a combat cameraman with the 75th Ranger Regiment, who deployed to Afghanistan for 30 days in 2021.

Carter was tasked with making a video that summed up the withdrawal from Bagram Air Field. At first, he was overwhelmed by the challenge, so he filmed everything he could and then tried to figure out how all the pieces would come together.

Completing the video became a two year process, Carter told Task & Purpose on Thursday. About three months ago, his first sergeant suggested that the video should end by focusing on the next generation of Rangers, requiring more filming.

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“This was the first project that I could really look back at and say: I gave everything I had into it,” Carter said. “I have put every ounce of effort that I have into it.”

The video not only highlights the hard work of the troops who served in Afghanistan, but it also meant to validate the service of all Global War on Terrorism veterans by showing that “what we did had meaning,” Carter said.

“It was intended for the GWOT [Global War on Terrorism] veterans of the 75th Ranger Regiment to let them know that the evolution of the regiment is undeniable; the response to 9/11 was not negotiable; their effort was valiant; and the legacy set a new standard of excellence that we try to achieve every day,” said Maj. Justin Wright, a spokesman for the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Released on Veterans Day, the video opens with scenes from the Sept. 11 attacks and the United States’ ensuing invasion of Afghanistan, and it also provides new footage of the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Bagram Airfield in July 2021 – little more than a month before Kabul fell.

By then, the 75th Ranger Regiment had been deployed to Afghanistan for roughly 7,200 days, according to the video. Army Col. Todd Brown, who led the regiment at the time, had deployed 14 times over the past two decades.

Brown notes in the video how Rangers have learned to use robots and drones over the past 20 years. He stressed that Rangers will continue to play a vital part in defending the nation going forward.

“The world is getting more complex. It’s not getting less complex,” Brown says. “There will be friction and there will be fights in the gray zone. There will be places where people will test our resolve. And the best thing to do is to send a Ranger battalion when you want to make a statement.”

The video chronicles the last day that U.S. troops spent at Bagram Airfield as they lowered and folded the American flag for the final time, rehearsed the withdrawal, and finally trudged aboard the last C-130 transport aircraft, which took off under cover of darkness.

These images may be both poignant and painful to veterans, who know all too well that the departure of U.S. troops from Bagram Airfield was a prelude to the horrors of the desperate, final evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

Released on Veterans Day, a video made by Army Sgt. Landon Carter of the 75th Ranger Regiment shows the US military’s final withdrawal from Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan in 2021.(Screenshot)

One condition that veterans from all conflicts may have to grapple with is moral injury, when they feel guilt, shame or remorse about their service, said Rita Nakashima Brock, senior vice president and director of the Shay Moral Injury Center in Alexandria, Virginia.

Like veterans of the Vietnam War, those who fought in the Global War on Terrorism may feel that they risked their lives and gave years of their lives to a cause that ended up not being worth it, Brock told Task & Purpose on Thursday.

“I think that’s an understandable feeling, but I think it’s also really important to acknowledge that since the draft was ended, everybody who’s enlisted in the military wanted to serve their country and wanted to have some life purpose that meant something beyond their own individual success,” Brock said. “I think that should be honored. I think it’s important to not lose touch with the person who wanted to do the right thing and wanted to serve their country.”

The video’s message to veterans of the Global War on Terrorism is that their accomplishments are worthwhile.

“To our GWOT Veterans—if you feel today like it was all for nothing, know this: Because of you, we have everything. Every opportunity, every chance to compete, and the same opportunity to arrive on the cutting edge of battle,” Army 1st Sergeant Tyler Fillion, of the 75th Ranger Regiment’s training and selection company, wrote for the video’s caption.

The video ends by showing the 75th Ranger Regiment’s Wall of Honor at Fort Moore, Georgia, which pays tribute to fallen Rangers. The camera pauses on a picture of Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher A. Celiz, a Ranger killed in Afghanistan who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in December 2021.

The next scene shows Ranger selection candidates holding pictures of Celiz, whom they study as part of their training.

“That shows the legacy that was shaped during GWOT is still impacting the youngest generation of Ranger every single day,” Wright said. “We don’t forget the sacrifices that were made. Also, they set a standard for us that we try to achieve every day.”

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taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · November 16, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com