​Quotes of the Day:

"The world is not waiting for us to adapt. Our adversaries are not holding conferences to debate whether irregular tools matter - they are using them aggressively, effectively, and relentlessly."

– David Brown, COL USA (R)

"A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction." 

– Rita Mae Brown

"To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him." 

– Honore de Balzac

1. How a $901 Billion Plan Changes U.S. Military Policy

2. Should China Be Reassured by Trump’s National Security Strategy?

3. Inside the very tense, very wet secret mission to get María Corina Machado out of Venezuela

4. A velvet reset: Trump’s new strategy hands China breathing space

5. Michael Anton and the Secret National Security Strategy

6. The enemy within – How Europe should respond to Trump's National Security Strategy by Sir Lawrence Freedman

7. Trump’s National Security Strategy Is a Blueprint for the Demise of the West

8. The FBI Spent a Generation Relearning How to Catch Spies. Then Came Kash Patel.

9. U.S. Presses Other Countries to Send Troops to Gaza, but None Have Stepped Forward Yet

10. America’s Pharmaceutical Dependence on China Is a National Security Crisis

11. They Droned Back – Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels circling off the Dutch and German coast

12. Pax Silica Summit

13. More reasons for America’s friends to plan for the worst

14. Reading the 2025 National Security Strategy Through Mead's Four Traditions

15. The ‘Trump Corollary’ in the US security strategy brings a new focus on Latin America – but it is a disordered plan

16. Trans-Siberian Rail poised for pivotal role In Russia-US Projects

17. Echoes of 1940: Learning from an Ally at War and Preparing the U.S. for the Next Fight

18. Free and Open Indo-Pacific 4.0 under Prime Minister Takaichi?

19. China’s ‘Low-Human-Rights’ Advantage

20. The shadow of war is at our door: Inside the new UK spy centre battling Russia

21. The Wisdom of Keith Richards at 82

1. How a $901 Billion Plan Changes U.S. Military Policy

​Summary:

The House-passed $901 billion NDAA would lock in major elements of POTUS’s defense agenda by codifying more than a dozen executive orders, authorizing new weapons and munitions buys, and setting a 3.8% military pay raise, while leaving final spending to separate appropriations. It tightens congressional oversight of Caribbean and eastern Pacific boat strikes by conditioning some funds on release of unedited strike video. It reinforces European posture by setting a 76,000 troop floor and extending Ukraine security aid at $400 million annually through 2029, with notification requirements if intelligence support is reduced. In the Asia-Indo-Pacific, it extends the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and mandates surge readiness exercises for a China crisis. It repeals Iraq AUMFs, expands Israel R&D funding, repeals Caesar Syria sanctions, restricts outbound investment tied to China-linked sectors, bans most Pentagon DEI programs, accelerates shipbuilding, and hardens supply chains against China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea while boosting counterdrone defenses.

Comment: Will POTUS sign the bill? How effective will this be in changing US military policy?

How a $901 Billion Plan Changes U.S. Military Policy

WSJ

Congress’s National Defense Authorization Act proposal weighs in on boat strikes, drones, DEI, foreign investment and fights overseas

By Anvee Bhutani

Follow

Dec. 13, 2025 12:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/military-defense-bill-ndaa-f46291c0

The defense bill broadly prohibits Pentagon programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. daniel slim/AFP/Getty Images

The $901 billion defense-policy bill passed by the House would codify more than a dozen of President Trump’s executive orders, authorizing major weapons programs, troop deployments and international-security assistance. The Senate is expected to take it up in the week ahead.

The 3,086-page National Defense Authorization Act authorizes $8 billion more than what Trump requested in May and contains a 3.8% pay increase for troops. While the bill authorizes spending levels in defense accounts, actual appropriations must be passed separately by Congress.

Here is what is in the bill:

Boat strikes

The legislation would withhold some Pentagon funds until Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth turns over unedited video footage of military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The move reflects growing bipartisan frustration with how little the administration has disclosed about its expanding campaign of boat strikes.

Support for Ukraine

The bill sets a floor for U.S. force levels in Europe of 76,000 troops and bars the Pentagon from cutting forces, closing facilities or moving equipment without consulting NATO allies and certifying that such moves are in the national interest. It extends through 2029 the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, authorizing $400 million annually to buy weapons from U.S. defense companies. Congress would have to be informed if U.S. intelligence provided to Ukraine is paused or scaled back.

Military presence in Asia

The bill extends the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which highlights military spending in Asia, and orders a military exercise testing the Pentagon’s readiness to effect a surge in troops and supplies in the event of a crisis with China. It calls for a review of how well the military can move and keep forces supplied across all branches in a major conflict or emergency, and requires the Air Force to integrate new tasks into exercises with Japan, Australia, South Korea, the U.K. and others.

Iraq war authorizations

The legislation scraps the decades-old authorizations for the use of military force that provided the legal basis for the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Presidents from both parties have relied on these authorizations for military operations long after major combat ended.

Partnership with Israel

The bill boosts U.S.-Israeli cooperation on defense technology, provides $80 million for joint research into countering adversaries in underground tunnels and $70 million for counterdrone programs.

Repeal of Syria sanctions

The bill repeals the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, which imposed sanctions on Syria’s government and other entities related to the country’s civil war.

D.C.-area airspace

The bill rolls back some safety rules for military helicopters in the busy Washington, D.C., area airspace that were put in place after a midair collision in January 2025 in which 67 people died. The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, along with the bipartisan Senate committee that oversees aviation, warned that this change would make the airspace less safe.

Restrictions on outbound investment

The legislation empowers the president to block Americans from buying significant equity or debt in some foreign companies, particularly those that are based in China, Hong Kong or Macau, operating in defense or surveillance sectors or controlled by state actors or Chinese Communist Party officials. The bill requires U.S. companies to report “national security-sensitive” transactions.

Diversity, equity and inclusion

The bill broadly prohibits Pentagon programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, though it preserves existing Equal Employment Opportunity offices and those focused on the Americans with Disabilities Act. It extends merit-based decision-making to command selection in addition to accession and promotion.

Shipbuilding authorization

Lawmakers authorized up to five Columbia-class submarines and two Ford-class aircraft carriers, and multiyear procurement of munitions including SM-3 and SM-6 missiles, Tomahawks and both air-to-air and standoff missile systems.

The legislation directs the Army to produce critical materials currently sourced solely from China, such as propellants and some precursor chemicals.

Prohibition on foreign components

The bill restricts purchases of critical materials and components from “foreign entities of concern,” including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. New acquisition programs starting in 2028 can’t use advanced batteries linked to these countries.

It calls for eliminating the purchase of optical systems, computer displays and other equipment by 2030 from foreign adversaries. Seafood for military dining facilities may not be sourced from these countries.

Drones defense

The bill creates a task force to approve and oversee technology that can detect and stop small drones, as well as measures to protect bases and other sites from them. The legislation calls for tighter rules and research on protecting nuclear facilities from unmanned systems.

What didn’t make it in

Several proposals were removed during negotiations, including expansion of military coverage of in vitro fertilization, collective-bargaining protections for Defense Department civilian employees, military-housing changes and language governing a potential central-bank digital currency.

The bill refers to the Pentagon chief as the secretary of defense rather than Trump’s preferred title for the role, secretary of war.

This explanatory article may be periodically updated.

Write to Anvee Bhutani at anvee.bhutani@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

WSJ

2. Should China Be Reassured by Trump’s National Security Strategy?

​Summary:

Beijing should take short-term comfort, but not long-term reassurance, from POTUS’s 2025 National Security Strategy. The NSS drops the earlier moral frame of “democracies versus autocracies” and avoids casting China as an ideological enemy, which reduces escalation risk and makes U.S. aims more predictable. It also stresses domestic renewal, suggesting a temporarily narrower U.S. global agenda, and it keeps Taiwan language closer to traditional deterrence and status quo terms while avoiding overt pro-independence signals. Yet the author warns the strategy’s core is a more actionable geoeconomic contest, tying tariffs, tech controls, supply chains, and energy policy into a sustained pressure campaign against China’s growth model. Transactional burden-sharing could still produce stronger, more autonomous allied militaries in the Asia-Indo-Pacific. With fewer stated cooperation “buffers,” and an NDS that may sharpen military posture, China faces a tougher strategic environment over time.

Comment: I certainly hope we have not actually dropped the "moral frame of democracies versus autocracies." Such a moral frame is what allowed us to win the Cold War. If we fail to understand and acknowledge that we are in an ideological war with China and the Dark Quad then we are in for a difficult future because they believe they are in and actually fighting an ideological war. Paradoxically, it is because they know they can win a large scale conventional war or a nuclear war with the US (or no one will win a nuclear war), that they have to fight us and try to defeat us on ideological terms. Our failure to recognize and understand their strategy as well as expose it and attack it is what is going to cause our ...well... failure or defeat.

My hope is that the words in the NSS (or the lack of specific words) are part of our larger political warfare strategy that I hope is a more focused classified political warfare strategy (e.g., President Reagan's NSDD 32) that is based on defense of our values and defeating our adversaries in the ideological war. Hopefully the business and economic focus (while very important) is also part of the ruse to defeat our adversaries ideologically.

Should China Be Reassured by Trump’s National Security Strategy?

The NSS is likely to offer China short-term relief – but cause for long-term concern.

By Ngo Di Lan

December 13, 2025

https://thediplomat.com/2025/12/should-china-be-reassured-by-trumps-national-security-strategy/

U.S. President Donald Trump greets Chinese President Xi Jinping before a bilateral meeting at the Gimhae International Airport terminal in Busan, South Korea, Oct. 30, 2025.

Credit: Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok

Since Trump’s return to power in 2025, China-U.S. relations have oscillated between confrontation and signs of rapprochement, driven by unprecedented tit-for-tat tariffs, tighter technology controls, and inconsistent diplomatic signals. Against this uncertain backdrop, the newly released 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) is likely to offer Chinese leaders short-term relief: it tempers ideological language, clarifies U.S. priorities, and suggests a more predictable basis for managing competition. 

However, the NSS also lays foundations that could, in the long run, complicate China’s external environment and strengthen the forces arrayed against it.

Grounds for Optimism

For Beijing, the strongest basis for near-term optimism is the 2025 NSS’s striking departure from earlier U.S. conceptions of strategic competition. In Trump’s first term, the 2017 NSS cast China as a “revisionist power” bent on reshaping the international system, while the Biden administration’s 2022 NSS elevated the rivalry into a global contest between “democracies and autocracies.” 

The 2025 document abandons both approaches. It does not present China as an ideological challenger, nor as the central threat around which U.S. global leadership must be rebuilt. Instead, it defines competition in national interest terms – economic leverage, industrial strength, and border security – rather than a question of transformation in the world order. This shift lowers the emotional and moral charge surrounding the relationship and immediately reduces the risk of framing misperceptions that fuel instability.

A second ground for optimism is the narrowing of U.S. strategic interests. Previous National Security Strategies presented China as the pacing challenge in a global arena, requiring deep engagement by the United States across multiple regions. The 2025 NSS instead places overwhelming emphasis on U.S. domestic renewal – reindustrialization, energy dominance, and restoring economic independence – and treats strategic competition as something that must be shaped around those priorities. For Beijing, a United States that is focused inward, and more constrained in its international appetite, offers a temporary window in which Chinese foreign policy can operate without the constant anticipation of counter-initiatives from Washington.

Third, the NSS introduces a greater degree of predictability after a year of unprecedented volatility in bilateral ties. Since Trump’s return to power, Chinese officials have faced rapid escalations in tariffs, shifting export controls, and fluctuating diplomatic signals. The 2025 NSS, regardless of one’s assessment of its tone, at least imposes coherence. It identifies clear economic boundaries, sets out the rationale for technology restrictions, and avoids proposing transformational objectives vis-à-vis China. In the short term, this structured articulation of U.S. priorities helps stabilize expectations on both sides, something Beijing has consistently sought.

A fourth area where the document offers reassurance is its treatment of Taiwan. The 2017 NSS described China as seeking to “displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific,” while the 2022 version highlighted Taiwan’s role in a systemic contest over the international order. The 2025 NSS, by contrast, upholds long-standing U.S. declaratory policy without introducing new political or ideological framing. It emphasizes deterrence and the prevention of unilateral changes to the status quo, a position that Beijing dislikes but understands, and omits any language suggesting support for Taiwanese independence.

Finally, China may draw optimism from the NSS’s lack of coalition-building rhetoric. The 2022 strategy positioned alliances as ideological partnerships defending democratic space, and the 2017 strategy emphasized mobilizing networks to counter revisionist powers. The 2025 document instead insists that allies must “step up” primarily for reasons of burden-sharing, not political solidarity, and frames cooperation in transactional terms. 

For China, this signals a less cohesive U.S.-led front in the near term, and potentially more opportunities to work around, rather than against, U.S. diplomatic initiatives. At minimum, it suggests that Washington will expend less energy on constructing a unified coalition aimed at containing China across multiple domains.

Why This Optimism May Be Misplaced

Despite the short-term relief the 2025 NSS offers, its deeper strategic logic is far less favorable to China. The document reframes competition not as a clash of political systems but as a contest for material advantage, including industrial capacity, technological dominance, and economic security. This shift may be less ideologically charged than the 2017 and 2022 NSS documents, but it is also more actionable. 

By declaring economic sovereignty and reindustrialization as core national imperatives, the NSS lays the groundwork for a sustained geoeconomic campaign targeting the very foundations of China’s long-term growth and competitiveness. Beijing has long been more vulnerable to U.S. economic statecraft than to ideological pressure, making this reframing strategically impactful over the long haul.

A second challenge stems from the coherent geoeconomic toolkit the NSS empowers. The 2017 NSS emphasized unfair trade practices and IP theft, and the 2022 NSS focused on securing the innovation base and supply chains. The 2025 strategy goes further by embedding trade, tariffs, critical technology controls, and energy dominance into a single, integrated framework of enhancing national power. It explicitly calls for restricting economic engagement with China to “non-sensitive factors,” tightening the definition of acceptable exchange. For China, this signals not a relaxation but a long-term consolidation of U.S. leverage over finance, semiconductors, data flows, and capital, which are domains essential to Beijing’s technological modernization.

Third, the NSS may accelerate a dynamic China has long sought to avoid: more capable and more autonomous U.S. allies. The strategy demands not ideological solidarity, as in the 2022 NSS, but concrete defense contributions. In practice, this could push Japan to advance its defense reforms, encourage Australia to deepen its technological integration with the United States, and motivate frontline states like the Philippines to further expand access arrangements. A more distributed security architecture driven by local initiative rather than U.S. orchestration may complicate China’s regional calculus in unpredictable ways and increase the likelihood that resistance to Chinese ambition will emerge from multiple, mutually reinforcing sources.

Fourth, the 2025 NSS creates uncertainty about the trajectory of U.S. force posture, which may cut against China’s interests once the National Defense Strategy (NDS) is released. The NSS itself maintains continuity on deterrence, including commitments to Taiwan and the First Island Chain, but offers few details on operational or capability priorities. If the forthcoming NDS emphasizes long-range precision fires, dispersed basing, AI-enabled targeting, and enhanced maritime denial, U.S. military posture may become more threatening to Beijing’s regional ambitions, rather than less. The current lull in overtly confrontational language may therefore mask a future sharpening of the U.S. defense approach.

Lastly, any short-term optimism should be tempered by the fact that the 2025 NSS eliminates a number of stabilizing mechanisms that earlier strategies preserved. Both the 2017 and 2022 NSS documents, despite their sharp critiques of Beijing, stated explicitly that competition did not preclude cooperation in areas of mutual interest, ranging from nonproliferation to climate and global health. The 2025 strategy pointedly shrinks that space, dismissing these domains as ideologically driven or strategically irrelevant. 

While China has never relied on China-U.S. cooperation to advance its core interests, such buffers nonetheless helped moderate the rivalry and offered channels for diplomatic signaling. Their removal means the relationship will operate with fewer safety valves, making long-term competition more rigid even if the immediate tone appears more stable.

Looking Ahead

The 2025 NSS ultimately offers China a mixed picture: short-term stability paired with long-term structural pressure. Its de-escalated ideological framing may ease immediate tensions, but the deeper logic points toward a more focused, economically fortified, and strategically disciplined U.S. approach to competition. Beijing may welcome the calmer tone, yet the strategy confirms that Washington is settling into a durable competitive posture rather than retreating from it.

In the coming weeks and months, several developments will clarify how much weight the NSS carries in practice. The most important will be the run-up to the summit between President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in China next year, which will test whether the NSS’s stabilizing language can translate into concrete confidence-building measures or at least prevent further tariff and technology escalations. 

Equally significant will be the National Defense Strategy, which will reveal whether Washington intends to sharpen its military posture in the Indo-Pacific. The next diplomatic moves with Japan, Australia, and the Philippines will also indicate whether the United States plans to accelerate allied capacity in ways that ultimately narrow China’s room for maneuver.

For now, the NSS should be read not as a turning point but as a strategic overture. Its real impact will depend on how these next steps unfold, whether they reinforce the document’s stabilizing elements or bring its more competitive impulses to the fore. Observers should therefore watch carefully: the trajectory of China-U.S. relations in 2025 and beyond will be shaped less by the NSS itself than by what follows in its wake.

Authors

Guest Author

Ngo Di Lan

Dr. Ngo Di Lan is a researcher at the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.

3. Inside the very tense, very wet secret mission to get María Corina Machado out of Venezuela

​Summary:

CBS reports that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was extracted from Venezuela by the Grey Bull Rescue Foundation, led by former U.S. Special Forces veteran Bryan Stern, and moved onward to Norway to reunite with her children and receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The operation was planned in roughly four days after months of preparation, involved about two dozen core team members plus a wider support network, and took 15 to 16 hours, most of it on rough seas at night to reduce detection risk. Stern says private donors funded the mission, not the U.S. government, though Grey Bull coordinated unofficially with the U.S. military to avoid misidentification amid a POTUS-driven regional buildup. Stern urges Machado not to return to Venezuela.

Comment: The Grey Bull Foundation conducted unconventional assisted recovery. See their leadership and advisors here: https://greybullrescue.org/leadership/

unconventional assisted recovery – Evader recovery conducted by directed unconventional warfare forces, dedicated extraction teams, and/or unconventional assisted recovery mechanisms operated by guerrilla groups or other clandestine organizations to seek out, contact, authenticate, support, and return evaders to friendly control. Also called UAR. See also assisted recovery; authenticate; evader; recovery. (JP 3-50.3) (US DoD)

Inside the very tense, very wet secret mission to get María Corina Machado out of Venezuela

By Tucker Reals, Lilia Luciano, Norman Oliver

Updated on: December 11, 2025 / 10:36 AM EST / CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/secret-mission-maria-corina-machado-out-of-venezuela/

It took an American private rescue team 15 to 16 hours to get Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado out of her country and safely on her way to Norway to collect her Nobel Peace Prize, and to be reunited with her family on Wednesday. The vast majority of that time was spent in rough seas, and the man who led the operation and met Machado on a boat told CBS News, "no one was enjoying that ride, especially Maria!"

"No one's blood pressure was low, throughout any phase of this operation, including mine," said Bryan Stern, a U.S. special forces veteran who heads the Grey Bull Rescue Foundation. "It was dangerous. It was scary. The sea conditions were ideal for us, but certainly not water that you would want to be on ... the higher the waves, the harder it is for radar to see. That's how it works."

In an interview Wednesday with CBS News, Stern gave some insight into the complex operation his organization undertook to get Machado out of Venezuela and on a plane to Norway, where she was reunited with her children for the first time in about two years. A representative for Machado confirmed to CBS News on Thursday that Grey Bull was behind the rescue operation that began on Tuesday.

Of the hundreds of rescues his organization has carried out, he said this was both one of the most challenging and the most rewarding. Machado has lived in hiding in her own country for almost a year, fearing persecution by the regime of President Nicolas Maduro, who is under increasing pressure from President Trump amid a U.S. military buildup off his shores.

"She has a very large target on her back," Stern said of Machado. "This is not a random shopkeeper who doesn't wanna be in Venezuela anymore. This is moving around a rock star."

"She's the first Nobel Prize winner that we've ever rescued, you know? She's the first person that we've ever rescued that has billboards with her face all over it in a country, where there's protests in her favor. We've never rescued anybody with her status, with her stature," he said. 

Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition figure and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, attends a press conference on Dec. 11, 2025 in Oslo, Norway. 

Rune Hellestad/Getty Images

Her high profile, combined with the Maduro regime taking "a very defensive posture because of the American military buildup," meant huge risks for the operation, and Stern was reluctant to divulge much detail about the operation on land, "because we still have other work to do in Venezuela, and we don't want to put sources and methods and people who worked on this at risk."

But once Machado had been spirited off Venezuelan soil onto a boat, she was ferried to a rendezvous at sea, and Stern was there himself to welcome her onto his boat for a 13-14 hour journey to an undisclosed location where she caught her flight to Oslo.

He said around two dozen people were involved directly within his team, but many more played a role - from providing intelligence to translation and logistics - including some who may never even know that they helped.

Stern and Grey Bull were in charge of the land and maritime portion of the extraction, which he said had to be planned in only about four days, though his organization has been preparing for operations in Venezuela for months.

He said the operation was funded by "a few generous donors," none of whom – to his knowledge – were U.S. government officials. 

"The U.S. government did not contribute a single penny to this operation, at least not that I know of," Stern said. 

He acknowledged that he and his organization did "unofficially collaborate" with the U.S. military about positioning and plans, largely to avoid being targeted inadvertently.

Asked about reports that a private extractions specialist contracted by the Trump administration had met Machado in the small Caribbean island nation of Curaçao, Stern told CBS News: "I'm the contractor who specializes in extractions, and I've never been hired by Donald Trump."

"I did not meet her in Curaçao. I met her somewhere else. I met her really far away from Curacao. Extremely far," he said. 

The moment when Machado climbed onto his boat was among the "moments of transition" that present the most risk for any rescue operation, he said. 

Stern wouldn't say where exactly that happened, beyond it being on a boat in the Caribbean, but he did say the nighttime rendezvous, and the conversation he had with the Venezuelan "freedom fighter" in the ensuing hours, made an impression on him.

"Personally, I was starstruck. She's a hero of mine," said Stern. "When I got to see her for the first time and validate that it was her, my heart skipped a beat."

The rough seas and dark skies on Tuesday night were perfect for operating covertly, he said, but they didn't make for an enjoyable ride.

"The maritime domain is the most unforgiving domain. This was in the middle of the night - very little moon, a little bit of cloud cover, very hard to see, boats have no lights."

By the time she climbed aboard, "all of us were pretty wet. My team and I were soaked to the gills. She was pretty cold and wet, too. She had a very arduous journey."

"She was very happy. She was very excited. She was very tired," he said. 

Asked about the fact that Machado eventually arrived in Oslo too late to attend Wednesday's Nobel Prize ceremony in person, Stern said "nothing went wrong, it just took time."

"From my perspective at least, her life was the most important aspect of this. A ceremony is great, but I don't look at this operation as getting Maria to a ceremony on time," he said. "I look at this operation as saving a freedom fighter's life, as saving a mother's life."

"We talked about her seeing her children for the first time in two years and I almost cried," Stern told CBS News. "She's a tough-as-nails, hard-as-woodpecker-lips woman, person, but she's still a mom, and she talked about how excited she was to see her children. It's been two long years."

He said being able to facilitate that reunion "truly was a blessing. We could not feel more privileged or honored to support this operation. She truly is a hero of mine. I've looked at her as an inspirational defender of freedom as long as I've known of her. So to be asked to support this, to conduct this operation, truly was a huge honor, a privilege for us."

Machado and her daughter, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her mother's behalf Wednesday, said the opposition leader intended to return to Venezuela. Stern said he advised her point-blank against it. 

"I think she's crazy. She's such a tough — you know, they call her the iron lady for a reason. I told her, 'Don't go back.'" 

Asked if Grey Bull would help her get back into the country, Stern told CBS News, "we've never done an infil, we've only done exfil. So, I don't think so … That's for her to determine and for her to decide. But I think she should not go back. But she wants to. Maria is truly inspirational."

4. A velvet reset: Trump’s new strategy hands China breathing space

​Summary:

POTUS’s December 4 National Security Strategy signals a quiet reset that gives Beijing breathing room by downgrading China as an existential adversary and reframing competition around trade “reciprocity and fairness,” not ideology. The author links the softer tone to recent Busan deals that reportedly paused the harshest tariffs and controls, eased rare-earth and fentanyl related measures, and expanded “non-sensitive” economic cooperation. Taiwan is described as handled with restraint, emphasizing deterrence and a preference to avoid war, while pushing allies to carry more load. The piece concludes China should lock in trade gains, widen practical cooperation, and project stability, while staying vigilant as U.S. posture along the First Island Chain still strengthens.

Comment: The more I read the NSS and the commentary and analysis the more I want to read the classified version. There is a lot of potential for an effective political warfare strategy. I do want to know who was on the writing team of the NSS. I am surprised the media has not determined the authors.

A velvet reset: Trump’s new strategy hands China breathing space - Asia Times

asiatimes.com · Imran Khalid

Beijing is expected to respond by quietly reinforcing the message that a stable, prosperous China poses no threat to American interests

by Imran Khalid

December 13, 2025

https://asiatimes.com/2025/12/a-velvet-reset-trumps-new-strategy-hands-china-breathing-space/

For years, Washington framed China as the defining adversary of the American century. The National Security Strategy released on December 4 has quietly abandoned that posture. At just 33 pages, the document mentions China sparingly and never as an existential threat. Instead, it treats Beijing as a major power with which the United States must reach “reciprocity and fairness” in trade.

The shift is deliberate and, from a Chinese perspective, long overdue. After a decade of being cast as the villain in successive Pentagon papers and Biden-era strategies that labelled China a “pacing challenge” and “systemic rival,” Beijing now finds itself described in language that prioritizes economic rebalancing over ideological confrontation.

This is not weakness on Washington’s part; it is realism born of exhaustion with endless confrontation and recognition that tariffs and technology bans have hurt American farmers, manufacturers and consumers as much as Chinese exporters. Beijing would be wise to pocket the concession and widen the opening before domestic politics in either capital reverses course.

The evidence of change lies in the deals that preceded the text. In Busan last month, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping suspended the most damaging tariffs and export controls. China lifted its restrictions on rare earths, committed to massive soybean purchases through 2028 and opened new cooperation in non-sensitive sectors. Washington, in return, cut fentanyl-related tariffs and extended exclusions on hundreds of Chinese product lines into 2026.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the architect of the softer tone, delayed the strategy’s release until these agreements were secure. The result is a document that elevates “mutually advantageous” trade above military rivalry. Chinese diplomats have privately described the outcome as the most favorable American strategic statement in fifteen years.

Taiwan, the issue that most worries Beijing, is handled with unusual restraint. The strategy lists “deterring a conflict over Taiwan” as a priority but immediately qualifies the goal: “ideally by preserving military overmatch.” The word “ideally” matters. It signals that Washington prefers to avoid war and is willing to rely on economic strength and allied burden-sharing rather than direct provocation.

The simultaneous signing of the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act looks tougher on paper, yet it contains no new weapons sales and merely calls for a review of existing engagements. President Lai Ching-te’s pledge to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2030 is welcome to hawks in Washington, but it also gives Beijing a predictable timetable and removes the specter of sudden American escalation.

For Asia’s middle powers, the new approach offers breathing space. Singapore and Hong Kong, long anxious about being forced to choose sides, now face less immediate pressure. The strategy speaks of “greater access to ports and facilities” from allies, yet it ties such access to economic reciprocity rather than ideological alignment.

Singapore’s role as a neutral entrepôt is implicitly preserved; Hong Kong’s position as a financial bridge, battered by earlier sanctions, may stabilize if tariff stability holds. Chinese investment through the Belt and Road can continue to flow into Southeast Asia without the constant threat of American countermeasures. ASEAN economies, already the largest collective trading partner of China, stand to gain most from a prolonged period of lowered tensions. The region gains time to deepen integration on its own terms.

Beijing, of course, will remain vigilant. The United States still plans to strengthen forces along the First Island Chain and will press Japan, South Korea and Australia to spend more. War games continue to highlight American vulnerabilities in a Taiwan contingency, which is precisely why Trump has chosen economic engagement over military bravado.

A richer America, fueled by resumed trade with China, can modernize its forces without bankrupting itself; a provoked China, by contrast, might accelerate the very conflict both sides claim to want to avoid.

The National Security Strategy is not a love letter, but it is the closest thing to a truce offer that China has received from Washington in a generation. It downgrades great-power competition, elevates trade, and narrows the Taiwan commitment to deterrence rather than regime change.

Chinese leaders have spent years arguing that the United States seeks to contain China’s rise. This document undermines that narrative more effectively than any amount of diplomacy could. Beijing is expected to respond by locking in the trade gains, expanding cooperation in clean energy, artificial intelligence standards and digital infrastructure and quietly reinforcing the message that a stable, prosperous China poses no threat to the American interests.

Beijing, of course, will remain vigilant. The United States still plans to strengthen forces along the First Island Chain and will press Japan, South Korea and Australia to spend more. War games continue to highlight American vulnerabilities in a Taiwan contingency, which is precisely why Trump has chosen economic engagement over military bravado.

asiatimes.com · Imran Khalid

5. Michael Anton and the Secret National Security Strategy

​Summary:

This blog post argues the 2025 NSS looks rushed, thin, and poorly coordinated, and suggests the messy product may reflect authorship turmoil. Citing Lawrence Freedman’s process observations, the post says Michael Anton likely started the draft before leaving in September 2025, with Stephen Miller possibly finishing or overseeing it, which could explain the document’s short length, abrupt ending, and selective “energy” only when praising POTUS or pushing civilizational themes. The post highlights reporting that a longer, unpublished version exists and is more inflammatory, including anti EU proposals, a “Core 5” major powers forum, and language rejecting U.S. hegemony.

​Comment: Speaking of possible the author(s) of the NSS and a possible classified version (that may be longer). Recall that President Raegan's top secret NSS (NSDD32) was only 8 pages long and it is the gold standard. If the classified version is longer than the 33 page unclassified NSS then it is likely not easily executable.

Anton's State department bio (he departed on Sept 15): https://www.state.gov/biographies/michael-anton

Miller's wikipedia bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Miller

Michael Anton and the Secret National Security Strategy - emptywheel

emptywheel.net · emptywheel · December 10, 2025

https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/12/10/michael-anton-and-the-secret-national-security-strategy/

Lawrence Freedman must have finished his post on the National Security Strategy before the latest news on it, which is that there’s an even more alarming longer version.

Nevertheless, Freedman’s observations about the process behind the document — that Michael Anton is thought to have started it, before he left in September, and Stephen Miller may have finished it — provide one possible explanation for why the document is so short, shoddy, and unenthusiastic about matters of standard policy.

It is worth reading the most recent NSS in its entirety. It is less polished than its predecessor, betrays little evidence of consultation, and is considerably shorter (33 as against 70 pages). It reads like time had run out and a deadline had been reached. It ends abruptly with a short discussion on Africa, this administration’s least important region, without a proper conclusion. It was released without fanfare in the early hours of Friday morning, without a press conference, suggesting the White House was not sure what to do with it.

The first draft has been attributed to Michael Anton, who was the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department until September 2025, when he left. It may be that Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff who represents the hardest line MAGA views, completed the document or at least oversaw its completion. This perhaps explains why, as Gideon Rachman notes, when restating standard policy positions, for example on Taiwan, the prose is ‘dutiful’ – ‘one senses that the author’s heart is not in it.’ Only on the civilizational issues and when praising Trump does it get fired up.

Much of the document seeks to give the administration’s disparate policies, including those directed against DEI hires or climate change or immigration, some coherence and international relevance.

This hypothesis — that some of its unfinished nature arises from having its author, Michael Anton, depart before he finished would raise a bunch of questions in any case.

Politico first reported Anton’s departure in August (so in the wake of the Anchorage summit), but said he would leave once he finished the National Security Strategy.

A senior Trump administration official and a Senate aide said Anton plans to depart this fall. The State Department later confirmed that he is leaving his post.

Anton, who directs the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, has been a low-profile but powerful presence with major roles on Russia, Iran and other foreign policy matters, including helping shape President Donald Trump’s still-unpublished national security strategy.

With Secretary of State Marco Rubio also serving as the national security adviser, a handful of political appointees such as Anton and Counselor Mike Needham have taken on more of the daily responsibilities of running the State Department.

Anton is expected to leave as the Trump administration wraps up writing the national security strategy, of which he is a lead author, according to the senior administration official. The official, and others, were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

[snip]

The Senate aide and another person familiar with administration dynamics said that Anton had been frustrated by Office of Presidential Personnel Director Sergio Gor shooting down a number of his potential hires and officials with the Trump administration such as Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby freelancing on key issues.

Anton had tried to resign in the spring amid frustration with the foreign policy processes of the administration, but Needham refused to let him do so, according to the Senate aide and two other people familiar with the matter.

The aide and one of those people said Anton was frustrated after being passed over as deputy national security adviser in the reshuffle after the departure of former national security adviser Mike Waltz.

But he ended up leaving in September, months before the NSS was dumped onto the world with no notice.

Which makes the Defense One claim all the more interesting. There’s a longer version of the NSS, which is even more inflammatory.

A longer version of the NSS, circulated before the White House published the unclassified version late Thursday night, shares the main points: competition with China, withdrawal from Europe’s defense, a new focus on the Western Hemisphere. But the unpublished version also proposes new vehicles for leadership on the world stage and a different way to put its thumb on the scales of Europe’s future—through its cultural values.

It was even more hostile to the EU than the public version is.

Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland are listed as countries the U.S. should “work more with…with the goal of pulling them away from the [European Union].”

“And we should support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life…while remaining pro-American,” the document says.

It excluded European nations from the alternative to the G7 it proposed, a C5 composed of China, Russia, India, Japan, and the US.

His national security strategy proposes taking this a step further, creating a new body of major powers, one that isn’t hemmed in by the G7’s requirements that the countries be both wealthy and democratically governed.

The strategy proposes a “Core 5,” or C5, made up of the U.S., China, Russia, India and Japan—which are several of the countries with more than 100 million people. It would meet regularly, as the G7 does, for summits with specific themes.

Most interesting — and something to which I’ll return — the unpublished version disavows hegemony.

The full NSS also spends some time discussing the “failure” of American hegemony, a term that isn’t mentioned in the publicly released version.

“Hegemony is the wrong thing to want and it wasn’t achievable,” according to the document.

These are, at this point, just data points. The existing NSS is shoddy and illogical. Michael Anton was going to see it through to completion but did not. There is reportedly a longer version — could that be what Anton wrote? Or could that be why he left before it was finished?

And we’re left with something that could have been written by Russia.

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emptywheel.net · emptywheel · December 10, 2025

6. The enemy within – How Europe should respond to Trump's National Security Strategy by Sir Lawrence Freedman

​Summary:

Lawrence Freedman argues Europe should treat the new NSS as serious but not as a reliable blueprint for consistent U.S. policy. He says it alarms Europeans by intervening in domestic politics through sympathy for “Patriotic Parties” and “civilisational erasure” rhetoric, while downplaying Russia as an active military threat and prioritizing a quick Ukraine ceasefire over justice or durability. He portrays the document as rushed, thinly consulted, and internally contradictory, mixing anti EU themes with pro alliance language and calls for burden shifting. His prescription is steady diplomacy: defend European integrity, sustain Ukraine, increase Europe’s defense capacity, and keep channels open to Washington and Congress without taking the bait.

The enemy within

How Europe should respond to Trump's National Security Strategy

Lawrence Freedman

Dec 10, 2025

∙ Paid

https://samf.substack.com/p/the-enemy-within

The new US National Security Strategy (NSS) has been poorly received in Europe. Two features have gone down particularly badly. First, it directly interferes in European affairs by explicitly siding with ‘Patriotic Parties’ and picking up on their themes of ‘civilisational erasure’. It is ‘more than plausible,’ the document says, ‘that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European’ (which we can assume to mean non-white). Here it recalls Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech last in February when he told an alarmed and high-level European audience that the biggest threat to their security was ‘from within’ – ‘the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.’ This is underscored by a stress on the restoration of America’s ‘spiritual and cultural health.’

Second, it fails to discuss Russia as an adversary that poses a direct threat to freedom in Europe and is currently waging an aggressive war against a sovereign country. Against all evidence, it claims that while the European people want peace yet their governments have subverted ‘democratic processes’ to prevent this. Yet it is Russia not Ukraine that has thwarted Trump’s desire to declare an early ceasefire. The document looks forward to ‘stabilising’ relations with Russian and to a peace deal for Ukraine without reference to its likely justice or durability. All this was noted cheerfully in the Kremlin, declaring that the US strategic vision is similar to Russia’s.

Because of the document’s provenance it cannot be ignored and there is no point pretending that it does not reflect the values and instincts of Trump, Vance and their courtiers in the White House. It has to be taken seriously. The question is how seriously. Is this the definitive statement of Trump’s strategy from which all future policy decisions will flow?

Those convinced that the aim of the Trump administration from the start has been to break up NATO and hand over Ukraine to the Russians have seized upon the document as showing that they were right all along. If they are correct then Europeans must take the logic of the administration’s position seriously, as a document like this sets it in stone. They must adjust to a world in which the US cares little for their security concerns and if anything is taking the side of the aggressors.

And yet. This is hardly an administration known for its consistency or coherence. As is often the case with official strategy documents, propositions that seem to be opposed to each other can be found, sometimes in the same sentence. There are for example references to the value and importance of alliances that on their own could be considered reassuring. We also know from this tumultuous year that Trump’s actions often reflect his whims and moods, animated often by a persistent desire to punish his enemies and help those who might do him favours. He has the backing of an energetic and radical political movement but also one that, by virtue of its extremism, is prone to splits and internal rivalries. The true isolationists object to the more activist aspects of the administration’s policies, seeing too much interference in matters which are not the US’s business. The NSS reflects the most nationalist strand of that movement, but in government and Congress there are other strands which shape the eventual policy mix.

In the rest of this post I look back briefly at past NSS’s and in particular the equivalent document of Trump’s first term, before looking at the new document. I then consider whether any of it is likely to happen and how Europeans should respond.

Past National Security Strategies

The US executive branch is required periodically to produce strategic guidance on threats to the United States and how they are to be met. The guidance should be expressed in relatively general terms sufficient to facilitate discussion with Congress and allies: it is not meant to be detailed policy.

These National Security Strategies often pass with little notice. Those that do get attention on publication usually represent some sort of departure from what had gone before. They can have short half-lives because they get overtaken by events. George H W Bush’s in 1991 tried to describe the ‘New World Order’ that would emerge as the Cold War came to an end. It now makes for a poignant read. A decade later, with his son now president, the 2002 review sparked controversy after al Qaeda’s attack of 11 September 2021 by suggesting that it might be necessary to mount pre-emptive strikes against a developing threat to ensure that the country was not caught out so badly again. It also spoke about the value of economic development and the promotion of democracy.

Another decade on Barack Obama’s strategy advocated increased engagement with Russia, China and India, and made a deliberate effort to talk about ‘terrorism’ in general rather than specifically ‘Islamic radicalism’. Within a few years US forces were battling with Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria and Russia had begun its war against Ukraine. This experience demonstrates how much the international environment can change very quickly, and how attempts to anticipate the changes can soon look very dated, sometimes embarrassingly so.

Trump’s first NSS in 2017 was written by Nadia Shadlow, who was the deputy to National Security Advisor General HR McMaster. It was preceded by widespread consultation and she was generally considered to have done a good job in reconciling the concerns of the mainstream national security community (then still well represented in the administration) and Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda. Despite Trump’s supposed admiration for Putin, it described Russia as a threat and warned about China. It removed climate change as a threat, a theme of the Obama years, and something Trump doggedly refused to accept.

For purposes of comparison this is what it said about Europe:

‘A strong and free Europe is of vital importance to the United States. We are bound together by our shared commitment to the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. Together, we rebuilt Western Europe after World War II and created institutions that produced stability and wealth on both sides of the Atlantic. Today, Europe is one of the most prosperous regions in the world and our most significant trading partner. Although the menace of Soviet communism is gone, new threats test our will. Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America’s commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of offensive capabilities.’

It mentioned migration as a problem but caused by instability in the Middle East and Africa with no reference to ‘civilisational erasure’. It spoke of the NATO alliance as ‘one of our great advantages over our competitors’, adding that ‘the United States remains committed to Article V of the Washington Treaty. Its big ask of ‘our European allies’ was that they should ‘increase defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2024.’

All of this seems a lot rosier than the most recent NSS yet it is also important to recall that having signed up to all of this, Trump did not always follow through. It contained some tough language on North Korea nuclear weapons: in 2018 Trump started his bromance with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. (That ended in failure and he now he seems to have given up. The new document does not set ‘denuclearisation of North Korea’ as an objective).

Equally, despite the warm words on NATO, the New York Times later reported that ‘several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.’ A member of the European Commission recalled a meeting with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020 when he said ‘You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you.’ He added, ‘By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.’

The actual status of these strategy documents should not be exaggerated. It would be out of character for Trump to check that his utterances fit with anything previously published by his administration before sharing whatever thought happens to have popped into his head at the time.

The 2025 Document

It is worth reading the most recent NSS in its entirety. It is less polished than its predecessor, betrays little evidence of consultation, and is considerably shorter (33 as against 70 pages). It reads like time had run out and a deadline had been reached. It ends abruptly with a short discussion on Africa, this administration’s least important region, without a proper conclusion. It was released without fanfare in the early hours of Friday morning, without a press conference, suggesting the White House was not sure what to do with it.

The first draft has been attributed to Michael Anton, who was the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department until September 2025, when he left. It may be that Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff who represents the hardest line MAGA views, completed the document or at least oversaw its completion. This perhaps explains why, as Gideon Rachman notes, when restating standard policy positions, for example on Taiwan, the prose is ‘dutiful’ – ‘one senses that the author’s heart is not in it.’ Only on the civilizational issues and when praising Trump does it get fired up.

Much of the document seeks to give the administration’s disparate policies, including those directed against DEI hires or climate change or immigration, some coherence and international relevance. It’s about how to make American strong and self-sufficient, all themes that one might expect from this administration. There is a focus on protecting ‘core national interests’ which means a narrower set or priorities and only modest ambitions when it came to influencing the rest of the world:

‘After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.’

This passage leads into a denunciation of past engagements in forever wars, ‘hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called “free trade”,’ complaints about allies and partners that were able to ‘offload the cost of their defense onto the American people’, and sucked the US ‘into conflicts and controversies central to their interests but peripheral or irrelevant to our own.’ The elites are further condemned because they:

‘lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty.’

There is not a single mention of the United Nations in the document.

This gives you an idea of the overall flavour of the document. Yet after complaining that past strategies have been ‘laundry lists of wishes or desired end states’ it then proceeds to offer just that. It wishes for all the things that would allow the US to feel prosperous and secure with the best immigration controls and defences, trade and migration controlled, no cultural subversion, resilient national infrastructure, most robust industrial base, and even ‘unrivalled soft power’ (this from an administration that shut down Voice of America offices abroad and USAID), and so on. There is little sense of trade-offs or prioritisation. Relations with the two neighbouring states - Mexico and Canada – are not discussed except in connection with their trade with China. It is a small mercy that the document forgets about the potential acquisition of Greenland or turning Canada into the 51^st state.

Regions are prioritised in terms of the Western Hemisphere, which is now given much more stress, the Indo-Pacific, where China is treated largely as an economic problem rather than a security one, before getting on to Europe. When talking about a continent anxious about its security, which has led it to invest far more in defence in line with Trump’s wishes, it offers this diagnosis:

‘The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence. Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.’

It reports, with apparent astonishment, that ‘many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat’ and goes on to suggest that:

‘Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.’

This is why ‘an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine’ is vital, not the need to address unprovoked aggression. Yet after traducing European democracies and their out of touch elites it insists that ‘Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States.’ Off it then goes in a different direction acknowledging that:

‘Transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and of American prosperity. European sectors from manufacturing to technology to energy remain among the world’s most robust. Europe is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions. Not only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.’

So it sets as a foreign policy goal helping ‘Europe correct its current trajectory.’ No doubt many in Europe feel the same way about the United States. At any rate there is a tension in these passages because it wants:

‘Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense, without being dominated by any adversarial power.’

But not to the point of expanding the alliance. It wants to cultivate ‘resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations’ yet also wants favourable treatment for US workers and businesses and lots of trade from those currently in power.

As already noted the document regularly refers positively to allies and alliances. It describes as one of America’s advantages a ‘broad network of alliances, with treaty allies and partners in the world’s most strategically important regions’ and speaks of how the administration ‘will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries.’ It even promises to extend ‘next-generation missile defenses’ to ‘protect the American people, American assets overseas, and American allies’.

How to Respond

Fred Kaplan argues that the document accurately reflects:

‘the more extreme nationalist streaks of Trump’s policies and prejudices. But the act of putting it all down on paper gives the impression that Trump has, and acts on, a coherent strategy—as opposed to a set of pecuniary interests and a scattershot of impulses. And that is misleading, both in terms of what Trump is actually doing and of what the paper really says.’

Trump followed up with an interview for Politico (the edited version makes Trump’s thoughts sound more organised than the transcript). The same themes are present. He laments the state of Europe, suffering as he puts it from a combination of mass migration and political correctness. He claims to be friends with all Europe’s leaders, although not London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan about whom he was unpleasantly rude. He also added to the pressure on Ukraine to cede territory, insisting that Russia had the ‘upper hand’ and that Zelenskyy ‘is going to have to get on the ball and start accepting things.’ At the same time he did not seem bothered by European support for Ukraine and as a real obstacle to a deal noted, as if this was surprising, ‘the level of hatred between Putin and Zelenskyy is tremendous.’

American’s allies are under no obligation to respond to this document or the interview. UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper properly defended Sadiq Khan and spoke of Europe’s strength. German Chancellor Merz observed that some parts of the document were understandable but other parts were unacceptable. There is a balance between defending Europe’s integrity and allowing ourselves to be provoked. We have been here before.

There is no need to treat it as ‘a wakeup call’ any more than Vance’s Munich speech. We know that these sentiments exist within the administration but it is not obvious how, if at all, they will be acted upon. One would have wished for a more robust stance on Russia and support for Ukraine but we have been living with Trump’s determination to end this war for the whole of his presidency now. The basic incompatibility over the Russian and Ukrainian positions remain. Trump has been sceptical of Ukraine’s determination to fight for its freedom yet frustrated by Putin’s refusal to make any concessions at all. If he wanted to abandon Ukraine completely he could have done so last February (as many feared he was about to do) but he decided not to. He has reduced support Ukraine significantly especially financially where he gives nothing. The Europeans are expected to carry the burden of supporting Kyiv but Kyiv has not been cut off completely nor forced to hand over territory it still holds. His current mood has shifted form frustration with Putin to frustration with Zelenskyy. This is a matter for extremely active diplomacy at the moment. It would still be a high-risk move for Trump to be seen to openly side with Putin.

The United States remains the world’s most formidable power and it can get away with saying and doing things that would get a lesser power into real trouble. Sometimes the provocations go too far and there is pushback, or it turns out to the administration’s dismay that it does not hold the cards (as with China). Its ambition is to be independent of other countries and it simply can’t do it. The group at the top making policy and doing the negotiations is remarkably small and spread thin, which means that they often struggle to follow through on their initiatives. So most governments, certainly in Europe, have found ways to cope with the disruption and avoid falling out with Trump. This has involved occasional concessions and performative flattery, playing to Trump’s ego. As Trump’s charisma and power starts to fade it will also be vital to keep the lines open to Congress and others who can argue back from within the American system against the more egregious actions of the administration.

However tempting and satisfying it can be to provide a damming critique of Trump’s policy, that is a role for commentators and not governments. Their basic task is to sustain the alliance, and support Ukraine, while continuing with the long-term shift of accepting more responsibility for the security of their own continent. Defence spending is going up, albeit slowly, and productive capacity has increased. The so-called E3 (France, Germany, and UK) coordinate their efforts and have provided backing for Ukraine while keeping up the dialogue with Washington. Europeans have been urged to move to greater self-sufficiency by successive presidents and Trump has given them more reason to accelerate the process. But it is impossible to unravel decades of close cooperation in a matter of weeks or even a few years and in some areas there would be huge detriment in doing so. That is also, of course, the case for the United States. So for now, whatever we think of each other, we have to work with the Americans and they have to work with us.

7. Trump’s National Security Strategy Is a Blueprint for the Demise of the West

​Summary:

Howard W. French argues the 2025 NSS signals a radical break with post 1945 Western solidarity and effectively sidelines Russia as a shared threat, aligning U.S. posture closer to Moscow by omission and by this year’s policy moves. He says the document treats Europe’s identity and immigration as a strategic issue, implying a racialized view of what “the West” is, and it openly endorses far right European parties. French contends this is less a coherent grand strategy than a dangerous political project that exports U.S. culture war logic into alliance management, risking NATO cohesion and the broader liberal order.

Trump’s National Security Strategy Is a Blueprint for the Demise of the West

Foreign Policy · Howard W. French

The White House’s agenda may not be coherent, but it is deeply dangerous.

Howard French

Howard W. French

By Howard W. French, a columnist at Foreign Policy.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/12/11/trump-national-security-strategy-blueprint-west-demise/

My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. |

• Foreign & Public Diplomacy
• Security
• United States
• Europe
• Howard W. French

December 11, 2025, 4:05 PM

In a bygone age, prominent conservatives in the United States clung to any number of well-worn complaints about the country’s Western European allies.

According to these Cold War U.S. ideologues, Europeans taxed too much and spent the money on overly generous social security programs that supposedly rendered them soft while inhibiting innovation and growth. Frequent were the warnings that Europe was abandoning the ethos of open and competitive markets that had made it a bastion of capitalism and was edging steadily, if somewhat stealthily, toward a socialist dead end.

Another ritualized complaint, dating at least as far back as President Richard Nixon’s administration, was that Europe was chronically underspending on its own defense, free riding on the reliably lavish U.S. outlays to its Defense Department, which were designed above all to protect Europe—and thereby the West itself—from its greatest existential threat, the Soviet Union.

Some of these old gripes about Europe, such as those concerning the continent’s supposedly parsimonious spending on defense, remain in the new National Security Strategy released last week by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. But as many commentators have noted, the document amounts to the most sweeping overhaul of Republicans’ worldview in decades. In terms of its major assumptions about Europe, almost everything has been scrambled to a degree that no major Republican Party figure in recent history—not Nixon, not President Ronald Reagan, and probably not even the failed 1964 ultraconservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater—would recognize.

Gone almost entirely is the assumption that Russia constitutes a major shared security concern for the United States and Europe. This comes across mostly through omission and what can be read between the lines, but also from Trump’s numerous actions this year to reorient U.S. foreign policy in ways more favorable to Moscow. And the best gauge of this comes from Russia itself, which may find it hard to believe its good fortune amid Washington’s turnabout. Russian media promptly pronounced Washington’s National Security Strategy to be largely in accord with its own views of the world.

This would be one thing if the ongoing war in Ukraine were not the result of Russia’s invasion in 2022. But the lack of preoccupation with Russian expansionism in the administration’s security circles suggests something truly radical that Trump and his advisors haven’t had the courage or candor yet to pronounce clearly.

Make no mistake: The White House’s new strategy document is a blueprint to engineer the demise of the West—or at least, what the world has understood by that term since World War II, starting with a closely knit set of shared interests between Europe and the United States.

The Trump scenario for this involves dark fantasies about the creeping takeover of nominally white societies by peoples of color—the Black, brown, and yellow hordes that haunted a bygone era’s genre of fevered white panic writing. This was best exemplified by figures such as the popular 1920s author Lothrop Stoddard. In his influential book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, Stoddard wrote that “colored migration is a universal peril, menacing every part of the white world.” (A thinly veiled reference to Stoddard even made its way into one of the most widely esteemed U.S. novels of the century, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.)

For its part, Trump’s National Security Strategy has warned that because of immigration, Europe is at risk of not being European for much longer, by which it clearly means being defined by whiteness. One can intuit that the reason this warrants inclusion in such a prominent document is that for Trump, having the United States and Europe “remain” white together is a bedrock condition of staying close allies at all. Another way of saying this is that remaining committed to whiteness is a condition, in Trump’s eyes, of continuing to be worthy of that long ubiquitous and unquestioned sobriquet, “the West.”

As disturbing as the U.S. government’s obsession with whiteness is, it would be wrong to imagine that the Trump administration’s policy is even remotely coherent. Trump’s warning that Europe risks losing its identity, principally due to the in-migration of nonwhite peoples, contains a logical flaw so glaring that it suggests that what is at stake isn’t entirely about race but, at bottom, something else that is arguably even more threatening.

This fault becomes obvious when one compares U.S. immigration rates to those of some of Europe’s largest and richest countries. Doing so reveals that Europe does not stand out in this regard at all.

Around 19 percent of Germany’s population are immigrants—a slightly higher figure than the United States’ 15 percent—which arguably resulted from a sober assessment of its demographic decline during the chancellorship of Angela Merkel. During her tenure, Germany accepted hundreds of thousands of people from a failing state in the Middle East, Syria. The integration of such large numbers of newcomers inevitably demands cultural adjustment that bring stresses for both the host population and the migrants. But although many German voters have at least temporarily turned against large-scale immigration, history may come to judge Merkel’s policy generously, if the influx of Syrians and others stems Germany’s very real crisis of population decline, aging, and the associated problem of too few workers.

Two other major European powers, France and Britain, each have foreign-born populations roughly comparable to those in the United States—around 14 percent and 16 percent of the total population, respectively. The fact that none of the three examples cited is a statistical outlier squarely disproves Trump’s notion that Europe is speeding toward its own racial erasure—and to be clear, neither is the United States.

U.S. complaints about European defense spending are equally ill-founded. As an editorial in the Washington Post recently pointed out, the United States is itself barely projected to surpass the benchmark of devoting 3 percent of its GDP to military spending in the 2025 fiscal year, even as it demands that European countries devote 5 percent of their output to defense.

That Europe should somehow follow the lead of the United States is also belied by the reality that European standards of living are higher by some measures than in Trump’s United States, and that many European countries nowadays are widely regarded as more vibrantly democratic than their newly ambivalent longtime ally across the Atlantic.

To understand what is going on more fully, one must recall how Trump used xenophobia and racial and ethnic scaremongering as a central tactic in his initial rise to power in 2016. Getting large numbers of voters riled up over identity issues not only proved to be a reliable way of rallying support but also an effective distraction from the elements of his agenda that were a radical departure from any recent precedent.

This points to what seems to be Trump’s true aim toward Europe: supporting a bigger and broader radical conservative agenda, of which race-based nationalism may be the point of the spear but also merely a single component.

Trump, in fact, revealed this himself—one wishes to say clumsily—by authorizing his National Security Statement to lay out Washington’s interest in promoting far-right parties in Europe. Trump’s appeal to racial xenophobia drew a mixture of puzzlement and chagrin from European commentators but little surprise. That’s because these have already long been core elements of his domestic politics.

Trump has flirted with interference in Europe’s domestic politics previously, but never before so brazenly, with a clear and official statement of outright alignment with that continent’s radical right, many of whose parties embody politics that engage in antisemitism and draw inspiration from fascism. Such audacious meddling has drawn sharp protests from many quarters in Europe.

If Trump manages to enact an agenda based on a political reorientation as radical as this—and above all, if he is succeeded by someone such as his vice president, J.D. Vance, who has loudly promoted very similar extreme views—this development, more than an emphasis on whiteness alone, is what will formally bring about the death of the old West.

During the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin appealed for the support of European powers such as France by saying, “We are fighting for their [Europeans’] liberty in defending our own.”

The democratic record of the West is, of course, replete with blemishes. But this idea of a shared set of values centered on liberty has always been the core of what has sustained the alliance of the United States and much of Europe. With Trump embracing authoritarianism ever more brazenly, it is the United States’ detachment from this value that may finally undo any common sense of what the world calls the West.

If Franklin were around today, he might have turned his formula around to say that in defending our liberty, Europeans are hoping to inspire Americans to defend their own.

This post appeared in FP's The Reading List newsletter. Sign up here.

Foreign Policy · Howard W. French

8. The FBI Spent a Generation Relearning How to Catch Spies. Then Came Kash Patel.

​Summary:

The FBI rebuilt serious counterintelligence after 9/11 by shifting from counting arrests to “know your domain” disruption, sources, and partnerships that could preempt espionage and sabotage, especially from China’s mass, networked approach. It warns those gains are being reversed under FBI Director Kash Patel as agents and expertise are reassigned from counterintelligence to immigration enforcement and some foreign influence cases are deprioritized, while POTUS seeks budget cuts. The piece highlights a parallel push in Congress to move counterintelligence leadership to DNI Tulsi Gabbard, raising civil liberties and effectiveness concerns in an AI, drone, and cyber driven threat environment.

Comment: Troubling analysis. We need strong and effective counterintelligence now more than ever.

The FBI Spent a Generation Relearning How to Catch Spies. Then Came Kash Patel.

As China’s spies grow more aggressive, the FBI is distracted and off-balance.

thebulwark.com · R.M. Schneiderman and Derek OwenDec 14, 2025

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/fbi-spent-generation-relearning-catch-spies-kash-patel-counter-intelligence-espionage-tulsi-gabbard-china?utm_source=substack

(Composite by Hannah Yoest / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)

AMERICA HAD BEEN AT WAR FOR TWO WEEKS but didn’t know it. The onslaught began with a fleet of store-bought drones swarming a power substation in Pennsylvania, delivering explosives made from common chemicals. They shredded switchgear and control systems, cutting power to airports, hospitals, and nearly half a million homes.

Hours later, a far-right extremist group calling itself “Dark Reich” took credit for the attack in an anonymous video replete with Nazi and occult symbols. The group hailed the blackout as the opening salvo of a campaign to bring down the U.S. government. They urged others to replicate their efforts and ignite a race war.

Over the next few days, copycat attacks cut the power for hundreds of thousands of Americans as summer temperatures soared into the 90s. Nobody could figure out who was piloting the drones. Each incident looked amateurish, yet the pattern worried FBI officials. Bureau investigators began to suspect a foreign adversary might be quietly orchestrating “gray-zone” attacks—covert strikes that offered plausible deniability.

Soon anonymous cyberattacks compounded the damage, crippling municipal governments, water systems, and first-responder networks from Atlanta to Denver. Rail corridors and ports—critical for stocking grocery stores and mobilizing the military—snarled in the digital gridlock. In an already toxic political climate, the White House was unable to craft a coherent response. Two weeks into the crisis, the source of the chaos became clear when China launched a swift and decisive invasion of Taiwan, and the United States was too paralyzed by domestic strife to stop it.

This scenario—hypothetical, but based on very real fears—is laid out in a 2024 RAND Corporation study modeling how America’s enemies could mask state-directed attacks as the work of extremists or criminal groups. Carrying out an operation of this magnitude on American soil would require a sophisticated network of spies. Which is exactly what China’s security services have been building since the late 1970s, stealing vital military, nuclear, and technological secrets en masse.

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Recently, Beijing’s intelligence services have gotten more aggressive. They’ve activated clandestine networks to organize violent crackdowns inside the United States, kidnapped American citizens, and carried out sweeping cyberattacks that hit everything from telecom giants to military IT networks. Some security researchers have speculated that, in a crisis, China’s espionage networks could quickly be repurposed for sabotage.

American security experts fear that growing networks of foreign spies, combined with new technology, represent an unprecedented threat—one the FBI, the primary agency tasked with thwarting hostile foreign intelligence services, may struggle to address.

“Look at what the Ukrainians are doing with drones and AI against Russia,” says national-security analyst Paul Joyal. “I know our adversaries are watching.”

Yet as these dangers have mounted, the White House has proposed slashing the FBI’s budget by more than $500 million and has shifted the bureau’s priorities away from combating spies and other forms of foreign influence. Under Director Kash Patel, the FBI has moved people and power out of the bureau’s headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington and into the heartland. He reassigned nearly a quarter of all agents to a job that’s never been part of the FBI’s purview, immigration enforcement, according to data obtained from the bureau by Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat. Counterintelligence specialists with deep expertise in countries like China, Russia, and Iran are now regularly working immigration cases on a rotating basis, according to former agents who recently left the bureau. The FBI has also limited investigations of crimes like violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), allowing foreign spies greater room to maneuver.

The end result of these changes, former senior FBI officials maintain, is that America is extremely vulnerable—not just to an attack, but to an unprecedented level of foreign espionage.

“It’s a disaster,” says Robert Anderson, the head of FBI counterintelligence from 2012 to 2014. “I’m rooting for everybody because we’re all Americans, [but] Patel needs to wake up.”

In a statement, the FBI said it was working with agencies across the government, publicly highlighting the tactics of America’s adversaries, and actively trying to change government policies to allow it to better protect the United States. “Looking towards the future,” a bureau spokesperson said, “we are preparing for the impact new technologies such as Quantum and AI will have on counterintelligence threats.”

But some lawmakers already seem to have lost faith in the bureau’s approach. In Washington, the House Intelligence Committee, led by Arkansas Republican Rep. Rick Crawford, recently approved a bill that would overhaul counterintelligence, stripping the FBI of its leading role. “The counterintelligence threat is very real,” said a spokesperson for the committee. “This is not politics; this is about national security and the safety of Americans in the homeland. The light is flashing red.”

The FBI is the country’s chief counterintelligence agency and premier law enforcement organization. If the bill were to become law, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would be put in charge of all U.S. counterintelligence efforts, including the FBI’s spy hunters. Her office is currently responsible for making sure the eighteen agencies in the U.S. intelligence community—including the FBI—work together and share information. Critics warn that expanding Gabbard’s role could harm civil liberties by shifting some of the bureau’s counterintelligence decision-making outside of the Department of Justice, a law-enforcement institution bound by constitutional safeguards. “That’s really dangerous,” says Frank Montoya Jr., a retired FBI agent who was once the head of counterintelligence for the agency Gabbard now runs. “You could be creating a domestic spy agency with even less transparency to the American public.”

A House Intelligence Committee spokesperson disagreed, adding that the bureau would not lose the power to carry out its own investigations. “This effort,” the spokesperson said, “is about bringing all of the tools to the table—not degrading any, FBI or otherwise.”

It’s not the first time the bureau’s counterintelligence agents have faced such a flashpoint. More than two decades ago, as then-FBI Director Robert Mueller began diverting resources to combat terrorism in the wake of the attacks on September 11th, the bureau’s counterspies were reeling from a series of espionage disasters, post–Cold War budget cuts, and pressure from Congress to strip the FBI of its counterintelligence mission. Meanwhile, the threat from Chinese espionage was exploding. Beijing not only employed intelligence officers to steal secrets; it began coercing tens of thousands of Chinese students, tourists, and businesspeople to help them in an “all of society” approach to spying.

The bureau was incapable of combating this onslaught until a small group of veteran FBI spy hunters, led by Assistant Director David Szady, shifted its strategy in 2002. Instead of simply hunting spies who had infiltrated the government and the private sector, the bureau used preemptive tactics—blocking or trapping foreign agents before they could do damage. To succeed, they had to confront scandals involving sex, spying, stolen nuclear secrets, and an FBI culture in which, as Szady puts it, only “cigar-smoking, beer-drinking, door-kicking agents” in the criminal divisions won respect—and got the funding that went with it.

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Today, however, Patel and President Donald Trump are moving toward an earlier strategy—one that failed spectacularly in the early 1990s, according to former senior spy hunters. Back then, Director Louis Freeh, believing a decentralized approach would be more effective at fighting crime, “took a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel to headquarters staffing,” says Thomas McWeeney, a contractor the FBI hired at the time. But instead of welcoming a new era of effectiveness, Freeh oversaw a decade marked by crises—from intelligence failures leading up to the September 11th terror attacks to the bungled espionage investigation of Dr. Wen Ho Lee.

In a series of exclusive interviews, Szady, McWeeney, and other former FBI officials recounted their successes and failures as they tried to rebuild the bureau’s Cold War–era spy-hunting capabilities—a process laid out in a 2005 internal FBI document obtained by The Bulwark. Many of these former bureau officials, including lifelong Republicans and Trump supporters, say they share Patel’s stated goal of “depoliticizing” the FBI. But some worry the administration is ignoring—or worse, actively crippling—counterintelligence at a critical time, as adversaries experiment with grave new threats, from AI-driven weapons to advanced cyber intrusions. Their experiences offer a glimpse into the type of challenges Patel faces—not only from foreign adversaries like China, but from rivals like Gabbard. “It’s tragic,” says Montoya. “All our work is being destroyed.”

IN LATE SEPTEMBER 2001, BARELY TWO WEEKS after al Qaeda operatives murdered 2,977 Americans, Robert Mueller sat in the bureau’s massive “war room” overseeing hundreds of agents trying to hunt down those responsible for the attacks. Despite the counterterrorism whirlwind, Mueller—less than a month into his service as FBI director—still had to figure out how to juggle the bureau’s other responsibilities, including fighting crime, rooting out corruption, and thwarting foreign spies.

That afternoon, Mueller tore himself away to meet two veteran spy hunters—Szady and his chief of staff, Kevin Favreau—in a vestibule adjacent to the war room. Spying had changed a lot since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Computer and internet technologies were booming and ascendant powers like China were aggressively targeting the United States. Earlier that year, President George W. Bush had put Szady in charge of a new interagency organization called the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX). It was formed to help the FBI, CIA, and Department of Defense coordinate their responses to emerging threats from foreign spies. Mueller wanted to better understand how it worked, Szady recalls. He closed the door, sealing the three men off from the cacophony of the command center, and asked: “What is your definition of counterintelligence?”

For Szady and Favreau, the subtext was hard to miss. During their frequent trips to Capitol Hill, they’d heard that legislators and staffers had come to see the FBI’s approach to both counterterrorism and counterintelligence as antiquated and inept. Szady, a charismatic showman with a staccato New England accent, had a reputation for being brash, even coarse at times. But he chose his words carefully, framing counterintelligence as a wide range of strategic and tactical moves to disrupt foreign spies.

“Wrong,” Mueller said, interrupting Szady. “It’s about espionage, espionage, espionage.”

The FBI director’s meaning was clear—he wanted stats he could show to Congress: criminal prosecutions and spies behind bars.

“Director, that may be your opinion,” Szady replied, “but if you go up on Capitol Hill and tell them that, they’re going to eat you alive.”

Mueller seemed shocked by Szady’s blunt answer. With Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon still smoldering, he cut the meeting short after fifteen minutes. But he followed up in a series of talks with Szady that fall.

“Mueller,” Favreau recalls, “had no background in [counterintelligence].” Szady, however, had spent decades at the FBI chasing traitors like John Walker—whose spy ring handed Moscow potentially war-winning Navy secrets—and thwarting espionage aimed at Silicon Valley. He wasn’t afraid to tell Mueller that, despite some sporadic successes, the FBI’s counterintelligence program had largely become the “bastard child of the bureau” in the 1990s.

(Mueller could not be reached for comment for this story.)

The FBI’s counterintelligence program had largely become the “bastard child of the bureau” in the 1990s.

By the turn of the century, morale had cratered among FBI spy hunters. “Counterintelligence was considered the rubber gun squad in some offices,” says Montoya. “It was where you put the guys you couldn’t use anywhere else.” The treachery of FBI-agent-turned-Russian-mole Robert Hanssen had also tainted the bureau at a time when its Cold War–era, one-on-one approach to spy-hunting was becoming obsolete. Globalization had changed the rules. America’s rivals—and sometimes even its allies—now waged what officials call “asymmetric espionage,” exploiting the open nature of American society to steal secrets through front companies, academic exchanges, cyber intrusions, and other nontraditional means. China led the way, targeting American technology and know-how in an all-out drive to catch up with the West.

Traditionally, spy services rely on a small cadre of intelligence officers operating abroad. But Beijing relentlessly recruited thousands of collectors from all parts of its society—scientists in sensitive labs, businesspeople, and visitors on student and tourist visas.

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They sent “multiple threats in multiple waves and different disguises,” says Rudy Guerin, a former head of the bureau’s China section. The vast majority of the people coming into the United States from China never engaged in espionage. But Beijing’s aggressive deployment of potential spies left the FBI outnumbered by tens of thousands to one. Each Chinese asset might return only a sliver of data, but when assembled in Beijing, the fragments formed a detailed mosaic of U.S. capabilities—an approach described by experts as a “thousand grains of sand.” It’s a numbers game that played out all across the country. “Where you find a McDonald’s,” Szady says, “you’ll find a Chinese spy.”

These challenges were among the forces that pushed Congress as well as the White House to create NCIX, which would ultimately be folded into the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. But from the moment Szady was put in charge of it, the CIA had resisted giving his team the authority they needed. Then September 11th and the War on Terror consumed the government.

In November 2001, two months after their first meeting, Mueller decided to bring Szady back to the bureau. He wanted him to lead counterintelligence and push through the ideas that had stagnated at NCIX.

What neither Mueller nor Szady knew at the time was that the FBI’s inability to stop Chinese spies was about to become part of a much bigger battle on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers, furious over pre–September 11th failures and alarmed by serious breaches of U.S. nuclear secrets, would openly threaten to strip the bureau of its counterintelligence responsibilities altogether.

‘Broken at every possible level’

WHEN SZADY RETURNED TO THE FBI to rebuild the counterintelligence program, one name immediately came to mind: Tom McWeeney, his “consigliere” at NCIX, and a longtime contractor at the bureau. McWeeney never set out to work in law enforcement. As a broke 24-year-old Georgetown grad student in the early 1970s, he had landed a job as a chauffeur for Drug Enforcement Administration executives. At the time, Congress was harrowing the DEA over a string of bribery, money-laundering, and corruption scandals. Affable and disarming, with a knack for deciphering people and situations, McWeeney earned the trust of the agency leaders he drove around. He eventually landed a job helping the DEA comply with freedom-of-information laws and later shaping the agency’s response to drug cartels in the 1980s.

After leaving the DEA in 1992, McWeeney reinvented himself as a strategic planner. “Most people would rather chew tinfoil than have anything to do with the words ‘planning’ or ‘government,’” he liked to joke. But his approach stood out because he insisted that agencies avoid the temptation to chase empty stats. Instead, McWeeney demanded brutal honesty in measuring success and insisted on delivering real, consequential outcomes.

By 1997, McWeeney had become something of a guru in D.C., giving seminars that packed rooms. He eventually caught the attention of the FBI’s newly appointed deputy director, Robert “Bear” Bryant, who had inherited an organization that was, as McWeeney puts it, “broken at every possible level.”

Many of the bureau’s issues originated when Freeh, a tenacious former-agent-turned-judge, took over in 1993. He immediately set out to return the FBI to its roots chasing criminals. He saw bureaucracy as a disease and distrusted technology at a time when computers and the internet were becoming more important to people’s daily lives. Within months of becoming director, Freeh had nearly wiped out the headquarters supervisory staff the bureau relied on to coordinate cases, sending the vast majority of them out to work street investigations. Some former FBI officials say the impulse was good—“He was trying to get rid of dead wood,” as one former senior bureau official puts it. But he went too far, McWeeney says, neutering the Hoover Building’s power to guide complex cases. Like Patel, he wanted to shift the bulk of the FBI’s investigative power from the headquarters to the field offices. (Freeh did not respond to a request for comment for this article.)

The result of Freeh’s changes, McWeeney says, was gridlock. The intricate demands of chasing spies and terrorists frequently require collaboration across multiple FBI field offices, large-scale coordination of surveillance, and cooperation with outside agencies. Freeh’s purge meant day-to-day work lagged behind, further snarling operations.

Perhaps most egregiously, in 1995 a source walked into a CIA station in Taiwan with a trove of Chinese government documents. Among them was what appeared to be designs for a weapon strikingly similar to the W88, the United States’ most advanced thermonuclear warhead. It signaled potentially the worst theft of sensitive nuclear secrets since the ones that helped the Soviets acquire the atomic bomb. Yet the investigation—codenamed “Kindred Spirit”—sputtered from the start, andFreeh’s decentralized FBI was a major culprit. When headquarters sent agents out to New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory to figure out what had happened, local supervisors in Albuquerque pulled them away to chase what they considered more pressing issues involving gangs, fugitives, and crimes on tribal lands. Despite the gravity of the alleged theft, counterintelligence ranked only fourth in the Albuquerque field office’s workload. The case dragged on for years without an arrest.

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Before ascending to the bureau’s second-highest post, Bear Bryant had served in the FBI for decades. He oversaw investigations into the Oklahoma City bombing and the arrest of notorious spy Aldrich Ames. He wasn’t about to let the bureau’s legacy—or his own—become permanently tarnished. So he hired McWeeney to help fix what was broken.

In 1998, Bryant and McWeeney worked with a cadre of senior experts and came up with a plan. It involved reestablishing FBI headquarters as the bureau’s central authority for coordinating the field offices, along with better intelligence sharing for both criminal and national-security matters. It also included something the FBI had never attempted: trying to foil plots and attacks before they began. Though much of their work was aimed at reversing the effects of Freeh’s changes, the director—once briefed on their proposal—became an ardent supporter, McWeeney says. Freeh shifted from a primarily criminal focus to championing the FBI’s national-security mission. (Bryant did not respond to a request for comment.)

In 1995 a source walked into a CIA station in Taiwan with a trove of Chinese government documents. Among them was what appeared to be designs for a weapon strikingly similar to the W88, the United States’ most advanced thermonuclear warhead.

Implementing Bryant’s vision took on new urgency that year as al Qaeda operatives carried out deadly attacks against American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. After Bryant retired the following year, McWeeney stayed to refine a more detailed blueprint for fighting terror. At first, the incoming Bush administration refused to fund it. Instead, they prioritized crimes involving drugs and firearms. That quickly changed after the September 11th attacks, when the War on Terror became the bureau’s top priority and the Justice Department adopted the ideas that McWeeney and Bryant had advocated years earlier—without their names attached.

The history of the bureau’s counterterrorism transformation after September 11th is well known. What’s often overlooked is that, at roughly the same time, the FBI also reinvigorated its counterintelligence program, which had been plagued by embarrassments in the late 1990s.

In May 1999, a report by the Cox Committee claimed that Chinese spies had stolen key information about seven U.S. nuclear warheads and a staggering range of missile and guidance technologies. Scientists at Stanford disputed some of the report’s more sweeping findings, but later government reports upheld the core premise. “The Chinese theft of nuclear weapons technology . . . has advanced the threat to our nation by a generation,” Steve Chabot, a Republican congressman from Ohio, said on the House floor at the time.

McWeeney, Bryant, and their team had attempted to reverse the dysfunction with their plan—elevating counterintelligence to a nationwide priority for the bureau. But vital leads in the Chinese nuclear spying case had already gone stale, while both the FBI and Department of Energy officials ignored opportunities to tighten security. At the same time, political leaders from both parties blamed the Clinton White House—which was focused on deepening trade ties with Beijing—for failing to act with more urgency.

In 1999, the bureau arrested Dr. Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-born scientist at Los Alamos with access to classified information related to the W88. The leak they traced to him was just one sliver of the broader nuclear-weapons losses detailed in the Cox Report. But without solid evidence, even that case quickly unraveled. Investigators leaked his name to the media, mishandled evidence, and overreached on charges they couldn’t prove. Lee’s lawyers also made use of “graymail,” the tactic of forcing prosecutors to drop charges rather than risk exposing secrets in open court. In 2000, Lee claimed the government racially profiled him and pleaded guilty to a single count of mishandling classified information. As he put it in his book, My Country Versus Me: “Had I not been Chinese I never would have been accused of espionage.”

Wen Ho Lee addresses the media outside a federal courthouse after he was freed from nine months of solitary confinement. (Photo by Mike Fiala/AFP via Getty Images)

The United States has a long history of alarmist and racist treatment of Asian immigrants and American citizens of Asian descent. But the failure in this case, according to former FBI officials, was structural. Because of the lack of oversight at headquarters—an arrangement critics warn Patel is bringing back—the bureau had lost the initiative to determine who, or how many people, had actually spied for China at the nuclear labs. Michael Rochford, who later became the FBI’s first counterespionage section chief under Szady, helped conduct the postmortem on “Kindred Spirit” and the wider losses identified by the Cox Report. His conclusion: Thousands of individuals might have been responsible for the breaches, which made pinning down the culprits nearly impossible.

Spies hidden in plains states

SO HOW DO YOU STOP hundreds of thousands of spies—not only from China, but from Russia, Iran, Israel, and others—all targeting America, both for military secrets and economic espionage? Even if tracking all the potential spies were logistically possible, it would entail mass surveillance and a gross violation of civil rights. The solution was to identify the things thieves were targeting and build moats around them. Instead of hunting spies—as they had during the Cold War—the FBI would need to find ways to block or trap them.

For Szady’s team, the idea wasn’t new. It had grown out of the economic-espionage initiatives the bureau launched in the early 1990s. Szady had worked on some of them in the FBI’s Silicon Valley office while helping to protect America’s tech sector during that period. And those same ideas formed the core of what the White House later tasked him to develop at NCIX with Favreau and McWeeney. But now that they were back at the bureau, they’d need to tackle the hard part: execution.

In the early months of 2002, the team launched a flurry of whiteboard sessions by day and gatherings at a cigar bar by night (Szady called these latter meetings “vespers”) to hammer the ideas into a plan for the field offices. During that time period, McWeeney was leading a brainstorming session at the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, Virginia with a group of field agents. They bandied around ideas about resources, money, and experience, but struggled to articulate the essence of the new strategy. Then a voice from the back blurted out, “You have to know your damn domain.” McWeeney knew that was it—the idea stuck. Eventually Szady would distill it further: “Know your domain”—three words that would define the FBI’s new playbook for stopping spies.

That playbook, according to the 2005 internal FBI document obtained by The Bulwark, involved proactively identifying and protecting what Chinese spies were looking for. “What are all the Chinese nationals doing in North Dakota?” Szady throws out as an example. The regional field office at the time could only shrug—they didn’t know their domain. North Dakota wasn’t a tourist destination. But it was home to U.S. early-warning radar systems tied to NORAD. It was also where agricultural research hubs, like North Dakota State University, were developing cutting-edge grain and biotech technology.

“The Chinese knew our domains better than we did,” says Tom Mahlik, a deputy assistant director for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) who was later detailed to the FBI. Mahlik points to the Navy’s Acoustic Research Detachment, a facility on Lake Pend Oreille, a remote, glacier-carved reservoir nestled between the snowcapped peaks of Idaho’s panhandle. There, engineers test top-secret designs for submarine hulls and propulsion. These are the kinds of technologies that keep America’s ballistic missile submarines undetected and its nuclear deterrent credible. Before “know your domain” became a mantra at the bureau, the regional field office in Salt Lake City didn’t even know it was there. “But Chinese spies did,” says Mahlik, and the bureau quickly detected that many of them were traveling to Idaho. The FBI made sure researchers were aware that if a local bartender, waiter, or ski instructor showed unusual interest in their work, it might not be an innocent question.

Kevin Favreau (left), Dave Szady (second from left), New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (center), FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Operations Tim Bereznay (second right), and Tom Mahlik (right) in 2005. (Courtesy of Tom Mahlik.)

To boost this strategy, the bureau pushed for greater cooperation with the CIA, the military, and other intelligence partners. It also prioritized what Szady, McWeeney, and Favreau dubbed “sophisticated ops.” These involved double agents, deceptions, and other missions that wouldn’t look out of place in an espionage thriller.

But the new approach hinged on the oldest discipline in the espionage trade: recruiting sources. The bureau would need to ramp up its efforts nationwide, positioning informants near suspected front companies or cultivating contacts inside Chinese student associations. Their goal was to detect if someone was secretly taking orders from Beijing.

The FBI’s new recruitment push wasn’t limited to adversaries. It also required building trusted networks at military installations, defense contractors, advanced research centers, and companies holding sensitive trade secrets. The bureau needed cooperation from managers and employees willing to act as “tripwires” to flag suspicious activities or sudden foreign interest.

The majority of this work wouldn’t lead to the arrests and statistics Mueller had put at the center of counterintelligence work during his first conversation with Szady and Favreau. But Szady and his team felt collecting intelligence was critical to their core mission: knowing the intentions of their adversaries and thwarting their plans. As Montoya, the former FBI agent, explains: “It was both common sense and revolutionary.”

‘Why the fuck aren’t you pounding on Mueller’s desk?’

BY APRIL 2002, SZADY HAD A PLAN—now he needed a solid team to carry it out. Early in his talks with Mueller, he had made his return conditional on placing people of his own choosing in key posts. Late one night at Kilroy’s, a sports bar in Northern Virginia, Szady gathered Favreau along with others from his inner circle and scribbled their names and the positions he wanted them to fill on a napkin.

A few of Szady’s picks would require a break with the way the bureau usually promotes from within. Both Rochford and Guerin had never served as assistant special agents in charge, the traditional step toward a top slot at headquarters. Some within the bureau felt that Szady had created a cliquish boys club—what the journalist Bill Gertz referred to as “the posse” in his 2006 book Enemies. But the assistant director was determined to succeed or fail on his own terms.

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Many in the bureau never expected Szady himself to rise so high. McWeeney recalls that some saw him as “a good agent, and a great guy to have a beer with. But he was inappropriate, loud, and didn’t seem to understand details.” Yet behind Szady’s swagger, McWeeney observes, was an instinct for identifying solutions most others didn’t see and, more crucially, the ability to sell them.

Szady knew he couldn’t push reform from headquarters. He’d need the heads of the fifty-six field offices to drive the message home to their agents on the ground. So he and McWeeney concocted a plan: win over the biggest hard-liners from the criminal side—like Charlie Mathews, an agent who was notorious for his disdain for counterintelligence. If they did that, they hoped, everyone else would at least be willing to hear them out.

With Mueller’s blessing, Szady flew six of the bureau’s most influential special agents in charge, including Mathews, to Washington in early April 2002. Late one morning, Szady and the agents gathered with ten other staffers in a fifth-floor conference room at the Hoover Building. The room went quiet as Szady wound himself up into a pulpit-style performance. “We’re fighting terrorism because it might hit you like a heart attack, out of nowhere—‘boom’—it’ll kill you,” he began. “In reality, there’s a cancer that’s probably more serious. It’s a more certain death. It’s eating you up, bit by bit. That cancer is the intelligence threat.”

China, he explained, was surging ahead—using its vast number of spies and the open nature of American society to steal its most sensitive secrets. Beijing’s recruitment pitches often appealed to duty to the motherland, but could also involve cash, sex, or coercion. They even targeted U.S. citizens with relatives in China. Refuse to spy, and a sick family member back in Beijing might lose their job, be refused medical treatment, or worse.

Szady paused, watching the eyes in the room to make sure he still had them. “And the FBI,” he said, “is really doing nothing. Zero.”

Then he pivoted to the ways they could counter China’s numbers game. Before he could finish, Mathews’s hand shot up. Everyone stared. “Shit, here he goes,” recalls McWeeney, “we’re all waiting for him to give the zinger as to why it’s not going to work.”

But Mathews’s response wasn’t what anyone expected. “If all this bullshit you’re saying is true, Dave, then why the fuck aren’t you in there pounding on Mueller’s desk asking for more resources?”

Szady took a long pause. “You’re right,” he said. “I should be.”

(Mathews did not respond to a request for comment.)

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Szady took Mathews’s advice and asked Mueller for an unprecedented transfer of 225 agents from the criminal division into counterintelligence. Every field office in the country would have a squad. He insisted on other changes as well. Counterintelligence training at Quantico shifted from three hours to three weeks. And by placing an assistant special agent in charge focused on national security in the field offices as well, the bureau forged a new career path for counterintelligence specialists to rise through the ranks.

Szady and company took their pitch around the country, but winning over partners in industry and academia was just as tough. Trade with China was lucrative, and plenty of executives worried that having the FBI poking around their operations might spook investors. Academics were no easier. The universities that anchor America’s defense and commercial research have been wary of the bureau since the days of COINTELPRO (an abbreviation of “counter-intelligence program”), a 1960s-era endeavor in which the FBI surveilled and harassed opponents of the Vietnam War and civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. These concerns—along with fears about racial profiling—had only escalated in the wake of the Wen Ho Lee affair.

To overcome the resistance, the bureau launched a massive outreach effort that would continue for years. It included forging strategic alliances with business leaders and the heads of major universities.

The new counterintelligence program was a hard sell on Capitol Hill, too. And it was about to get a lot harder. An espionage scandal was about to explode in Los Angeles—one that involved a prized FBI informant who was secretly sleeping with two of her handlers and allegedly spying for Beijing.

Sex, lies, and political backlash

ON APRIL 9, 2003, WHILE THE WORLD was fixated on the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, FBI agents raided two homes in Los Angeles. The targets were James “J.J.” Smith, a recently retired senior counterintelligence agent for the bureau, and Katrina Leung, codenamed “Parlor Maid,” an informant prized for her deep connections inside Beijing’s byzantine power circles. The FBI now suspected her of being a double agent.

For Steve Conley—Smith’s friend, protégé, and eventual successor on the Leung case—the scandal was personal. When Smith retired in late 2000, he urged Conley to take over Leung’s operations, telling him his asset would “make his career.” Instead, Conley immediately saw warning signs: Leung had unreported travel to China, access to sensitive FBI secrets, and an unsettling familiarity with Smith. Conley tried to raise his concerns with his superiors, but they brushed him off.

Conley continued to push until December 2001. That’s when investigators working on a secret task force looking into Leung pulled Conley aside and told him what was really going on. They recruited him to help. Shortly afterwards, the FBI discovered it had not one but two espionage suspects, when surveillance in a hotel room in Los Angeles caught Smith and Leung in flagrante delicto. “They had the video,” Conley recalls. “They didn’t make me watch it, but . . . they said,‘This means [Smith is] compromised.” It became clear that Smith, Leung’s handler, had been secretly having an affair with her for nearly twenty years, through most of her spying career. Their sexual liaison threatened to undermine the bureau’s entire China program.

Conley’s new mission was to quietly determine what his former boss had passed to Leung. In 2002, Les Wiser, the agent who led the squad that captured notorious spy Aldrich Ames, took over the task force. They discovered the duo had blown a wide swath of bureau operations. “[Smith] was the supervisor,” Conley explains. “He had access to all of the China cases including joint operations. . . . People were told on the squad, ‘Run your stuff by J.J., run it by Parlor Maid.’ That meant she saw everything,” says Conley. This included the FBI’s investigations into U.S. nuclear leaks: “She could let [her handlers] know back in Beijing and they could warn their source, their spy in the lab: ‘You need to stop, you need to lay low, or you need to get out.’”

The potential implications of the Leung case were staggering. It meant twenty years of FBI investigations into the loss of U.S. nuclear secrets may have been sabotaged from the inside. Though the “Parlor Maid” fiasco started long before Szady’s tenure, Mueller came down hard on him to make sure the FBI’s other sources were better vetted. “It was a fucking earthquake,” says Rochford. Guerin and his team dove into the files of assets all around the country to weed out other potential problems, kicking off a new push to validate their sources. But the scandal was already doing damage to the bureau’s reputation in Washington. Especially after Wiser’s team uncovered that Leung simultaneously carried on a twelve-year affair with William Cleveland, another senior FBI counterintelligence official. He too had played a key role in investigations into Chinese spying at U.S. nuclear labs. (Cleveland could not be reached for comment.)

Louis Freeh (left) and Steve Conley (right). (Courtesy of Steve Conley.)

Despite serious espionage allegations, Leung only pleaded guilty to tax-evasion charges. “They followed me for two years, recorded 40,000 minutes of phone calls, and found not a shred of evidence [of spying for China],” Leung wrote in a statement published in the Chinese-language diaspora newspaper, the China Press. Conley and Wiser maintain that graymail was a major factor in the government’s case unraveling. Regardless, the task force finally neutralized what Conley calls “the biggest penetration of the FBI by the Chinese—certainly that I know of.” (Smith and Leung did not respond to requests for comment.)

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In the early summer of 2003, as criticism of the bureau intensified in Washington in the aftermath of the “Parlor Maid” scandal, the Economist published an article titled “America Needs More Spies,” calling for a new domestic intelligence service separate from the FBI. Among its six authors was Bryant, the former deputy director who had been McWeeney’s ally in pushing for reform, who had since retired. Szady felt blindsided. He was surprised that someone who’d worked so hard at changing the bureau would reach those conclusions.

It would only get worse for the FBI. Later that summer, the Bush administration appointed Michelle Van Cleave as national counterintelligence executive, the interagency post Szady had once held before September 11th. Van Cleave wanted to be in charge of American counterintelligence, trumping the bureau’s authority—the same reorganization recently approved by the House Intelligence Committee. (Van Cleave did not respond to a request for comment.)

The power struggle was unfolding as leaders in Washington were trying to figure out how to combat terrorism in the twenty-first century—and they were excoriating the FBI. In 2004, the 9/11 Commission said the bureau still wasn’t using intelligence in a manner sophisticated enough to fight terrorism and espionage. “We woke up and realized we had a Cold War national security apparatus in place, and that’s why nearly 3,000 people were just killed in New York,” says a senior Senate staffer who took part in the debates and asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Counterintelligence was just one part of this larger battle, the senior staffer adds. Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, for instance, floated proposals to create a new domestic security agency similar to Britain’s MI5. In an interview with The Bulwark, former national security official Richard Clarke says the Bush administration was considering creating an MI5-style agency as well. “Bush said, ‘We’ll give [the FBI] one last chance,’” Clarke recalls.

To arm themselves for the long-running battles behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, Mueller, Szady, and other bureau officials met with the domestic intelligence services of other countries that operated without the FBI’s law-enforcement powers. What they found surprised them. Former Deputy Director John Pistole recalls how some MI5 officials wished their service and Scotland Yard were unified in the way the bureau was. The FBI’s ability to arrest, subpoena, and seize evidence, they said, gave it leverage to disrupt spy networks that those agencies salivated over. Those tools could be used creatively too, similar to how the bureau and Justice Department brought tax-evasion charges to ultimately bring down Al Capone.

In their briefings to Congress, Szady and his team also stressed that keeping counterintelligence at the FBI would help protect civil rights. The bureau had, of course, blatantly violated the law during its hundred-year history—from the Palmer Raids against suspected leftist radicals that began in 1919 when the FBI was still called the Bureau of Investigation to COINTELPRO in the 1960s. But the FBI’s obligation to support prosecutions had helped keep it tethered to the Constitution.

As they continued to speak to congressional leaders and their aides, Szady and others eventually began to make headway. Some genuinely liked their ideas and saw them making progress, the senior Senate staffer says. Others liked them just enough to preserve the status quo and avoid the hassle of aggressively reconfiguring counterintelligence.

But the FBI would still need to prove it had shaken off the dysfunction that had plagued the nuclear lab cases and others.

Soccer cleats and secret submarines

ON A SWELTERING NIGHT IN LATE JUNE 2004, faint red flashlights flitted through the darkness inside a modest midcentury home in Downey, a Southern California suburb where defense contractors have clustered since World War II. The home belonged to Chi Mak, an electrical engineer who specialized in naval propulsion systems. The FBI suspected he had another job—as a spy passing highly classified details about the Navy’s next generation of submarines and other warships to China. Now, a team of black-clad FBI agents were searching his house, taking pains to leave every item, from computers to dust-covered papers, exactly as they’d found them.

Weeks earlier, investigators had confirmed that Mak and his wife, Rebecca, would be out of town on a week-long Alaska cruise—a rare opening that gave the bureau its best chance to get inside undetected. For weeks, the lead investigator on the case, Special Agent James Gaylord, had overseen the plan. It was the first covert entry of his career, and he knew if they made a mistake, a neighbor might tip off Mak, potentially blowing the entire investigation. So far everything—from camouflaging the mobile command post in a nearby park to placing surveillance teams in the neighborhood—had gone smoothly.

Gaylord’s only oversight? Footwear. While dressing in dark clothes for the mission, he realized the only black sneakers he owned were a pair of soccer cleats he used to referee his daughters’ games. He’d covered the reflective stripes with black electrical tape, but now the cleats were digging into the soles of his feet.

After hours of searching, the agents found what they were looking for: classified schematics and propulsion data for submarines and destroyers. It was a breakthrough. These were sensitive documents that could compromise America’s advantage on the high seas.

Gaylord was excited—until he heard one of his teammates hiss through the darkness: “This house looks like it’s got fucking smallpox!” Gaylord’s cleats had left deep divots in the carpet, he writes in his new book about the case, Chasing Chi. An agent had to smooth over every single cleat mark so the couple wouldn’t suspect anything when they returned.

It was a hiccup for Gaylord in an investigation—codenamed “Glazed Stone”—that became a major win for the bureau. The case had begun in 2003, when the FBI received a tip from another intelligence agency that someone inside the company where Mak worked was leaking Navy secrets to Beijing. At first, Gaylord didn’t want the case—investigations into Chinese espionage were seen as career-enders that seldom got the support they needed.

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But Gaylord and his partner at NCIS, Gunnar Newquist, reached out to headquarters for help. To their surprise, they got it—fast. Among the dozens of reforms Szady had adopted in the aftermath of the Wen Ho Lee debacle was the creation of a new team in Washington to fast-track spy cases and prevent the kind of neglect that had crippled “Kindred Spirit.” “Our job wasn’t to take control away from the field,” but to help them jumpstart the investigations, recalls Rochford, the head of that new team, known as the counterespionage section. Though the bureau’s new strategy was about stopping espionage before it started, its work with companies, universities, and other agencies meant it was also getting a lot more leads. “At any given time,” says Rochford, “we were pushing nearly eight hundred hot cases.”

Gaylord and Newquist got nearly two dozen agents, six surveillance teams, plus analysts—more than they’d asked for. And as the case moved forward, the counterespionage section occasionally worked with Gaylord’s supervisor to overrule senior managers at the local Los Angeles field office when they tried to pull people back for other work. “It was a real reversal” of what it was like dealing with headquarters before Szady, says Gaylord.

On October 28, 2005, the FBI arrested Chi Mak and five members of his family whom he had recruited to move sensitive material. Defense lawyers tried to claim the bureau’s case was driven by xenophobia. But prosecutors and agents were prepared for that line of argument—and others—that Gaylord and his cohorts say were bogus. “I’m Chinese-American,” says Sheldon Fung, an FBI case agent on the Chi Mak investigation who extensively studied the mistakes of the Wen Ho Lee affair. “There were three other Asian-Americans on the squad. We didn’t pick these people because they were Asian. . . . If any of us saw any profiling like that we’d be screaming about it.”

Two years later, a federal jury convicted Mak of illegally passing Navy secrets to China. It marked the first successful U.S. prosecution of a major Chinese spy since 1985. “The Chi Mak case,” says Fung, “set a different standard for how all Chinese cases were handled after that.”

Some of the evidence Gaylord’s team gathered led directly to more espionage arrests. And a postmortem of the case uncovered the way Chinese spies operated. Exposing their tradecraft helped the bureau—as part of its new domain program—alert other companies about early warning signs of espionage.

Equally important: The case gave the FBI a success story to help reassure Congress.

FBI surveillance photo of Chi Mak and Rebecca Chiu

‘We’ve put a disaster in play’

BACK IN LATE 2002, NOT LONG AFTER the bureau’s new counterintelligence plan went into effect, the FBI asked Montoya to move from headquarters and become a field supervisor in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A former criminal investigator who had worked gang cases and bank robberies before he began chasing spies, he was eager to do so. “I had been baptized in the waters of Szady,” he says. “They wanted me to go out there and evangelize the program.” His supervisor at the time expressed skepticism. “If this is really a priority,” Montoya recalls him saying, “then go out and find the spies in Wisconsin.”

Montoya did just that. In less than two years, he partnered with a Wausau, Wisconsin company selling carbon fiber tubing abroad—and attracting the attention of Chinese and Iranian spies. The bureau worked with the company to set up tripwires to warn them about any suspicious purchases. He also helped crack a major case in Manitowoc, a small town on Lake Michigan. The bureau used a court-authorized wiretap to nab Wen Ning, a former Chinese consulate employee-turned-FBI informant who was playing a double game and sending Beijing computer chips for intercontinental ballistic missiles. “In the course of the investigation, we determined there was a connection between him and ‘Parlor Maid,’” says Montoya. Wen Ning was sentenced to five years in prison in 2006.

When Szady retired from the bureau that same year, he left behind not only many of the leaders he’d hand-picked, like Favreau. He also left a new generation of agents he’d helped train, like Montoya, who continued to build on what he’d started.

In the ensuing years, thanks in part to the foundation Szady and his team created, the bureau would finally come to be viewed as a respected part of the American intelligence appartus—and fully integrate cyber operations, as well. But the tension that had kicked off Szady’s and Mueller’s first conversation in the wake of September 11th never went away: How do you maintain the arduous work of developing networks of human sources when they don’t always produce the kinds of immediate stats that get Congress to pay for operations?

Subsequent FBI counterintelligence chiefs dealt with this dilemma in different ways. Robert Anderson, who held Szady’s old job between 2012 and 2014, used the domain program’s net to snare numerous potential spies, arresting them for crimes like money laundering, intellectual property theft, and FARA violations at a time when China was growing more aggressive. “It was like shooting ducks on a pond,” he says. “These are criminal violations just like bank robberies or anything else.”

Conley, who went on to become an executive in the FBI’s intelligence directorate, lamented that the program under subsequent directors seemed to lose some of its focus on cultivating long-term sources and operations. Since the first Trump administration, the counterespionage section—the team within the counterintelligence division focused on traditional spying by foreign intelligence services, as well as leaks of classified information—has been reorganized at least once. Regardless, the foundation of what Szady, McWeeney, and Favreau had pioneered stayed intact in some form. “It was mixed results, but [Szady] got results,” says Montoya.

Along the way, many of the lieutenants and agents who’d served in the program brought its strategy to corporate security consulting—an informal network that amplified the FBI’s work. Pamir Consulting, cofounded by Guerin, played an early role in detecting a breach at DuPont that led to a billion-dollar espionage case the press referred to as “stealing the color white.” The FBI took the handoff and ran an investigation that, in 2014, netted a ring of China-linked conspirators who’d tried to pilfer the secret chemical process behind the ultra-white pigment used in everything from Ford Mustangs to Oreo fillings.

Today, more than a decade has passed since the DuPont case, and the threat of foreign espionage has entered a new phase—one turbocharged by artificial intelligence. Having already created a mass-surveillance panopticon at home, Chinese officials are attempting to use their DeepSeek AI to thwart crimes, obstruct political protests, and mitigate security risks before they start—powers a recent Jamestown Foundation analysis likened to the predictive policing in the movie Minority Report.

That same unnerving capability could extend to the United States thanks to millions of Chinese-made products and services like security cameras, drones, internet-connected appliances, and even TikTok. Data from these devices and apps flow through companies obligated to report to Beijing—and its intelligence agencies. This gives China opportunities to spot weaknesses in America’s defenses—not just for spies looking to steal secrets but for covert operations aimed at both civilian and military targets.

Civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution and American law prohibit the FBI from using similar mass-surveillance tools. But that puts the bureau at an extreme disadvantage against foreign adversaries like Beijing. “You can’t think about high castle walls keeping everything out,” says Emily Harding, a former CIA officer and Senate Intelligence Committee staffer. “You need a layered defense.”

For many security experts, the key layer is human—clandestine informants as well as partnerships similar to those Szady and his team created more than two decades ago. But instead of building on that foundation to combat new, pressing national-security challenges, Patel is shifting the bureau’s priorities to focus on deportation and street crime. In the country’s largest field offices, according to the data obtained by Sen. Warner, nearly 40 percent of agents have been assigned to immigration enforcement. The FBI says there has been a 35 percent increase in arrests related to Chinese espionage since January. But many of those cases—including one earlier this month involving two men who were allegedly smuggling AI technology to China—began well before Patel became director.

Perhaps more critically, the total number of arrests doesn’t necessarily reflect the bureau’s effectiveness. “Arrests are never the measure of success,” says Rochford. “You need to know the mind of your enemy.” Putting someone behind bars rather than flipping them for information can even be counterproductive at times.

A spokesperson for the House Intelligence Committee put it even more pointedly: “Success cannot be measured by the number of indictments. Each publicized arrest demonstrates the successful identification of a system failure: hostile operatives functioned successfully within the U.S., often for years.”

Stopping adversaries like China, Rochford adds, requires gathering vast amounts of intelligence and carrying out sophisticated ops with other agencies—especially in the age of AI. These were the same metrics used by Szady and his team, reinforced by ruthless, ongoing reviews by retired counterintelligence agents, a rare form of outside scrutiny that McWeeney considered indispensable. “Patel is only paying lip service to the Chinese threat,” says Montoya. By focusing on deportations at the expense of national security, he adds, “we’ve put a disaster in play.”

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Whether Patel’s goals for the bureau will impede counterintelligence work or not, William Evanina, a former FBI agent and supervisor who went on to become the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, has stressed to lawmakers that the bureau and Congress should make sure the FBI is capable of facing the challenges of the AI era. “We do need to take a hard look at counterintelligence and how we’re protecting America,” he says. “Let’s fix things that are broken but not throw everything out that is working.”

Though some of the changes proposed in Crawford’s bill hark back to parts of Szady’s plans, others—such as elevating Gabbard—are more radical. In a memo leaked to the Atlantic in November, her office argued that counterintelligence at the bureau has become “politicized” and needs centralized control to prevent further “weaponization.” Other news outlets also reported that Gabbard was gathering support within the government for the proposal to put her in charge of all counterintelligence. The FBI pushed back, warning of the dangers of handing counterintelligence authority to an organization lacking experience with spy-hunting operations.

For now, however, Gabbard appears to have backed away from the proposed reorganization. A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told The Bulwark that “DNI Gabbard supports the administration’s position, which is in opposition to the legislation.” But that could quickly change, especially if Patel—already reeling from allegations he’d misused FBI resources for his girlfriend’s personal security—becomes embroiled in more controversy that further tarnishes his and the bureau’s reputation. “We fought this battle twenty years ago,” says Szady. “Why would we waste time and energy going back to square one?”

Either way, to veterans of the post–September 11th reform battles and others, the power struggle between Patel and Gabbard felt like Groundhog Day—only worse, because the FBI still doesn’t seem to have a clear plan to confront the extraordinary threats of sophisticated foreign spies armed with advanced technology. “Any resources taken away from this just puts us more behind,” says a former FBI agent who, after years of working national security cases, recently left the bureau to avoid being reassigned to immigration enforcement. “We don’t have the luxury of time.”

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thebulwark.com · R.M. Schneiderman and Derek OwenDec 14, 2025

9. U.S. Presses Other Countries to Send Troops to Gaza, but None Have Stepped Forward Yet

​Summary:

The WSJ reports the Trump administration is trying to assemble a roughly 10,000 troop multinational stabilization force for postwar Gaza under a U.S. general, but no country has committed troops yet and officials expect it would take much of 2026 to field. Many governments fear mission creep into disarming Hamas in contested areas, preferring a narrower “green zone” mandate while Israel holds a central “yellow line.” Washington has asked 70+ countries for troops or support; 19 have expressed interest. Funding talks involve Gulf partners, while governance, Israeli withdrawal, hostage releases, and Hamas disarmament remain unresolved, raising risk Israel stays indefinitely.

Comment: Some might ask: Why would they? Let America deal with it.

U.S. Presses Other Countries to Send Troops to Gaza, but None Have Stepped Forward Yet

WSJ

Some governments are concerned about being drawn into disarming Hamas in areas where the militants remain active

By Alexander Ward

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, Robbie Gramer

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 and Benoit Faucon

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Dec. 13, 2025 12:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-presses-other-countries-to-send-troops-to-gaza-but-none-have-stepped-forward-yet-9c204999

Hamas militants earlier this month in the northern Gaza Strip. Reuters

WASHINGTON—Trump administration officials are seeking to recruit a multinational force of around 10,000 troops under a U.S. general to stabilize postwar Gaza, officials say, but acknowledge it will take much of the next year to get them in place.

No foreign countries have yet committed troops, partly over reservations that the mission could expand to include disarming Hamas militants who remain active in parts of the shattered enclave, officials said.

Even the two nations U.S. officials say are on the verge of sending troops—Azerbaijan and Indonesia—favor a narrower mandate that wouldn’t involve them in potentially lethal operations.

Some U.S. officials are hopeful they will secure commitments for up to 5,000 troops early next year and will raise that to 10,000 total by the end of 2026. Others say the force is unlikely to ever have more than 8,000 personnel, far fewer than U.S. officials aim to recruit.

Michael Singh, a former National Security Council official who handled Middle East issues in the George W. Bush administration, said a stabilization force that avoids confronting Hamas might create new problems.

“Peacekeepers who are unwilling to use force risk creating a worst-case scenario for Israel: a force that not only fails to disarm Hamas, but acts as cover for the group’s rearmament and an obstacle to Israel’s freedom of action,” he said.

The embassies of Indonesia and Azerbaijan in the U.S. didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Foreign countries have reservations about committing troops to the plan to stabilize Gaza, which is in ruins. Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters

The U.S. State Department on Monday formally asked more than 70 countries for their military or financial contributions to the security force, officials said, ranging from close allies such as Italy and France, to smaller countries including Malta and El Salvador.

The message says Middle East countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are already in discussions with the U.S. to fund the Gaza effort, noting that they “will require consistent engagement for specific asks.”

A U.S. official said 19 countries have responded expressing interest in contributing troops or helping in other ways, such as providing equipment, transportation or logistics support.

More than 25 countries are expected to meet in Qatar next week for a U.S.-led meeting to make plans for the force’s composition and the scope of the mission, officials said.

Vice President JD Vance said in October that the force was key to disarming Hamas, telling reporters during a visit to Israel that the task was “going to take some time and it’s going to depend a lot on the composition of that force.”

President Trump outlined a multistep plan to rebuild Gaza after brokering a cease-fire in late September. Even the first phase of the plan, which includes the return of all hostages, hasn’t been completed, according to Israel. Hamas still holds the body of Ran Gvili, which Israel says must be released before the peace process can continue.

Trump is eager to declare the start of the next phase of the plan early next year, which calls for naming a Board of Peace to oversee reconstruction, and a group of Palestinian technocrats to administer Gaza. Israeli forces would also begin the process of withdrawing from the enclave under the plan.

Trump is expected to name the U.S. general to command the force early next year. No U.S. troops will participate inside Gaza, officials said, though some are stationed at a coordination center in nearby Kiryat Gat, Israel.

With Hamas refusing to disarm and details unresolved on who eventually will govern the enclave, talks on moving to the second phase of the plan are gridlocked.

“We accepted Trump’s plan as a whole, we made compromises, and we were not happy with everything in it,” Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., said in an interview. “But when you read the plan, it says very clearly that the next phase will take place after all of the hostages are released.”

President Trump showing a signed document at the Gaza Peace Summit in Egypt earlier this year. yoan valat/press pool

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Trump in Miami before the end of the year, officials said. They are expected to discuss the practicalities of moving to the next phase of the peace process.

Gaza is still in ruins, and living conditions for the enclave’s more than two million residents remain dire. Most Palestinians are staying in tents pitched in overcrowded camps and rubble-strewn streets. The onset of winter has worsened conditions, with heavy rains flooding camps.

A major unresolved issue is Netanyahu’s opposition to allowing the Palestinian Authority a role in postwar Gaza. This stance clashes with the desire of Arab countries that want to see the authority play a major role in Gaza.

U.S. officials point out that it has been only a month since Trump’s peace plan was passed in a United Nations Security Council resolution adopting the blueprint.

“The Trump administration has made tremendous progress in record time in implementing President Trump’s 20-point peace plan and we have seen unbelievable interest from countries across the world to be a part of this historic effort to deliver a lasting peace in the Middle East,” White House spokesman Dylan Johnson said.

Countries in talks with the U.S. said they wanted their forces to operate in Gaza’s eastern “green zone,” a Hamas-free area, while Israel’s military mans the “yellow line” roughly bisecting the enclave from north to south. Armed Hamas members would remain in the smaller “red zone” hugging Gaza’s coastline.

But U.S. officials haven’t given up on persuading troop-contributing countries to expand their mission into Hamas-controlled areas. Any delay in disarming the militants could prompt the Israeli military to remain in Gaza instead of fully withdrawing, as the peace plan demands, U.S. officials say.

Hamas has privately signaled it is open to decommissioning its heavy weapons under Egyptian supervision, officials said. But publicly, it is taking a much stronger stance as negotiations over disarming continue, insisting that it will only consider giving up its weapons in return for U.S.-brokered commitments on creation of a Palestinian state.

“If there is a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a clear horizon toward a Palestinian state, we will deal with suggestions on weapons in a positive way,” Husam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told The Wall Street Journal at the group’s office in Doha, Qatar.

Trump’s closest allies in Washington remain skeptical that Hamas will ever lay down its arms voluntarily.

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“I don’t see an Arab-led force coming over the horizon that will literally disarm Hamas. I don’t see them giving up with their weapons,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said. “This idea of developing Gaza with an armed faction of Hamas still in play makes no sense to me.”

Only Israel could succeed in such a mission, he said. “It is going to take an armed intervention by Israel to disarm Hamas. I just don’t see any credible force to do that other than the Israelis.”

Israeli military chief Eyal Zamir said this week that his forces might never leave the “yellow line,” calling it a potentially permanent “new border.”

The United Nations said last month it would cost about $70 billion to rebuild Gaza, with around 75% of buildings in the Strip damaged or destroyed. U.S. officials hope that Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. will contribute significant funds to Gaza’s reconstruction. Qatar, another wealthy Arab country, suggested Israel should foot the bill.

“We aren’t the ones who are going to write a check to rebuild what others destroyed,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar’s prime minister, said at a conference in Doha this month. “When you are talking about Gaza,” he continued, “Israel flattened this land.”

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com, Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

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10. America’s Pharmaceutical Dependence on China Is a National Security Crisis

​Summary:

U.S. reliance on China for pharmaceuticals is a national security vulnerability because Beijing could disrupt or weaponize access to essential medicines in a crisis. He claims China supplies a large share of U.S. imports for common drugs and ingredients, including acetaminophen, ibuprofen, hydrocortisone, key antibiotic precursors, and inputs for major cardiovascular medications. He warns cost driven direct to consumer drug models can deepen this exposure. He attributes China’s advantage to long term industrial policy and weak regulatory constraints, and urges treating drug manufacturing as critical infrastructure through reshoring incentives, procurement reforms, and supply chain security requirements.

Comment: The sad irony. We depend on China for medicine yet we demand China stop the flow of precursors to Mexico to create the pharmaceuticals so many Americans seem to desire. 

America’s Pharmaceutical Dependence on China Is a National Security Crisis

China controls a staggering portion of the United States’ pharmaceutical supply chain – and that means U.S. access to medicine can be weaponized.

By Jason Forrester

December 13, 2025

https://thediplomat.com/2025/12/americas-pharmaceutical-dependence-on-china-is-a-national-security-crisis/

Credit: Shutterstock

My time at the Pentagon clearly demonstrated that national security isn’t just about missiles and military readiness. It’s about the people and critical systems that keep Americans safe and healthy. Today, one of our greatest vulnerabilities doesn’t come from the incredible risk posed by foreign military capabilities or a rogue state’s nuclear program. It comes from our medicine cabinets.

China controls a staggering portion of the United States’ pharmaceutical supply chain, producing or supplying the active pharmaceutical ingredients for up to a quarter of all drugs available to Americans. From common over-the-counter medications like Tylenol and Advil to life-saving antibiotics and critical heart medications, we have handed our adversary leverage over the health and survival of millions of American citizens. 

This is a national security crisis hiding in plain sight.

The scope of this dependence should alarm every American. China supplies 70-74 percent of acetaminophen (Tylenol) imports to the United States, 95 percent of ibuprofen, and 91-96 percent of hydrocortisone. These aren’t exotic drugs – they’re medications sitting in millions of American homes right now.

Even some of the most recent attempts to improve drug access are trapped in this dependency. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug sales platforms, which have been gaining traction thanks to TrumpRx, are significantly reliant on Chinese supply chains. Billionaire Mark Cuban’s company, Cost Plus Drugs, lists numerous medications whose active ingredients have high exposure to Chinese manufacturing. It even publicly announced the addition of a Chinese-made medication for chronic inflammatory diseases.

Frequently prescribed antibiotics, including amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, azithromycin, and doxycycline are heavily dependent on Chinese inputs. China is the leading supplier of 6-APA, a critical ingredient for these antibiotics. Production of amoxicillin, for instance, relies heavily on China for raw materials, with estimates suggesting around 80 percent dependence. 

Cardiovascular medications tell an equally troubling story. Commonly prescribed drugs for high blood pressure, heart disease, and high cholesterol, like losartan, atenolol, and atorvastatin, are significantly tied to Chinese manufacturers. HealthWarehouse offers these cardiovascular drugs, as well as Blink Health, another DTC platform that is well-known thanks to Donald Trump Jr.’s involvement. 

These examples clearly demonstrate China’s deep penetration into portions of our pharmaceutical supply chain. Tens of millions of Americans take these medications every day. If China decided to limit exports, cardiovascular disease risks would skyrocket, and Americans would die from preventable heart attacks and strokes.

The irony is painful: in the name of lowering prescription drug prices, these companies resort to Chinese-made products to keep costs down. But what good are affordable medications if the supply can be cut off at Beijing’s whim?

China didn’t stumble into this dominant position. Beijing deliberately developed this control through decades of strategic industrial policy, government subsidies, and lax environmental regulations that allowed Chinese manufacturers to systematically undercut Western competitors. While U.S. pharmaceutical companies prioritized short-term profits, China played the long game – and won.

The history of Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing should give us pause. In 2009, Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals’ heparin, a blood thinner offered by Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs, caused American patient fatalities. This incident forced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to do a major recall for Chinese-made heparin due to carcinogen contamination. These aren’t isolated incidents; they’re predictable outcomes when cost-cutting trumps quality control and when an authoritarian government faces no meaningful accountability.

From a national security perspective, pharmaceutical dependence creates multiple vectors of vulnerability. In peacetime, China can leverage this control for diplomatic concessions. During a crisis – whether over Taiwan, the South China Sea, or any future flashpoint – Beijing could weaponize U.S. pharmaceutical dependence, denying Americans access to essential medications. Even without explicit threats, supply chain disruptions during a conflict would devastate American healthcare.

The solution requires treating pharmaceutical manufacturing as critical national infrastructure. We need strategic investments in domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing, particularly for active pharmaceutical ingredients. We need regulatory reforms that incentivize reshoring production and penalize excessive foreign dependence. We need procurement policies that prioritize supply chain security alongside cost.

Most importantly, we need political leadership willing to acknowledge that the United States’ healthcare system cannot be dictated by China or other foreign markets. True healthcare affordability means nothing if the medications we need are controlled by an adversary. National security and healthcare security are inseparable – and right now, we’re failing at both.

After nearly three decades in defense policy, I’ve seen many threats to U.S. security. Few are as insidious as the one we’ve willingly created by outsourcing our pharmaceutical production to China. It’s time we treated this crisis with the urgency it deserves – before Beijing reminds us exactly how vulnerable we’ve become.

Authors

Guest Author

Jason Forrester

Jason Forrester has worked in the Washington, D.C., policy community since the late 1990s. He's been a senior staffer in the U.S. Senate, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and worked for the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He's a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

11. They Droned Back – Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels circling off the Dutch and German coast

​Summary:

Seven journalism students used OSINT and leaked German police documents to link persistent drone swarms over military sites and critical infrastructure to Russian linked vessels loitering off the Dutch and German coasts. They flagged three ships, HAV Dolphin and HAV Snapper under convenience flags but with Russian crews, and the Russian freighter Lauga, noting abnormal circling near defense shipyards and timing overlaps with drone incidents, including seven drones shadowing a German police escort. The team cites 2025 BKA figures showing 1,072 drone incidents, rarely attributed to pilots, and reports 19 geographic and temporal correlations between ship positions and drone sightings. They did not prove causation, but intelligence sources assess high confidence of Russian tasking and point to Rosatom linked facilities and ship launched drone capability.

They Droned Back

Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels circling off the Dutch and German coast

Henk van Ess

Dec 10, 2025

∙ Paid

https://www.digitaldigging.org/p/they-droned-back

Seven German journalism students tracked Russian-crewed freighters lurking off the Dutch and German coast—and connected them to drone swarms over military bases.

Let me walk you through what Michèle Borcherding, Clara Veihelmann, Luca-Marie Hoffmann, Julius Nieweler, Tobias Wellnitz, Sergen Kaya, and Clemens Justus of Axel Springer Academy for Journalism and Technology pulled off.

Just so you know, I’m familiar with them. I did a long OSINT training with them in Berlin. I can tell you: they went far beyond anything I taught them. The physical verification alone—chasing a ship across France, the Netherlands, and Belgium—that’s not something you learn in a classroom.

On the night of May 16, 2025, two ships were sitting in suspicious positions. The HAV Dolphin—flagged in Antigua & Barbuda—had been circling in Germany’s Kiel Bay for ten days. Not delivering cargo. Just loitering, 25 kilometers from defense shipyards where drone swarms had been spotted on three separate days.

Merry goes round and round and round. Based on shipping data.

Meanwhile, 115 kilometers away off the Dutch island of Schiermonnikoog, her sister ship the HAV Snapper had sailed out and parked in open water. It positioned itself exactly two hours before seven drones appeared over a Russian freighter being escorted by German police through the North Sea. It stayed there for four days and made silly circles.

That Russian freighter, the Lauga—formerly named “Ivan Shchepetov”—had visited Syria’s Tartus port the previous summer. Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base. Where Russian submarines dock.

Coincidence? That’s what the students from the Axel Springer Academy decided to find out. What followed was a five-week investigation involving leaked classified documents, tens of thousands of ship tracking data points, a 2,500-kilometer car chase across three countries, and—in a delicious bit of turnabout—their own drone flight over one of the suspect vessels.

“Wir haben zurück-gedrohnt,” they told their audience today during a presentation of the project. We droned back.The scale of the problem

Here is the actual footage of the ship that the students droned, including more background. It’s in German.

Let’s start with the numbers that German authorities didn’t want public.

According to classified BKA reports obtained by the team: 1,072 incidents involving 1,955 drones in 2025 alone (as of November 19). Forty-five percent occurred in evening hours. Drone swarms flew “almost exclusively over or near military installations.”

In only 29 of 498 investigated cases could drone pilots be identified. In none of those cases were they state actors. In 88 percent of cases, authorities couldn’t even identify the drone type.

The BKA’s own assessment: “Individual incidents indicate complex operations drawing on larger financial and logistical resources.”

Translation: this isn’t hobbyists.

Munich Airport

October 2, 2025. First drone sightings around Munich Airport at 22:10. By 22:35, the airport shut down completely. No departures, no landings. Nearly 3,000 passengers stranded overnight.

October 3: same thing. Another shutdown. This time 6,500 people affected. Four hundred emergency cots deployed. Over two days: roughly 10,000 travelers disrupted.

Economic damage to Munich Airport: 6 to 8 million euros.

By October 2025, German air traffic control had logged 192 drone incidents—a new record. Frankfurt led with 43.

The Munich prosecutor’s office is investigating “dangerous interference with air traffic.” Against unknown perpetrators.

The pattern

The leaked BKA documents reveal a disturbing pattern: drones aren’t just buzzing airports. They’re systematically surveilling military installations—often during sensitive operations.

April 15, 2025: A drone overflies Werratalkaserne in Bad Salzungen at 9 PM. At that exact moment: combat vehicles were being delivered and stored for transport to Ukraine.

May 17-21, 2025: During the Bundeswehr exercise “Gelber Merkur” across four German states, more than 80 drone sightings over military sites and defense contractors. Almost exclusively in evening hours.

January 28-29, 2025: Multiple drones spotted over Schwesing airfield. At the time, Ukrainian soldiers were being trained there.

Q1 2025: Persistent overflights of US Air Base Ramstein.

June 4, 2025: Photo reconnaissance of Wilhelmshaven Naval Arsenal.

January 8, 2025: Drones flying in formation over a naval aviation squadron base in Nordholz.

It’s not just military bases.

February-March 2025: Three evening overflights of the LNG terminal in Stade. Two incidents at the adjacent seaport. Seven incidents over Wilhelmshaven Naval Arsenal. One pilot was identified: a 69-year-old German. No evidence of state involvement in that case.

May 4, 2025: A drone flew over Biblis nuclear power plant for five to ten minutes. An unknown vehicle drove up to the open facility gate. Search unsuccessful.

January 13, 2025: Multiple drones spotted over a chemical company in Marl starting at 8 PM. No drone models identified. No suspicious persons or vehicles found. Authorities concluded: “Coincidence is excluded.”

The research method

They started with official channels. What they found was instructive.

The team obtained an internal email showing that all state interior ministries were instructed to give uniform responses to questions about drone sightings. Coordinated stonewalling.

“We were trapped in a bureaucratic maze,” Michèle Borcherding told the audience. “The federal states closed ranks. Nobody felt responsible. We got passed from one spokesperson to the next, and it felt like the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.”

But here’s the thing that made them dig harder: “The answers we got were nearly identical. That everyone blocked us like that triggered the thought: something’s there.”

So they kept digging. And obtained the classified BKA reports that authorities didn’t want public.

Tens of thousands of data points

Clara Veihelmann led the ship tracking analysis. They used Global Fishing Watch (globalfishingwatch.org) to pull AIS data—the automatic identification system that broadcasts ship positions.

“We analyzed tens of thousands of data points,” Veihelmann explains. “We looked closely at ship data in the North Sea and Baltic Sea.”

They were looking for anomalies. Cargo ships move from A to B. Efficiency matters. So when the team saw a ship track that looked like someone had scribbled furiously with a purple marker—loops, circles, ten days of chaos in Kiel Bay instead of a clean transit line—the audience laughed at how absurd it looked.

Experts confirmed: absolutely not normal for a coastal freighter that’s supposed to be making money delivering cargo.

The three ships

The HAV Dolphin

Specifications: 88.32m long, 12.50m beam. Built 1993. Flag: Antigua & Barbuda. Owner: HAV Shipping AS (Norway).

The HAV Dolphin is “the most striking example of all,” the team concluded.

From late March to late April 2025, the ship spent nearly a month at the Pregol Shipyard in Kaliningrad—a facility with documented ties to the Russian military and Rosatom.

Then it sailed to Kiel Bay. May 1-10: the ship sat there for nine days, exhibiting chaotic movement patterns. During exactly this period, drones were spotted on three separate days over defense shipyards 25 kilometers away. Observers noted the drones appeared to come from the direction of the Baltic Sea.

The BKA’s own classified report notes: “A container ship under the flag of Antigua & Barbuda had been anchoring in Kiel Bay since May 1, 2025, with a recent extended stay in Russia.”

The HAV Dolphin has been inspected three times by German and Dutch authorities. Each time: nothing found.

But here’s what the team learned from security sources: those inspections were “superficial“ and “symbolic in nature.” Not all containers were opened. You can’t properly search a freighter like that without many investigators and more time, they were told.

Classified security documents reveal another detail: “During personnel inspection, an additional watch officer was found on board who behaved conspicuously during the inspection.” The captain claimed he was there for training purposes.

The crew? Entirely Russian.

And another incident: In early June, a drone was spotted inside the military security zone at a naval radio station between Ramsloh and Rhauderfehn—used for communication with German submarines and NATO ships. It flew over for about two minutes before disappearing. Seventy kilometers away, the HAV Dolphin had been anchored in the Ems estuary for three days.

The Lauga

Specifications: 102.50m long, 16.40m beam. Built 1994. Former name: “Ivan Shchepetov.” Flag: Russia. Owner: Idan Shipping Company, St. Petersburg.

Night of May 16-17, 2025. The Lauga transits through the North Sea, escorted by the German Federal Police vessel Potsdam.

At approximately 1 AM, the police vessel reports: “Seven drones detected around the deployment ship.” The drones circle both the Russian freighter and the German police ship for hours. Three eventually depart. Four keep circling. Eventually, the police vessel breaks off its escort.

Belgian customs later searched the Lauga in Zeebrugge. All eleven crew members—Russian citizens to a man—were questioned. No drones found.

But the Lauga’s history is telling. Summer 2024: the ship called at Tartus, Syria—Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, where Russian submarines dock.

After the Belgian search, the Lauga sailed to St. Petersburg and docked at the Petrolesport terminal—owned by Delo Group, which is 49% owned by Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation.

The ship’s owner, Idan Shipping Company, is run by Andrei Selyanin. Documents show Selyanin’s other companies openly advertised working for Rosatom in 2024. The team found evidence of earlier Rosatom connections in additional documents.

The HAV Snapper

Specifications: 88.16m long, 12.50m beam. Built 1991. Flag: Bahamas. Owner: HAV Shipping AS (Norway)—same company as the HAV Dolphin.

On the evening of May 16, the HAV Snapper sailed out to a position off the Dutch island of Schiermonnikoog. Two hours before the first drones were spotted over the Lauga and Potsdam, she took up station. She stayed for four days.

Distance from the Lauga incident: 115 kilometers. Within drone range.

The HAV Snapper was serviced at the Pregol Shipyard in Kaliningrad from August 4-29, 2023—the same facility where the HAV Dolphin spent nearly a month before the Kiel incidents.

HAV Shipping told the journalists that Pregol is “a reputable shipyard used by many European shipping companies.” Perhaps. But Pregol has documented connections to both the Russian military and Rosatom.

The Rosatom Thread

The team traced ownership chains, maintenance records, corporate connections. Multiple threads led to Rosatom—Russia’s state nuclear corporation, responsible for nuclear weapons and the submarine program. Rosatom also operates the Atomflot fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers.

Then they found a 2024 Rosatom presentation. It showed an orange-and-blue drone on the helipad of a massive red icebreaker in an Arctic landscape.

Rosatom’s drone specifications:

• Speed: 140 km/h

• Range: at least 200 kilometers

• Maximum altitude: 2.5 kilometers

• Equipment: video cameras, thermal imaging

• Can launch and land on ships

Officially, Rosatom uses these drones for Arctic sea route surveillance. Conditions in the North Sea and Baltic? Far more favorable than the Arctic.

The HAV Dolphin was 25 kilometers from the Kiel drone sightings. The HAV Snapper was 115 kilometers from the Lauga incident. The naval radio station incident: 70 kilometers from the HAV Dolphin.

All well within Rosatom drone range.

The chase

“At this point it was clear to us,” Borcherding says. “We don’t just want to see these ships as data on our screen. We have to get one of them in front of our own eyes.”

They tracked the HAV Dolphin to a French Atlantic port. Called the harbor authority. Got confirmation: the ship would stay until 7 PM the next day.

They flew to Paris. Rented a car. Drove five hours to the coast.

The ship was gone.

What followed was a 2,500-kilometer pursuit from France through the Netherlands to Belgium. The HAV Dolphin was “unpredictable.” Left ports early. Sometimes crawled. Then suddenly sped up. Changed destination data. Then deleted its destination entirely.

It never reached Antwerp. Instead, it parked on a sandbank off the Belgian coast near Ostende. Then it started circling—25 kilometers offshore, directly in front of a Belgian military base.

The team finally caught up.

We droned back

They flew their own drone over the HAV Dolphin.

From the air: 88 meters long, 12 meters wide. Open cargo hold with grid covers, typical for multi-purpose freighters. German security sources confirmed what they’d suspected: the crew was exclusively Russian sailors.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Germany’s domestic intelligence agency) told the team:

“Russian intelligence services deploy so-called low-level agents for espionage, sabotage, and other disruptive measures. These ‘pocket money agents’ or ‘disposable agents’ operate for small sums in the interest of hostile intelligence services without belonging to them. They’re used for comparatively simple operations. Unlike regular staff, they’re expendable—exposure is accepted as a cost of doing business.”

The profile: young men with unstable social circumstances and financial difficulties. Recruited online via messenger services and social media. Financially motivated, sometimes ideologically aligned with Russia.

The Munich prosecutor found no evidence linking airport drone incidents to disposable agents. But the intelligence service confirms the tactic exists and is actively used.

What intelligence services say

European intelligence services assess the three documented ships as operating “with high confidence“ on behalf of Russian interests. Their movement profiles are “very conspicuous” and show “little evidence of commercial activity.”

The German Interior Ministry’s official response: “German security authorities are aware of the ‘shadow fleet’ phenomenon. The issue is being continuously addressed within respective legal jurisdictions. (...) Reports of drone overflights remain consistently high. (...) Involvement of foreign state entities in a non-quantifiable portion of drone overflights is to be presumed.”

“Non-quantifiable portion.” “To be presumed.” That’s intelligence-speak for: we know it’s happening, we can’t prove exactly how much, but we’re not going to say that publicly.

19 Correlations

The team’s final tally: they could draw 19 temporal and geographic correlations between drone sightings and the positions of the three ships.

When drones appeared over northern Germany, a pattern emerged: often, multiple ships exhibited suspicious behavior simultaneously. Movement data showed suspicious patterns over multiple days.

HAV Shipping CEO Petter Kleppan responded to the team’s findings: “HAV has exclusively large, established European companies as customers. We transport dry goods from port to port—steel, curbs, grain, scrap. Typical invoice: about €50,000. We have no Russian customers and generate no revenue from Russia. HAV has ‘self-sanctioned’—we don’t transport goods to or from Russian customers, and we don’t work with Russian brokers.”

What they proved and didn’t prove

“Our trail leads to Russia,” the team concludes. “Not beyond doubt, but it’s currently the most probable explanation. We systematically laid both things side by side: the secret reports about drone incidents and the routes of the ships. You can at least recognize a pattern.”

They didn’t find a drone on any ship. They can’t prove causation. What they established:

• Ships with Russian crews exhibited anomalous behavior near German military installations

• Multiple ships from the same owner positioned suspiciously during the same incidents

• These ships have connections to Russian military-linked facilities (Pregol, Rosatom, Tartus)

• 19 correlations between ship positions and documented drone incidents

• Russia’s state nuclear corporation operates ship-launched drones with sufficient range

• Official inspections were “symbolic”—not all containers opened

• European intelligence assesses these ships as “with high confidence” working for Russia

Why this matters

When the presentation ended, the boss of the paper in the front row spoke up. “I’ve rarely seen anything this good,” she said. “I hope you’re sufficiently proud of yourselves. This is really outstanding. I have goosebumps.”

She was right. Seven students, five weeks, publicly available ship tracking tools, and a willingness to drive 2,500 kilometers on a hunch. They produced a more coherent picture of Germany’s and Netherlands drone mystery than months of official hand-wringing and coordinated stonewalling.

Track them yourself

The ships are still sailing. And you can watch them. The AIS data is still updating. Go find them.

As I write this (December 11, 2025), the HAV Snapper is in the Aegean Sea, underway from Volos to Thessaloniki, Greece. Speed: 8 knots. Course: 327°. Draught: 4.3 meters. Expected arrival: 07:30 local time.

I pulled this from MarineTraffic three minutes ago. You can do the same.

HAV Snapper identifiers for tracking:

• IMO: 9001813

• MMSI: 311014800

• Call sign: C6XN4

• Flag: Bahamas

• AIS transponder: Class A

Free tracking tools:

• MarineTraffic.com — Search by vessel name or IMO number. Free tier shows current position; paid tiers show historical tracks.

• VesselFinder.com — Similar functionality, good for cross-referencing.

• Global Fishing Watch (globalfishingwatch.org) — What the Axel Springer team used. Better for historical analysis and bulk data.

• Kpler — Professional-grade commodity and shipping intelligence. Subscription required but powerful.

The IMO number is key—it’s the ship’s unique identifier that doesn’t change even if the vessel changes names, flags, or owners. The Lauga used to be the “Ivan Shchepetov”. Same IMO number.

Set up alerts. Watch for anomalous behavior. When a cargo ship that should be moving from A to B starts circling for days in the Baltic, you’ll know.

That’s the point of OSINT: find the story in public data.

Below, members only, full presentation.

12. Pax Silica Summit

​Summary:

Pax Silica is a U.S.-led initiative to build a secure, resilient, innovation-driven silicon and AI supply chain, spanning critical minerals and energy through semiconductor manufacturing, AI infrastructure, and logistics. It aims to reduce coercive dependencies, protect sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure, and coordinate fair-market responses to overcapacity and dumping, while framing the effort as positive-sum rather than isolationist. The inaugural Pax Silica Summit, convened by Under Secretary Jacob Helberg, included Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, the UAE, and Australia, with contributions from Taiwan, the EU, Canada, and the OECD.

Comment: I was not familiar with this initiative. It seems like an effort that we need to pursue for US and allied (free world) national security and economic prosperity.

Pax Silica Summit

Fact Sheet

Office of the Spokesperson

December 11, 2025

https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/12/pax-silica-initiative

Pax Silica is a U.S.-led strategic initiative to build a secure, prosperous, and innovation driven silicon supply chain—from critical minerals and energy inputs to advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, AI infrastructure, and logistics.

Rooted in deep cooperation with trusted partners, Pax Silica aims to reduce coercive dependencies, protect the materials and capabilities foundational to artificial intelligence, and ensure aligned nations can develop and deploy transformative technologies at scale.

Pax Silica is a positive-sum partnership. It is not about isolating others—but about coordinating with partners who want to remain competitive and prosperous.

Participating Countries

The inaugural Pax Silica Summit convened stakeholders from: Japan, Republic of Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, The United Kingdom, Israel, United Arab Emirates, and Australia, alongside guest contributions from Taiwan, the European Union, Canada, and the OECD

Together, these partners are home to the most important companies and investors powering the global AI supply chain.

Why Pax Silica?

A New Economic Security Paradigm

Across the United States and its partners, a clear consensus has emerged: secure supply chains, trusted technology, and strategic infrastructure are indispensable to national power and economic growth.

The initiative responds to:

• Growing demand from partners to deepen economic and technology cooperation with the United States.
• The understanding that AI represents a transformative force for our long-term prosperity.
• Recognition that trustworthy systems are essential for safeguarding our mutual security and prosperity.
• Increasing risks from coercive dependencies.
• The importance of fair market practices and policy coordination to protect sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure.

A Transformational Economic Moment

AI is reorganizing the world economy. Economic value will increasingly flow through all levels of the global AI supply chain, driving historic opportunity and demand for energy, critical minerals, semiconductors, manufacturing, technological hardware, infrastructure, and new markets not yet invented.

Meaning Behind the Name

“Pax Silica” draws from the Latin pax—meaning peace, stability, and long-term prosperity, as seen in terms like Pax Americana and Pax Romana. Silica refers to the compound that is refined into silicon, one of the chemical elements foundational to the computer chips that enable artificial intelligence.

The United States is organizing a coalition of countries around the principle of building a secure, resilient, and innovation-driven ecosystem across the entire global technology supply chain—from critical minerals and energy inputs to advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, AI infrastructure, and logistics.

Pax Silica is a new kind of international grouping and partnership – one that aims to unite the countries that host the world’s most advanced technology companies to unleash the economic potential of the new AI age.

Pax Silica seeks to establish a durable economic order that underwrites an AI-driven era of prosperity across partner countries.

On December 12, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Jacob Helberg convened the inaugural Pax Silicia Summit marking the beginning of a new golden era of cooperation on AI and supply chain security. The Summit brought together counterparts from eight countries with the most cutting-edge AI supply chain ecosystems, including Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The Summit also included guest contributions from Taiwan, the European Union, Canada, and the OECD.

The Summit aimed to strengthen trusted technology ecosystems, support long-term offtake arrangements, expand productive capacity across partner economies, and coordinate responses to overcapacity and dumping so that supply chains remain secure, resilient, and innovative over time.

Together, these participants are home to the most important companies and investors powering the global AI supply chain, including but not limited to: Sony, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung, SK Hynix, Temasek, DeepMind, MGX, Rio Tinto, and ASML. 

This summit hailed a new geopolitical consensus: economic security is national security, and national security is economic security. Participants discussed jointly pursuing multilayered partnerships that strengthen supply chain security, address coercive dependencies and single points of failure, and advance the adoption of trusted technology ecosystems. All summit participants explored opportunities to partner on flagship projects across global technology stacks, including connectivity and data infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, logistics, mineral refining and processing, and energy.

President Trump has been explicitly clear that economic security is national security and that the United States is determined to win the AI race. This effort marks another milestone in the implementation of the President’s vision.

Deliverables and Expected Outcomes

Countries will partner on securing strategic stacks of the global technology supply chain, including, but not limited to: software applications and platforms, frontier foundation models, information connectivity and network infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, transportation logistics, minerals refining and processing, and energy.

Countries affirmed a shared commitment to:

• Pursue projects to jointly address AI supply chain opportunities and vulnerabilities in: priority critical minerals. semiconductor design, fabrication, and packaging, logistics and transportation, compute, and energy grids and power generation.
• Pursue new joint ventures and strategic co-investment opportunities.
• Protect sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure from undue access or control by countries of concern.
• Build trusted technology ecosystems, including ICT systems, fiber-optic cables, data centers, foundational models and applications.

What comes next?

Under Secretary Helberg directed U.S. diplomats in Washington and overseas to operationalize this summit’s discussions through identification of infrastructure projects and the coordination of economic security practices. This directive has been disseminated to State Department headquarters and all U.S. overseas missions for further action.

For more information, visit Pax Silica.

13. More reasons for America’s friends to plan for the worst

​Summary:

The Economist argues U.S. allies should assume the 2025 National Security Strategy signals higher risk and greater unpredictability. It says the document alarms Europe by framing “mass migration” as the West’s top threat, hinting at U.S. support for populist right parties, and omitting Russia as a danger, raising fears of tacit acceptance of a Russian sphere of influence. It warns Latin America will resent a “western hemisphere” troop redeployment that echoes old interventionism. On Asia, it sees a softer, commerce-driven approach to China and mixed signals, including some Taiwan reassurance, but doubts any promise is durable given internal MAGA power shifts and POTUS’s transactional, inconsistent decision making.

Comment: Again, as always, where you stand depends on where you sit. An old refrain, I know.

More reasons for America’s friends to plan for the worst

A strategy that scorns Europe, bullies Latin America and is vague on Asia

Photograph: Getty Images

Dec 11th 2025

|

3 min read

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/12/11/more-reasons-for-americas-friends-to-plan-for-the-worst

Listen to this story

T

HE WORLD is becoming used to startling news from Washington. The Trump administration’s national security strategy (NSS), abruptly posted on its website in the middle of the night on December 4th/5th, once again left many policymakers, especially in Europe, in a panic. How worried should they be?

Unfortunately, the answer is very, for two reasons. First, because America’s foreign policy, although still contested, seems more likely to move in a worse direction than a better one; and second, because the erratic way in which policy is made means that allies cannot depend on anything that they are told, even by President Donald Trump himself and certainly not by his squabbling courtiers.

Dig deeper

• Inside the fight for MAGA’s foreign policy
• Donald Trump’s flawed plan to get China hooked on Nvidia chips
• What’s worse for innovation: MAGA or Mao?

The 32-page document gives America’s oldest and closest friends plenty of scope for alarm. It declares the West’s greatest threat to be “mass migration”. To prevent it, the document pledges not just to secure America’s own borders, but also to support populist-right parties in Europe which promise to secure borders there. It fails to mention even the possibility that Russia might be a threat.

On its worst reading, you could see this as an American suggestion that Europe should fall within Russia’s sphere of influence. That is also the logic behind Mr Trump’s latest plans to stop the war in Ukraine by using frozen Russian assets to help revive business ties between Europe, Ukraine and Russia (and make money for American firms). This includes Europe once again buying Russian energy, a dependency the Kremlin exploited in 2022. Europe’s leaders are rightly sceptical.

Other regions also have cause to worry. The NSS announces that America will redeploy troops to ensure that America remains top dog in the western hemisphere, which will go down very badly in Latin America. The continent still resents 20th-century American campaigns of political interference and gunboat diplomacy. Even so, the “Donroe doctrine”, the idea that America must be pre-eminent in its own backyard, has been a feature of its foreign policy since January 20th.

On Asia the picture is more nuanced. The document is much less clear about the threat posed by China than the first Trump administration’s NSS, in 2017. Official thinking today seems to be guided by commerce and a desire to preserve a planned April summit between Mr Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s leader. News that America will allow Nvidia to sell one of its more advanced chips in China suggests that the administration is ready to sacrifice some of its technological edge over China in exchange for goodwill, however fleeting. Fortunately, the NSS renews America’s commitment to deterring attacks on Taiwan, which some had feared was wavering. And yet who can be sure what that reassurance is worth?

The fear among America’s allies is that the administration may indeed be moving in the direction the NSS lays out. Washington is abuzz with speculation that those insiders most supportive of America’s allies will be out in the coming year or so—among them, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. More radical MAGA figures are ascendant. But there are limits to what hawkish Republicans in Congress will support. And the intelligence agencies and top military brass are likely to resist or slow down changes they see as rash or unwise. The strategy’s slapdash drafting suggests that, unusually for an NSS, it is not the settled view of the administration.

Then there are the views of the boss himself. Asked about the NSS on December 8th, Mr Trump at times appeared unfamiliar with its contents. He is notoriously transactional, and often changes his mind. A document he may not have read is an unreliable indicator of what he will do. But hope is not a strategy. Better for America’s friends to plan for the worst. ■

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14. Reading the 2025 National Security Strategy Through Mead's Four Traditions

​Summary:

Paul Kruchoski argues the 2025 National Security Strategy is best understood through Walter Russell Mead’s four traditions and that it tries to do something risky: suppress, even “excise,” the Wilsonian tradition. He sees the document as overtly Jacksonian in tone, with contempt for “elites,” honor language, coercive threats, and worker-first economic nationalism. He judges it Hamiltonian in tools but not in spirit, using trade and industrial policy as leverage rather than integration. He reads its “non-intervention” rhetoric as selectively Jeffersonian, paired with assertive Western Hemisphere ambitions. His core claim is durability: traditions live in the public, so sidelined Wilsonian impulses will reappear via Congress, opinion, allies, and implementation friction.

Comment: This is the essay that graduate students would be using to parse the NSS.  

Reading the 2025 National Security Strategy Through Mead's Four Traditions

linkedin.com · Paul Kruchoski

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reading-2025-national-security-strategy-through-meads-paul-kruchoski-frbie/

The 2025 National Security Strategy attempts something no previous NSS has tried: entirely excising one of the four traditions that Walter Russell Mead identified as the foundations of American foreign policy success. The early reactions suggest why that's harder than it looks.

Every time a new NSS is released, I would walk my teams through different ways to read it. Now that I am outside government, I want to share some of that thinking here. Walter Russell Mead's framework from Special Providence is my favorite place to start, because it explains something essential: why certain foreign policy instincts keep resurfacing in American politics regardless of which party holds power, and why suppressing them creates tension that eventually finds other outlets.

The Framework

Mead identified four traditions shaping American foreign policy since the founding:

Hamiltonian: Commerce, business-government alliance, integration into the global economy on favorable terms.

Wilsonian: Moral mission, democracy promotion, international institutions that embed American values.

Jeffersonian: Protect democracy at home, avoid entangling alliances, skepticism of foreign adventures.

Jacksonian: Populist honor, military strength, decisive action when American dignity is threatened, suspicion of elites.

Mead's core insight: American foreign policy succeeds not despite tensions among these traditions but because of them. They form shifting coalitions, check each other's excesses, and prevent any single logic from being pursued to destructive ends. The system works through productive friction.

But here's what matters most for reading the 2025 NSS: these traditions don't originate in think tanks. They emerge from the American public itself—from regional cultures, religious communities, economic interests, and historical experiences. Jacksonianism keeps resurfacing because it reflects how a significant portion of Americans actually think about honor and national dignity. Wilsonianism persists because millions genuinely believe America has moral obligations beyond pure self-interest.

You can't kill a tradition by denouncing it in a strategy document, because traditions don't live in documents. They live in people.

What the 2025 NSS Actually Does

Read through Mead's framework, this NSS attempts to fundamentally restructure these traditions—not just reweight them, but eliminate one entirely while hollowing out another.

Jacksonianism Ascendant

The document's animating spirit is unmistakably Jacksonian. Elite critique runs throughout: "American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country." Honor culture surfaces repeatedly—references to "America's historic goodwill" being exploited, allies "free-riding," the need to restore respect.

The military posture is Jacksonian: threats of "lethal force" against cartels, promises to "surgically extinguish embers of division." The populist economic thread—prosperity for workers, suspicion of globalist arrangements benefiting elites—runs from opening critique through policy prescriptions.

This isn't surprising. Mead noted years ago that Jacksonianism is often misread by observers in other camps. Many foreign policy professionals explicitly reject the Jacksonian perspective as crude. This is a mistake: while Jacksonian may not reflect their views of what is best for the United States and its interests, it is a real and enduring part of American political culture. They ignore it at their own peril.

Hamiltonianism: Present with a twist.

Economic language saturates the document: reindustrialization, supply chain security, trade rebalancing, energy dominance. This looks Hamiltonian—emphasis on commerce, economic foundations of national power, business-government partnership.

But classical Hamiltonianism sought integration into the global economy on favorable terms, building relationships that served mutual prosperity. This NSS instrumentalizes economic policy for nationalist ends: tariffs as leverage, trade as weapon, commercial diplomacy conditioned on security alignment.

The document states plainly: "American policy will be pro-worker, not merely pro-growth." This is Hamiltonian vocabulary in service of Jacksonian goals. Hamilton would have recognized the methods but questioned the ends.

Jeffersonianism: Present in Theory, Less so in Practice

The non-interventionist language is extensive: "predisposition to non-interventionism," no more "forever wars," engagement limited to clear national interests. Jeffersonians reading this might initially feel heard.

But the Monroe Doctrine reassertion—the "Trump Corollary"—is profoundly interventionist within the Western Hemisphere. The NSS calls for military redeployment toward Latin America, endorses "lethal force" against cartels, and promises to "push out foreign companies" while conditioning relationships on American preferences.

This isn't Jeffersonian restraint, but restraint applied a bit more selectively: pull back from Europe, but expand assertively in the Western Hemisphere.

Wilsonianism: Explicitly Killed

Previous administrations deprioritized democracy promotion. This one repudiates it.

The NSS dismisses "hectoring" Gulf monarchies about governance, explicitly abandoning "America's misguided experiment" with pressuring allies toward reform. It frames international institutions as "sovereignty-sapping incursions." The 2022 NSS framed great power competition as "democracy versus autocracy." That frame is gone entirely.

Can you kill a Tradition?

Wilsonian instincts—the belief that America has moral obligations beyond its borders, that democratic values should inform foreign policy—aren't held only by "elites." They're held by tens of millions of Americans across the political spectrum, including many who voted for the current administration.

The missionary impulse in American foreign policy emerges from American religious traditions, from the self-understanding of a nation founded on universal principles, from genuine popular belief that American power ought to serve a noble, higher purpose. It's why democracy promotion has commanded bipartisan support across decades, why Americans broadly supported the Marshall Plan and NATO's founding.

You can argue rightly Wilsonianism has been applied badly and that democracy promotion became cover for ill-conceived interventions. Even so, declaring the tradition over doesn't eliminate support for a Wilsonian views among Americans. It just ensures they have no constructive outlet within the strategy.

We're already seeing this tension in reactions to the NSS. The document's framing of European allies as civilizational failures and its dismissal of democracy concerns don't just conflict with elite consensus. They conflict with values held by a significant portion of the American public.

Jacksonianism is ascendant because it reflects and channels a genuine public sentiment. But Wilsonianism doesn't disappear because a strategy document declares it over. The constituency remains. The tension will express itself—in congressional resistance, public opinion constraints, alliance friction, and the gap between declared strategy and implementable policy.

The Analytical Question

Mead argued American foreign policy succeeded through productive tension among traditions that checked and balanced each other. No single tradition dominated long enough to pursue its logic to destructive ends.

This NSS attempts to resolve that tension through elimination. Wilsonianism isn't balanced—it's rejected. Jeffersonianism isn't balanced—it's stated as a global principle, but largely subordinated to Jacksonian impulses in the Western Hemisphere. What remains is a Jacksonian document in Hamiltonian clothes, with productive friction replaced by simpler ideological alignment.

The question isn't whether that's ideologically preferable. Reasonable people disagree about democracy promotion and international institutions. The question is whether it's sustainable.

Can American foreign policy maintain coherence with one tradition actively suppressed and another hollowed out? Or will eliminated traditions reassert themselves through the democratic processes that created them?

History suggests traditions don't die easily. They go underground, find new champions, wait for circumstances that make them relevant again. The Americans who believe their country's foreign policy should reflect something beyond interest and power haven't disappeared.

What This Offers Practitioners

Most practitioners themselves have a predilection toward one or more of the quadrants of Mead's framework, often backed by their own lived experiences that validate that worldview. For those working in or advising on foreign policy, Mead's framework offers something that expands perspectives, allowing you to see how others might be approaching these questions. That offers real insight about the future. The core practitioner question isn't "do I agree with this?" It's "where will this face friction, and how durable is the coalition behind it?"

Policy analysts: When strategy documents ignore traditions with deep public roots, a savvy analyst looks for pressure release points. Congressional resistance, public opinion constraints, alliance friction—these become predictable when you understand which traditions are being pushed aside.

Communicators: Recognize that your audiences hold different traditions. Jacksonian language resonates with some constituencies; Wilsonian framing with others. This holds true domestically as well as overseas.

I'll explore other frames in subsequent posts—including how to read the NSS as a two-level game balancing domestic and international audiences. But Mead's framework suggests an important audience may be the one the document tries to dismiss: the Americans who still believe their country's foreign policy should reflect something beyond narrowly-defined national interest.

linkedin.com · Paul Kruchoski

​15. The ‘Trump Corollary’ in the US security strategy brings a new focus on Latin America – but it is a disordered plan

  ​Summary:

Mariano Aguirre Ernst argues the 2025 National Security Strategy’s “Trump Corollary” revives a Monroe Doctrine style claim to U.S. political, economic, and military primacy in Latin America, driven mainly by migration control and resource access. He says the plan is disordered and vague, stressing cartels and border deployments more than China, Ukraine, or core alliance management, while omitting basics like Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Haiti. He warns the approach leans toward coercion: tariffs, aid cuts, selective funding, and threats of intervention, which will push many governments to hedge by cutting deals with Washington on resources while keeping trade and finance ties with China.

The ‘Trump Corollary’ in the US security strategy brings a new focus on Latin America – but it is a disordered plan

chathamhouse.org · Mariano Aguirre Ernst Associate Fellow, International Security Programme

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/12/trump-corollary-us-security-strategy-brings-new-focus-latin-america-it-disordered-plan

The dual objective is to prevent migration and impose US domination in the ‘Western Hemisphere’. But Latin American leaders will still wish to work with China.

Published 11 December 2025 — 3 minute READ

Image — The USS Gravely departs the Port of Port of Spain on 30 October 2025. The US warship arrived in Trinidad and Tobago on 26 October for joint exercises near the coast of Venezuela. (Photo by MARTIN BERNETTI / AFP via Getty Images)

The new US National Security Strategy (NSS), unveiled on 5 December, has been influenced by various interest groups and personalities, from those in Washington who prioritize containing China and Russia, to those who want to expand Make America Great Again (MAGA) to Europe – and those who wish to dominate the Western Hemisphere.

On the latter, ‘sovereigntists’ have gained ground in the NSS – a trend that, according to Jennifer Mittelstadt, ‘asserts liberty from international agreements and institutions that threaten to limit the sovereign jurisdiction and governance of the US’.

The strategy states that the Western Hemisphere must be controlled by the US politically, economically, commercially, and militarily. It is the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine – an 1823 policy which established that European powers should not intervene in Latin America. This paved the way for US pre-eminence in the region until well into the 20th century. However, Washington neglected it in the last three decades.

According to the Trump Corollary, the US has the right to resuscitate the Monroe Doctrine. To that end, it will readjust its military presence in the region, increase naval forces to control migrant routes and illicit trafficking, and carry out deployments at borders. In addition, it will use ‘the military system superior to any other country in the world’ to gain access to energy and mineral resources in the region.

Related work

Trump’s new national security strategy: Cut deals, hammer Europe, and tread gently around autocrats

The NSS wants a hemisphere ‘free from hostile foreign incursions or ownership of key assets’; to control ‘critical supply chains’; and to ensure ‘continued access to key strategic locations’.

It proposes that the US be ‘preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition for our security and prosperity…allowing us to assert ourselves with confidence where and when necessary.’ To this end, it will carry out ‘targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat the cartels’.

Linked to drug crime and border control is migration. Migration flows, the NSS warns, will lead to ‘civilisational erasure’ in Europe. That reflects the views of ideologues of Make America Great Again (MAGA), such as the deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller and Vice President JD Vance who posted on X on 7 December that mass migration ‘is theft of the American Dream’. In this respect Kori Schake describes the NSS as part of ‘a cultural war’.

Latin America is on the front line: many immigrants from the ‘Western Hemisphere’ come from there. The NSS says that national leaders in the region will be ‘enlisting regional champions’ and alliances with like-minded governments will be ‘expanded’ to cooperate in the fight against ‘narco-terrorists, cartels and other transnational criminals’ and ‘help us stop illegal and destabilizing migration’.

Strange priorities

The NSS devotes much more attention to migration and organized crime than to the challenges posed by China or the significance of the war in Ukraine for Western security. As Michael Kimmage writes, ‘Trump’s strategy risks militarizing problems that are not military in nature’.

Migration overshadows traditional security issues such as the growth of nuclear arsenals, responses to the military strategies of China and Russia, and relations with Europe, Japan and Australia.

When referring to the ‘Western Hemisphere,’ the document deals only with Latin America, without mentioning Canada…Neither does it address ties with Mexico or Brazil, nor the collapse of Haiti.

Even within its passages on the Western Hemisphere, the NSS is confusing and has striking omissions. When referring (in 5 pages out of 31) to the ‘Western Hemisphere,’ the document deals only with Latin America, without mentioning Canada (which Trump has previously said should accept annexation by the US). Neither does it address ties with Mexico or Brazil, nor the collapse of Haiti.

This disordered, contradictory and vague plan has several problems – not least of which, as Juan Gabriel Tokatlian points out, is that ‘hegemony is not the same as domination’.

A hegemonic leader makes agreements with subordinate states, provides and obtains benefits, and uses persuasion and sometimes coercion. In the past the US invested, offered credit, and supported democracy and free markets in the region, and used coercion when its interests were threatened.

Trump proposes a different approach: access to resources without compensation; using coercion instead of negotiation with local elites (through tariff wars and cutting development aid); providing funds to like-minded governments (as he has done with Argentina); and threatening military intervention, as now in Venezuela, without respecting international law.

This is in contrast to China, which has been providing investment and credit in exchange for access to resources for more than two decades – without imposing conditions. (The NSS states that the US should use ‘leverage in finance and technology to induce countries’ to reject ‘low-cost foreign assistance’).

Latin America’s reaction

Faced with the choice between the two powers, governments and voters may adopt pragmatic positions, candidates favourable to Trump may reach agreements on natural resources with the US, but still try to pursue economic relations with China (and other partners in Europe and the Global South).

Others may respond differently. Brazil and Mexico, for instance, are strengthening their relations to develop options to the Trump Corollary. Other countries could follow their example. So far, Latin American leaders have said little about the NSS publicly.

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This US administration suffers from inconsistencies, the president’s volatility, and a lack of coordination between the diverse interests of the private sector and the government. The strategy captures this problem indicating ‘Every U.S. Government official that interacts with these countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed’.

But hugely complex problems are involved: the interests of US industrial and agricultural sectors in the region diverge considerably. Tariffs on countries like Brazil and Mexico complicate the picture even more.

It is easy to say that embassy officials should help US business. In practice it will not always be clear what that means, or how to achieve it, especially when the administration’s international trade policy is so unsettled and subject to sudden change.

Defining policies for different regional security challenges, competing with China, and coordinating responses to the 35 states of the Americas requires more than an ideology-laden strategy.

The biggest danger is that a lack of coherence will be replaced by pure coercion, and even violent interventions. The threat of the use of force, and the use of force, instead of sophisticated policies, has become notably commonplace in this administration’s foreign and security policy.

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Chatham House is a world-leading policy institute with a mission to help governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world.

© Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2025

chathamhouse.org · Mariano Aguirre Ernst Associate Fellow, International Security Programme 

16. Trans-Siberian Rail poised for pivotal role In Russia-US Projects

​Summary:

Andrew Korybko argues U.S. rare earth deals in Central Asia risk overdependence on Turkiye as the only viable export corridor if the Ukraine war drags on and Turkish Russian tensions worsen. He says Washington should broker an end to the war and manage those tensions so it can diversify logistics by using Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railway to move Central Asian, Russian, and even Mongolian minerals to Vladivostok and onward to U.S. tech hubs. That, he claims, could unlock joint U.S.-Russia resource projects in Siberia, build strategic interdependence that lowers crisis risk, and reduce China’s access to discounted Russian resources.

Comment: See the interesting railway graphic at the link.

Trans-Siberian Rail poised for pivotal role In Russia-US Projects - Asia Times

asiatimes.com · Andrew Korybko

Unlocking this profitable opportunity requires managing Turkish-Russian tensions in Central Asia that the US has exacerbated

by Andrew Korybko

December 12, 2025

https://asiatimes.com/2025/12/trans-siberian-rail-poised-for-pivotal-role-in-russia-us-projects/

The United States’ management of Turkish-Russian tensions in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, which I proposed here as part of a larger NATO-Russian Non-Aggression Pact, could lead to the merger of its planned rare earth mineral investments in Central Asia and related post-Ukraine joint projects in Russia.

Regarding the first, Trump clinched such deals with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan during the latest C5+1 Summit in DC, while the second were described by the Wall Street Journal in a recent report.

If Turkish-Russian tensions worsen in Central Asia and the Ukrainian Conflict continues raging, thus delaying the United States’ joint minerals projects in Russia, then the US will be fully dependent on Turkiye for importing its rare earths from Central Asia.

That’s because the Afghan and Iranian routes are unviable for security and political reasons, so the only realistic one is from Turkiye, the western anchor of the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) across Armenia to Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

TRIPP will gradually replace Russia’s regional influence with Turkish-led Western influence, but this will also turbocharge Turkey’s rise as a Eurasian great power, which might empower it to defy the US even more than it already does.

The forms that this could take include cooperating more closely with China in Central Asia to break the Americans’ planned containment of the latter, funding more (possibly US terrorist-designated) Muslim Brotherhood chapters and weaponizing its pivotal role in TRIPP to blackmail the US.

These dark scenarios can be averted if the US manages Turkish-Russian tensions and brokers an end to the Ukrainian Conflict.

In that event, the US could diversify from its dependence on TRIPP and therefore Turkiye for importing rare earths from Central Asia by relying on Russia’s nearby Trans-Siberian Railway, which can conveniently deliver these resources to Vladivostok from where they can then be shipped to the Californian tech hub. This can then lead to the merger of its two rare earth minerals investments.

Not only would joint rare earths projects with Russia be unlocked, but the same US companies investing in Central Asian ones could then more easily scale their regional operations northward, with resources from both projects being shipped to the Pacific via the Trans-Siberian.

The increased logistical and resource importance of Siberia and the Russian Far East for the US could then lay the basis for more joint projects there and in the neighboring Arctic, thus advancing Putin’s master development plan for those regions.

The US and other investors in Mongolia’s mineral sector might also begin rerouting exports through the Trans-Siberian instead of continuing to rely on the Americans’ systemic rivals, the Chinese.

The gradual result could be the creation of complex strategic interdependence between the US and Russia, something that was non-existent prior to the “special operation” against Ukraine, for reducing the risk of another crisis. The US would also establish a strategic economic presence along China’s western and northern peripheries that could be flaunted for prestige.

Amidst the Sino-US rivalry, the US has an interest in obtaining access to Russian resources – access that ipso facto denies them to China, whose superpower trajectory would be turbocharged by unlimited access at the bargain-basement prices that would characterize the trade without robust US competition.

This makes the proposed arrangement of grand strategic importance to the US, which is why Washington should broker an end to the war in Ukraine and then manage Turkish-Russian tensions in Central Asia without delay.

asiatimes.com · Andrew Korybko

17. Echoes of 1940: Learning from an Ally at War and Preparing the U.S. for the Next Fight

​Summary:

Sean Wiswesser argues the United States should treat Ukraine like Britain in 1940, not only as a cause to support but as a source of battlefield learning. He says Lend-Lease brought the U.S. critical British technology such as radar, and Ukraine now offers the modern equivalent through large-scale drone warfare and rapid wartime innovation. He warns Russia is adapting fast, using drones and electronic warfare, and probing NATO with gray-zone incursions. He urges sending more U.S. engineers, operators, and analysts into Ukraine to absorb lessons on EW, drone adaptation, and fighting outnumbered, to prepare for future wars.

Echoes of 1940: Learning from an Ally at War and Preparing the U.S. for the Next Fight

As Ukraine fights a tech-driven war, America risks missing out by watching from afar

 11 December, 2025

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/learning-from-ukraine

Guardsmen places the Ukrainian flag and the American flag at the entrance to the White House before the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ahead of a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and European leaders at the White House in Washington, DC on August 18, 2025. (Photo by Yuri Gripas/PA Images via Getty Images)

By Sean Wiswesser

Former CIA Senior Operations Officer

Sean Wiswesser is a former senior operations officer with the CIA. He served multiple overseas tours and held senior leadership positions such as Chief of Station and in joint-duty assignments across the intelligence community. Sean is the author of the forthcoming book Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War (Spring 2026), which examines the evolution of Russia's intelligence services, their fight against the West, and their role in modern hybrid warfare.

EXPERT OPINION / PERSPECTIVE — Eighty-five years ago, as the United States cautiously explored an expanded alliance with Great Britain, our own population was divided. London was already fighting for its very survival, standing alone after the fall of France; Washington was not yet fighting at all. Public opinion tilted toward isolationism, and President Roosevelt had to proceed slowly to avoid losing the support of both Congress and the U.S. public. Yet a year later, the Atlantic Charter was signed with Churchill, publicly declaring a shared stand against tyranny and an alliance that would stand for the rest of the century. But behind the scenes, the two leaders negotiated a deeper exchange: American weapons for British technology.

Through Lend-Lease, the United States sent destroyers and vital equipment to keep Britain in the fight against Nazi aggression. Less understood was what the U.S. quietly received in return: cutting-edge capabilities that would shape its own success once it entered the war. That historical moment holds lessons for today, with America again questioning its commitments abroad, and for the value of learning from a Ukrainian ally engaged in a war we are not fighting ourselves.

related

The U.S. Needs to Restore Deterrence Credibility Against Putin

Can a “Flamingo” Cruise Missile Help Ukraine Turn the Tide?

One of Britain’s most consequential contributions in 1940 was the technology behind “Chain Home,” an early, revolutionary radar network. A constellation of radio stations sent out beams whose returns revealed the direction, altitude, and approximate numbers of incoming Luftwaffe aircraft during the Battle of Britain. Integrated with human observers and command-and-control stations, the system allowed RAF leaders to deploy their limited squadrons with precision, conserving fuel, protecting pilots, and preserving the nation’s survival. As Churchill famously said of the RAF, “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

That success was not only a triumph of courage but a triumph of rapid wartime innovation and operational learning. And it is exactly the kind of learning the United States must pursue now as Ukraine pioneers new modes of drone warfare against a technologically sophisticated adversary.

Drone warfare in Ukraine today is the chain home radar of our time. Today in Ukraine, that country “owes so much to so few”: drone warrior heroes fighting not only for their country, but for all of Europe and democracy. The drone operators and their innovation are helping Ukraine to stay in the war against overwhelming Russian numbers. The U.S. and other NATO allies have provided large weapons systems like HIMARS, ATACMS, Abrams tanks, and F-16s. All of these systems at one time were supposedly ruled out for Ukraine, only to be provided later. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s own drone industry and innovations have helped it to turn the tide of countless battles.

There has been frustration in the U.S., however, with the support. Many are asking: for all the weapons and funding we have provided to Ukraine, what are we getting back? Defending freedom and fighting Russian aggression for Europe and our allies should be enough for our arsenal of democracy. But it’s a fair question. It is understandable after 20 years of war that the American people want to know what else we are getting if the U.S. is to be so heavily engaged financially and militarily.

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One of the things we are learning, and can learn even more ahead, are incredible lessons about the battlefield for our future force. The Army War College has led a multi-year effort to help in a project called “Call to Action: Lessons for the Future Force”. Others in various military training and testing commands across all our services, and our allies, are doing the same.

There are many more lessons to be learned, and not enough resources are being put into the fight. For years, the U.S. embassy and government were limiting the number of official Americans and contractors allowed into the war zone to work with and learn from the Ukrainians. That should end for good, and we should be flooding our ally with experts ready to help, but also to learn. One of the areas we should be drawing a lot more lessons from is drone warfare.

The Russian military and its intelligence services have learned a lot about drone warfare in Ukraine. They have stood up an entire new service of their troops devoted to drone warfare, as well as a drone center called Rubikon, which is changing the battlefield. The Russians are also using drones in gray warfare against NATO countries, to probe their borders, weaknesses at airports, and other facilities across the continent in what has grown in recent months into a wave of drone incursions. This is hybrid warfare practiced by a country and its intelligence services that have a long history of doing so: testing reactions, looking for weak points, antagonizing the alliance to find soft spots, or partners willing to acquiesce to Russian aggression.

In turn, we in the NATO alliance and in the U.S. are slow to adapt. The United States needs to deploy more personnel, more resources, more engineers, and experts into Ukraine to learn all the desperately valuable lessons about the world’s first truly all-encompassing drone war. It is monumental both in scale and evolution. Just as the United States learned valuable lessons about radar, which saved countless American pilots and other lives throughout World War II, we need to learn these important lessons from the Ukrainians about drone warfare before we may find ourselves engaged in a conflict we are not prepared for.

There are three salient lessons for those who are studying the war and how it has evolved just in the past four years. These are areas the U.S. should focus more resources on. The first lesson that we need to study from the Ukrainians involves the electromagnetic space on the battlefield and electronic warfare (EW). American soldiers have never operated in a battle space so encumbered by all manner of electromagnetic jamming, as is taking place every day across the battlefields of Ukraine. Cyber operations, both enabling and disabling various systems, command and control, and what is called “PNT” or the precision navigational systems of all manner of weapons— all are being jammed and interfered with on an unprecedented scale in the EW space.

The second lesson we need to understand and learn from are the ingenious innovations and adaptations that the Ukrainians, in particular, have carried out with their drones. Ukraine stood up an entire industry to build millions of the very smallest type of drones designed to target an individual Russian soldier in a trench, to much larger mother drones to carry other drones, deliver supplies, and even carry out strategic strikes like those against Russian bombers at airfields, taking off from “conex” shipping containers. These are remarkable operations and feats that we can mine for lessons from our Ukrainian allies. We are well behind their innovation and acquisition curve.

Third and finally, the most important lesson we need to learn from the Ukrainians is how to fight a war where we might be out-manned and out-gunned. That is not something the American people could have imagined for nearly a century. But Russia’s aggression is stark and unprecedented. Add to it the prospect of a potential war with China over the Taiwan Strait looming, which the Chinese are preparing and training for, also at an unprecedented level. They and the North Koreans are sharing weapons’ components and helping Russia evade sanctions. And in the case of the latter, North Korean soldiers are dying for Russia on the battlefield. They are getting the know-how and learning the lessons from Russia.

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We are at a point where all of China’s conventional forces, with very few exceptions - on the land, sea, and air (save for nuclear forces)- outnumber the United States. China has a larger land army, a larger navy now by volume of surface vessels, and a Chinese Air Force that rivals our own and NATO’s airpower. Many will argue correctly that the Chinese do not have the experience of decades of combat, as our pilots do, nor the expertise of our sailors and soldiers on the ground. But as many famous generals have noted in history, “quantity has its own quality.” This is also a lesson from Ukraine, as overwhelming numbers of Russian troops are wearing down the front lines of Ukraine in the east. Overwhelming numbers of drones and artillery, as well as missile strikes combining in multi-vector attacks—all these are also making a significant impact on the battlefield.

We would be wise to engage with and learn more from our Ukrainian partners, just like the United States did 85 years ago from our British allies, before we were forced into war. It forged a “special relationship” that has stood for a century. We can hope for the same with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters fighting now against aggression in no less of a challenge to all of democracy than the Nazis were to Europe. Putin and his Chinese allies are out for world domination; make no mistake, we have to learn the lessons to prepare to fight and support our allies fighting again.

While we, supporters of Ukraine, hope this war will end soon, we also need to prepare for the next war. As Churchill said then, we should: “gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true; kindly upon all who suffer for the cause; gloriously upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn.”

The dawn will come, but so will night again. We should learn from the Ukrainian heroes who have suffered through all the nights of this war, not doubt their commitment to freedom, nor our own obligation to support them.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.

18. Free and Open Indo-Pacific 4.0 under Prime Minister Takaichi?

​Summary:

William Winberg argues Japan’s new leader, Sanae Takaichi, could refresh Tokyo’s Free and Open Asia-Indo-Pacific framework rather than replace it or merely maintain continuity. He sketches FOIP’s evolution from early Abe-era concepts to Kishida’s four pillars, then proposes a “FOIP 4.0” that reflects Takaichi’s strengths in economic security. Suggested updates include treating Taiwan as a global public good, intensifying practical cooperation with Southeast Asia through assistance and capacity building, and expanding cybersecurity, maritime domain awareness, disaster response, and counter-illegal fishing efforts to keep the vision relevant and politically energizing.

Free and Open Indo-Pacific 4.0 under Prime Minister Takaichi? - Asia Times

asiatimes.com · William Winberg

Her updated vision could involve deepening cooperation with ASEAN countries along with defending Taiwan as a global public good

by William Winberg

December 6, 2025

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

When Sanae Takaichi was confirmed as the new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), it was – as is typically the pattern in Japanese politics – virtually certain that she would succeed outgoing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

Her ascension did face some political uncertainty after long-time coalition partner Komeito broke with the LDP, raising questions about who would ultimately become prime minister. However, with a breakthrough in negotiations between the LDP and the Japanese Innovation Party (Ishin no Kai), the potential for an anti-LDP opposition coalition quickly evaporated.

The new administration has a window of opportunity to present itself as a visionary one with the injection of a new prime minister and the new political partnership. It has brought the LDP a chance to rebrand itself following former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s handover of party leadership to his successors. Takaichi has ideological similarities with the late Abe on foreign policy and her economic views resonate with the more proactive stance advocated by the JIP on domestic economic reform.

This policy convergence may allow Takaichi to act boldly, and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision, which has served as Japan’s central diplomatic vision since its inception in 2016, is the most obvious vehicle for doing so.

Innovating the FOIP

The new Takaichi administration has three distinct choices in its approach to the FOIP.

The most unlikely one would be to scrap it and replace it with something else. Given the longevity and international traction through what political scientists term norm diffusion that the FOIP has shown, this would be counterproductive, hampering any potential for political momentum in the realm of foreign policy.

The second option is to keep the status quo, opting for continuity, as the FOIP already offers a comprehensive approach to Japan’s interests in the Indo-Pacific. It would also present the least amount of effort – the administration would need only to take on the current formulation and run with it. Given that this formula has been a proven success, this would be a low-risk but low-reward scenario

The third – and preferable – route would be an evolution of the FOIP, building upon the previous formulations by incorporating Takaichi’s own comparative advantages and vision, such as her economic security acumen, to keep it relevant in the context of current regional dynamics in the Indo-Pacific.

This third route might start with expanding the scope of the FOIP to include the promotion of Taiwan as a global public good. The critical role that Taiwan plays has recently topped the headlines as Takaichi faces her first diplomatic challenge after her comments in the Diet on Japan’s involvement in the event of a so-called Taiwan contingency, comments that sparked strong reactions by Chinese officials.

Another promising and critical avenue involves deepening cooperation with Southeast Asian countries – which, notably, were Takaichi’s chosen destination for her first official visit as prime minister. While ASEAN has adopted its own “Outlook on the Indo-Pacific,” incorporating FOIP vocabulary, its approach remains notably more cautious and ambivalent.

Given that Japan’s ally the United States and strategic partners Australia, New Zealand, and European stakeholders have already embraced Japan’s FOIP vision, Tokyo should prioritize engaging regional players who remain uncommitted. This engagement could materialize through security initiatives, including expanded official security assistance (OSA) programs and capacity-building efforts with selected countries, alongside enhanced cybersecurity cooperation.

Additionally, Japan shares significant interests with ASEAN members in disaster prevention, combating illegal fishing, and strengthening maritime domain awareness – areas that offer practical entry points for deeper collaboration beyond traditional security frameworks.

FOIP as a foreign policy tool

US President Donald Trump, in keeping with the expectations that the LDP presidency would translate into the prime ministership, congratulated Takaichi on Truth Social as soon as she became the new party leader. Takaichi, writing on X, thanked Trump for his words and continued by wishing for continued cooperation in upholding a free and open Indo-Pacific – thus highlighting the ubiquitousness of the framework.

Although the conceptual underpinnings of the FOIP can be traced at least all the way back to 2007, during Abe’s first stint as prime minister, Yoichi Hosoya labels this loose conceptual constellation FOIP 1.0. It would not become a declared policy until almost 10 years later, in 2016, which can be seen as FOIP 2.0. In 2018, it was rebranded as a vision rather than a strategy, to make it more appealing in light of accusations of it being anti-China.

Stephen Nagy and Nanae Baldauff argue that FOIP 3.0 emerged in 2023 under then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who framed it through four conceptual pillars that capture Japan’s core interests in the region. These are

1. sovereignty, rules, transparency and dialogue;
2. collaborative solutions to regional issues such as disaster prevention and environmental resilience;
3. connectivity and infrastructure; and
4. expanded maritime security and capacity building.

FOIP 4.0?

As a legacy of the second Abe administration, FOIP has been sustained and developed by later government. But, to remain relevant, it must be kept up to date as realities of economics, security and politics in the region change. As Japan sees a new prime minister for the fourth time in five years, a revamped FOIP 4.0 stressing the points above may prove one of the ingredients for a stable government, offering a clear vision of Japan and its role, something the previous administration struggled with.

Given Takaichi’s claim as successor to the late Abe in terms of foreign policy, this is a no-brainer – an opportunity to present a convincing vision for a future of Japan as a key player in the Indo-Pacific region.

As Kazuto Suzuki notes, however, the conditions that Japan is faced with are substantially different from those of 2012, when Abe returned to power. Japan faces an increasingly dire demographic situation and the economy has remained stagnant despite efforts by Takaihchi’s predecessors.

The new coalition with the JIP may, however, open up new windows as the LDP no longer has to adhere to the pacifist inclinations of its former coalition partner Komeito.

Despite a more challenging environment, both domestically and internationally, a “Takaichification” of the FOIP may inject well needed energy into a fresh administration that needs all the momentum it can get.

William Winberg (g269706k@icu.ac.jp) is a PhD candidate, Japanese government research scholar and teaching assistant at the International Christian University, Tokyo. He is also the Indo-Pacific Policy Dialogue event coordinator for the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies, a member of Pacific Forum’s Young Leaders Program and regional research associate at the Indo-Pacific Studies Center.

asiatimes.com · William Winberg

19. China’s ‘Low-Human-Rights’ Advantage

​Summary:

Qin Hui, translated and adapted by Perry Link, argues China’s growth rests on a “low-human-rights advantage” that lets an authoritarian state suppress labor, seize land, mute courts and media, and externalize environmental costs, producing speed and scale that democracies struggle to match. The danger compounds when this model locks into “symbiosis” with wealthy democracies that provide capital, technology, and markets, creating pressures to lower standards abroad and hollow out resilience at home. Qin warns the West is already in a new Cold War, but is misreading it as avoidable, even as China exploits these structural advantages to win without open conflict.

Excerpts:

My book is titled “Save Mr. Democracy” but I am not, in fact, confident that this can be done. The Mr. Democracy who looked so promising to young Chinese during their “enlightenment” in the late 1910s and early 1920s has begun to appear now as a feeble old man. The world discusses whether we have entered a new Cold War, but the democracy side in that war seems unaware that it is already losing. 

Of course, the result of the new Cold War will not be “the end of history” any more than that was the case for the first Cold War. But the peril before us must not be underestimated. If the end of the last Cold War created the illusion that humankind was bound for peace and democracy, so that all parties could set aside their weapons of war, we need to recognize that the defeat of democracy in the new Cold War might bring the opposite. It might be a warning that a hot war could be on the way. 

If my analysis is pessimistic, let me also say that I hope I am wrong. The sense of justice that abides in human nature will not easily be changed and will always provide us with reason for hope. One of my hopes is that others can successfully refute my pessimism.  

Comments: This is an important essay. It articulates the geostrategic reality with China better than most. Do our national leaders grasp this? Are we ceding the battlespace of the ideological war?

My assessment is that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan).

* What are the most significant challenges in the Asia-Indo-Pacific region?  (e.g., PRC aggression, disinformation, disaster preparedness, civic resilience, regional tensions)

Is this a generational struggle (surely the PRC see it that way).

* What emerging opportunities should we prioritize?

Has our NSS sufficiently answered these questions? 

What would a generational struggle look like? Sunday morning stream of consciousness follows:

If this is the Chinese strategy: "China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions."

Perhaps these are some considerations for the generational struggle against China and the other members of the Dark Quad.

Strong deterrence - we want to prevent conflict and war BUT we cannot show fear of it and we cannot have a policy of "preventing escalation at all costs" as this current administration has in place. Fear of escalation is a demonstration of our strategic weakness. We have to understand that there are times to escalate to de-escalate. We have to have the strategic sense to know when.

Adopt JFK's dictum: "never fear to negotiate but never negotiate out of fear." Maintain global strategic strength to sustain a superior negotiating position.

Conduct proactive aggressive political warfare rather than "strategic competition" to protect, sustain, and advance US interests in conjunction with mutual defense and mutually supporting political warfare in conjunction with our friends, partners, and allies (some (e.g., UK or Five Eyes) more than others ). This does mean protecting the rules-based international order (I cannot yet imagine something that could replace it that would be in our interest).

Regarding the Dark Quad (China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea): recognize that we cannot impose external change on any of them. We have to sustain our strength and defense capabilities to deter them from engaging in direct conflict or war. We must deal with the reality of their malign activities and work to defeat the effects of those activities while conducting our own political warfare activities to continuously create conditions (dilemmas ) that will keep them off balance - we need to sustain the initiative and not cede it to them. We need to recognize that this will be the strategic order for the long term until there is internal change in these countries where they collapse or change due to their own internal contradictions. The bottom line is we have to both create the conditions where possible but also let the conditions develop naturally that will cause these countries to fail due to their own internal contradictions. We cannot "fix" everything ourselves. We cannot "try" too hard. But we can protect, sustain, and advance our interests. If we focus on that we can live with a certain level of the status quo while recognizing that eventually our enemies will change or collapse based on their own internal contradictions.

China’s ‘Low-Human-Rights’ Advantage

People in the West say they must avoid a new Cold War without realizing that they are already in one – and China is winning.

By Qin Hui and Perry Link

December 13, 2025

https://thediplomat.com/2025/12/chinas-low-human-rights-advantage/

Credit: Shutterstock

Qin Hui, professor emeritus of history and economics at Tsinghua University and a pre-eminent Chinese public intellectual, who now lives and writes abroad, in April of this year published a book on China’s “low-human-rights advantage.” For years, people in the West marveled at the economic “miracle” in China and expected that the growth of a Chinese middle class would lead to political liberalization. But Qin Hui never thought he was observing a miracle.

What he saw was hundreds of millions of low-paid laborers working long hours in an environment that had no free press, no indigenous labor unions and no independent courts – but a very efficient police force. Unmiraculously, these hard workers produced immense wealth that went largely to the Chinese state, to elite families connected to it, and to foreign corporations. Qin could see that dictatorship, its generally bad reputation notwithstanding, under certain conditions could sharply accelerate economic growth. 

What follows is an adaptation and translation of the preface to Qin’s new book, “Save Mr. Democracy” (拯救民主) by Perry Link, a distinguished professor in Comparative Literature and Chinese at UC Riverside and the author of numerous books on Chinese literature, society, and politics.

Many people in both China and the West have lived under the serious historical misconception that, after British gunboats won lopsided wars on the China coast in the mid-19th century, Chinese felt an urgent need for Western science but were much slower to feel attracted to Western democracy. It is certainly true that Western science has entered China much more quickly than democracy. But that is because Chinese political regimes, in ancient times and now, too, have repressed the Chinese people – not because the people have been indifferent to the idea of controlling their own lives.

Guo Songtao, who in the late 1870s was China’s first ambassador to Britain and France, was much taken with how Western governments conceived the rule of law and how they stipulated that rulers serve at the sufferance of the ruled. It is important to note that Guo praised these notions not by introducing new Western vocabulary to his Chinese readers but by invoking ancient Chinese aphorisms about how rulers should guard the interests of the people and should be overthrown if they do not. Some of the mechanisms of modern democracy – notably separation of powers – were indeed new to China, but the idea of “rule by the people” (a literal translation of minzhu, the Chinese term for “democracy”) resonated with some features deep in popular thought. Ideas about “people’s power” (minquan), “people’s will” (minyi), and a “people’s nation” (minguo) were at least as exciting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as ideas about science were. During “China’s Enlightenment” in the late 1910s and early 1920s, “Mr. Democracy” was seen as a twin partner with “Mr. Science” in offering China paths forward. 

Authoritarianism in China’s Republican years (1912-49) and even worse authoritarianism in its Mao years (1949-76) kept the idea of “rule by the people” on the defensive. A flare of optimism appeared briefly in the late 1970s and the 1980s, and might have led to democracy, if Deng Xiaoping had not “insisted upon” his redundantly stated Four Fundamental Principles: the socialist system, Communist Party rule, Mao Zedong Thought, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The June Fourth massacre in 1989 pushed hope for democracy back underground.

It was also in 1989, however, that the Velvet Revolution brought regime change in Eastern Europe, and in 1992, when the Soviet Union had fallen and Francis Fukuyama wrote about liberal democracy as “the end of history,” Chinese intellectuals began again to take heart. Perhaps China could, in the widespread metaphor of the time, “connect tracks” (jiegui) with the world. When a “floating population” of farmers arrived in Chinese cities and coastal areas in the hundreds of millions to work in manufacturing and construction, they fueled a huge economic boom. China’s exports soared, and some Chinese liberals hoped that if China joined the World Trade Organization (which it did in 2000) jiegui might become irreversible.

But there was spirited debate inside China over whether that would be a good thing. Some argued that economic pressures would force a welcome liberalization. Others held that the outside pressures might be too strong and that China’s system might fail. The two sides did not differ much in their analyses; they agreed that WTO membership would bring important changes. They differed only on the value of the anticipated results. Few foresaw what actually did happen – that the results would produce a major advantage for a dictatorial system. 

The Low-Human-Rights Advantage

An authoritarian government has an advantage in economic competition when it operates in a market system that includes the economies of one or more democracies. I speak here not just of the advantage of low-wage labor. Other developing countries, including democracies, have that as well. I speak of a structural advantage that results from efficiencies in matters such as cutting red tape, confiscating land and property, ignoring environmental risks, and suppressing complaints. First-world economies that provide capital investment on the one hand and a market for products on the other can become locked into a symbiotic relationship with low-human-rights economies. 

In the 1990s, when China’s economy was approaching its boom, I worked within a community of scholars that included advisers to the top leadership. There was much talk then of what “our advantages” were. A colleague showed me privately an article that he was passing upward to the authorities. It said China today has no comparative advantage in natural resources or in technology; our comparative advantage is in “a system of near-slave labor.” (Yes, that shocking phrase was used; it remains seared in my memory.) We absolutely must retain that advantage, my colleague argued, and for that reason we must resist the import of Western ideas about the rights of workers and farmers. 

Others of my colleagues introduced a theory of “reduced transaction costs,” which they had adapted from the British economist Ronald Coase. An example from the PRC was the way the state procured grain from farmers in the 1950s. Originally the exchange was negotiated house by house in a process whose “transaction costs” were immense. A few years later, when farmers were brought into “people’s communes” and harvests overnight became “collective,” the state simply took as much as it wanted and that was that. There was no need to waste time bargaining. 

This instant conversion of private property to public was mirrored, during the “reform” economy of the Deng era, by an equally efficient conversion of public property to private. A directive from above was then enough to allow the manager of a “work-unit” (factory, mine, power plant, etc.) to divert public resources for use in his or her private enterprise. These conversions bore little resemblance to what Ronald Coase had meant by “eliminating transaction costs,” but they lay bare an important fact: China had an immense “comparative advantage” over the economies of democracies. 

Two of the most important economic tools of the CCP regime have been confiscation of land and exploitation of migrant labor. Tens of millions of Chinese households have had their land seized or homes demolished without recourse; this “advantage” led to impressive booms in construction and in real estate. Hundreds of millions of migrant farmer-laborers have lacked residence permits in cities and so have had to do without medical care, children’s education, and the other rights of legal residents. In 2017 the official press began referring to these people as diduan renkou – a “low-end population” whose neighborhoods could be “cleaned out” if they became unsightly. Socially they were “low-end” but economically they were indispensable.

The Key Element: Symbiosis With Developed Economies

What I am calling the “low-human-rights advantage” appears when an economy that uses slave-like labor interlocks in a system with a more advanced modern economy. This is different from the simpler case of isolated economies that feed off low-wage labor – such as medieval Europe with its serfs, or China in the Mao era, or North Korea today. I refer instead to symbiotic systems in which a wealthy economy provides capital and technical know-how at one end and a market for products on the other, while the “low-human-rights” partner supplies cheap labor and an authoritarian government to enforce stability. Both sides benefit – at least at first. With time, the wealthy partner in the symbiosis runs a risk of being hollowed out.

The interlocking of the Chinese and American economies in recent decades is a good example, but there are others. The American economic historian Robert Fogel has shown that the slave economy in the antebellum American south was at least as efficient, economically, as its symbiotically linked economy in the north. Under apartheid in South Africa, two domestic economies, one using the “low-human-rights advantage,” were interlocked. The non-market economies that grew under Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s are also examples, as is the “second serfdom” in the rapid development of commercial agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. 

In a public debate with the German politician Hans Modrow in 2009, I proposed a thought experiment that became known in Chinese intellectual circles as “Honecker’s Fable.” Imagine that Erich Honecker, dictator of East Germany from 1971 to 1989, had plotted to take over West Germany by using the low-human-rights advantage. He could welcome West German capital to invest in the captive cheap labor of East Germany to produce merchandise that would be sold in West Germany at prices well below what West Germany could match. Eventually the West German economy would hollow out. East Germany would thrive as the West descended into turmoil. West Germany would be left with three alternatives: 1) build a wall and isolate itself; 2) depress its human rights standards to match those of East Germany; and 3) (the worst case) watch as the West German people rebel against “East Germanization” while Honecker sends in troops to quell the rebellion and clean up. 

The interlocking of the economies of China and the Western democracies has not gone as far as Honecker’s Fable, but there is a trend in that direction. Western companies and governments, for the sake of profits, have turned a blind eye to China’s repression. In order to stay competitive, they have lowered their standards in protection of workers, the environment, and private property. As a Chinese idiom puts it, “foul coin can drive out fair coin.” The longer democracies remain in this game, the more fragile they become – not just economically, but politically and morally as well. Western confidence that “our engagement will change the other society” is turned on its head.

What can be done? In the past the U.S. has demanded that the CCP raise the value of its currency, but that made little difference. Recently it has announced tariffs, but the results of that remain unclear. U.S. support for Voice of America and Radio Free Asia did have positive effects, but those two enterprises recently have been closed. In broadest theory, the only solution to the problem is that the human rights of Chinese people be brought closer to global standards. So long as “globalization” means only economic globalization, the world’s economy (not just its moral universe) may be headed for major problems and possibly disaster. 

What would happen if China moved away from its “low-human-rights advantage” – by, for example, relying on domestic consumption rather than an export market? Would the results be disastrous? In the short term the country’s economy would certainly slow down, but the record of India and other low-wage democracies shows that a “low-human-rights advantage” is not necessary in order for a country to make good progress. The result would still be better, both inside China and for its relations with the world, than what continuation along the present path augurs.

Deterioration of the “Lighthouse”

When liberal intellectuals in China became excited in the 1980s about Deng Xiaoping’s policies of “reform and opening,” the U.S. came to be thought of as a “lighthouse” – an unwavering reference point to which people could look even if they knew that parts of the shining model might be constructed from hope. 

During the last two decades, the lighthouse has sometimes seemed to blink on and off and perhaps not to be fully reliable. The financial crisis of 2008 came as a shock, and in its wake problems like online disinformation and political polarization were not what one expected from a lighthouse. The U.S. appeared weaker on the world stage – not only unsure about how to handle China, over whom it now seemed less confident of its advantage, but also timid before adversaries like Russia and (until recently) Iran, over whom it clearly did hold advantages. The role of appeasement in Western thinking grew more prominent than at any time since World War II. 

Part of the problem lay in the West’s symbiotic interlocking with China’s economy and low-human-rights advantage. Competitive pressures led Western companies to accept lower standards in human rights. The COVID-19 crisis provided an especially clear look at the “advantages” the CCP regime could deploy: it could lie to the world, lie to its own people, and mercilessly lock its people down. In spite of its crises at home, it could still race past a confused West, reassert its ability to compete economically, and adopt a more aggressive political posture. (Were all that not enough, the pandemic also raised the fearsome specter of what biological warfare could look like.) 

The Problem of Seeing Clearly

The Western misunderstanding of how China works lies not just in details but sometimes in basic concepts. There are many examples, but here is one: In the early 2000s U.S. diplomats began arguing at WTO meetings that China must reduce its agriculture subsidies to 8.5 percent, to bring them more in line with international norms. Eventually the diplomats succeeded. But they remained unaware, apparently, that state subsidy of agriculture in China had been a negative number ever since 1949. In the PRC, farmers have always subsidized the state, not the other way around.

Similarly, I worry that few Westerners really grasp the workings of what I am calling the “low-human-rights advantage.” Optimists in the West tend to assume that free economies will always win out because controlled economies are weak in innovation, which needs competition in order to thrive, and also weak in domestic consumption because the populace is unfree. But China today has used symbiotic partners in the West to mitigate both of these problems: the West does the innovating and China swipes it, and the West provides a huge consumer base that makes China’s domestic consumption unimportant.

People in the West say they must avoid a new Cold War without realizing that they are already in one. This war is both colder and more warlike than the old Cold War. In the old one, tens of millions of people could die in famines in Ukraine and in China without there being an effect on the high standards of human rights in the U.S. In those days, when Stalin and Mao spoke of “world revolution” they imagined (however fancifully) that it would happen by violence or subterfuge. They never dreamed that they might use “peaceful evolution” against the West – the very strategy that they thought, at the time, the West was using on them. But now something very much like the peaceful dismantling of the West is in process. 

In U.S. politics today, both left and right use catchwords and concepts that fit only awkwardly onto the conditions of people in China who suffer human-rights deficits. The American left opposes “neoliberalism,” instead calling for better worker welfare, while the right deplores “socialism,” calling for more freedom. Neither side adequately understands that the rights-deprived in China lack both freedom and welfare. Some Americans support “multiculturalism” without noticing how the authoritarianism and super-idealism in its methods can corrode a democratic system. 

Today’s champion of the “tariffs are excellent” theory aims to keep the United States No. 1, regardless of what happens elsewhere. He can accept the low-human-rights advantage and is unaware that the West is already in (and losing) a new Cold War. 

It is not just Chinese who have noticed an unsteady lighthouse. Westerners have also worried about their democracy. But some of their worries, in my view, have been off the mark. There is a tendency, for example, to blame things on Donald Trump without looking at the social changes that set the stage for Trumpism. The CCP elite made a similar mistake when looking at the collapse of the Soviet Union. They see that disaster as attributable to Mikhail Gorbachev personally, not to the economic and political stagnation that had reached a dire state under Leonid Brezhnev. Trump can be seen (and in China is sometimes called) a “Gorbachev in reverse.” This view sees each man as undermining the system he grew up in – where “reverse” means only that the direction of political change is opposite. In both cases, however, the “bad guy” explanation is far too simple. Could the American politicians who preceded Trump, the “Brezhnevs in reverse,” do some careful reflection about what was happening in society on their watch?

Another over-simplification in the West is the view that the uncontrolled internet is responsible for democracy’s decline. To be sure, intellectual fast-food on cable news and social media are problems and do lead to confusion and polarization, but from a Chinese viewpoint the internet has done far more good than harm for democracy. When it entered China in the 2000-2010 decade, people welcomed it, with much excitement, as a vehicle of “enlightenment,” not confusion. It was the first medium under communist rule that allowed ordinary people to be the senders, not just the recipients, of information flow. Online speech led to organized demands for things like rights, justice, and constitutional government – and that, in turn, is what spurred the regime’s draconian controls on the internet. Those controls have largely worked – but it is control of the internet, not the internet itself, that leads to benighted public opinion in China today. 

Whatever the challenges facing democracy in America, at least the internet is free. There are no Chinese-style controls on it. If we see that the internet allows stupidity to spread among the masses, we should not say simplistically that that is a problem of either the internet or the masses. It is also, in part, the problem of high-minded elites who disparage what appears on the internet and lose touch with the realities that it reflects.

The Prospects

My book is titled “Save Mr. Democracy” but I am not, in fact, confident that this can be done. The Mr. Democracy who looked so promising to young Chinese during their “enlightenment” in the late 1910s and early 1920s has begun to appear now as a feeble old man. The world discusses whether we have entered a new Cold War, but the democracy side in that war seems unaware that it is already losing. 

Of course, the result of the new Cold War will not be “the end of history” any more than that was the case for the first Cold War. But the peril before us must not be underestimated. If the end of the last Cold War created the illusion that humankind was bound for peace and democracy, so that all parties could set aside their weapons of war, we need to recognize that the defeat of democracy in the new Cold War might bring the opposite. It might be a warning that a hot war could be on the way. 

If my analysis is pessimistic, let me also say that I hope I am wrong. The sense of justice that abides in human nature will not easily be changed and will always provide us with reason for hope. One of my hopes is that others can successfully refute my pessimism.  

Authors

Guest Author

Qin Hui

Qin Hui is a professor emeritus of history and economics at Tsinghua University and a pre-eminent Chinese public intellectual. He is the author of the new book (in Chinese) “Save Mr. Democracy.”

Guest Author

Perry Link

Perry Link is a distinguished professor in Comparative Literature and Chinese at UC Riverside and the author of numerous books on Chinese literature, society, and politics.

20. The shadow of war is at our door: Inside the new UK spy centre battling Russia

​Summary:

Britain has opened a new, unified Military Intelligence Service at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, described as the largest Five Eyes intelligence hub, with about 700 officers from the UK, US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The change folds separate service intelligence elements into one enterprise to reduce duplication, improve sharing, and speed support to commanders and policymakers, including targeting. Officials cite a sharp rise in hostile state activity, with threats against UK defence rising 50% in a year and more Russian naval activity near UK waters. AI and new tools help analysts cope with manpower strain.

​Comment: It is good to see Five Eyes flourishing.

The shadow of war is at our door: Inside the new UK spy centre battling Russia

Story by Molly Blackall • 1d • 4 min read​

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/the-shadow-of-war-is-at-our-door-inside-the-new-uk-spy-centre-battling-russia/ar-AA1Sh1XD?ocid=Peregrine

​Nestled in the flat, green fields of rural Cambridgeshire is a cluster of square, brown prefabricated buildings. Cut off from the public by reels of barbed wire and armed guards, these otherwise innocuous buildings are home to a top secret intelligence centre.

RAF Wyton – a former Second World War bomber base – is the largest Five Eyes intelligence hub in the world, hosting around 700 top intelligence officers from the UK, the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The nerve centre of the site is a windowless room the size of a football pitch, where 100 desks sprawl out in a honeycomb-shaped web, currently adorned with tinsel and peppered with plastic Christmas trees.

Military analysts buzz around, carrying papers and working at computers, as news channels broadcast from nearby screens. The flags of the Army, Navy and Air Force hang from the walls.

The i Paper was granted rare access to the site to see the launch of the military intelligence service, a new, unified approach which Western officials claim will be a “step change” in information operations and “keep Britain ahead of hostile states and terrorists”.

It will create a third branch of intelligence gathering, MIS, to site alongside MI5 and MI6.

RAF Wyton, home of the UK’s new Military Intelligence Services (Photo: UK MOD/Crown Copyright)

Previously, each branch of the military had its own intelligence service, creating overlaps and operational challenges, but now they will liaise and collaborate under one umbrella, supported by the conventional intelligence agencies.

The need for this was highlighted in the UK’s Strategic Defence Review, released this summer, which said, among other things, that the UK should “maximise its expert intelligence capabilities under a single enterprise”.

Western officials say it will bolster efficiency, improve intelligence sharing and help overcome the “tribalism” between branches, which insiders say has long dogged the forces.

At RAF Wyton, leading analysts track everything from satellite imagery to social media channels, as well as information gathered by agents.

This is then sent to military and policy decision-makers in the UK and allied countries to warn of threats, geopolitical changes or to offer options for military action, including giving targeting information to RAF jets.

This intelligence is the “nucleus of our world-class military might,” one Western official told The i Paper.

The Pathfinder Building, RAF Wyton, is home to the largest Five Eyes intelligence hub in the world (Photo: Hayley Ward/ UK MOD Crown copyright)

50 per cent rise in threats to defence officials

A renewed intelligence service is becoming increasingly important, officials said, with threats against the UK’s Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces rising by 50 per cent in the last year alone.

Adrian Bird, director of Defence Intelligence, said they are now facing “hundreds of incidents” across cyber, espionage and physical domains, originating predominately from Russia, China and Iran.

This marks a “significant change”, he said, with the threat focus moving from terrorist groups to hostile states, which are now conducting espionage on an “industrial scale”.

On the day of The i Paper‘s visit, the Royal Navy said that a Russian submarine had spent three days in British waters. This was just the latest incident, part of what the MoD said is a 30 per cent increase in Russian vessels threatening UK waters over the past two years.

Armed Forces Minister Al Carns told The i Paper and a select group of journalists that “the shadow of war is knocking on Europe’s door once more” and warned that the next major conflict was likely to cause more casualties than any UK deployment for decades, and would not be a “war of choice”.

Defence Minister Al Carns spoke to cadets on the visit and warned that conflict was looming over Europe (Photo: Jacob King/PA)

Carns said that spending on defence, which is due to reach 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, is key to protecting our borders and military but also much more.

He noted that the £1.5bn government bailout for Jaguar Land Rover after a cyber attack earlier this year, cost almost half the amount of removing the two-child benefit cap, which was a key sticking point in the recent Budget.

“We need to make sure the population recognise that those threats overseas have direct impacts to their way of living, their cost of living, food prices, fuel prices, and government spending as a whole,” he said.

A hive of activity

The site in Wyton is a buzz of activity 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with AI helping to distill information and a home-built Google-style search engine used to sift through intelligence.

They have even built a ‘tardis’ – a portable intelligence hub where analysts can work and sensitive laptops can be stored while gathering information overseas.

During the Navy’s deployment to the Indo-Pacific this year, analysts scoured Iranian and Yemeni Telegram channels to monitor the threat from the Houthi militant group.

At the same time as creating the third branch of intelligence gathering, the MoD is also launching a new Defence Counter-Intelligence Unit, to assess threats to officials, military personnel and defence industry.

One soldier from an intelligence unit said that projects like these were “why we joined the military, to add value and see the tangible output.”

Some of the intelligence collected at RAF Wyton is shared with Ukraine, to better inform its fightback against Russia, but military officials wouldn’t be drawn on whether they are monitoring live feeds of the battlefields.

But as the threat from countries like Russia soars, military intelligence experts in the West are stretched thin.

The Strategic Defence Review warned that while “demand for its services is increasing”, there are around 500 fewer people working in defence intelligence today than in 2019, while digital programmes have seen “significant cuts and deferments.”

Western officials said the site can still run effectively, but admitted the teams are “under pressure”. Carns said that the analysts are some of the country’s most talented minds but “work in the shadows”.

“24/7, every day of the year, they’re here, protecting us”, he said.

21. The Wisdom of Keith Richards at 82

Summary:

Rich Cohen uses Keith Richards turning 82 as a case study in survival, not self-help. He notes how several Rolling Stones have outlived expectations, but Richards, given his excess and chaos, has become the band’s symbol of near-immortality. Cohen weaves in his own teenage Stones cover-band moment, then traces Richards’s arc from Dartford, blues apprenticeship, and heroin seclusion to the myth that “Keith cannot be killed.” The core argument is that what reads as wisdom is endurance: Richards repeatedly meets the abyss, comes back, and makes art, like writing “Angie” after an overdose. Keep getting up, and people call it grace.

Comment: And now for something completely different. As we approach our mortality I was hoping for some lessons for resilience and longevity but I do not feel like there is anything from Keith Richards that we can replicate. But he does kind of embody the Nietzsche dictum: "that which does not kill me...." and there were sure a lot of things that should have killed him or should be killing him. I guess all we can do is just appreciate his music. But this is an interesting conclusion that perhaps does illustrate resilience. Keep going, keep playing, get up one more time, and stay in the game. We should strive for that (just perhaps not the way Richards did it).

To me, the lesson is simple: If you keep going long enough, if you keep playing, if you stay in the game, if you get up just one more time than you’ve been knocked down, people will ascribe to you a quality that is indistinguishable from wisdom.

The Wisdom of Keith Richards at 82

Solving the mystery of the guitarist’s longevity may be our best hope of aging gracefully

By Rich Cohen

Dec. 11, 2025 10:00 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/the-wisdom-of-keith-richards-at-82-500208bb

Keith Richards performing in 2024. Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

In America, the average man can expect to live 75.8 years. Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts had gone five years past that and was still playing for audiences shortly before he died in 2021. Stones founder Brian Jones died young in his swimming pool, but several of the band’s other iconic members, from Ronnie Wood, 78, to Bill Wyman, 89, have won the battle with the actuarial tables. Mick Jagger, the demonic frontman, was barely slowed by the replacement of his aortic valve in 2019. An octogenarian, Mick can still be seen dancing on the ashes of Western Civilization.

And yet, for some reason, it is the band’s rhythm guitarist who personifies immortality. As the bumper sticker has it, “Think of the world we’ll be leaving Keith Richards.” How this riff-drunk ragamuffin, who turns 82 on Dec. 18, not only survived but stayed relevant is a mystery, a puzzle wrapped inside a guitar string. Solving it may be the best hope the rest of us have of aging gracefully.

Richards having a drink on stage in 1975. ‘It was living through the chaos and tragedies of the 1960s and 70s that gave him that vampiric aura.’ Christopher Simon Sykes/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

I date my life with Keith to the spring of 1982, when, in the finale of the Central School talent show in Glencoe, Ill., I played the part of the guitarist in the Stones cover band that brought down the house with “Jumpin Jack Flash.” The experience taught me not only about rock ’n’ roll and the lure of stardom but about the vicissitudes of the powers that be—aka the man, Vice Principal Armor—who handed me a three-day suspension for the trip I made into the seats during the solo, for the cigarette I lit, and for how I tossed it into the crowd, the orange tip shedding sparks as it turned over and over.

It was while preparing for the show that I first really learned about Keith: about his legendary 1961 meeting with Jagger at the train station in Dartford, the English town where they both grew up; about their mutual love for the Chicago Blues (Jagger was carrying a stack of albums from Chess Records); about the Stones’ apprenticeship in the basement clubs and bars around London; about the first rush of fame and how Keith shut himself off from it behind a wall made of heroin. It was living through the chaos and tragedies of the 1960s and 70s—the river of opioids, the demise of Janis, Jimi, Jim and the rest—that gave him that vampiric aura. As the roadie puts it in “Wayne’s World 2,” “Keith cannot be killed by conventional weapons.”

Richards, far right, is shown with The Rolling Stones in 1963. He met Mick Jagger, far left, at the train station in Dartford, the English town where they both grew up, just two years earlier. Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Looking at a picture of young Keith, gaptoothed and geeky, beside old Keith, as gnarled as Yoda, is a lesson in the nature of time, in what the years can do. It’s the damage that makes him seem immortal, not just what he lived through but how he survived. It’s what Hemingway called “grace under pressure,” the ability to maintain a steady inner atmosphere even when the whip comes down. In his memoir “Life,” Keith describes writing “Angie” in a Swiss sanitarium after narrowly surviving yet another overdose. It’s Keith—squeezing his life like a press, turning a brush with death into maybe the most beautiful ballad in rock ’n’ roll—that gives us hope.

Keith says he doesn’t know where the songs come from. “Great songs write themselves,” he explains in “Life.” “You’re just being led by the nose, or the ears. The skill is not to interfere with it too much.” But I think I do know. It’s the confrontation between a sensibility and the abyss, not just touching the edge but coming away with a song, that makes a person seem everlasting.

The author with Richards in 1994, during the Voodoo Lounge tour. Rich Cohen

To me, the lesson is simple: If you keep going long enough, if you keep playing, if you stay in the game, if you get up just one more time than you’ve been knocked down, people will ascribe to you a quality that is indistinguishable from wisdom.

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Appeared in the December 13, 2025, print edition as 'The Wisdom of Keith Richards at 82'.

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