Quotes of the Day:

"In this kind of war a natural gap exists between the expectations of the of the politicians, of the public opinion, of the press and the real capacity of the armed forces to deliver. The gap is a characteristic of this kind of war. The gap is related the four dimensions: To the duration of the war; to the number of casualties; to the damage to the innocent civilians on the other side; and, what is more important, is the solution to the problem of the question of whether or not a decisive victory can or cannot be achieved."

– Giora Eiland

“Writing, as most art, is considered to be essentially superfluous. Who is an artist before a surgeon? Or a scientist? But the fact that tyrants and political forces of every age have been threatened by art again and again, condemned it as degenerate or poisonous, and have silenced, brutalized, or murdered artists because of their work only serves to illustrate how significant art is, that it is our one greatest power. I would even go so far as to say that the tyrant ‘understands’ art more than the devotee, for the latter is generally too ‘pious’ and adoring, almost like a simple-minded believer overwrought by faith who simply loves and finds everything ‘great,’ whereas the former suffers the transformative threat of art more, is even endangered by it, hence their terror.”

– Rainer J. Hanshe

“Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.”

– DaShanne Stokes

1. Special Ops Command Sees Change in Mission as a Return to Roots

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 12, 2024

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, February 12, 2024

4. Hamas’ Attack on Israel – an “Improvised Everything” Case Study

5. US permanently deploys military trainers to Taiwan (Special Forces)

6. Inside Israel’s Daring Hostage Rescue in Gaza: ‘Diamonds Are in Our Hands’

7. House speaker casts doubts on Ukraine and Israel aid package as senators grind toward final vote

8. Exploring the Cyber Dimension of the Current U.S.-Iran Crisis

9. Understanding the Deterrence Gap in the Taiwan Strait

10. Bringing the Swarm to Life: Roles, Missions, and Campaigns for the Replicator Initiative

11. How the CIA Destabilizes the World

12. Senate Passes $95.3 Billion Ukraine, Israel Aid Package

13. China’s Shipyards Are Ready for a Protracted War. America’s Aren’t.

14. Opinion | China airbrushed away its foreign minister. Why?

15. A Tunnel Offers Clues to How Hamas Uses Gaza’s Hospitals

16. US Official Warns of China’s Growing Offensive Cyber Power

17. A new report says the world faces a 'dangerous decade' as instability and military spending rise

18. Mongolia's former president mocks Putin with a map showing how big the Mongol empire used to be, and how small Russia was

19. Kiev needs new strategy, not just a military reshuffle

20. Empowered edge versus the centralization trap: Who will wield AI better, the US or China?

1. Special Ops Command Sees Change in Mission as a Return to Roots

The title of my 1995 MMAS thesis: "Special Forces Missions: A Return to the Roots for a Vision of the Future."  https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA299300.pdf

• Abstract:This study traces the development of Special Forces SF missions from the 0SS in 1944 to the present to determine how the doctrinal missions evolved. Five specific operations events are examined including the Jedburghs and Operational Groups in France, Unconventional Warfare during the Korean War, Operation White Star in Laos, Special Forces conduct of the CIDG program and its participation in MACV-SOG during the Vietnam War, and SF operations in the Dominican Republic. The possible characteristics of conflict in the Post Cold War World are established. These characteristics are compared with the five specific operations examined to determine the likenesses and differences among them, as well as lessons learned that will have application for future Special Forces training. The study concludes that because the Post Cold War World will be characterized by chaos and uncertainty, SF requires the broadest training possible. It should focus on two missions and all others should become collateral activities. The wartime mission should be Unconventional Warfare and the peacetime mission should be Unconventional Operations. Training for these missions provides flexible, language capable, culturally aware, highly skilled, and disciplined soldiers that will meet the requirements across the spectrum of conflict.

Special Ops Command Sees Change in Mission as a Return to Roots

Feb. 13, 2024 | By Jim Garamone , DOD News |   

U.S. Special Operations Command leaders see the current move to integrate the command into great power competition as a return to its roots.

Army Gen. Bryan Fenton and Army Command Sgt. Maj. Shane Shorter, the commander and senior enlisted leader of Socom, spoke with the Defense Writers Group recently and discussed the changes happening in the world and Special Operations Command's place in it. 

The command has come off more than 20 years as America's preeminent counterterrorism organization. Even before the attacks on the United States in September 2001, the command was tracking and pursuing violent extremist organizations around the world. The command operated against narco-trafficking gangs in Central and South America, as well as transnational criminal organizations in the Balkans. Socom came into its own in counterterrorism in operations against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, fundamentalist groups in Iraq and against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. 

Special operators also worked with and formed relationships with national and indigenous forces from the Indo-Pacific to Europe to Africa and South America. 

But before that, the special operations community was an integral part of great power competition working to "fill in the gaps" of conventional power structures when the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe, Fenton said. "We still have to maintain and stay on the [violent extremist organization] threat because it has not gone away. What I will tell you is … the special operations command team frankly is born for the integrated deterrence, great power competition era." 

But while the mission set might be changing, the values behind the force are not. "The most important line of effort that we have in our headquarters is still our people," said Shorter. "We're not a platform-centric organization, we're a people-centric organization." 

The first rule of the command is "Humans are more important than equipment," and Fenton and Shorter are sticking with that. 

Change is tough. Many in the command grew up in the organization when it was sometimes jokingly called "Counter Terrorism Command" and that is what they know. But Shorter said in travels around the command, service members are making the switch to great power competition and integrated deterrence. "We focused hard on the global war on terror, and I'm very proud of what we did, but we've never had [to] … pull ‘Socomians' towards the nation's main effort." 

So the bulk of the forces is absolutely laser focused on great power competition and integrated deterrence, Shorter said. Special operators are studying China and Russia. They are taking lessons learned from Russia's war on Ukraine. They are studying the nature of all-domain combat and applying new tactics, techniques and procedures to it. They are also looking at better ways to integrate new technologies and equipment into the fight, the command sergeant major said.  

"We always will be focused on the nation's priorities and the department's priorities," Shorter said.  

Still, the experience of counterinsurgency combat is valuable, and special operators can take that experience and apply it to new situations and new missions, he said. 

Fenton said that people lead in the strategic priorities of the command. "If we have one more dollar to spend, we're spending it on our people, and then we'll wrap the technology around them," he said.  

That idea is born in the people attracted to special operations. Service members "go through a rigorous assessment selection process, and more arduous training because they really want to be at the leading edge," Fenton said.  

Transformation of the command also is all about people, the general said. Special operators must "think how we're going to be prepared, not only in equipment or some level of technology to meet the world, but how are we thinking about the world differently," he said. "We have to hold these different ideas in our head and actually still complete the mission, even though it doesn't look the same as it did 20 years ago. But the outcome has still got to be the same. We've got to succeed for the nation." 

Typically, when a counterterrorism mission ends, organizations put the capability on the back burner. In the United States, this happened at the end of the Vietnam War and there are moves to cut the number of special operations personnel. This hits at another Special Operations truth: Special operations cannot be mass produced in times of a crisis. 

The services, from whom Socom gets their recruits, are having trouble attracting new service members. Fenton said Socom has not felt that problem yet, but says it could happen further down the road. Fenton did say there is no retention problem in special operations, and that the command is already working with the services to improve the recruiting climate. 

He has asked members of the command to reach out to recruiters when they travel in the United States to inform the American people about the military in general and Special Operations Command in particular. 

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 12, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-12-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that elements of Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are training Russian drone operators at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria.
• The Russian State Duma is considering a bill to restrict actors that the Russian government designates as “undesirable” from entering Russia, likely as part of ongoing efforts to censor opposition media outlets and dismantle ties between Russia and foreign and international non-governmental organizations.
• Boris Nadezhdin, the only openly anti-war Russian presidential candidate, filed two lawsuits in the Russian Supreme Court challenging the Russian Central Election Commission’s (CEC) refusal to register him as a candidate as the Kremlin continues efforts to suppress popular opposition while trying to preserve the veneer of legitimacy of Russian presidential elections.
• The European Union (EU) is beginning to take concrete steps towards possibly using frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine.
• Ukrainian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kreminna and Donetsk City and in western Zaporizhia Oblast, and Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kupyansk and Kreminna.
• South Korean news outlet Yonhap News Agency reported on February 12 that North Korea has developed 240mm guided multiple rocket launcher system (MLRS) mortar that North Korea may export to Russia.
• Russian authorities continue to use youth engagement programs to Russify Ukrainian youth.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Feb 12, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 12, 2024

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

February 12, 2024, 6:10pm ET 

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

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:15pm ET on February 12. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the February 13 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that elements of Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are training Russian drone operators at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria.[1] The GUR stated that LH and IRGC trainers are training Russian operators how to use Shahed-136/-131, Ababil-3, and Qods Raab 85 drones and that LH commander Kamal Abu Sadiq is heading the training effort. Iranian-backed militias and Russian forces are located at Shayrat Air Base, which is the second largest Iranian air base in Syria’s Homs Province after the Tiyas T-4 Air Base.[2] The IRGC and LH previously conducted training for Russian forces on Iranian-made drones at the Russian-controlled Palmyra Military Airport, also in Homs Province.[3] The Israeli Air Force notably struck Shayrat Air Base and other Syrian army Iranian-backed militia sites throughout Homs Province on February 7.[4] The GUR report suggests that Russian forces are expanding drone training to Shayrat Air Base utilizing existing Russian military infrastructure and leveraging relationships with LH and other Iranian-backed militant groups.

The Russian State Duma is considering a bill to restrict actors that the Russian government designates as “undesirable” from entering Russia, likely as part of ongoing efforts to censor opposition media outlets and dismantle ties between Russia and foreign and international non-governmental organizations. Russian State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Head Vasily Piskarev announced on February 12 that he and other Duma deputies submitted a bill that would allow the Russian government to designate foreign organizations whose founders or participants are allegedly affiliated with foreign governments as “undesirable.”[5] The bill would also prohibit foreign and stateless individuals who are involved in such “undesirable” organizations from entering Russia.[6] This bill will likely prohibit journalists from Russian opposition outlets based outside of Russia and foreign outlets with Russian-language services (such as the UK’s BBC and Germany‘s Deutsche Welle, among others) from entering Russia, thereby restricting their ability to report on domestic Russian affairs, and will likely further block the work of international and foreign non-governmental organizations in Russia. Russian authorities can also bring criminal charges and revoke acquired Russian citizenship from individuals found guilty of participating in a designated “undesirable” organization.[7] Piskarev recently announced that the Duma is considering another bill that will ban Russian citizens and companies from advertising on platforms owned by organizations designated as “foreign agents,” likely in an effort to use financial coercion to censor Russian opposition media and critical Russian ultranationalist milbloggers.[8] ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin has been attempting to consolidate control over and stifle dissent in the Russian information space ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential election, although this bill will likely severely restrict opposition media operations in Russia for the long term.

Boris Nadezhdin, the only openly anti-war Russian presidential candidate, filed two lawsuits in the Russian Supreme Court challenging the Russian Central Election Commission’s (CEC) refusal to register him as a candidate as the Kremlin continues efforts to suppress popular opposition while trying to preserve the veneer of legitimacy of Russian presidential elections. Nadezhdin filed lawsuits with the Supreme Court challenging the technicalities the CEC used to deny his registration in the presidential election.[9] Nadezhdin stated that he will likely file a third lawsuit against the CEC before February 16.[10] ISW previously assessed that the Kremlin may have reversed its decision to allow Nadezhdin to run after Nadezhdin demonstrated that he might win too many votes for the Kremlin to credibly portray Putin as winning the election by the Kremlin-desired margin, and by extension frame Putin’s reelection as an overwhelming referendum on his war effort.[11] The CEC is unlikely to reverse its decision. The Russian Ministry of Justice included the Russian Election Monitor, a European non-governmental organization (NGO) that publishes expert analyses on Russian elections and observations from independent civilian election observers in Russia, on the list of “undesirable” NGOs in Russia.[12] Chairperson of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Vasily Piskarev justified the “undesirable” designation, claiming that a group of unnamed Polish, French, and German “Russophobe” politicians formed the Russian Election Monitor to “prepare foreign audiences to recognize the presidential elections in Russia as illegitimate.”[13]

The European Union (EU) is beginning to take concrete steps towards possibly using frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine. The European Council adopted a decision and regulation stating that central securities depositaries (CSDs) holding more than one million euros ($1.07 million) in assets from the Russian Central Bank must separate any profits generated from the primary accounts.[14] The European Council stated that this decision could allow the European Council to decide to support Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction using these profits in the future. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba “welcomed” the European Council‘s decision and called for further “ambitious” and “prompt” steps towards using revenues from frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine.[15]

Key Takeaways:

• Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that elements of Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are training Russian drone operators at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria.
• The Russian State Duma is considering a bill to restrict actors that the Russian government designates as “undesirable” from entering Russia, likely as part of ongoing efforts to censor opposition media outlets and dismantle ties between Russia and foreign and international non-governmental organizations.
• Boris Nadezhdin, the only openly anti-war Russian presidential candidate, filed two lawsuits in the Russian Supreme Court challenging the Russian Central Election Commission’s (CEC) refusal to register him as a candidate as the Kremlin continues efforts to suppress popular opposition while trying to preserve the veneer of legitimacy of Russian presidential elections.
• The European Union (EU) is beginning to take concrete steps towards possibly using frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine.
• Ukrainian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kreminna and Donetsk City and in western Zaporizhia Oblast, and Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kupyansk and Kreminna.
• South Korean news outlet Yonhap News Agency reported on February 12 that North Korea has developed 240mm guided multiple rocket launcher system (MLRS) mortar that North Korea may export to Russia.
• Russian authorities continue to use youth engagement programs to Russify Ukrainian youth.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian and Ukrainian forces recently made confirmed gains along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line. Geolocated footage posted on February 12 shows that Russian forces marginally advanced northwest of the Synkivka-Lake Lyman area (northeast of Kupyansk).[16] Additional geolocated footage posted on February 12 shows that Russian forces marginally advanced east of Terny (west of Kreminna) and are now operating within two kilometers of the outskirts of Terny itself.[17] Geolocated footage posted on February 11 indicates that Ukrainian forces regained some tactical positions about three kilometers east of Yampolivka (west of Kreminna).[18] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported continued positional fighting northeast of Kupyansk near Ivanivka, Synkivka, and Lake Lyman; southeast of Kupyansk near Tabaivka and Tymkivka; west of Kreminna near Terny and Yampolivka; southwest of Kreminna near Dibrova; and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka.[19] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces drove Ukrainian troops out of some positions in western Bilohorivka, although ISW has not observed visual evidence of this claim.[20] Elements of the Russian 4th Guards Tank Division (1st Guards Tank Army, Western Military District) and 7th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic [LNR] Army Corps) are reportedly operating near Svatove and Bilohorivka, respectively.[21]

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

Russian forces reportedly advanced west of Bakhmut amid continued positional fighting in the area on February 12. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced up to one kilometer along the O0506 Bakhmut-Chasiv Yar highway towards Khromove (west of Bakhmut), into a field north of Bohdanivka (northwest of Bakhmut), and near Klishchiivka (southwest of Bakhmut).[22] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims, however. Positional fighting continued near Bohdanivka; west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske; southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka, Andriivka, and Kurdyumivka; and south of Bakhmut near Mayorske, Pivdenne, and Niu York.[23] Elements of the 98th Airborne (VDV) Division are reportedly operating south of Bohdanivka, and the Chechen “Sever-Akhmat” detachment (78th Motorized Rifle Regiment, 42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) is reportedly operating near Klishchiivka.[24]

Russian forces reportedly advanced in Avdiivka amid continued positional fighting near the city on February 12. Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces crossed the rail line in Avdiivka and entrenched themselves in the dacha area west of the railway, but other milbloggers claimed that these reports are unconfirmed and ISW has not yet observed visual evidence of Russian forces operating west of the railway line in Avdiivka .[25] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces continued to advance along Chystyakova Street and Zaliznychnyi Lane in northern Avdiivka and advanced 300 meters deep along a 450-meter-wide front in southern Avdiivka.[26] Milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced in a forest belt east of Opytne (southwest of Avdiivka) and advanced further into Pervomaiske (southwest of Avdiivka).[27] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of any of these Russian claims. Positional fighting also continued north of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka; west of Avdiivka near Tonenke; and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske and Nevelske.[28] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Dmytro Lykhovyi stated that Russian forces are using more armored vehicles, tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles in the Avdiivka direction, and a Russian milblogger attributed this increase to increased Russian control over areas in and near Avdiivka.[29]

Ukrainian forces recently marginally advanced southwest of Donetsk City amid continued positional fighting to the west and southwest of the city on February 12. Geolocated footage published on February 11 shows that Ukrainian forces marginally advanced northeast of Pobieda (southwest of Donetsk City).[30] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced along the T0524 Vuhledar-Pobieda highway towards Pobieda and captured additional positions immediately south of the settlement, and another milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced on the flank of the settlement.[31] Positional fighting continued near Krasnohorivka, Heorhiivka, Pobieda, and Novomykhailivka.[32] Elements of the Russian 150th Motorized Rifle Division (8th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating in the Kurakhove direction west of Donetsk City; elements of the 5th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Army Corps [AC]) are reportedly operating in the Krasnohorivka-Heorhiivka direction (also west of Donetsk City); elements of 255th Motorized Rifle Regiment’s “Tiger” Battalion (20th Guards Motorized Rifle Division, 8th CAA) are reportedly operating near Pobieda and Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City); and elements of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) are reportedly operating near Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City).[33]

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

Positional engagements continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on February 12, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced one kilometer near Vodyane (north of Vuhledar), but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[34] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued north of Vuhledar near Vodyane; southeast of Velyka Novosilka near Prechystivka; and southwest of Velyka Novosilka near Pryyutne.[35]

Ukrainian forces made a confirmed advance in western Zaporizhia Oblast amid continued positional fighting in the area on February 12. Geolocated footage published on February 12 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced west of Pyatykhatky (28km northwest of Robotyne) near Kamianske, though this advance was likely not recent.[36] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced near Novoprokopivka (south of Robotyne), but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[37] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Robotyne and Novopokrovka (northeast of Robotyne).[38] Elements of the Russian 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (58th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating in the Zaporizhia direction, elements of the Russian 1152nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (58th CAA, SMD) are reportedly operating near Robotyne, and elements of the Russian 19th Motorized Rifle Division (58th CAA, SMD) are reportedly operating south of Kamianske.[39]

The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast near Krynky.[40]

Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign (Russian Objective: Target Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure in the rear and on the frontline)

Russian forces launched 17 Shahed-136/-131 drones, one Kh-59 cruise missile, and an unspecified number of S-300 surface-to-air missiles at Ukrainian rear areas on the night of February 11–12.[41] Ukrainian military sources reported that Ukrainian air defenses shot down 14 Shaheds and the Kh-59 over Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhia oblasts.[42] The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office stated that Russian forces struck Selydove, Donetsk Oblast with three S-300 missiles, damaging residential and energy infrastructure.[43] Russian forces also struck Lyubotyn, Kharkiv Oblast with two S-300 missiles.[44] Ukrainian sources reported that Shahed strikes on energy infrastructure in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast left up to 29,000 residents without power in Pavlohrad Raion.[45]

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

South Korean news outlet Yonhap News Agency reported on February 12 that North Korea has developed a 240mm guided multiple rocket launcher system (MLRS) mortar that North Korea may export to Russia.[46] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Chief Major General Vadym Skibitskyi stated that North Korea delivered one million rounds of artillery ammunition to Russia from September to November 2023, and US officials have stated that Russian forces have launched at least nine North Korean ballistic missiles against Ukraine as of February 2024.[47] ISW continues to assess that Russia is open to financial, technological, and defense cooperation with North Korea in exchange for the provision of munitions and ballistic missiles to use in Ukraine.[48]

The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is overseeing the selection of Russian conscripts to serve in combat units in Ukraine.[49] The Ukrainian Resistance Center stated that regional FSB offices plan to select conscripts from military registration and enlistment offices and train them in combat to serve in the Russian special services. Russian military officials have repeatedly stated that Russian conscripts would not deploy to Ukraine, although Russian conscripts were aboard the Russian Novocherkassk and Moskva ships when Ukrainian forces sank them.[50] The Russian State Duma adopted a law allowing Russian conscripts to serve in the FSB Border Service on December 12, 2023, however.[51]

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

Russian software company Hardberry-Rusfaktor reportedly designed the “Naka” artificial intelligence neural network that allows drones to automatically identify and locate objects.[52] Hardberry-Rusfaktor General Director Alexei German stated that the “Naka” artificial neural network software can work on all drone types, automatically identify enemy equipment types with 85 percent accuracy, and locate targets’ exact coordinates. German claimed that drones enabled by the “Naka” neural network’s object-detection capability will be able to identify NATO-provided equipment such as Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

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

Ukraine continues to expand its domestic drone production capabilities. Ukrainian Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stated on February 12 that Ukraine will produce thousands of long-range drones in 2024, including various loitering munitions with a maximum range of 300-1,000 kilometers (about 185-620 miles).[53] Fedorov also reported that Ukraine intends to produce over one million first-person view (FPV) drones in 2024 and that Ukraine delivered 50 times more drones in December 2023 than in all of 2022. Fedorov stated that the Ukrainian government is “rapidly deregulating the drone market” and increasing its funding to manufacture Ukrainian drones.[54] Fedorov also stated that many Ukrainian drone companies will have at least 50 percent of their components produced domestically by the end of 2024.

German Chief of Defense General Carsten Breuer stated on February 11 that Germany will provide 100 million euros (about $108 million) worth of additional military equipment to Ukraine.[55] German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall also began building a new factory in Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony to increase Germany’s artillery shell production capabilities to strengthen arms provisions to Ukraine and maintain Germany’s artillery ammunition stocks.[56] Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger stated that the new facility, once operational, will be able to produce 200,000 artillery shells per year and that Rheinmetall will deliver “several hundred thousand shells” to Ukraine in 2024.[57] This new Rheinmetall factory will reportedly become operational in 2025.[58]

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

Russian authorities continue to use youth engagement programs to Russify Ukrainian youth. Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo announced on February 12 that Ukrainian youth from occupied Kherson Oblast attended the “Russia” international exhibition-forum in Moscow and received grants from the Russian Federal Agency of Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh) for projects pertaining to developing media and social networking in occupied Kherson Oblast.[59] Rosmolodezh is likely using grant money as a financial incentive for Ukrainian youth to participate in pro-Russian civic engagement programs in occupied Ukraine, thereby increasing Russian social control of occupied areas.

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian sources continued to promote Kremlin narratives aimed at driving wedges between the West and Ukraine and within Ukraine. Kremlin newswire TASS stated that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed that the West is preparing to appoint a “viceroy” in Ukraine as part of ongoing Kremlin narratives that the West controls Ukraine and Ukraine lacks independence and sovereignty.[60] Russian milbloggers attempted to use reports of protests in various European countries to promote the idea that the West should decrease support to Ukraine and to claim that European states are fabricating and exaggerating the “Russian threat” for their own interests.[61] Russian sources, including Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov, have launched their own smear campaigns against newly-appointed Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi.[62]

Kremlin officials continued to promote the false narrative that Ukraine and the West, not Russia, are to blame for the lack of negotiations. Russian Security Council First Deputy Secretary Rashid Nurgaliev claimed that Russia has repeatedly “sincerely” sought to resolve the conflict in Ukraine with peaceful means and blamed the West for failing to implement the Minsk Agreements and starting the war in 2022.[63] Russian Permanent Representative to the EU Kirill Logvinov claimed that EU states have refused to support any political and diplomatic settlements to the war in Ukraine.[64] Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a lengthy interview on February 6 justifying why Russia invaded Ukraine and why Russia must destroy Ukraine as a nation.[65]

Russian state media alleged that the West conducted biological testing in Ukraine in the past as part of efforts to promote and legitimize Russia’s occupation of Ukraine. Russian news outlet RIA Novosti claimed that Ukrainian officials helped Western pharmaceutical companies conduct experiments on Ukrainian babies and children in a psychiatric ward of a hospital in Mariupol between 2008 and 2016.[66] Russian officials frequently weaponize narratives about alleged Western chemical and biological weapons testing in Ukraine to undermine the West and frame Russia as Ukraine’s savior.[67]

A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger continued efforts to set information conditions to justify future Russian aggression against Moldova, although the degree to which the Kremlin is directly involved in these efforts remains unclear. The milblogger claimed that the Moldovan government is increasingly cooperating with NATO and Ukraine and may seek to resolve the Transnistria conflict with force and that these actions are “drawing Moldova into the conflict [in Ukraine] at a new level.”[68]

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

Belarusian Ambassador to Russia Dmitri Krutoy claimed that Russia and Belarus may cooperate on aircraft and microelectronics production, possibly as part of sanctions evasion schemes.[69] Ukrainian officials previously noted that Russian Kalibr missiles include foreign microelectronics.[70]

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

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, February 12, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-february-12-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Russia: Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate reported that elements of Lebanese Hezbollah and the IRGC are training Russian drone operators at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria.
• Northern Gaza Strip: The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement stated that it reestablished contact with its “combat units” in southwestern Gaza City.
• Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces conducted an overnight raid to rescue Hamas-held hostages in Rafah.
• West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters two times.
• Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Lebanese Hezbollah conducted seven attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
• Iraq: The Iraqi Parliament discussed the removal of US-led international coalition forces from Iraq in a session.
• Yemen: The Houthis launched at least two anti-ship missiles targeting a Greek-owned, Marshall Islands-flagged commercial vessel carrying Brazilian corn to Iran.
• Iran: Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian is conducting a regional tour and politically coordinating with senior Axis of Resistance leaders in Lebanon, Syria, and Qatar.

IRAN UPDATE, FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Feb 12, 2024 - ISW Press

Iran Update, February 12, 2024

Annika Ganzeveld, Ashka Jhaveri, Brian Carter, Peter Mills, Kathryn Tyson, Karolina Hird, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00pm ET

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

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

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

Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that elements of Lebanese Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are training Russian drone operators at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria.[1] The GUR stated that Hezbollah and IRGC trainers are training Russian operators how to use Shahed-136/-131, Ababil-3, and Qods Raab 85 drones and that Hezbollah commander Kamal Abu Sadiq is heading the training effort. Iranian-backed militias and Russian forces are located at Shayrat Air Base, which is the second largest Iranian air base in Syria’s Homs Province after the Tiyas T-4 Air Base.[2] The IRGC and Hezbollah previously conducted training for Russian forces on Iranian-made drones at the Russian-controlled Palmyra Military Airport, also in Homs Province.[3] The Israeli Air Force notably struck Shayrat Air Base and other Syrian army Iranian-backed militia sites throughout Homs Province on February 7.[4] The GUR report suggests that Russian forces are expanding drone training to Shayrat Air Base utilizing existing Russian military infrastructure and leveraging relationships with Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militant groups. Note: This text also appears in CTP-ISW's Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 12, 2024.

Key Takeaways:

• Russia: Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate reported that elements of Lebanese Hezbollah and the IRGC are training Russian drone operators at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria.
• Northern Gaza Strip: The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement stated that it reestablished contact with its “combat units” in southwestern Gaza City.
• Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces conducted an overnight raid to rescue Hamas-held hostages in Rafah.
• West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters two times.
• Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Lebanese Hezbollah conducted seven attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
• Iraq: The Iraqi Parliament discussed the removal of US-led international coalition forces from Iraq in a session.
• Yemen: The Houthis launched at least two anti-ship missiles targeting a Greek-owned, Marshall Islands-flagged commercial vessel carrying Brazilian corn to Iran.
• Iran: Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian is conducting a regional tour and politically coordinating with senior Axis of Resistance leaders in Lebanon, Syria, and Qatar.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement stated that it reestablished contact with its “combat units” in southwestern Gaza City on February 12.[5] The militia fighters reported that they detonated a house-borne improvised explosive device targeting Israeli forces. The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement is a Palestinian faction aligned with Hamas and has expressed close ties with Iran.[6] The inability of these fighters to communicate with higher headquarters indicates that their commanders may be unable to transmit orders to fighters that are engaged with Israeli forces.

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in eastern Khan Younis on February 12. Most of the engagements between the IDF and Palestinian militias occurred in eastern Khan Younis. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) reported that its fighters conducted a complex ambush targeting Israeli forces in Maan, southeast of Khan Younis.[7] Hamas and al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fighters reported that their fighters conducted separate attacks targeting Israeli forces east of Khan Younis.[8] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades is the self-proclaimed militant wing of Fatah. The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement and al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) targeting Israeli armor in a combined attack in Khan Younis.[9]

Palestinian militias did not claim any attacks in western Khan Younis on February 12 for the first time since Israeli forces “expanded” ground operations there on January 22.[10] The IDF reported on February 11 that its 84th Givati Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) “deepened” the damage it inflicted on Hamas’ Western Khan Younis Battalion.[11]

The IDF reported on February 11 that Israeli forces have operated in the Amal Hospital in western Khan Younis in recent days.[12] The Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported that Israeli forces entered the hospital on February 9.[13] The IDF 84th Givati Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) and Israeli special operations forces (SOF) detained about 20 Palestinian fighters, including some Hamas fighters hiding in the hospital.[14] The IDF said that Israeli forces searched the hospital without firing weapons and without harming medical staff or patients. The IDF briefed its forces on the importance of preventing harm to civilians "in accordance with international law” before the 84th Givati Brigade and SOF entered the building.[15] The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), a unit under the Israeli Defense Ministry, supported the distribution of dozens of oxygen cylinders to the hospital after the operation.[16]

Israeli forces conducted an overnight raid to rescue Hamas-held hostages in Rafah on February 12.[17] An IDF armored brigade and other Israeli security services used "highly sensitive and valuable intelligence” to launch the raid.[18] Israeli SOF rescued two Hamas-held hostages and exfiltrated them from the Gaza Strip.[19] The operation marks the second time since October 7, 2023, that Israeli forces have successfully retrieved hostages from the Gaza Strip.[20] The IDF Air Force provided air support to suppress the local Hamas battalion during the raid.[21] The Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported that Israeli airstrikes killed approximately 100 people.[22] The US State Department spokesperson said on February 12 that the United States does not view the Israeli airstrikes in Rafah as “the launch of a full-scale offensive.”[23]

Two unspecified security officials told CNN on February 12 that Egypt has increased security along its border with the Gaza Strip as a “precautionary measure” in anticipation of an Israeli ground operation into Rafah.[24] An eyewitness told CNN that the Egyptian Army reinforced checkpoints near the Rafah crossing and prepared roads in an unspecified manner for the deployment of tanks and military equipment. Egypt has added other fortifications to the border and deployed approximately 40 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to the Rafah border crossing over the past two weeks.[25] Egypt has repeatedly expressed concern that an Israeli operation into Rafah could create a flow of Palestinian refugees into the Sinai Peninsula.[26]

Israeli media reported that the IDF plans to release a report on alleged war crimes its service members have committed during the Israel-Hamas war.[27] The IDF told Haaretz that the Israeli General Staff investigative team is working to ”examine reports and complaints of the violation of Israeli and international law in the course of the fighting.” The IDF said that the team is collecting data regarding various wartime events and that the investigation is in its initial stages.

The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement fired a rocket salvo from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel on February 12.[28]

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

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters two times across the West Bank on February 12.[29] The IDF killed on February 11 an unspecified fighter who attempted to stab an IDF soldier.[30] Israel police killed a separate attacker who also attempted to stab police officers.[31] The IDF detained 17 wanted individuals across the West Bank overnight on February 11.[32]

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

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Lebanese Hezbollah conducted seven attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on February 12.[33] The IDF Air Force targeted a Hezbollah field commander, who was responsible for the Maroun al Ras region, in an airstrike near Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon.[34] The commander survived the attack.[35]

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

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Senior Kataib Hezbollah official and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) Chief of Staff Abu Fadak (Abdul Aziz) al Mohammadawi stated that the Iraqi federal government and Islamic Resistance in Iraq will “coordinate” before any retaliation for the US strike that killed a Kataib Hezbollah commander in Baghdad on February 7.[36] Abu Fadak said that the “greatest revenge” for the US strike will be the expulsion of “foreign forces” from Iraq.[37]

Abu Fadak’s remarks are consistent with CTP-ISW's assessment that the primary objective driving the Iranian-backed attacks on US forces is expelling these forces from the region. Iranian-backed militias are using Israeli operations as an excuse to attack US forces, when the actual objective of these attacks is to advance the long-standing Iranian effort to erode American influence in the Middle East. Iranian-backed militias have thus exploited the Israel-Hamas war to justify their attacks and partially obfuscate the core objective driving their escalation. Iran and its Axis of Resistance will almost certainly continue their decades-long effort to expel US forces from the Middle East regardless of whether there is a ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Hamas war.

The US force presence in Iraq aims to defeat ISIS at the invitation of the Iraqi federal government. CTP-ISW continue to assess that ISIS could resurge in Syria and then threaten Iraq 12 to 24 months after a US withdrawal.[38] The expulsion of US forces from Iraq would require the United States to end operations in Syria because US forces there rely on Iraqi bases for logistics and other support. The expulsion of US forces from Iraq would benefit ISIS by constraining US support to the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), which still faces deficiencies in fire support, intelligence, and logistics.[39]

The Iraqi Parliament discussed the removal of US-led international coalition forces from Iraq in a session on February 10. Over 100 parliamentarians called for an emergency parliamentary session following the February 7 US strike that killed a senior Kataib Hezbollah commander in Baghdad.[40] Acting Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohsen al Mandalawi ordered the formation of a parliamentary committee to “support” the Iraqi federal government’s negotiations with the United States to end the US-led international coalition’s mission in Iraq.[41] Washington and Baghdad began talks about the status of the US-led coalition mission to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on January 27.[42] Mandalawi also submitted a January 2024 draft law to the Parliamentary Security and Defense and Legal Committees.[43] The draft law calls for the removal of all foreign forces from Iraq.[44] The law would also require Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani to author a report detailing how his administration would end the US presence in Iraq.[45]

Iranian-backed actors control the Parliamentary Security and Defense Committee, which is reviewing this draft law. Badr Organization member Abbas Zamili heads the committee. Zamili described the US presence in Iraq as a “threat to Iraqi security” and called for accelerating the removal of US forces on February 4.[46] Mandalawi and PMF Chief of Staff Abu Fadak were with Zamili when he made these remarks.[47] The Security and Defense Committee previously announced a draft resolution in December 2023 to expel US forces from Iraq.[48]

Iranian-backed Iraqi parliamentarians accused Sunni and Kurdish factions of hampering the parliamentary efforts to expel the United States from Iraq. Parliamentarians affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al Haq, and the Badr Organization accused Sunni and Kurdish politicians of “boycotting” the February 10 parliamentary session discussing the removal of US-led international coalition forces.[49] A member of Asaib Ahl al Haq’s political wing called for Kurdistan Democratic Party Chairman Masoud Barzani and the leaders of other unspecified political blocs to be “punished for their support of the US presence in Iraq.”[50] National Progress Alliance member Nihal al Shammari denied that Sunni and Kurdish parliamentarians "boycotted” the February 10 session and claimed that only 60 members of the Shia Coordination Framework—a loose coalition of Iranian-backed political parties—attended the session.[51] The Shia Coordination Framework controls 138 out of 329 seats in Iraq’s parliament.[52]

The Houthis launched at least two anti-ship missiles targeting a Greek-owned, Marshall Islands-flagged commercial vessel carrying Brazilian corn to Iran on February 12.[53] The Houthis claimed that they targeted an "American” ship.[54] The Greek shipping company that owns the vessel is listed publicly in the United States but is not US-owned.[55]

Iranian Deputy Interior Minister for Security and Law Enforcement Majid Mir Ahmadi announced on February 10 that Iranian security forces killed an Islamic State member attempting to enter Iran from Iraq.[56] Iranian Law Enforcement Command (LEC) border guards recently arrested several unspecified individuals attempting to smuggle weapons from Iraq into Ilam Province on February 6.[57]

Unspecified individuals shot and killed two Basij members near the Zahedan-Bam railway in Sistan and Baluchistan Province on February 11.[58] The Basij is a regime-run, paramilitary organization responsible for civil defense and social control in Iran.[59] This incident is part of an uptick in anti-regime militancy in southeastern Iran since December 2023. Jaish al Adl—a Balochi, Salafi-jihadi group operating on the Iranian border with Pakistan—has conducted at least five attacks targeting Iranian security personnel since December 2023.[60] The Afghan branch of the Islamic State separately conducted a terrorist attack in Kerman Province in early January 2024, killing over 90 individuals.[61]

IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami claimed on February 12 that the IRGC Navy and Aerospace Force jointly launched a long-range ballistic missile from a warship for the first time.[62] Salami did not specify the type of missile launched or when it occurred.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian is conducting a regional tour and politically coordinating with senior Axis of Resistance leaders in Lebanon, Syria, and Qatar. Abdollahian discussed developments in the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, and the “other fronts of the Axis of Resistance” during a meeting with Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on February 10.[63] Abdollahian also called on Palestinian militias to adopt a “unified position” on unspecified political initiatives to end the war.[64] Abdollahian made this statement on February 10 during a meeting in Beirut with Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary General Ziyad al Nakhalah, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Deputy Secretary General Jamil Mazhar.[65] Abdollahian also met with the Lebanese prime minister, foreign affairs minister, and parliament speaker during his visit to Beirut.[66] This trip marked Abdollahian’s third visit to Lebanon since the Israel-Hamas war began.[67]

Abdollahian criticized US efforts to create “political plans” for the post-war Gaza Strip during a meeting with Syrian President Bashar al Assad in Damascus on February 11.[68] Abdollahian emphasized that Palestinians and the leaders of Palestinian militias can and should “decide the management of the post-war Gaza Strip and West Bank.”[69] Abdollahian also met with Syrian Foreign Affairs Minister Faisal Mekdad in Damascus on February 11.[70]

Abdollahian traveled to Doha on February 12, marking his fifth visit to Qatar since the Israel-Hamas war began.[71] Abdollahian could meet with Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh, who is based in Doha. Abdollahian has previously met with Haniyeh and other Hamas officials during his recent visits to Doha.

4. Hamas’ Attack on Israel – an “Improvised Everything” Case Study

Mon, 02/12/2024 - 8:22pm

Hamas’ Attack on Israel – an “Improvised Everything” Case Study

By David G. Smith, Ph.D. and Allan O. Steinhardt, Ph.D.

 https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/hamas-attack-israel-improvised-everything-case-study

           During the Cold War and afterwards, some Pentagon strategists used to contemplate how much destruction ten men could do, as a barometer for how dangerous the world was becoming. The sages chose ten men because that was roughly the size of the core group of radicals behind the Russia Revolution.

           Overthrowing a nation demonstrates an impressive amount of capability, but Pentagon analysts liked to think in terms of military, destructive capability. Since 2000, events have illustrated the power easily wielded by a small group has grown significantly. 9/11 showed how much devastation a group of 19 terrorists, albeit with offshore support, could wreak. Since then, mass killings have proliferated. The power of automatic weaponry is such that just one gunman, firing multiple automatic weapons, could kill 60 individuals and wound 413 in the Las Vegas shootings in 2021.

           The rising destruction able to be wreaked by a small group of people has been abetted by another trend – the rising use of commercial technologies for destructive purposes. Writing from 2008 to 2015, Dr. Allan Steinhardt and I introduced the concept of “improvised everything,” a way to alert readers to the proliferation of military capability available from leveraging commercial products and technology.[1] We called the concept “Improvised Everything” as a way of warning that the phenomenon extended far beyond just the development of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), which were a major focus at the time. Using both current events and select historical examples, we showed that non-state actors, terrorists, and rogue states could assemble an impressive range of at least rudimentary military capabilities by leveraging commercial technology. In fact, while sometimes primitive, capabilities could be developed in every major military branch of service – army, air force, and navy. Planning, training, tactics, intelligence and logistics capabilities could be developed or aided as well. These improvised capabilities often do not stand alone, but are combined with widely available military technologies such as automatic weapons, explosives, and mortars to create a dangerous new threat environment. This military equipment is often available from rogue states or the black market.

There are a number of global trends that are making improvised everything (IE) an increasing threat. Consider the following two trends: 

(i) The global commercial R&D budget in 2022 was $2.5 Trillion, 2.5% of the global GDP last year ($105T). In 1960, US defense-related R&D represented 36% of global R&D.[2] Today, global research expenditure is roughly 30 times US DoD R&D (roughly $80B DoD spending on R&D and R&D plant in 2022).[3] Global commercial R&D is almost the proverbial dog wagging the US defense R&D tail.

(ii) The intersection of commercial and military technology is growing, increasing the percentage of global R&D that is relevant for defense. 

A grim illustration of the destructive capabilities able to be created from commercial technology is the October 7 attack on Israel.

Hamas’ October 7 Attack on Israel

Recently, and tragically, a case study has unfolded illustrating this modern variant of warfare: Hamas’ attack on Israel. While Hamas certainly used conventional military capabilities in the attack, it was also able to innovate and greatly undercut traditional military development cycle times by using commercial technologies.

On October 7, Hamas launched a horrific attack across the Israeli border. The attack contradicted Hamas’ earlier claims that it did not deliberately target civilians.[4] A key part of this attack was based on commercial technology – commercially available drones, pickup trucks, bulldozers, motorcycles, and ATVs – or improvised technology like homemade rockets, combined with widely available military munitions, explosives, and firearms. 

Improvised Army                                                                                                                                 

           In 2015, we highlighted the ability of non-traditional militaries to rapidly muster volunteers or crowds using conventional means such as mobile phones, text messages, blogs or social media. When those are not available, asymmetric adversaries can resort to improvised communications or preset rules (improvised CONOPS) like “gather every night at the town square” or “grab a gun and head towards the shooting.” This points back to conflicts in the past, such as the French Revolution, where planning and recruiting took place by word of mouth in taverns that royal agents could not penetrate. Communications between groups can also leverage other simple, low bandwidth means – such as motorcycle or bicycle messengers. During the American Revolution, some American spies even communicated through how they hung up their laundry (improvised semaphores).[5] 

In 2023, Hamas added a new dimension of “Improvised Airborne” to the “Improvised Army” – using soldiers with hang gliders and motorized power gliders to sail over the border wall. By flying “low and slow” they were difficult to counter.[6] They also added “improvised combat engineers,” with Hamas using tractors and bulldozers to expand breaches in the Gaza border fence.

           A key element of 2015’s “Improvised Army” was “Improvised artillery.” In 2015, we commented how non-state groups around Israel were stockpiling rockets, some crudely fashioned from lampposts, sometimes with parts transported by self-guided donkeys. One Israeli official grumbled, “[T]he only way to knock out the threat would be to kill every donkey in Lebanon.”[7] In 2023, the similar tactics were also used, with lamppost bodies and plumbing pipe used as launching tubes or rocket bodies. Recent high-rise construction in Gaza gave the terrorists plenty of access to material, and if an Israeli airstrike destroyed a building, it was promptly scavenged for electronics and plumbing parts. An Israeli study in 2021 remarked of Hamas, “They collect unexploded Israeli ordnance for the explosives contained within, recycle streetlight poles or war detritus from the deserted Israeli communities in Gaza for launch tubes, and make projectile tubes from plumbing pipes. The destruction of several hi-rise buildings in May 2021 left much more wiring, pipes, rebar, cement, and metal available for ‘recycling.’” The report also quoted Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar boasting in 2019, “[We have] enough [plumbing pipes] to manufacture rockets for the coming 10 years.”[8]

To these improvised devices are added traditional rockets, smuggled into Gaza, and mortars, widely available on the black market. Hybrid warfare is becoming a very destructive, combining strictly military technologies with widely available commercial ones. Hamas has also benefitted from support and clandestine allies, including possibly Iran. Without that support, its improvised forces would not be as effective.[9]

“Improvised Everything” ordnance can be difficult to recognize. In “classic” warfare, the presence of a weapon is easily discerned by its unique signatures. Indeed, it is easy to differentiate an Abrams tank from a Vladimir tank. Improvised weapons, assembled as they are from a global supply chain, have limited ‘fingerprints’, i.e., no “smoking gun” signature to identify the device’s intent). In some cases the material weaponized are plumbing pipes or commercial or even toy drones.

Improvised Air Force                                              

            Non-state actors (as well as states such as Russia and Ukraine) are weaponizing drones (UAVs). Hamas used commercially-produced quadcopter drones armed with grenades to destroy surveillance towers, blinding Israeli intelligence to details about the initial attack. Other weaponized drones were also used to crash into targets. While rockets are impressive, slower moving drones are easier to guide with GPS, have a smaller effective radar cross-section, and can become a precision weapon – Russia and Ukraine have both used drones in this way, as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen.[10] According to an Israeli defense report from 2021, “Drones can fly low to avoid radar, fly a complex route to a target, and can be used swarm-like with other unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and cruise missiles to overwhelm defenses to hit a strategic target, as seen in the Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facility. The attack in September 2019 shut down 50 percent of the Saudi oil industry.”[11]

           In World War II, dive bombers and level attack aircraft were used to attack command and communications. The planes had to be large to carry a pilot and non-precision ordnance and armor to give the crew some chance of surviving. Today, small, light miniature drones can carry out those attacks, as did the quadcopters that took out the communications for Israel’s surveillance system. And they can be flown right on top of surveillance cameras or communications systems to drop small, but effective munitions. They can be challenging to spot optically, hard to detect on radar, and difficult to counter. As we said back in 2015, “Small is the poor man’s stealth.”[12]          

Improvised Navy

           The attack on the USS Cole in 2000 had shown the devastating capability of rubber dinghies packed with explosives. Iran is a state actor who has built a significant naval capability in part through commercial speedboats. In 2014, five Hamas terrorists, armed with rifles, grenades, explosives, and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), attempted to infiltrate Israel through a beach near Zikim, 5 km north of Gaza. They donned scuba gear and swam to the beach. In 2021, divers were stopped again, and terrorists were caught trying to launch an improvised submarine. In 2023, Hamas attempted to attack Israel with unmanned speedboats packed with explosives and through swimmers infiltrating over the beaches. Hamas is also suspected of using commercial fishing boats to move underwater weapons caches closer to shore where swimmers and divers could recover it. Hamas’s “naval” capabilities are still rudimentary, but they try to exploit the vulnerability of Israel to from-the-sea attack. Hamas is believed to now own several models of the autonomous submarine that was captured in 2021.[13]

Improvised C4I, Counterintelligence and Cyber

           One new capability that we did not highlight in 2015 is improvised jamming. With the increasing dependence of modern armies on anytime, anywhere communications for rapid, flexible operations, there is a strong reliance on orders, especially in a new conflict situation. Hamas has used large server farms to try to jam Israeli communications on the southern border, and to keep Israeli outposts from reporting on the initial swarm attack across the border, in addition to trying to disrupt the tower’s communications with physical attacks.

           In the category of expanding Improvised Everything, we included satellite imagery and cyber capabilities. Cyber capabilities are easy to generate through training computer savvy youth or simply offering to pay hackers to work on your behalf. There are reports that Hamas has used its cyber capabilities to target Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system with its cyber capabilities. With Iranian help, Hamas has also been improving its defensive cyber, trying to keep Israel from surveilling its planning.[14]  In the 1970s, various terrorist groups from around the world like the IRA and the PLO became “strange bedfellows,” collaborating on developing small bombs and terror attacks. Today various shady entities are exchanging cyberattack expertise.[15] 

A hallmark of Hamas’ recent assault is the targeting of Israeli intelligence capabilities. As mentioned, quadcopter drones dropped grenades repeatedly on Israeli surveillance cameras along the border. Snipers also took out surveillance cameras. Hamas also gathered intelligence on the location of Israeli server farms supporting the border cameras and other border intelligence. These locations were targeted for attack and destruction. 

Before Hamas drones were used to target Israeli communication towers and surveillance equipment, they were apparently used to fly a large number of surveys over southern Israel. Captured maps indicated that the drones may have flown as low as 150 feet. Hamas attackers also had commercial satellite photographs of key locations and targets.[16]

Swarm techniques

           Another aspect of this new improvised warfare is the adoption of swarm techniques, which attempt to mimic emergent behaviors of complex adaptive systems to overwhelm defenses. Hamas uses swarms to try to increase the capability of its improvised army, navy, and air force. The US military has long been studying the adversarial use of swarm techniques. In the 2005 war in Lebanon, Hezbollah fired antitank weapons en masse in salvos, hoping to defeat the active protection systems of Israeli tanks. In 2023, salvos of Hamas rockets exploited swarm techniques to try and overcome Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. Some believe that the rocket attack – over 5000 rockets were fired over a short time – was designed to distract Israeli attention from the breaching of the southern border.

The overland attack on Israel, with explosives blowing holes in the border fence to enable commandos on motorcycles and foot soldiers to enter, could also be thought of a swarm attack. The breaches were later widened by bulldozers to allow the entrance of larger vehicles. Motorcycles and pickup trucks were used to add speed to the swarm. 

Conclusion

           The diabolical use that many types of commercial technology are being put to reminds us of the benefits of close cooperation between cutting edge scientists and engineers familiar with commercial technology and the military. In Britain during World War II, corvettes – basically small destroyer escorts – were rapidly fielded because the fundamental design was not based on the military requirements process, but specs for commercial whaling vessels (even in wartime it was recognized using the traditional military procurement route would be too slow to meet the U-Boat challenge).[17] Again, during World War II, scientists also worked to rapidly develop and deploy jamming countermeasures to defeat German precision bombs – weapons that could have otherwise stopped the D-Day invasion.[18] During the 1970s, the then Director of Defense Research & Engineering, DDR&E, Johnny Foster (1965-1973), and DoD innovator Don Srull were able to give early UAV development a vital push because of their experience designing and flying powered model aircraft. Srull, who became Deputy Assistant Director of Defense (Systems Analysis), went on to help develop the Marine Corps’ Dragonfly UAV, one of the first useful small UAVs – because of his expertise in a niche commercial technology, rather than a military one. Foster continued the advocacy for UAVs as a member and later chair of the Defense Science Board.[19] One of us (Smith) remembers scientists studying Coca-Cola bottling techniques for insights into how an armored vehicle guns might be loaded more rapidly and reliably. For years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has fostered cooperation between science and technology and the military to achieve paradigm-shifting military breakthroughs. So has the CIA’s Office of Weapons and Development, and later, In-Q-Tel, designed specifically to leverage commercial IT developments. In recent years, the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Rapid Reaction Technology Office has also pushed rapid capability development and fielding.

           Monitoring commercial developments to understand their military implications is also important and not a new idea. In the 19th century, the British designed their navy to be larger than any other two nation’s navies. Given this advantage, they realized that what they had most to fear was a technological breakthrough that would make some of their navy obsolete. British intelligence had a project to monitor militarily-relevant technology development. Reportedly, this was highly effective, although they missed the development of motors to power undersea submarines (the U-Boat threat). In the 2000s, the National Research Council’s Technology Insight, Guage, Evaluate and Respond (TIGER) committee monitored technology developments for the military and intelligence community. Now, more than ever, military planners need to be aware of both the capabilities and the implications of emerging technology. 

In today’s world, see for example the list of controlled technology in the controlled munitions list, 22 CFR Parts 120-130 (www.ecfr.gov). Items 11-14 have very strong commercial and defense overlap. Biology, computers, sensors, all have broad application in commercial markets. As recently as the year 2000 the controlled munitions list had no breakdown of chemical compositions, biologics, or laser sensors and transmitters. We estimate the commercial/defense overlap has grown from 3% of commercial sectors to 30% of commercial sectors. This is in large part due to the internet of things as well as 3D printing. It follows that dual use technology, once a rare exception, is becoming increasingly the norm.

           By leveraging commercial technology, then, advanced capabilities can be developed by terrorists and non-state actors. An improvised military may never have sufficient capability to stand up to a modern one. But as the recent Hamas incursion into Israel has shown, it can have the capability to do tremendous damage, especially to civilians. The amount of destruction a relatively small group of people can do, some Pentagon strategists’ litmus test for the security of the world, has increased again.

           In a sense, “Improvised Everything” is a reflection of today’s world of rapid change, which Peter Vaill has called “permanent white water.”[20] It is vital that the U.S. and other Western states be nimble at their own improvisation, and to thoroughly understand the implications of new commercial technologies. Fanatics, terrorists, hate groups, and non-state actors will continue to leverage commercial technology. Even nation states will. Regrettably, the world situation has not improved since we wrote in 2015 – in fact, it has gotten worse. The words of W. B. Yeats, describing modernity’s fanaticism and loss of innocence, are still regrettably apropos in the world of “Improvised Everything:”

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

– W.B. Yeats, 1921[21]

NOTES

 [1] D. Smith & A. Steinhardt, “The Blood Dimmed Tide: Technology and the Dangerous New “Improvised Everything” International Security Environment,” Small Wars Journal, December 12, 2015. The Blood-Dimmed Tide: Technology and the Dangerous New “Improvised Everything” International Security Environment | Small Wars Journal. A. Steinhardt, D. G. Smith. “Improvised Everything: Taking a Page from the Adversary’s Playbook.” Defense News, August 12, 2013. D. Smith and A. Steinhardt, “‘Improvised Everything’ Challenges Acquisition,” Defense News, lead editorial, May 18, 2009 (reprinted at Federal Times.com under different title). [c4ISR Journal]. We gratefully acknowledge the important role of Dr. Joseph Mancusi to the early development of the Improvised Everything concept. 

[2] Congressional Research Service, “The Global Research and Development Landscape and Implications for the Department of Defense,” updated June 28, 2021, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45403.

[3] For DoD statistic, see NSF publication Federal R&D Spending, by Budget Function, 2021-2023, https://ncses.nsf.gov/data-collections/federal-budget-function/2023#data

[4] Devorah Margolin, “A Major Pivot in Hamas Strategy,” War on the Rocks, October 16, 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/10/a-major-pivot-in-hamas-strategy/.

[5] Smith and Steinhardt, “The Blood-Dimmed Tide.” See “The Spy Who Hung Out Her Laundry,” History Daily website, July 25, 2019, https://historydaily.org/the-spy-who-hung-her-laundry/7.

[6] Vincent Carchidi, Middle East Institute, “The October 7 Hamas Attack: An Israeli overreliance on Technology?” October 23, 2023, https://www.mei.edu/publications/october-7-hamas-attack-israeli-ove

rreliance-technology

[7] Karby Leggett, “Key Issue in Lebanon Fighting: How to Stop Hezbollah Rockets,” Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2006. Karby Leggett and Jay Solomon, “Why Hezbollah is Proving So Tough on the Battlefield,” Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2006.

[8] Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Jerusalem Report 2021, “Hamas’ Advanced Weaponry: Rockets, Artillery, Drones, Cyber”

[9] Jerusalem Report 2021, “Hamas’ Advanced Weaponry”

[10] Oded Yaron, “Hamas Drone Assault Surprised Israel, Using Russia Ukraine War Tactics,“ Ha’aretz, October 9, 2023, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-10-09/ty-article/.premium/hamas-drone-assault-surprised-israel-using-russia-ukraine-war-tactics/0000018b-155d-d2fc-a59f-d55d05eb0000?v=1699850992255 For an account downplaying the effectiveness of Hamas’ drones, see WIRED, “The Dangerous Mystery of Hamas’ Missing “Suicide Drones,” October 21, 2023, https://www.wired.com/story/hamas-drones-israel-war/. David Ingram, “How Yemen’s Houthi Rebels have leveraged cheap drones into military success for years,” MSN.com How Yemen’s Houthi rebels have leveraged cheap drones into military success for years (msn.com)

[11] Jerusalem Report 2021, “Hamas’ Advanced Weaponry”

[12] Smith and Steinhardt, “The Blood-Dimmed Tide.”

[13] Jerusalem Report 2021, “Hamas Advanced Weaponry,” Joby Warrick, “Observers fear that Hamas weapon reserves may contain more surprises,” Washington Post, October 20, 2023, p. A1. Jerusalem Report, 2021.

[14] Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), “Hamas’ October 7 Attack: The Tactics, Targets, and Strategies of Terrorists,” November 7, 2023.

[15] R.A. Oppenheimer, The IRA: The Bombs and the Bullets, A History of Deadly Ingenuity (Newbridge: Irish Academic Press, 2008)

[16]Shira Rubin and Joby Warrick, “Hamas envisioned deeper attacks, aiming to provoke an Israeli war,” Washington Post, November 12, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/12/hamas-planning-terror-gaza-israel/

[17] “Corvette,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvette

[18] Martin J. Bollinger, Warriors and Wizards: The Development and Defeat of Radio-Controlled Glide Bobs of the Third Reich (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2010)

[19] Don Srull, personal communication, c. 2010. See also Diane Tedeschi, “From Models to Military Drones, Don Srull has built them all,” Smithsonian, December 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/modelers-tale-don-srull-interview-model-airplanes-180957297/. Despite the headline, the article does not actually discuss Srull’s military drone work. Stephen J. Balut, et. al., Institute for Defense Analyses, IDA 2004 Cost Research Symposium, p. 14.

[20] Peter Vaill, Managing as a performing art: New ideas for a world of chaotic change. (San Franscico: Jossey-Bass, 1989). Peter B. Vaill, Learning as a Way of Being: Strategies for Survival in a World of Permanent White Water (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996), pp. 1-21.

[21] William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (1989), https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

About the Author(s)

David G. Smith

David G. Smith has worked for 25 years as a consultant supporting Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and logistics technology clients. He has a doctorate in American History from Penn State University, a Master’s of Science in Science, Technology and Society from Virginia Tech, and a certificate in Terrorism Studies from the University of St. Andrews. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in American Government and a Master’s in History from the University of Virginia.

Allan O. Steinhardt

Allan O. Steinhardt is the chief scientist for AEye, Inc. He has a doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder, has published over 200 articles in academic and defense strategy journals, and co-authored a book on adaptive radar. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his contributions to radar and radar processing.

5. US permanently deploys military trainers to Taiwan (Special Forces)

Special Forces Taiwan Resident Detachment resurrected?

Excerpt:

According to sources based in Taiwan, the 1st Special Forces Group is this year permanently stationed at two bases of the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion

US permanently deploys military trainers to Taiwan

https://armyrecognition.com/defense_news_february_2024_global_security_army_industry/us_permanently_deploys_military_trainers_to_taiwan.html?utm

Defense News February 2024 Global Security army industry

POSTED ON MONDAY, 12 FEBRUARY 2024 13:55

On February 10th, 2024, it was reported that, for the first time, US special forces troops would be permanently stationed in Taiwan, rather than as part of a temporary or rotational arrangement. The deployment of American troops to Taiwan challenges China's "One China" policy, where the US is expected to recognize Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.

Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

Taiwanese Army special forces disembarked from a Blackhawk helicopter during an 11-day training exercise near Taichung in December 2023 (Picture source: Ministry of national Defense)

According to sources based in Taiwan, the 1st Special Forces Group is this year permanently stationed at two bases of the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion, a Taiwanese army special operations force. Some of the US special forces are based on Kinmen, a group of fortified Taiwanese-controlled islands just 10 kilometers from the Chinese port city of Xiamen. Another group is stationed on the Pescadores islands off the Taiwanese coast in the Taiwan Strait.

While the US troops are ostensibly involved in training Taiwanese forces, their positioning also facilitates intelligence gathering on movements in the Taiwan Strait and on the Chinese coast, where Xiamen hosts naval and air force bases. American troops are also present at a military base in Taoyuan, in northern Taiwan, involved in training the Taiwanese military in the use of drones for its Airborne Special Service Company, an elite special forces unit.

Neither Washington nor Taipei has provided details on the number of US trainers or the training provided. It was only in 2021 that Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen officially confirmed American special forces were in Taiwan training local forces. The US Defense Department acknowledged the presence of 30 American soldiers, but only to guard the American Institute in Taiwan, which functions as an unofficial US embassy in Taipei. Taiwan's Defense Minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, stated that American instructors had worked with Taiwanese forces under different administrations and did not consider the deployment to be a permanent US military presence on the island.

When Washington established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, it closed its embassy in Taipei, ending formal diplomatic ties, and maintained only low-key unofficial contact. While continuing arms sales to Taipei, the US ended its longstanding military pact with Taiwan and withdrew all its military forces.

Under the presidencies of Trump and now Biden, the US has increased arms sales, including offensive weaponry, and stationed American trainers in Taiwan. The Biden administration welcomed last month's election of Lai Ching-te, the candidate of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), as Taiwanese president.

Moreover, a Taiwanese military contingent was scheduled to travel to the US for training by the Michigan National Guard, including participation in annual exercises with multiple countries at Camp Grayling in northern Michigan.

6. Inside Israel’s Daring Hostage Rescue in Gaza: ‘Diamonds Are in Our Hands’

Inside Israel’s Daring Hostage Rescue in Gaza: ‘Diamonds Are in Our Hands’

An elite team stormed into the second floor of a building as airstrikes rained down on the border city of Rafah

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/inside-israels-daring-hostage-rescue-in-gaza-diamonds-are-in-our-hands-00a4f3eb?mod=hp_lead_pos7

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Israeli officials said two hostages were freed during an overnight raid in Rafah, in Gaza. The rescue comes as Israel’s military prepares for a larger operation against Hamas in the southern border town. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/AFP/Getty Images

By Chao DengFollow, Fatima AbdulKarim, Anat Peled and Carrie Keller-Lynn

Feb. 12, 2024 5:30 pm ET

TEL AVIV—Palestinians in the city of Rafah, on the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, awoke Monday to the sound of explosions. It was 1:50 a.m., but it looked like daytime outside.

“I never witnessed such a violent night since the war began,” said Hanan Abdulkarim, who said her window was flashing white when she and her 6-year-old son woke up. “I was 100% sure we were going to die at that moment.”

Minutes earlier, an elite Israeli team of counterterrorism police and intelligence agents had used explosives to break through a blast door and rush into the second floor of a residential building in the city. They exchanged fire with militants, killing at least three of them.

They quickly surrounded two men—70-year-old Luis Har and 61-year-old Fernando Simon Marman—and attempted to shield them with their bodies. Both men were dual Israeli-Argentinian citizens and had been taken from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on Oct. 7. They were thin and weak after 129 days in captivity.

As the rescue at the residential building unfolded, airstrikes rained down on operation centers of Hamas, to prevent the group from having a real-time picture of the raid, according to Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari.

A member of the Palestinian Civil Defence works at the site of airstrikes in Rafah. PHOTO: PALESTINIAN CIVIL DEFENCE/REUTERS

More than a million Palestinians have crowded into the city of Rafah, seeking refuge from Israel’s offensive against Hamas to the north. But the war has been closing in on them. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on American television that the Israeli military would enter Rafah, which he called the last bastion of Hamas. Israel is proposing setting up sprawling tent-cities as part of an evacuation plan for those sheltering in the city.

The rescue of two hostages brought a glimmer of hope for Israeli families with loved ones still held captive in Gaza and offered a moment of optimism for the nation. For Palestinians in Gaza, however, the operation was another reminder of how exposed they are to Israeli military operations.

“I truly believed it was our end,” said Hanan Harbi, a doctor’s secretary who had sought refuge in Rafah with her five children.

Nearly 70 Palestinians were killed in the operation, mostly in airstrikes, according to health authorities in Gaza. The figures don’t distinguish between militants and civilians. 

As the rescue operation unfolded, many Palestinians in the city said they thought the invasion had begun. They weren’t the only ones.

Around 2 a.m., phone alerts went off at the military headquarters in Cairo, Egyptian officials said. Panic ensued among defense officials. They thought Israel had started the offensive, which risked pushing a wave of Palestinians into Egypt, without telling them.

This photo provided by the Israeli military shows an Israeli Air Force helicopter said to be carrying the freed men in Ramat Gan, Israel. PHOTO: IDF/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Sheba Medical Center, where the two hostages, Luis Har and Fernando Simon Marman, were taken for care. PHOTO: JACK GUEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

In Israel, Netanyahu had gathered with top officials—including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Ronen Bar, the director of the country’s security agency Shin Bet. They watched live footage of the rescue from a Shin Bet special operations room in an undisclosed location.

Netanyahu later said he had watched the SWAT team place the explosive charge. Seconds later, he said the team reached their target. A voice could be heard over the radio: “The diamonds are in our hands.”

It was code for the two men.

Time in captivity

The two men—Fernando and Luis—had been taken on Oct. 7, along with Fernando’s sisters Clara Marman and Gabriela Leimberg, as well as Gabriela’s 17-year-old daughter, Mia. Luis is Clara’s partner.

Clara, Gabriela and Mia were released in late November as part of a one-week cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel.

All five of them were kept in one residential house, Clara told The Wall Street Journal in an interview last month. Luis, who has four children and 10 grandchildren, didn’t have his hearing aid or the medication he needed for high blood pressure and diabetes.

Fernando Simon Marman, right, is reunited with family in this photo released by the Israeli army. PHOTO: IDF/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

They kept track of time by listening to the Muslim call to prayer five times a day. Each prayer had a different tune. Mia and Clara would count the days.

To pass time, the adults in the family told Mia stories about their life on the kibbutz, including how Clara and Luis met when he was working at the kibbutz factory. Sometimes they heard buzzing outside from what they thought were Israeli drones trying to collect intelligence. When it was possible, they would try to speak louder, in the hope their voices would be detected by the drones.

When the family had to split up as the three women were released in November, their captors gave them only a bit of time to say goodbye. Clara’s eyes welled up in tears as she recalled her separation from Fernando and Luis. “They tried to play it cool but I could tell they were devastated,” she said.

A daring rescue

Before rescuing Fernando and Luis, Israeli forces prepared for a month, the head of the police SWAT team said. The operation was a collaboration between various Israeli forces, including an elite group of police officers, Shin Bet and the Shayetet 13—Israel’s equivalent of U.S. Navy SEALs.

“We waited for the right timing and intelligence to move in,” Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said on Monday.

The decision to go ahead was made as negotiations to release hostages stalled, said David Tsur, a former commander of the police SWAT unit. “If the deal had progressed, I think they would have canceled the operation,” said Tsur.

The SWAT team likely spent weeks practicing how they would enter the home and deal with potential complications posed by being in a dense neighborhood, said Tsur. They would have planned the precise timing of each movement and task, he said.

“From the moment you explode the door, you’re already exposed,” said Tsur. “You have a few seconds to get to the terrorists and eliminate them. Then begins the evacuation operation.”

Palestinians inspected the damage to buildings in Rafah on Monday. PHOTO: FATIMA SHBAIR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Nearly 70 Palestinians were killed in the operation, mostly in airstrikes, according to health authorities in Gaza. PHOTO: FATIMA SHBAIR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

As they were evacuated from the building early Monday, the two men and their rescuers came under fire as they walked down a narrow road in Rafah, according to aerial video footage released by the Israeli military. “The forces have started to move along the route,” an Israeli officer can be heard saying to his colleague. A tank convoy can be seen moving along the road.

The Israeli military said that it carried out strikes for roughly one hour as the men were whisked out of Gaza. At nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, the wounded began flowing in.

Musa Masaad, a 21-year-old Palestinian who was staying with relatives in the neighborhood where the raid took place, started checking on his family members after being awakened by deafening blasts. He said he could see bodies outside on the ground.

A bit further away, Ameen Abu Taha, 34, was sleeping in a tent in a neighborhood of Rafah that the Israeli military had designated a safe zone. He held on to his daughter and brother’s four children, and urged them to go back to sleep. “I honestly thought we were going to die,” said Abu Taha.

‘We love you!’

As the city of Rafah reeled from the strikes, Fernando and Luis were almost out of harm’s way. As they were being taken in a vehicle to a helicopter, they were greeted by members of the Shayetet. “Welcome back. How are you guys? How are you feeling?” they asked the men.

“Shocked, shocked, all right,” said one of the men, according to a video released by the Israeli military. They were buckled in and asked whether they wanted a blanket and water. One of the officers offered the men shoes since they were still barefoot.

“We love you!” said someone in the crew.

Just after 3 a.m., Fernando and Luis landed at Sheba Medical Center, where they were greeted by family. There were long hugs and tears. Fernando held Gabriela tightly, while Luis embraced his daughter Natali Afgan. A medical staff member in green scrubs smiled on the side.

“I’m still speechless really,” said Maayan Sigal-Koren, Fernando’s niece. “We’re all still shocked here.”

“We waited for this. We dreamed about this for a very long time,” Gefen Sigal Ilan, Fernando’s niece, told Israeli radio on Monday.

A kidnapped sign is removed Monday from a store where rescued hostage, Fernando Simon Marman, worked. PHOTO: AMIR LEVY/GETTY IMAGES

—Abeer Ayyoub and Summer Said also contributed to this article.

Write to Chao Deng at chao.deng@wsj.com

7. House speaker casts doubts on Ukraine and Israel aid package as senators grind toward final vote

House speaker casts doubts on Ukraine and Israel aid package as senators grind toward final vote

BY STEPHEN GROVES AND MARY CLARE JALONICK

Updated 11:24 PM EST, February 12, 2024

AP · · February 13, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson late Monday sharply criticized a $95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other countries, casting serious doubts about the future of the package just as Senate leaders were slowly muscling it toward a final vote.

Senate leaders, trying to send a message that the U.S. remains committed to its allies, were looking to overcome marathon speeches from a determined group of Republican senators and hold a vote to pass the bill in the early morning hours Tuesday.

But Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said in a statement the package lacked border security provisions, calling it “silent on the most pressing issue facing our country.” It was the latest — and potentially most consequential — sign of opposition to the Ukraine aid from conservatives who have for months demanded that border security policy be included in the package, only to last week reject a bipartisan proposal intended to curb the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border

“Now, in the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” Johnson said. “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”

The mounting opposition was just the latest example of how the Republican Party’s stance on foreign affairs is being transformed under the influence of Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee.

Even if the package passes the Senate, as is expected, it faces an uncertain future in the House, where Republicans are more firmly aligned with Trump and deeply skeptical of continuing to aid Ukraine in its war against Russia.

As Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and 17 other GOP senators have provided the votes to ensure the foreign aid package stays on track to clearing the Senate, Johnson has shown no sign he will put the package up for a vote.

Support for sending military aid to Ukraine has waned among Republicans, but lawmakers have cast the aid as a direct investment in American interests to ensure global stability. The package would allot roughly $60 billion to Ukraine, and about a third of that would be spent replenishing the U.S. military with the weapons and equipment that are sent to Kyiv.

“These are the enormously high stakes of the supplemental package: our security, our values, our democracy,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as he opened the chamber. “It is a down payment for the survival of Western democracy and the survival of American values.”

Schumer worked closely with McConnell for months searching for a way to win favor in the House for tens of billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine. But after the carefully negotiated Senate compromise that included border policy collapsed last week, Republicans have been deeply divided on the legislation.

Sen. J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, argued that the U.S. should step back from the conflict and help broker an end to the conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He questioned the wisdom of continuing to fuel Ukraine’s defense when Putin appears committed to continuing the conflict for years.

“I think it deals with the reality that we’re living in, which is they’re a more powerful country, and it’s their region of the world,” he said.

Vance, along with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and other opponents, spent several hours on the floor railing against the aid and complaining about Senate process. They dug in to delay a final vote.

“Wish us stamina. We fight for you. We stand with America,” Paul posted on social media as he and other senators prepared to occupy the floor as long as they could.

Paul defended his delays, saying “the American people need to know there was opposition to this.”

But bowing to Russia is a prospect some Republicans warned would be a dangerous move that puts Americans at risk. In an unusually raw back-and-forth, GOP senators who support the aid challenged some of the opponents directly on the floor.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis angrily rebutted some of their arguments, noting that the money would only help Ukraine for less than a year and that much of it would go to replenishing U.S. military stocks.

“Why am I so focused on this vote?” Tillis said. “Because I don’t want to be on the pages of history that we will regret if we walk away. You will see the alliance that is supporting Ukraine crumble. You will ultimately see China become emboldened. And I am not going to be on that page of history.”

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., became emotional as he talked about the drudgery of the Senate and spending time away from his family to get little done. “But every so often there are issues that come before us that seem to be the ones that explain why we are here,” he said, his voice cracking.

Moran conceded that the cost of the package was heavy for him, but pointed out that if Putin were to attack a NATO member in Europe, the U.S. would be bound by treaty to become directly involved in the conflict.

Trump, speaking at a rally Saturday, said that he had once told a NATO ally he would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to members that are “delinquent” in their financial and military commitments to the alliance. The former president has led his party away from the foreign policy doctrines of aggressive American involvement overseas and toward an “America First” isolationism.

Evoking the slogan, Moran said, “I believe in America first, but unfortunately America first means we have to engage in the world.”

Senate supporters of the package have been heartened by the fact that many House Republicans still adamantly want to fund Ukraine’s defense.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat, traveled to Kyiv last week with a bipartisan group that included Reps. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, as well as French Hill, R-Ark., Jason Crow, D-Colo. and Zach Nunn, R-Iowa.

Spanberger said the trip underscored to her how Ukraine is still in a fight for its very existence. As the group traveled through Kyiv in armored vehicles, they witnessed signs of an active war, from sandbagged shelters to burned-out cars and memorials to those killed. During a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the U.S. lawmakers tried to offer assurances the American people still stood with his country.

“He was clear that our continued support is critical to their ability to win the war,” Spanberger said. “It’s critical to their own freedom. And importantly, it’s critical to U.S. national security interests.”

The bipartisan group discussed how rarely used procedures could be used to advance the legislation through the House, even without the speaker’s support. But Spanberger called it a “tragedy” that the legislation could still stall despite a majority of lawmakers standing ready to support it.

“The fact that the only thing standing in the way is one person who does or doesn’t choose to bring it to the floor,” she said. “The procedure standing in the way of defeating Russia — that’s the part that for me is just untenable.”

STEPHEN GROVES

Groves covers Congress for The Associated Press.

twittermailto

AP · by STEPHEN GROVES · February 13, 2024

8. Exploring the Cyber Dimension of the Current U.S.-Iran Crisis

"Accommodative signaling"

Excerpts:

On the other hand, the Biden administration also aims to avoid further escalating the situation and, in a worst-case scenario, unintentionally drawing the United States into a direct confrontation with Iran. How can the Biden administration square this circle? While we have little information about the cyber operations that the U.S. has reportedly conducted, academic research has shown that cyber operations during international crises, especially when they occur in tandem with other forms of signaling, can offer a way for states to take action in a manner that avoids escalation—a form of accommodative signaling.

This may seem counterintuitive. Cyber operations tend to be problematic when it comes to signaling resolve, especially in the context of coercive strategies. For one, they are limited in their ability to generate sufficiently high costs to deter or compel adversaries. Additionally, revealing a cyber capability to signal risks rendering it moot, undermining the inherent credibility of the signal. However, costly signals of resolve are only some of the types of signals states aim to send. For some of the same reasons that offensive cyber operations are poor tools of coercive signaling, they can be especially useful as accommodative signals during international crises.

Accommodative signals contain a mixture of resolve and reassurance—they represent a Goldilocks strategy that includes coercive elements aimed at minimizing losses, and accommodative actions that demonstrate some restraint and create space for de-escalation. In the context of the current crisis, a half-measure option like an offensive cyber operation would allow the President to claim to be “doing something”—in this case, applying military authorities, resources, and capabilities directly against the sponsor of the attack, rather than against proxy groups—but in a way that carries a lower risk of escalation than kinetic attacks. That’s because offensive cyber operations have useful accommodative signaling properties. While the more sophisticated cyber attacks can cause lasting damage to networks and systems, they do not impose costs at a magnitude comparable to kinetic capabilities. Cyber attacks lack physical violence, and even the most costly forms of attack do not directly result in death. Moreover, the secrecy and plausible deniability associated with offensive cyber operations are useful for reassurance. Cyber operations are simply less visible to domestic audiences. In this case, they could facilitate an off-ramp to the crisis for Iranian leaders, allowing the government to absorb the attack without creating a perceived imperative to retaliate further.

Exploring the Cyber Dimension of the Current U.S.-Iran Crisis - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Erica D. Lonergan · February 13, 2024

Editor’s note: This article is part of Project Cyber, which explores modern challenges and opportunities in and through cyberspace at the intersection of irregular warfare and strategic competition. We warmly invite your participation and engagement as we embark on this project. Please submit articles here.

In the wake of the recent drone attack carried out by Iranian-backed militants, which resulted in the deaths of three U.S. servicemembers and the injury of dozens more, the Biden administration has responded with a range of actions. The most significant of these has been a series of strikes over multiple days against numerous Iranian targets and their proxies across Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. Additionally, the administration has taken non-military measures, such as economic sanctions and criminal indictments against members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). But there also appears to be a cyber dimension to this crisis. As administration officials debated potential response options, they reportedly considered a cyber attack. Moreover, the New York Times reported on Friday that cyber attacks were indeed part of the ultimate response, noting: “Two American officials said the United States conducted cyberoperations against Iranian targets on Friday but declined to provide details.” Of note, also related to cyberspace, the economic sanctions the United States imposed against the IRGC included entities associated with Iranian cyber activities.

President Biden faced some vexing tradeoffs in formulating how the U.S. government would respond to the attack. On the one hand, domestic political pressure and strategic imperatives suggest a sufficiently forceful response was in order. With American lives demonstrably at risk—the incident represents the first time U.S. service members have been killed in the context of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East—the United States must clearly convey to Iran and its proxy groups that further violence will not be tolerated. In the context of what will invariably be a contentious and polarizing presidential election year, the Biden administration faced domestic political pressure for a strong response; Republicans called on the administration to take the fight “to the source” and directly attack the Iranian government. Ostensibly, the kinetic strike packages the Biden administration authorized are meant to tackle this aspect of the policy challenge—sending a signal of resolve to the Iranian government and its proxies to deter future attacks. The decision to use long-range bombers deployed from the U.S. homeland to strike targets in Iraq and Syria, rather than assets in the region, for instance, was likely meant to act as a signal of the range, reach, and firepower of U.S. military capabilities.

On the other hand, the Biden administration also aims to avoid further escalating the situation and, in a worst-case scenario, unintentionally drawing the United States into a direct confrontation with Iran. How can the Biden administration square this circle? While we have little information about the cyber operations that the U.S. has reportedly conducted, academic research has shown that cyber operations during international crises, especially when they occur in tandem with other forms of signaling, can offer a way for states to take action in a manner that avoids escalation—a form of accommodative signaling.

This may seem counterintuitive. Cyber operations tend to be problematic when it comes to signaling resolve, especially in the context of coercive strategies. For one, they are limited in their ability to generate sufficiently high costs to deter or compel adversaries. Additionally, revealing a cyber capability to signal risks rendering it moot, undermining the inherent credibility of the signal. However, costly signals of resolve are only some of the types of signals states aim to send. For some of the same reasons that offensive cyber operations are poor tools of coercive signaling, they can be especially useful as accommodative signals during international crises.

Accommodative signals contain a mixture of resolve and reassurance—they represent a Goldilocks strategy that includes coercive elements aimed at minimizing losses, and accommodative actions that demonstrate some restraint and create space for de-escalation. In the context of the current crisis, a half-measure option like an offensive cyber operation would allow the President to claim to be “doing something”—in this case, applying military authorities, resources, and capabilities directly against the sponsor of the attack, rather than against proxy groups—but in a way that carries a lower risk of escalation than kinetic attacks. That’s because offensive cyber operations have useful accommodative signaling properties. While the more sophisticated cyber attacks can cause lasting damage to networks and systems, they do not impose costs at a magnitude comparable to kinetic capabilities. Cyber attacks lack physical violence, and even the most costly forms of attack do not directly result in death. Moreover, the secrecy and plausible deniability associated with offensive cyber operations are useful for reassurance. Cyber operations are simply less visible to domestic audiences. In this case, they could facilitate an off-ramp to the crisis for Iranian leaders, allowing the government to absorb the attack without creating a perceived imperative to retaliate further.

U.S. officials have been reticent to share details about any purported cyber operation against Iran. Therefore, we can only speculate what form it may have taken. An offensive cyber operation that directly targets Iranian government assets is one plausible course of action. Such an operation could deny the Iranian government the ability to employ key military capabilities or systems through cyber disruption, degradation, or destruction. It would be distinct from a cyber attack against civilian critical infrastructure (which would set a precedent the U.S. government would likely not want others to replicate). Beyond enabling the U.S. to respond to Iran itself, rather than its proxies, from a targeting perspective, it is also likely that there are far more viable cyber options against Iran. Proxy groups may have more limited infrastructure that the U.S. could target in cyberspace in a way that would net a meaningful effect.

From Iran’s perspective as the recipient of such signaling, these cyber operations would contrast with the highly visible and destructive kinetic attacks that have already occurred. Taken together, costly kinetic strikes aimed at Iranian interests in the region while avoiding targeting Iran directly, coupled with less costly cyber attacks, ostensibly against Iran itself, reflect a mixture of resolve and assurance. Hopefully, these measures can create a mutual face–saving option for both parties to avoid further escalation.

This would not be the first time an offensive cyber operation took place in the context of a U.S.-Iran crisis—and did not escalate the situation. An illustrative (though imperfect) analogy to the current situation is the Trump administration’s reported decision in 2019 to employ offensive cyber capabilities to retaliate against Iran. This took place in the context of a spate of Iranian attacks against oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. During that crisis, tensions ratcheted up after Iran downed a U.S. surveillance drone: U.S. and Iranian officials traded strident, blustery public statements; the U.S. authorized the deployment of an additional 10,000 troops to the region, and Iran announced that it was a few days shy of surpassing the enrichment limitations that the defunct nuclear deal had imposed. On June 21, President Trump revealed that he had approved, and then walked back, a military strike against Iran while simultaneously implying that military options were still on the table, sharing on social media: “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights [sic.] when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it.”

Then, media sources published reports that the U.S. government had conducted a highly tailored cyber attack against an Iranian database used to target oil tankers in the region. While the United States did not publicly claim responsibility for the cyber attack, reports relied on quotes from unnamed, current senior government officials—likely a way of coupling a cyber signal with another form of communication so that the intended message is received. Such officials described the cyber operation as enabling the U.S. to “demonstrate strength” and show that it will “impose costs.” But, compared to the threat of a kinetic strike that was estimated to result in significant casualties, the offensive cyber operation was a less escalatory choice. In the current situation, the decision to couple kinetic strikes with cyber attacks rather than use the latter as a substitute for the former likely reflects the increased salience of the interests at stake.

Another aspect of the current situation that stands out from the 2019 case is the apparent decision by the Biden administration to, informally and obliquely, telegraph the potential for a retaliatory cyber attack in advance. Before the U.S. response, anonymous officials told NBC News that the U.S. would respond with a campaign that included cyber operations without specifying further details. Then, after the fact, officials confirmed that cyber operations had occurred. There are only a handful of cases where the United States has explicitly or implicitly taken responsibility for an offensive cyber operation. Examples include the 2018 operation to counter the Internet Research Agency’s ability to use the Internet to interfere in the midterm elections; Operation Glowing Symphony, the cyber operation to counter the Islamic State; or cyber operations in support of Ukraine’s defense following Russia’s 2022 invasion. Across each of these, officials have only acknowledged the role of cyber operations after the fact. This reflects the challenges described earlier of using cyber operations as a form of signaling: threatening to use a particular cyber tool against a certain target may enable defenders to take measures to identify and mitigate the threat in advance.

This is likely the first known instance of the U.S. warning of an impending cyber attack before it has taken place. While it is difficult to ascertain the motivations behind issuing an ambiguous cyber threat in advance, it does reflect a maturing appreciation of the nuances and complexities of signaling through cyber means. To wit, the implied threat was sufficiently vague to avoid communicating operational details that would undermine the feasibility of the cyber operation while also increasing the likelihood that the forthcoming cyber attack is actually perceived by the targeted and interpreted as such. Along the lines of the 2023 Department of Defense cyber strategy, applying cyber power to make adversaries “doubt the efficacy of their military capabilities” is more effective if that adversary observes the cyber operation in the first place and discerns its implications in the context of the ongoing crisis.

Finally, there are, of course, important limitations to offensive cyber operations. The most significant of these is that a cyber attack that will reliably cause significant effects against strategic targets is difficult to conduct and to do so with a level of reliability and precision in timing that will make it relevant. Cyber operations aimed at adversary military systems and capabilities typically depend on significant prior preparation and investment in time, resources, and skilled personnel to gain and maintain access to priority targets and develop tools that can cause the desired effects. Such accesses and exploits can be ephemeral and disappear unexpectedly. These factors will constrain the options the military is able to present to the President during a crisis. This only underscores the importance of defining clear targeting priorities in advance and directing sufficient resources to enable gaining and maintaining access to those targets so that when the President asks for a cyber course of action during a crisis or contingency, palatable options are on the table.

Erica D. Lonergan is an Assistant Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She also currently serves as a Senior Advisor to Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0. Previously, Erica served on the writing team of the 2023 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy and was a Senior Director on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. She has published widely on cyber strategy and policy, including her recent Oxford University Press book, Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace.

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

Main image: Airmen from the 67th Cyberspace Wing review daily tasks at Joint Base San Antonio – Lackland’s Medina annex, Sept. 5, 2023. The 67th Cyberspace Wing serves as the Air Force’s combat cyberspace capability by presenting trained and qualified Airmen to the Cyber Mission Force. As such it acts as the service’s execution arm for generating, projecting, and sustaining global cyberspace operations. (Jason W. Edwards via U.S. Air Force)

9. Understanding the Deterrence Gap in the Taiwan Strait

Excerpt:

The most important point, as we argue in our follow-up monograph, Deterrence Gap, is that Taiwan and its partners should not repeat the mistakes of the past by assuming deterrence to be fixed and immutable. It is not. All deterrents decay over time, and deterrence across the strait will be in a state of peak decay this decade. Taiwan and its friends should realize the gravity of the situation. They need quick fixes — potent and credible deterrents that will cause China’s leaders to question their ability to seize Taiwan in a fait accompli. Betting too heavily on deterrents that will come online next decade might actually increase risk this decade by generating a “better now than later dynamic.” And all concerned should avoid the siren call of symbolism, which provokes, over substance, which deters.

Understanding the Deterrence Gap in the Taiwan Strait - War on the Rocks

JARED M. MCKINNEY AND PETER HARRIS

warontherocks.com · by Jared M. McKinney · February 12, 2024

What is stopping China from invading Taiwan? In the past, it was overdetermined that Beijing would not use force to compel reunification. Not only did China lack the capabilities to execute a swift and decisive conquest of the island, but China’s leaders since 1979 used to believe that peaceful unification was both possible and vastly more preferable to military solutions. Today, however, the military balance of power has shifted decisively, enabling an amphibious invasion from a capabilities standpoint in the not-too-distant future, while prospects of peaceful unification have faded. As such, it is now something of a conventional wisdom that a Chinese invasion has become more likely than not.

We agree with these pessimistic assessments. Of course, no analyst can say with certainty when or why a war over Taiwan might be triggered. Those who project auras of inevitability are wrong to do so. But the changing geopolitical situation around Taiwan cannot be ignored. It is only because deterrence across the Taiwan Strait was strong that past crises over the island’s political status could unfold without causing an invasion. Now that deterrence has weakened, there are few if any guardrails to prevent current or future crises from escalating to become a full-blown war.

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This is a combustible situation — one that warrants urgent attention from Taiwanese and American leaders. For Taiwan to regain security, the deterrence gap should be closed and the odds of destabilizing crises emerging should be lowered.

What Is Making War More Likely?

The balance of power across the Taiwan Strait used to serve as a tight constraint on China’s freedom of maneuver. In the past, Taiwan’s armed forces — especially its air force — constituted a significant barrier to a Chinese invasion. As recently as 2002, the Department of Defense’s report to Congress on Chinese military power assessed that Taiwan’s air force enjoyed “dominance of the airspace over the Taiwan Strait” and maintained “a qualitative edge over” its Chinese counterpart. But this is no longer the case.

To be sure, China still has reason to fear a U.S. military intervention in a war over Taiwan, but the threat of such an intervention has been made deliberately uncertain. It would be wrong to dismiss “strategic ambiguity” as a dud deterrent. But it is becoming increasingly clear it may not be sufficient on its own to deter an invasion.

This is because Chinese strategists have had decades to plan for this eventuality. As a result, the United States no longer possesses clear escalation dominance. People’s Liberation Army doctrine is optimistic about managing escalation, which perhaps increases the likelihood of a first strike against forward-deployed U.S. assets in East Asia of the sort that might significantly undermine U.S. capabilities for stopping an invasion. And, of course, there is always the possibility that nuclear-armed China could successfully deter Washington from joining a conflict over Taiwan, as Russia has in Ukraine.

Various “self-deterrents” that once held back China have weakened, too. For example, leaders in Beijing once worried that absorbing Taiwan into the People’s Republic would pose significant social, political, and economic challenges — so much so that unification was sometimes viewed as more trouble than it was worth, at least in the short term. Not anymore.

At the same time as the balance of power has shifted, Chinese government incentives for restraint have also eroded. Those who talk about deterrence usually focus on the credibility and potency of threats made against a potential aggressor — that is, an adversary’s expectations about what will befall them if they do something unwanted. But such constraints are only part of a would-be aggressor’s overall calculation about whether to use force. States also consider what will happen to their political, social, and economic interests if they do not use force.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy put incentives for restraint at the heart of the concept of deterrence:

Deterrence is strengthened by actions that reduce a competitor’s perception of the benefits of aggression relative to restraint. Effective deterrence requires the Department to consider how competitors perceive U.S., Ally, and partner stakes, commitment, and combat credibility; their perception of their own ability to control escalation risks; and their view of how the status quo will evolve – in part as a result of U.S., Ally, and partner actions – if they do not use force.

This sophisticated understanding of deterrence is directly applicable to assessing Chinese government decision-making today.

What are the costs to China of exercising restraint? With reference to Taiwan, we think four key variables speak to this point: the strength and resilience of the “One China” discursive framework; the rate of economic growth in China; the trajectory of “tech wars” involving the United States, Taiwan, China, and other relevant economies; and China’s perception of a closing window of opportunity to resolve the Taiwan dispute on favorable terms.

Restraint Variable 1: “One China”

Since the Shanghai Communique in 1972, a “One China” framework has been at the foundation of U.S.-Chinese relations. Of course, there has never been agreement over what the One China concept means, precisely. Beijing has a One China principle, for example, while the United States maintains a One China policy — with each capturing very different political understandings regarding the status of Taiwan.

But even so, the common language of “One China” has served as a useful discursive framework to help mediate the deep estrangement that defined ties between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party before 1972. The One China framework worked in the past because all sides tolerated — albeit sometimes more, sometimes less — the ambiguity that accompanied the compromise.

Since 2016, the One China idea has become increasingly devoid of practical meaning. This began to some extent haphazardly, with President-elect Donald Trump speaking with Taiwan’s president on the phone, but since then a bipartisan pattern of disregard has become the norm in U.S. politics. In our new monograph, Deterrence Gap: Avoiding War in the Taiwan Strait, we count 27 “firsts” since 1979 that have occurred since Trump’s phone call with Tsai Ing-wen in 2016. These “firsts” range from Taiwan’s chief of the general staff visiting the White House, to deputy assistant secretaries of defense visiting Taiwan, to the State Department terminating previous restrictions on U.S. government contacts with Taiwanese officials.

To be clear, for many of these developments, action-reaction cycles are in operation. We do not hold the Chinese government guiltless in the process that is destroying the status quo. Quite the contrary. But what matters for our present argument is this: Chinese analysts increasingly fear that the United States will reverse its One China policy and create a de jure or de facto defense alliance with Taiwan. This makes peace — and restraint — less beneficial for China in the short to medium term and creates powerful incentives for China to seek a non-peaceful resolution of the Taiwan dispute before the situation (from the Chinese Communist Party’s perspective) further deteriorates.

Restraint Variable 2: Economic Trends

The Chinese Communist Party rules China by mixing strategies of co-optation and coercion with claims to legitimacy. Over the past generation, legitimacy has been directly connected in China to economic performance. However, some observers now strongly suspect that economic growth in China has plateaued. This spells danger for cross-strait relations. For although we are skeptical of pure “diversionary war” arguments, slowing growth is important for a few reasons.

First, the erosion of economic competence as a hallmark of Communist Party rule might push China’s leaders to become more indulgent of nationalist pressure as a means of shoring up domestic support. Second, slowing growth means that there is a diminishing chance of Taiwan’s citizens opting to join the People’s Republic for some sort of economic payoff — something that was at least plausible in the not-too-distant past.

Finally, China’s economic slowdown threatens military spending as the Chinese state runs into a fiscal cliff by mid-century. This means that time will not solve all of China’s problems vis-à-vis Taiwan. On the contrary, time might be running out to make a move on Taiwan during propitious conditions.

Restraint Variable 3: Tech Wars

America’s export controls on semiconductors and related technologies are intended to prevent China from overtaking U.S. military, science, and technology power. In effect, Washington has launched a direct challenge to the Chinese government’s “innovation-driven development” strategy. The logic to these controls seems straightforward: Why should China’s economy and military benefit from technologies largely designed in the West and manufactured in Taiwan?

Counterintuitively, however, export controls might have some unintended consequences — namely, by decreasing the net costs of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the short term while creating pressures for Beijing to act before the U.S. military can reap the rewards of the emerging military-technological revolution. These dangerous side-effects of the tech war have been almost universally overlooked despite hefty international relations literature on economic interdependence and the expected costs of war.

In the past, one of the deterrents that protected Taiwan from invasion was the so-called “Silicon Shield.” The gist of the shield was that Taiwan’s position at the heart of the global semiconductor industry would add huge economic costs to a Chinese invasion. Although this in itself may be inadequate to deter such an invasion, it was one of a cluster of deterrents that operated in a concurrent and overlapping fashion, ensuring that the likely costs of an invasion outweighed the perceived benefits.

But restricting the export of semiconductors to China from Taiwan is entirely at odds with the Silicon Shield. In effect, China is being made to bear in peacetime the costs that it otherwise would have suffered only in wartime.

Even worse, the export controls impose additional time pressures on China writ large. The costs of recreating the technologies involved in extreme ultraviolet lithography are tremendous. As a former deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy put it, “At some point, you’re replicating all of human civilization.” The allure of just taking such machines, the majority of which are located in Taiwan, may seem simpler.

Another form of this pressure is military, as the People’s Liberation Army watches others — with easy access to massive compute — “intelligentize” faster than it, contributing to a “better now than later” dynamic, which we consider a final key variable reducing Chinese restraint.

Restraint Variable 4: The Future Balance of Power

The general context for a potential closing window of opportunity is set by the plateauing of the Chinese economy and the likelihood it will not be able to fully exploit the current military-technical revolution due to export controls. These trends suggest that, over the long term, time may not be on China’s side. What about in the shorter term? There is good reason to see relative Chinese military power as peaking this decade. Despite the increasing alarm animating both military and civilian analysts, by some metrics U.S. military power is actually declining this decade due to where the United States is in its modernization cycles.

This is especially true of the Navy. According to the Congressional Budget Office, which analyzed three possible plans submitted to Congress by the Department of Defense for 2023: “the lethality of the fleet, as measured in part by the total number of missile cells, would decline by 13 percent until 2032.” This number includes both vertical launch cells and torpedo tubes. The falling numbers for this decade contrast in particular with the numbers projected after the 2020s, when “the number of torpedo tubes would increase, compared with the number in today’s fleet, by 40 percent to 50 percent.”

The Air Force, in contrast, does not face such a drastic decline in lethality, but the most significant system it is investing in for modern peer-on-peer warfare, the B-21, will not be available in mass until the 2030s. The B-21 will recapitalize capability that has atrophied over decades, as the Air Force became centered around short-range fighters not particularly suited to stopping a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

For their parts, the Marine Corps and Army are both modernizing their force structures and training to be more relevant for the Taiwan “pacing scenario,” and by the 2030s both are likely to possess significant new formations and capabilities. At the same time, the results of Japan moving defense spending from 1 percent of GDP to 2 percent will begin to be felt, too, as will rising defense budgets and longer conscription terms in Taiwan.

The Chinese government, of course, will not stand still throughout the 2020s. Certainly, more Renhai Cruisers and J-20 fighters will be commissioned. But such incremental Chinese progress will not change the overall pattern, which is that China has mostly completed a modernization cycle begun in the late 1990s, while the United States is still in the midst of one. A reinvigorated U.S. Navy increasingly centered on submarines and smaller combatants instead of hugely expensive and potentially vulnerable aircraft carriers, an Air Force with long-range bombers, and a Marine Corps and Army with long-range missiles and dispersible capabilities poses a much more significant threat to an invading Chinese force than exists today — or this decade.

In all, the combination of eroding constraints and loosening restraints is a toxic mix, implying that whatever might have been doing the heavy lifting of dissuading China’s leaders from invading Taiwan in the past is likely not operating today. Given the high probability for major provocations relating to the Taiwan issue going forward, especially as Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party enters an unprecedented third presidential term in a row, and that fact that two recent pollssuggest that more than half of China’s population already support armed unification, the upshot is that the Chinese leadership is becoming less likely to act with restraint compared to the past.

Restoring Deterrence

In a previous article published in Parameters, we proposed a strategy for Taiwan to deter a Chinese invasion, one that did not rely on an uncertain U.S. military intervention. This comprised four main elements: A pre-planned resistance campaign, multilateral economic sanctions, regional balancing behavior, and a targeted campaign of scorched tech that would see Taiwan threaten to destroy or disable their semiconductor industry if China were to invade. These are all deterrents that Taiwan and its friends could develop quickly. Even if not as severe as a U.S. threat to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf, they are credible deterrents in the sense that China could have a high degree of confidence in these threats actually being carried out in response to an armed attack.

Beyond these ideas, what else can be done to repair deterrence, bolster reassurance, and avoid war?

The most important point, as we argue in our follow-up monograph, Deterrence Gap, is that Taiwan and its partners should not repeat the mistakes of the past by assuming deterrence to be fixed and immutable. It is not. All deterrents decay over time, and deterrence across the strait will be in a state of peak decay this decade. Taiwan and its friends should realize the gravity of the situation. They need quick fixes — potent and credible deterrents that will cause China’s leaders to question their ability to seize Taiwan in a fait accompli. Betting too heavily on deterrents that will come online next decade might actually increase risk this decade by generating a “better now than later dynamic.” And all concerned should avoid the siren call of symbolism, which provokes, over substance, which deters.

This decade, there is still low hanging (substantive) fruit that should be exploited. Taiwan’s political leaders should consider allowing the Taiwanese air force to change its intercept doctrine so it does not wear out its pilots and airframesby intercepting every Chinese flight into its Air Defense Identification Zone. The Taiwanese air force could also prioritize its air defense mission: denying the People’s Liberation Army Air Force command of the air would be vital in a conflict, and ground-based launchers will be more suitable for this than expensive fighters. As well, procuring and training across services to achieve massed precision fires will be key to challenge the People’s Republic of China’s defensive systems in an invasion.

Unfortunately, given the huge cost and long timeline for entering service, Taiwan’s much ballyhooed submarine programis likely a distraction from the fundamentals of developing the hardware and software for an effective “anti-navy.” Taiwan’s armed forces should instead prioritize the acquisition, production, and employment of mines, drones, and missiles. Mines are likely Taiwan’s best way to “buy time” with minimal risk to Taiwan’s armed forces, while drones could bolster Taiwan’s defenses via decentralized and attritable systems that could wreak havoc on an invading force, and missiles —especially if road-mobile — combine resilience with lethality. Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown that such systems would need to be accessible in mass (i.e., thousands not scores).

Taiwan should also continue building out access to a reliable low-earth orbit satellite network to help preserve communication ability in the event of a blockade or invasion, but it should prioritize systems resilience in this process. All of these actions are practical in the next few years. The only thing required is prioritization.

Finally, regional powers — especially Japan, but also South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia — should be clearer about their own likely responses to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. These states have the most to lose from a Chinese bid to overturn the status quo. While it is unrealistic to expect regional governments to announce firm commitments to Taiwanese security, it would certainly help the cause of stability in East Asia if they would announce a willingness to impose economic punishments, political sanctions, and increase defense spending in response to an invasion.

For peace to be likely in the Taiwan Strait in the 2020s, Taiwan and its friends will need to take radical action to develop short-term constraints on Chinese action but also look for ways to encourage internal restraint among Chinese decision-makers, something that will require recognizing practically what the Department of Defense has recognized theoretically: that if China comes to view the evolution of the status quo in increasingly negative terms, its incentives not to use force are correspondingly reduced.

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Dr. Jared M. McKinney is an assistant professor of international security at the Air War College at Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.

Dr. Peter Harris is an associate professor of political science at Colorado State University and a non-resident fellow with Defense Priorities.

Together, they are the author of Deterrence Gap: Avoiding War in the Taiwan Strait (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, January 2024)

The views expressed are those of the authors alone, and not necessarily those of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or U.S. government.

Image: People’s Republic of China (Taiwan) Air Force

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Jared M. McKinney · February 12, 2024

10. Bringing the Swarm to Life: Roles, Missions, and Campaigns for the Replicator Initiative

Excerpts:

New theories of victory require new echelons and creative combinations of concepts and capabilities to sequence tactical actions in time, space, and purpose. Imagining these formations and prioritizing capabilities requires a set of defense scenarios linked to major plans and foundational concepts in military theory.

In that spirit, this article is an invitation for a wider debate about swarming roles and missions. Replicator is a noble promise and one that should transition across the election in 2024. That requires an open debate and vibrant marketplace of ideas in place of closed working groups and overly managed field experiments. The Defense Department needs debates, wargames, and tests that support a more agile approach to combat development often disincentivized in the modern military bureaucracy.

Based on the initial scenario analysis, a few ideas for further discussion emerge. First, there is no Replicator swarm without a battle network. And there are reasons to be skeptical that service-led efforts to connect the force will bear fruit as they often struggle to overcome legacy policies and processes that limit military innovation. There are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about major joint efforts like the Global Information Dominance Exercise, which focuses on real-world experimentation and planning to envision how best to employ AI and machine learning in modern crisis planning. Second, the promise of swarming requires a clear defense industrial policy that prioritizes mass production and scalability over exquisite prototypes and technology demonstrations. Quantity still has a quality all its own. Swarms need a deep magazine and few, if any barriers, to being built and fielded by partners and allies.

Bringing the Swarm to Life: Roles, Missions, and Campaigns for the Replicator Initiative - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Benjamin Jensen · February 13, 2024

Can you kill a bear with a thousand paper cuts or slay a dragon with an armada of toy boats? Many a wargame I have participated in suggests you can. Beyond rolling dice and questioning salvo exchange models, the challenge is understanding the types of battles and larger campaigns where swarms make a difference.

From debates about the viability of Project Replicator to the Ukrainian calls to build a million first person view drones in 2024, there is a rising tide of interest in low-cost, attritable battlefield effects. The swarm is now a “new” theory of victory. Yet, what roles and missions will these swarms make possible? Tactical adaption and the unforgiving feedback loop of the battlefield are helping Ukraine answer these questions. What is missing in the Replicator discussion in U.S. national security community is a tangible set of scenarios that support strategic analysis.

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To that end, I propose a series of ideal typical missions in support of capabilities development and refining continency and campaign plans. Specifically, three concepts of operations emerge: imposing costs, denying terrain, and buying time. Swarms offer viable options for imposing costs linked to the concept of virtual attritionand how much an adversary expects to gain from a particular course of action. They offer low-cost ways — similar to mines and obstacles — of denying terrain. In an era of great-power competition between nuclear adversaries, drone swarms offer a new rung on the escalation ladder that buys time and space for political leaders to form prudent crisis response strategies.

Roles and Missions for the Swarm

Previous work on mosaic warfare, swarming, and operational art highlights the ability of a swarm to generate asymmetries by using low-cost systems to hold an adversaries’ critical capabilities at risk.

For example, if the People’s Liberation Army chooses to cross the Taiwan Strait, they need troop transports and destroyers. If small, unmanned speed boats can damage billion-dollar surface connectors while air-launched drones create clutter and attack radars, blinding the destroyers, it makes the crossing more precarious. The Chinese military has to either assume more risk or divert additional resources to protect its force, slowing or even halting the operation. The expected costs change relative to the anticipated benefits, making certain courses of action less tenable. This rational logic is why swarms are potentially as important for deterrence as they are for warfighting.

Holding critical capabilities at risk requires the swarm to be networked, dynamically retaskable, and multi-mission capable. Clever tacticians need to be able to swap warheads for synthetic aperture radars and decoys for signals intelligence and electronic warfare payloads to create different combinations of effects based on the critical vulnerabilities that emerge from the chaos of the battlefield. That is, because war is a non-linear system, the swarm has to be able to sense and adapt to emerging advantages faster than its target. This requirement implies that swarms need a tremendous amount of intelligence and logistics. Constant updates to targeting and moving the swarm into position while regenerating salvos (i.e., swarm-in-being as the next potential attack vector) require planning and good old fashion staff work even if new AI/machine learning co-pilots help along the wary. To achieve the right economy of scale, it also puts a premium on ensuring both hardware and software are interoperable with allies. This measure requires as much time and effort spent on defense policy as on force employment, development, and design.

Being more adaptable than the adversary puts the enemy off balance and into constantly guessing the next move. Fear of the unknown compounds to skew rational decision-making. This compounding effect alters how an adversary arrays their forces relative to expected decisive points leading to a misallocation of scarce battlefield resources and adding time and friction to an operation.

Consider Ukraine’s recent success in the Black Sea. It is not the unmanned surface vessels alone that create the asymmetry. It is how large numbers of these unmanned surface vessels are combined with raids, cruise missile strikes, intelligence, deception, and electronic warfare that keep the Russians constantly guessing and wondering what will hit them next. The Black Sea fleet wasn’t defeated. Rather, the risk of suffering further loses to constant attacks without a clear counterattack option forced the Russian navy to retreat to safer areas further east. Anticipation and fear of the next attack matter as much as the current fight in swarming. The principles of surprise, maneuver, and objective are as important as mass. For Russia, the benefits of occupying maritime terrain west of Crimea proved less than the anticipated costs.

Given this logic, three roles and missions emerge as purpose statements (i.e., the “why” of military action) for swarming formations: impose costs, deny terrain, and buy time. As the operational purpose for employing a tactical swarm, the logic of each mission speaks to different requirements and even unique task organizations. Put another way, visualizing and describing roles and missions for swarms supports defense planning scenarios and analyzing the mix of forces and functions required for modern great-power competition.

Impose Costs

Cost imposition has a long history in competitive strategy. Applied to swarming roles and missions, the theory of advantage lies in the correlation of forces and convincing an adversary that the costs of a particular course of action are disproportionate to the value of the objective. The focus of sequencing tactical actions is on enemy forces and altering their decision-making process by manipulating the expected cost to achieve a benefit.

For example, the Chinese military could try to secure outlying Taiwanese islands as part of a joint blockadeand pressure campaign. In addition to airborne and air assault insertions, the People’s Liberation Army might deploy amphibious forces. If the sum total cost of a swarm of unmanned air and maritime systems is only a fraction of the costs of a Type 55 guided missile cruiser and/or a Type 075 landing ship, it alters how the Chinese military approaches a joint forcible entry operation. Cost curves change courses of action. Low-cost, attritable swarms are a game-changer if they alter adversary decision-making.

Intelligence looms large over this scenario, creating clear requirements for near-to-midterm (3–5 year) force development. First, Taiwan is not Ukraine and the front will look different. It will not be enough to have thousands of small drone operators terrorizing People’s Liberation Army soldiers on the beach or unmanned speed boats littering the littorals with mines. Both beach defense and sea denial will require long-range intelligence, complex battle networks to pass and aggregate information into target quality tracks, and good old-fashioned planning about when and where to fire the next swarming salvo. These requirements put a premium on capabilities like multi-purpose platforms and wide-area surveillance platforms, integrating mannedand unmanned teams. The trick will be to sense and launch effects faster than the adversary can react, putting a premium on a high-low mix of capabilities. In other words, low-cost and attritable assets require a battle network. And this network has to be able to pass data — including target quality tracks — between coalition partners using cloud-based programs that fuse open source data, like THRESHER and SeaVision. No network, no swarm.

Deny Terrain

Denial-based strategies have a long history in security studies. The concept traditionally invokes some action that frustrates an adversary’s military power. Since military power is multidimensional, this process of frustration can range from eliminating capabilities and tactical degradation to operational paralysis and strategic effect reduction. In terms of sequencing tactical actions in time and space, the most common approach to denial is focused on terrain and how to make it increasingly difficult for an adversary to hold key terrain or advance along a mobility corridor. This logic also extends to air denial. As it relates to modern capabilities, many analysts see new approaches to air denial limiting adversary freedom of action, often linked to lessons from Ukraine and Corbettian approaches to seapower.

Returning to the scenario above, any effort to insert Chinese military forces on even outlying Taiwanese islands will start with air and maritime forces isolating the objective. If these forces struggle to get close because of cheap air defenses — whether air- or ground-launched — and sea lines of communication covered with smart mines and high-speed unmanned boats circling like sharks, the force is effectively frustrated. Their freedom of action has been constrained and their forces canalized in time and space.

Logistics also loom large over this scenario. Denying air lines of communication will require a mix of long-range air-to-air shots holding medium- and high-altitude airspace at risk, and dispersed short-range air defenses that limit the use of low-altitude airspace. The more these activities can advantage of existing missile inventories — such as the FrankenSAM program seen in Ukraine and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s long shot program — the more constrained the adversary’s choices become.

Magazine depth matters in denial-based approaches. The same logic applies to networks of smart mines andunmanned surface vessels. Their utility is in slowing down an adversary, which opens attack vectors from lower-inventory long-range anti-ship missiles and submarines lurking beneath the surface. No one is afraid of one land mine. They are paralyzed when hundreds are scattered around key terrain. And that paralysis is the best time for an artillery strike.

Buy Time

The highest art of war is found in winning without fighting, especially when the conflict involves nuclear-armed states. From Sun Tzu to the emergence of modern deterrence theory, military force plays a dual role both as a threat designed to shape behavior and as a sword. Therefore, Replicator swarms should also contribute to conventional deterrence and provide flexible options for crisis management. At the operational level, the focus of sequencing tactical actions is on friendly forces and using trip wires and risk-worthy platforms to create a strategic space for diplomacy and crisis communication.

Before the Chinese Communist Party launched any military action, it would likely seek to set conditions. This crisis management strategy is more likely to use the threat of force than a fait accompli even if it involves increased military deployments and warning strikes. If the United States and its partners can get risk-worthy swarms in place, they have the potential — beyond raising costs and denying benefits — to encourage restraint. If a $100,000 drone is destroyed, the U.S. president doesn’t have to make a speech to the nation that increases domestic audience costs and contributes to the risk of runaway escalation spirals.

Intelligence and logistics support conventional deterrence in this scenario. Once again, no network, no swarm. The United States, along with its network of partners and allies, will need warning time and the ability to pass information along an interoperable battle network. This network should fuse commercial data on everything from commodity prices in China and rail patterns to social media sentiment with sensitive signals intelligence.

Second, the adversary has to know you have a deep enough magazine. It is not just enough to be cheap. The swarm has to be easy to manufacture in terms of time and resources and capable of being rapidly produced in multiple allied countries. Companies offering cheap swarms without proven manufacturing capability may be selling a false promise.

Roles and Missions Are Just the Beginning

Establishing the logic of Replicator and swarming has the potential to unleash wider changes across the Department of Defense in terms of everything from doctrine and task organization to training and education. More importantly, it could create a focal point for better aligning defense resources for a new era of competition.

New theories of victory require new echelons and creative combinations of concepts and capabilities to sequence tactical actions in time, space, and purpose. Imagining these formations and prioritizing capabilities requires a set of defense scenarios linked to major plans and foundational concepts in military theory.

In that spirit, this article is an invitation for a wider debate about swarming roles and missions. Replicator is a noble promise and one that should transition across the election in 2024. That requires an open debate and vibrant marketplace of ideas in place of closed working groups and overly managed field experiments. The Defense Department needs debates, wargames, and tests that support a more agile approach to combat development often disincentivized in the modern military bureaucracy.

Based on the initial scenario analysis, a few ideas for further discussion emerge. First, there is no Replicator swarm without a battle network. And there are reasons to be skeptical that service-led efforts to connect the force will bear fruit as they often struggle to overcome legacy policies and processes that limit military innovation. There are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about major joint efforts like the Global Information Dominance Exercise, which focuses on real-world experimentation and planning to envision how best to employ AI and machine learning in modern crisis planning. Second, the promise of swarming requires a clear defense industrial policy that prioritizes mass production and scalability over exquisite prototypes and technology demonstrations. Quantity still has a quality all its own. Swarms need a deep magazine and few, if any barriers, to being built and fielded by partners and allies.

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Benjamin Jensen, Ph.D., is a professor of strategic studies at the School of Advanced Warfighting in the Marine Corps University and a senior fellow in the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. The views expressed are those of a swarming addict and like his misplaced creativity, youth, and will are strictly his own and not indicative of any official government or industry position.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Benjamin Jensen · February 13, 2024

11. How the CIA Destabilizes the World

Quite a perspective on the CIA.

The author wants another Church Committee.

Conclusion:

Holding the CIA to public account is of course a steep uphill struggle. Presidents and the Congress don’t even try. The mainstream media don’t investigate the CIA, preferring instead to quote “senior unnamed officials” and the official cover-up. Are the mainstream media outlets lazy, suborned, afraid of advertising revenues from the military-industrial complex, threatened,

ignorant, or all of the above? Who knows.

There is a tiny glimmer of hope. Back in 1975, the CIA was led by a reformer. Today, the CIA is led by William Burns, one of America’s long-standing leading diplomats. Burns knows the truth about Ukraine, since he served as Ambassador to Russia in 2008 and cabled Washington about the grave error of pushing NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Given Burns’ stature and diplomatic accomplishments, perhaps he would support the urgently needed accountability.

The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding. In Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Kosovo, Ukraine, and far beyond, the needless deaths, instability, and destruction unleashed by CIA subversion continues to this day. The mainstream media, academic institutions, and Congress should be investigating these operations to the best of their ability and demanding the release of documents to enable democratic accountability.

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee hearings. Fifty years on, with the precedent, inspiration, and guidance of the Church Committee itself, it’s urgently time to open the blinds, expose the truth about the U.S.-led mayhem, and begin a new era in which U.S. foreign policy becomes transparent, accountable, subject to the rule of law both domestic and international, and directed towards global peace rather than subversion of supposed enemies.

How the CIA Destabilizes the World

commondreams.org · by Jeffrey D. Sachs · February 12, 2024

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OPINION

A janitor mops the floor at CIA headquarters on March 3, 2005 in Langley, Virginia.

(Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

If only the CIA’s rogue operations had been consigned to history as a result of the crimes exposed by the Church Committee, or at the least had brought the CIA under the rule of law and public accountability. But that was not to be.

Feb 12, 2024Common Dreams

Feb 12, 2024

There are three basic problems with the CIA: its objectives, methods, and unaccountability. Its operational objectives are whatever the CIA or the President of the United States defines to be in the U.S. interest at a given time, irrespective of international law or U.S. law. Its methods are secretive and duplicitous. Its unaccountability means that the CIA and president run foreign policy without any public scrutiny. Congress is a doormat, a sideshow.

As a recent CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, said of his time at the CIA: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."

The CIA was established in 1947 as the successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS had performed two distinct roles in World War II, intelligence and subversion. The CIA took over both roles. On the one hand, the CIA was to provide intelligence to the US Government. On the other, the CIA was to subvert the “enemy,” that is, whomever the president or CIA defined as the enemy, using a wide range of measures: assassinations, coups, staged unrest, arming of insurgents, and other means.

It is the latter role that has proved devastating to global stability and the U.S. rule of law. It is a role that the CIA continues to pursue today. In effect, the CIA is a secret army of the U.S., capable of creating mayhem across the world with no accountability whatsoever.

When President Dwight Eisenhower decided that Africa’s rising political star, democratically elected Patrice Lumumba of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), was the “enemy,” the CIA conspired in his 1961 assassination, thus undermining the democratic hopes for Africa. He would hardly be the last African president brought down by the CIA.

The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding.

In its 77-year history, the CIA has been held to serious public account just once, in 1975. In that year, Idaho Senator Frank Church led a Senate investigation that exposed the CIA’s shocking rampage of assassinations, coups, destabilization, surveillance, and Mengele-style torture and medical “experiments.”

The expose by the Church Committee of the CIA’s shocking malfeasance has recently been chronicled in a superb book by the investigative reporter James Risen, The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy.

That single episode of oversight occurred because of a rare confluence of events.

In the year before the Church Committee, the Watergate scandal had toppled Richard Nixon and weakened the White House. As successor to Nixon, Gerald Ford was unelected, a former Congressman, and reluctant to oppose the oversight prerogatives of the Congress. The Watergate scandal, investigated by the Senate Ervin Committee, had also empowered the Senate and demonstrated the value of Senate oversight of Executive Branch abuses of power. Crucially, the CIA was newly led by Director William Colby, who wanted to clean up the CIA operations. Also, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, author of pervasive illegalities also exposed by the Church committee, had died in 1972.

In December 1974, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, then as now a great reporter with sources inside the CIA, published an account of illegal CIA intelligence operations against the U.S. antiwar movement. The Senate Majority Leader at the time, Mike Mansfield, a leader of character, then appointed Church to investigate the CIA. Church himself was a brave, honest, intelligent, independent-minded, and intrepid Senator, characteristics chronically in short supply in U.S. politics.

If only the CIA’s rogue operations had been consigned to history as a result of the crimes exposed by the Church Committee, or at the least had brought the CIA under the rule of law and public accountability. But that was not to be. The CIA has had the last laugh —or better said, has brought the world to tears—by maintaining its preeminent role in U.S. foreign policy, including overseas subversion.

Since 1975, the CIA has run secretive operations backing Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan that utterly wrecked Afghanistan while giving rise to al-Qaeda. The CIA has likely run secretive operations in the Balkans against Serbia, in the Caucuses against Russia, and in Central Asia targeting China, all deploying CIA-backed jihadists. In the 2010s, the CIA ran deadly operations to topple Syria’s Bashir al-Assad, again with Islamic jihadists. For at least 20 years, the CIA has been deeply involved in fomenting the growing catastrophe in Ukraine, including the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 that triggered the devastating war now engulfing Ukraine.

What do we know of these operations? Only the parts that whistleblowers, a few intrepid investigative reporters, a handful of brave scholars, and some foreign governments have been willing or able to tell us, with all of these potential witnesses knowing that they might face severe retribution from the U.S. government. There has been little to no accountability by the U.S. government itself, or meaningful oversight or restraint imposed by Congress. On the contrary, the government has become ever-more obsessively secretive, pursuing aggressive legal actions against disclosures of classified information, even when, or especially when, that information describes the illegal actions by the government itself.

Once in a while, a former U.S. official spills the beans, such as when Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed that he had induced Jimmy Carter to assign the CIA to train Islamic jihadists to destabilize the government of Afghanistan, with the aim of inducing the Soviet Union to invade that country.

In the case of Syria, we learned from a few stories in the New York Times in 2016 and 2017 of the CIA’s subversive operations to destabilize Syria and overthrow Assad, as ordered by President Barack Obama. Here is the case of a dreadfully misguided CIA operation, blatantly in violation of international law, that has led to a decade of mayhem, an escalating regional war, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of displaced people, and yet there has not been a single honest acknowledgment of this CIA-led disaster by the White House or Congress.

In the case of Ukraine, we know that the U.S. played a major covert role in the violent coup that brought down Yanukovych and that swept Ukraine into a decade of bloodshed but to this day, we don’t know the details. Russia offered the world a window into the coup by intercepting and then posting a call between Victoria Nuland, then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State (now Under-Secretary of State) and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (now Assistant Secretary of State), in which they plot the post-coup government. Following the coup, the CIA covertly trained special operations forces of the post-coup regime the U.S. had helped bring to power. The U.S. government has been mum about the CIA’s covert operations in Ukraine.

We have good reason to believe that CIA operatives carried out the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, as per Seymour Hersh, who is now an independent reporter. Unlike in 1975, when Hersh was with the New York Times at a time when the paper still tried to hold the government to account, the Times does not even deign to look into Hersh’s account.

Holding the CIA to public account is of course a steep uphill struggle. Presidents and the Congress don’t even try. The mainstream media don’t investigate the CIA, preferring instead to quote “senior unnamed officials” and the official cover-up. Are the mainstream media outlets lazy, suborned, afraid of advertising revenues from the military-industrial complex, threatened,

ignorant, or all of the above? Who knows.

There is a tiny glimmer of hope. Back in 1975, the CIA was led by a reformer. Today, the CIA is led by William Burns, one of America’s long-standing leading diplomats. Burns knows the truth about Ukraine, since he served as Ambassador to Russia in 2008 and cabled Washington about the grave error of pushing NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Given Burns’ stature and diplomatic accomplishments, perhaps he would support the urgently needed accountability.

The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding. In Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Kosovo, Ukraine, and far beyond, the needless deaths, instability, and destruction unleashed by CIA subversion continues to this day. The mainstream media, academic institutions, and Congress should be investigating these operations to the best of their ability and demanding the release of documents to enable democratic accountability.

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee hearings. Fifty years on, with the precedent, inspiration, and guidance of the Church Committee itself, it’s urgently time to open the blinds, expose the truth about the U.S.-led mayhem, and begin a new era in which U.S. foreign policy becomes transparent, accountable, subject to the rule of law both domestic and international, and directed towards global peace rather than subversion of supposed enemies.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Jeffrey D. Sachs

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of "A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism" (2020). Other books include: "Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable" (2017) and "The Age of Sustainable Development," (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.

afghanistanchurch committeecongressinternational lawmike pompeonord stream pipelineseymour hershsyriaukrainecia

There are three basic problems with the CIA: its objectives, methods, and unaccountability. Its operational objectives are whatever the CIA or the President of the United States defines to be in the U.S. interest at a given time, irrespective of international law or U.S. law. Its methods are secretive and duplicitous. Its unaccountability means that the CIA and president run foreign policy without any public scrutiny. Congress is a doormat, a sideshow.

As a recent CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, said of his time at the CIA: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."

The CIA was established in 1947 as the successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS had performed two distinct roles in World War II, intelligence and subversion. The CIA took over both roles. On the one hand, the CIA was to provide intelligence to the US Government. On the other, the CIA was to subvert the “enemy,” that is, whomever the president or CIA defined as the enemy, using a wide range of measures: assassinations, coups, staged unrest, arming of insurgents, and other means.

It is the latter role that has proved devastating to global stability and the U.S. rule of law. It is a role that the CIA continues to pursue today. In effect, the CIA is a secret army of the U.S., capable of creating mayhem across the world with no accountability whatsoever.

When President Dwight Eisenhower decided that Africa’s rising political star, democratically elected Patrice Lumumba of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), was the “enemy,” the CIA conspired in his 1961 assassination, thus undermining the democratic hopes for Africa. He would hardly be the last African president brought down by the CIA.

The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding.

In its 77-year history, the CIA has been held to serious public account just once, in 1975. In that year, Idaho Senator Frank Church led a Senate investigation that exposed the CIA’s shocking rampage of assassinations, coups, destabilization, surveillance, and Mengele-style torture and medical “experiments.”

The expose by the Church Committee of the CIA’s shocking malfeasance has recently been chronicled in a superb book by the investigative reporter James Risen, The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy.

That single episode of oversight occurred because of a rare confluence of events.

In the year before the Church Committee, the Watergate scandal had toppled Richard Nixon and weakened the White House. As successor to Nixon, Gerald Ford was unelected, a former Congressman, and reluctant to oppose the oversight prerogatives of the Congress. The Watergate scandal, investigated by the Senate Ervin Committee, had also empowered the Senate and demonstrated the value of Senate oversight of Executive Branch abuses of power. Crucially, the CIA was newly led by Director William Colby, who wanted to clean up the CIA operations. Also, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, author of pervasive illegalities also exposed by the Church committee, had died in 1972.

In December 1974, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, then as now a great reporter with sources inside the CIA, published an account of illegal CIA intelligence operations against the U.S. antiwar movement. The Senate Majority Leader at the time, Mike Mansfield, a leader of character, then appointed Church to investigate the CIA. Church himself was a brave, honest, intelligent, independent-minded, and intrepid Senator, characteristics chronically in short supply in U.S. politics.

If only the CIA’s rogue operations had been consigned to history as a result of the crimes exposed by the Church Committee, or at the least had brought the CIA under the rule of law and public accountability. But that was not to be. The CIA has had the last laugh —or better said, has brought the world to tears—by maintaining its preeminent role in U.S. foreign policy, including overseas subversion.

Since 1975, the CIA has run secretive operations backing Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan that utterly wrecked Afghanistan while giving rise to al-Qaeda. The CIA has likely run secretive operations in the Balkans against Serbia, in the Caucuses against Russia, and in Central Asia targeting China, all deploying CIA-backed jihadists. In the 2010s, the CIA ran deadly operations to topple Syria’s Bashir al-Assad, again with Islamic jihadists. For at least 20 years, the CIA has been deeply involved in fomenting the growing catastrophe in Ukraine, including the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 that triggered the devastating war now engulfing Ukraine.

What do we know of these operations? Only the parts that whistleblowers, a few intrepid investigative reporters, a handful of brave scholars, and some foreign governments have been willing or able to tell us, with all of these potential witnesses knowing that they might face severe retribution from the U.S. government. There has been little to no accountability by the U.S. government itself, or meaningful oversight or restraint imposed by Congress. On the contrary, the government has become ever-more obsessively secretive, pursuing aggressive legal actions against disclosures of classified information, even when, or especially when, that information describes the illegal actions by the government itself.

Once in a while, a former U.S. official spills the beans, such as when Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed that he had induced Jimmy Carter to assign the CIA to train Islamic jihadists to destabilize the government of Afghanistan, with the aim of inducing the Soviet Union to invade that country.

In the case of Syria, we learned from a few stories in the New York Times in 2016 and 2017 of the CIA’s subversive operations to destabilize Syria and overthrow Assad, as ordered by President Barack Obama. Here is the case of a dreadfully misguided CIA operation, blatantly in violation of international law, that has led to a decade of mayhem, an escalating regional war, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of displaced people, and yet there has not been a single honest acknowledgment of this CIA-led disaster by the White House or Congress.

In the case of Ukraine, we know that the U.S. played a major covert role in the violent coup that brought down Yanukovych and that swept Ukraine into a decade of bloodshed but to this day, we don’t know the details. Russia offered the world a window into the coup by intercepting and then posting a call between Victoria Nuland, then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State (now Under-Secretary of State) and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (now Assistant Secretary of State), in which they plot the post-coup government. Following the coup, the CIA covertly trained special operations forces of the post-coup regime the U.S. had helped bring to power. The U.S. government has been mum about the CIA’s covert operations in Ukraine.

We have good reason to believe that CIA operatives carried out the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, as per Seymour Hersh, who is now an independent reporter. Unlike in 1975, when Hersh was with the New York Times at a time when the paper still tried to hold the government to account, the Times does not even deign to look into Hersh’s account.

Holding the CIA to public account is of course a steep uphill struggle. Presidents and the Congress don’t even try. The mainstream media don’t investigate the CIA, preferring instead to quote “senior unnamed officials” and the official cover-up. Are the mainstream media outlets lazy, suborned, afraid of advertising revenues from the military-industrial complex, threatened,

ignorant, or all of the above? Who knows.

There is a tiny glimmer of hope. Back in 1975, the CIA was led by a reformer. Today, the CIA is led by William Burns, one of America’s long-standing leading diplomats. Burns knows the truth about Ukraine, since he served as Ambassador to Russia in 2008 and cabled Washington about the grave error of pushing NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Given Burns’ stature and diplomatic accomplishments, perhaps he would support the urgently needed accountability.

The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding. In Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Kosovo, Ukraine, and far beyond, the needless deaths, instability, and destruction unleashed by CIA subversion continues to this day. The mainstream media, academic institutions, and Congress should be investigating these operations to the best of their ability and demanding the release of documents to enable democratic accountability.

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee hearings. Fifty years on, with the precedent, inspiration, and guidance of the Church Committee itself, it’s urgently time to open the blinds, expose the truth about the U.S.-led mayhem, and begin a new era in which U.S. foreign policy becomes transparent, accountable, subject to the rule of law both domestic and international, and directed towards global peace rather than subversion of supposed enemies.

Jeffrey D. Sachs

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of "A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism" (2020). Other books include: "Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable" (2017) and "The Age of Sustainable Development," (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.

There are three basic problems with the CIA: its objectives, methods, and unaccountability. Its operational objectives are whatever the CIA or the President of the United States defines to be in the U.S. interest at a given time, irrespective of international law or U.S. law. Its methods are secretive and duplicitous. Its unaccountability means that the CIA and president run foreign policy without any public scrutiny. Congress is a doormat, a sideshow.

As a recent CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, said of his time at the CIA: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."

The CIA was established in 1947 as the successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS had performed two distinct roles in World War II, intelligence and subversion. The CIA took over both roles. On the one hand, the CIA was to provide intelligence to the US Government. On the other, the CIA was to subvert the “enemy,” that is, whomever the president or CIA defined as the enemy, using a wide range of measures: assassinations, coups, staged unrest, arming of insurgents, and other means.

It is the latter role that has proved devastating to global stability and the U.S. rule of law. It is a role that the CIA continues to pursue today. In effect, the CIA is a secret army of the U.S., capable of creating mayhem across the world with no accountability whatsoever.

When President Dwight Eisenhower decided that Africa’s rising political star, democratically elected Patrice Lumumba of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), was the “enemy,” the CIA conspired in his 1961 assassination, thus undermining the democratic hopes for Africa. He would hardly be the last African president brought down by the CIA.

The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding.

In its 77-year history, the CIA has been held to serious public account just once, in 1975. In that year, Idaho Senator Frank Church led a Senate investigation that exposed the CIA’s shocking rampage of assassinations, coups, destabilization, surveillance, and Mengele-style torture and medical “experiments.”

The expose by the Church Committee of the CIA’s shocking malfeasance has recently been chronicled in a superb book by the investigative reporter James Risen, The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy.

That single episode of oversight occurred because of a rare confluence of events.

In the year before the Church Committee, the Watergate scandal had toppled Richard Nixon and weakened the White House. As successor to Nixon, Gerald Ford was unelected, a former Congressman, and reluctant to oppose the oversight prerogatives of the Congress. The Watergate scandal, investigated by the Senate Ervin Committee, had also empowered the Senate and demonstrated the value of Senate oversight of Executive Branch abuses of power. Crucially, the CIA was newly led by Director William Colby, who wanted to clean up the CIA operations. Also, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, author of pervasive illegalities also exposed by the Church committee, had died in 1972.

In December 1974, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, then as now a great reporter with sources inside the CIA, published an account of illegal CIA intelligence operations against the U.S. antiwar movement. The Senate Majority Leader at the time, Mike Mansfield, a leader of character, then appointed Church to investigate the CIA. Church himself was a brave, honest, intelligent, independent-minded, and intrepid Senator, characteristics chronically in short supply in U.S. politics.

If only the CIA’s rogue operations had been consigned to history as a result of the crimes exposed by the Church Committee, or at the least had brought the CIA under the rule of law and public accountability. But that was not to be. The CIA has had the last laugh —or better said, has brought the world to tears—by maintaining its preeminent role in U.S. foreign policy, including overseas subversion.

Since 1975, the CIA has run secretive operations backing Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan that utterly wrecked Afghanistan while giving rise to al-Qaeda. The CIA has likely run secretive operations in the Balkans against Serbia, in the Caucuses against Russia, and in Central Asia targeting China, all deploying CIA-backed jihadists. In the 2010s, the CIA ran deadly operations to topple Syria’s Bashir al-Assad, again with Islamic jihadists. For at least 20 years, the CIA has been deeply involved in fomenting the growing catastrophe in Ukraine, including the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 that triggered the devastating war now engulfing Ukraine.

What do we know of these operations? Only the parts that whistleblowers, a few intrepid investigative reporters, a handful of brave scholars, and some foreign governments have been willing or able to tell us, with all of these potential witnesses knowing that they might face severe retribution from the U.S. government. There has been little to no accountability by the U.S. government itself, or meaningful oversight or restraint imposed by Congress. On the contrary, the government has become ever-more obsessively secretive, pursuing aggressive legal actions against disclosures of classified information, even when, or especially when, that information describes the illegal actions by the government itself.

Once in a while, a former U.S. official spills the beans, such as when Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed that he had induced Jimmy Carter to assign the CIA to train Islamic jihadists to destabilize the government of Afghanistan, with the aim of inducing the Soviet Union to invade that country.

In the case of Syria, we learned from a few stories in the New York Times in 2016 and 2017 of the CIA’s subversive operations to destabilize Syria and overthrow Assad, as ordered by President Barack Obama. Here is the case of a dreadfully misguided CIA operation, blatantly in violation of international law, that has led to a decade of mayhem, an escalating regional war, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of displaced people, and yet there has not been a single honest acknowledgment of this CIA-led disaster by the White House or Congress.

In the case of Ukraine, we know that the U.S. played a major covert role in the violent coup that brought down Yanukovych and that swept Ukraine into a decade of bloodshed but to this day, we don’t know the details. Russia offered the world a window into the coup by intercepting and then posting a call between Victoria Nuland, then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State (now Under-Secretary of State) and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (now Assistant Secretary of State), in which they plot the post-coup government. Following the coup, the CIA covertly trained special operations forces of the post-coup regime the U.S. had helped bring to power. The U.S. government has been mum about the CIA’s covert operations in Ukraine.

We have good reason to believe that CIA operatives carried out the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, as per Seymour Hersh, who is now an independent reporter. Unlike in 1975, when Hersh was with the New York Times at a time when the paper still tried to hold the government to account, the Times does not even deign to look into Hersh’s account.

Holding the CIA to public account is of course a steep uphill struggle. Presidents and the Congress don’t even try. The mainstream media don’t investigate the CIA, preferring instead to quote “senior unnamed officials” and the official cover-up. Are the mainstream media outlets lazy, suborned, afraid of advertising revenues from the military-industrial complex, threatened,

ignorant, or all of the above? Who knows.

There is a tiny glimmer of hope. Back in 1975, the CIA was led by a reformer. Today, the CIA is led by William Burns, one of America’s long-standing leading diplomats. Burns knows the truth about Ukraine, since he served as Ambassador to Russia in 2008 and cabled Washington about the grave error of pushing NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Given Burns’ stature and diplomatic accomplishments, perhaps he would support the urgently needed accountability.

The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding. In Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Kosovo, Ukraine, and far beyond, the needless deaths, instability, and destruction unleashed by CIA subversion continues to this day. The mainstream media, academic institutions, and Congress should be investigating these operations to the best of their ability and demanding the release of documents to enable democratic accountability.

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee hearings. Fifty years on, with the precedent, inspiration, and guidance of the Church Committee itself, it’s urgently time to open the blinds, expose the truth about the U.S.-led mayhem, and begin a new era in which U.S. foreign policy becomes transparent, accountable, subject to the rule of law both domestic and international, and directed towards global peace rather than subversion of supposed enemies.

commondreams.org · by Jeffrey D. Sachs · February 12, 2024

12. Senate Passes $95.3 Billion Ukraine, Israel Aid Package

Senate Passes $95.3 Billion Ukraine, Israel Aid Package

Bill’s fate in House uncertain amid push for border provisions

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/senate-on-verge-of-passing-95-3-billion-ukraine-israel-aid-package-55d07d5a?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Siobhan Hughes

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 and Lindsay Wise

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Updated Feb. 13, 2024 7:09 am ET

The Senate’s final passage comes amid intense GOP infighting over Ukraine. PHOTO: NATHAN HOWARD/REUTERS

WASHINGTON—President Biden’s drive to send more aid to Ukraine took a big step forward, as the Senate passed a $95.3 billion package on Tuesday that also includes funds for allies Israel and Taiwan, overcoming the objections of many Republicans who opposed spending so much money abroad.

The Senate’s approval of the measure on a 70-29 vote comes at a critical moment for Ukraine, which has been running short of supplies and manpower after a failed counteroffensive against Russia last year. Twenty-two Republicans joined almost all Democrats in supporting the bill. Three members of the Democratic caucus who have expressed concerns about Israel’s military operations in Gaza voted no. Passage occurred around 6:30 a.m. after opponents delayed the vote with a marathon night of floor speeches.

“It’s been a long night, a long weekend and a long few months, but a new day is here,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.). “With this bill, the Senate declares that American leadership will not waver, will not falter, will not fail.”

In a post on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked senators. “Continued US assistance helps to save human lives from Russian terror,” he said.

The bill now goes to the GOP-controlled House, where it faces an uncertain fate because of the greater power of Ukraine skeptics and influence of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has opposed more aid and recently suggested turning the aid package into a loan. Some lawmakers are demanding a crackdown on the U.S. border as a condition for any aid, relitigating demands from last year. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) has criticized the Senate aid bill for lacking border provisions but has kept his options open.

Ukrainian servicemen preparing for combat in an undisclosed location near the front line in February. PHOTO: GENYA SAVILOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Proponents of the Senate bill, who included both Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), argued the U.S. risks its own security and the current global order if it turns inward and ignores the rise of authoritarian forces around the world. They painted the vote in stark terms.

“History settles every account,” said McConnell, who has taken barbs from his right flank for his persistent support of Ukraine. Today, he said, “history will record that the Senate did not blink.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah), who isn’t running for re-election, called the Ukraine measure “the most important vote we will ever take as U.S. senators.” He said that letting Ukraine fall would have ripple effects around the globe, opening the door for Russia to ultimately invade a NATO ally and sending a signal to China that the U.S. wouldn’t stand up against a takeover of Taiwan.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.) choked up when he acknowledged that his constituents might not agree with his support for the aid package, but he felt it was a rare moment in his career when his vote truly mattered. “I believe in America First, but unfortunately America First means we have to engage in the world,” Moran said. America’s enemies are on the march, he said, adding, “It’s always easier, I suppose, to look the other way.”

But Republican opponents described continued aid for the war efforts as folly, arguing that America doesn’t have the resources to keep supporting Kyiv—or that Russian President Vladimir Putin would prevail anyway. Other GOP opponents insisted that the U.S. needed to better secure its own border before providing more aid overseas, trying to restart a legislative fight that stalled out last week after Republicans, including Johnson, rejected as inadequate a bipartisan compromise devised by Sens. James Lankford (R., Okla.), Kyrsten Sinema (I., Ariz.) and Chris Murphy (D., Conn.).

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at the Capitol ahead of a procedural vote. PHOTO: JIM LO SCALZO/SHUTTERSTOCK

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) called the bill “the middle finger to every working man and woman in America.” He said that it tells Americans, “We don’t care about you. We care more about Ukraine than we care about our southern border.”

“If you’re concerned about the Ukrainian people, you ought to do everything you can to bring this war to an end,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), who opposed the bill. “Again, that’s not to say I’m supporting Putin. He’s an evil war criminal. But he will not lose, he’s not going to lose. And at some point in time, people here need to recognize that reality.”

Congress took four separate votes to appropriate more than $110 billion for Ukraine in 2022, when Democrats controlled both chambers and the White House, but provided no money for Ukraine last year once Republicans won the House. The new aid package would contain the largest single infusion of aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion, providing about $60 billion related to Ukraine, with much of that available through Sept. 30, 2025. 

That includes some $20 billion to replenish U.S. stockpiles drawn down during earlier rounds of support to Ukraine, and $13.8 billion to help Ukraine buy weapons and munitions from the U.S. It also includes $7.85 billion to help sustain Ukraine’s government—a reduction from the $11.8 billion requested by the Biden administration—and a prohibition on using the funds to cover pensions for Ukrainians.

The bill also includes $14.1 billion for Israel, both for missile-defense systems and to help Israel finance other weaponry, and $9.15 billion to provide food, water and other humanitarian aid in hot spots including Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine. It provides $2.4 billion to support U.S. operations related to attacks by the Houthis on global shipping operations in the Red Sea. It wraps in a separate sanctions and anti-money-laundering measure aimed at cracking down on groups bringing deadly fentanyl into the U.S.

Israeli soldiers look away as a helicopter takes off during a military exercise in Upper Galilee near the Lebanon border. PHOTO: JALAA MAREY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Many House Republicans expect Speaker Johnson, a Trump ally, to revive a push to link border security to the funding package. 

“House Republicans were crystal clear from the very beginning of discussions that any so-called national security supplemental legislation must recognize that national security begins at our own border,” Speaker Johnson said in a statement on Monday. He said the House “will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters.”

Support for Ukraine has softened after an early burst of support in 2022, with Republican backing shifting noticeably as Trump has railed against more aid. In a December 2023 Wall Street Journal poll, some 56% of Republicans said that the U.S. was already doing too much to help Ukraine, compared with 11% who said America wasn’t doing enough.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a military hawk who has opposed the Ukraine package because of lack of border provisions, said in a statement that the money to Ukraine should be converted into a loan, as suggested by Trump. “President Trump is right to insist that we think outside the box,” said Graham, who is skipping the annual Munich Security Conference, where he had been scheduled to be a marquee attendee this weekend.

Those sentiments were repeated by other Republican lawmakers, who spoke by phone to Trump Monday about the loan idea and how they might implement it. “It’s a brilliant idea,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.).

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WSJ explores where U.S. aid to Ukraine has gone so far and what could happen if additional funding remains stalled. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

Write to Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com and Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Mitch McConnell is the Senate minority leader. A caption in an earlier version of this article incorrectly said he is the House minority leader. (Corrected on Feb. 13)

13. China’s Shipyards Are Ready for a Protracted War. America’s Aren’t.

Another major strategic weakness.

Excerpts:

Today, America’s shipyards are struggling to keep up with peacetime demand. Submarines are bogged down by maintenance delays and new ones are behind schedule. The Navy, for instance, is expecting two new Virginia-class submarines a year, but is receiving the boats at the rate of 1.4, a Defense Department official said last year.

There isn’t enough trained labor, dry docks are in short supply, and in the case of some critical components, only a handful of vendors are still standing. 

This is especially troubling, U.S. strategists say, in light of what the Ukraine conflict has shown: Wars can last a long time and fighting them requires industry. America’s weapons factories have struggled to keep up with Ukraine’s battlefields. Its munition makers—and shipyards—aren’t ready for a war with China.

If the U.S. intervened in a conflict over Taiwan, American forces would need to stop Chinese ships from reaching the island and discharging equipment and thousands of troops. Each side would try to take as many enemy ships off the board as possible to prevent those ships from firing their missiles.

In such a scenario, both sides would need to quickly get their damaged ships back into play—repaired, ready to re-enter combat and able to use their firepower. The U.S. would struggle to ramp-up shipbuilding and repair facilities midwar, not least because modern shipyard workers need to be trained.

China would have no such troubles. Its advantage is visible on an island near Shanghai, at the mouth of the river Yangtze. Two immense shipyards are now located on the island, known as Changxing, concentrating a great deal of ship-making power in one place.

China’s Shipyards Are Ready for a Protracted War. America’s Aren’t.

While Chinese shipyards are thriving and primed to build at wartime rates, U.S. shipbuilding is in disarray

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-shipyards-are-ready-for-a-protracted-war-americas-arent-d6f004dd?mod=Searchresults_pos2&page=1

By Niharika MandhanaFollow

Updated Feb. 13, 2024 12:03 am ET

China emerged as a global power by turning itself into the world’s factory floor. It is expanding that power, and its military might, with another striking industrial feat: becoming the world’s shipyard.

More than half of the world’s commercial shipbuilding output came from China last year—making it the top global shipmaker by a wide margin. The once-prolific shipyards of the West that helped forge empires, expand trade and win wars have shriveled. Europe accounts for just 5% of the world’s output, while the U.S. contributes next to nothing. Most of what China doesn’t build comes from South Korea and Japan.

“The scale [of China’s shipbuilding] is just almost hard to fathom,” said Thomas Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security whose research focuses on maritime competition. “The degree to which it dwarfs American shipbuilding is just unbelievable.”

This shipbuilding empire is a symbol of China’s historic transformation from an inward-looking continental nation to a maritime power. But it is more than that. It is a pivotal strategic asset for Beijing as Chinese leader Xi Jinping tries to reshape the world order in peacetime and prepares to prevail over his nation’s rivals during war. 

Giant Chinese shipbuilding firms that crank out merchant ships for the world are often the same ones building warships for China’s navy. Their shipyards are thriving, with billion-dollar contracts pouring in not just for warfighting gray hulls but also for containerships, oil tankers and bulk carriers for shipping lines from China, the West and even Taiwan. 

With their order books full for years to come, the shipyards have expanded, trained enormous pools of workers and built sprawling supply chains. 

China’s military planners have leveraged all that to build up the world’s largest navy, in hull count—a force central to Xi’s greatest ambitions of projecting power overseas, protecting the sea lanes that connect China to the world and absorbing Taiwan. 

The huge Hudong Zhonghua shipyard, in central Shanghai, is being relocated to Changxing Island at the mouth of the river Yangtze. PHOTO: © CARLOS BARRIA / REUTERS/REUTERS

China is concentrating a great deal of ship-making power in one place. PHOTO: © CARLOS BARRIA / REUTERS/REUTERS

America’s once-robust shipbuilding industry has shrunk. It no longer produces any significant number of commercial oceangoing ships. Several shipyards have only one big customer, the Navy, and those shipyards are often battling backlogs, worker shortages, a paucity of suppliers and cost overruns.

The major difference between the Chinese and American shipbuilding industrial bases is that “China benefits from a massive commercial shipbuilding workload,” Rear Adm. Thomas J. Anderson said to a congressional subcommittee in May, when he was the program executive officer for ships in the U.S. Navy. Meanwhile, he said, the U.S. government largely goes it alone, bearing all the costs of the ships and associated infrastructure.

“Clearly China’s commercial shipbuilding industry provides them a massive advantage when it comes to shipbuilding capacity,” he said.

In a protracted conflict, China’s shipyards would give its navy a significant upper hand. Sized to build at wartime rates, they would be able to quickly accelerate production, replace lost ships and repair damaged ones. That is a capability U.S. shipyards brought to the fight during World War II, building Allied vessels faster than German U-boats could sink them. 

Today, America’s shipyards are struggling to keep up with peacetime demand. Submarines are bogged down by maintenance delays and new ones are behind schedule. The Navy, for instance, is expecting two new Virginia-class submarines a year, but is receiving the boats at the rate of 1.4, a Defense Department official said last year.

There isn’t enough trained labor, dry docks are in short supply, and in the case of some critical components, only a handful of vendors are still standing. 

This is especially troubling, U.S. strategists say, in light of what the Ukraine conflict has shown: Wars can last a long time and fighting them requires industry. America’s weapons factories have struggled to keep up with Ukraine’s battlefields. Its munition makers—and shipyards—aren’t ready for a war with China.

If the U.S. intervened in a conflict over Taiwan, American forces would need to stop Chinese ships from reaching the island and discharging equipment and thousands of troops. Each side would try to take as many enemy ships off the board as possible to prevent those ships from firing their missiles.

In such a scenario, both sides would need to quickly get their damaged ships back into play—repaired, ready to re-enter combat and able to use their firepower. The U.S. would struggle to ramp-up shipbuilding and repair facilities midwar, not least because modern shipyard workers need to be trained.

China would have no such troubles. Its advantage is visible on an island near Shanghai, at the mouth of the river Yangtze. Two immense shipyards are now located on the island, known as Changxing, concentrating a great deal of ship-making power in one place.

Changxing Island is being transformed into a colossal “shipbuilding base,” wrote the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a May report. The buildup started with the relocation of the Jiangnan shipyard to the island from central Shanghai through the years 2005 to 2008. That was followed by the transfer of a second shipyard, Hudong Zhonghua, which is still under way.

Changxing Island shipbuilding base

CHINA

Changxing

Island

Jiangnan Shipyard (2008-’16)

Jiangnan Shipyard expansion (’16-’20)

Expansion for Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard (’21-present)

Sources: Center for Strategic and International Studies; Maxar (satellite image)

The shipyards belong to subsidiaries of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, a state-owned behemoth whose clients range from the Chinese navy to foreign shipping lines. French shipping giant CMA CGM last year signed a $3 billion deal with it for 16 containerships, after ordering 22 vessels two years before that. Taiwanese shipping company 

Evergreen Marine also sends large contracts its way.Satellite images from May obtained from Maxar Technologies show Jiangnan’s vast facility. Around two dozen ships are visible at the busy yard. Some are new; others appear to be in for refurbishment or repairs. There are what appear to be containerships, destroyers and China’s third aircraft carrier, known as the Type 003.

“Where we used to see some levels of division between the commercial side of things and the military side of things, those lines have just become increasingly blurred,” said Matthew Funaiole, a senior fellow of the China Power Project at CSIS, who closely follows developments in Chinese shipbuilding.

Satellite images of Jiangnan analyzed by CSIS in recent years captured an Evergreen vessel docked alongside three Chinese warships and, in another instance, the identifiable green of an Evergreen hull next to the Chinese aircraft carrier. A dry dock used for the carrier was earlier occupied by a containership being built for CMA CGM, the CSIS analysis showed, suggesting that resources were being shared between the commercial and military side of operations. 

A Chinese survey ship at the original site of the Jiangnan shipyard in Shanghai in 2023. PHOTO: CFOTO/ZUMA PRESS

When foreign companies pay the Chinese shipyard, a portion of those proceeds is very likely reinvested in the shipyard, said Funaiole. “If the piers and dry docks and assembly halls that are being invested in are also the piers and dry docks and assembly halls that are used to produce military vessels, how do you write that?”

To Shugart at the Center for a New American Security, this is the upshot: “All these countries that are buying ships from China are paying them to build the shipyards they would need to repair their fleet in wartime,” he said, adding, “It’s kind of hard to watch.”

CMA CGM didn’t respond to a request for comment. Evergreen said that its vessels were being built by the commercial department of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, which it said was separate from the company’s military department. Evergreen’s shipbuilding contracts are of a purely civil commercial nature, it said.

China’s navy fields 370 battle force ships, more than the U.S. Navy. That number is expected to rise to 435 by 2030. Its shipyards are building increasingly sophisticated warships, such as the large and well-equipped Renhai-class surface combatant. They have also built the world’s largest coast guard and fishing fleets, and an extensive merchant marine—adding to China’s sea power.

The U.S. Navy is expected, meanwhile, to stay the same size or get smaller in the next several years from the present 292 hulls, retiring more ships than it commissions, before it starts to grow again. The logistics support and sealift fleet that helps the military is aging.

The U.S. Navy has superior platforms than China’s, such as a large number of aircraft carriers. But naval strategists increasingly argue that fleet size also matters—the bigger, the better.

Carlos Del Toro, the U.S. Navy secretary, says he is looking hard at shipbuilding. He has directed a review of the causes of U.S. shipbuilding problems and is seeking recommendations for a shipbuilding industrial base “that provides combat capabilities that our warfighters need, on a schedule that is relevant,” according to the Navy.

In October, he visited a privately-owned shipyard not far from San Francisco. The area was home to one of the busiest naval shipyards during World War II—a symbol of the glory days of U.S. shipbuilding, much like Changxing Island is of China’s shipbuilding might today. Mare Island Naval Shipyard built 17 nuclear-powered submarines in the decades after the war before it was closed down in the mid-90s.  

“History demonstrates a clear pattern: No great naval power has ever existed without also being a dominant commercial maritime power, encompassing both shipbuilding and global shipping,” Del Toro said late last year.

Write to Niharika Mandhana at niharika.mandhana@wsj.com

14. Opinion | China airbrushed away its foreign minister. Why?

Opinion | China airbrushed away its foreign minister. Why?

By David Ignatius

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February 12, 2024 at 6:11 p.m. EST

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · February 12, 2024

For nearly eight months, diplomats around the world have puzzled over the sudden disappearance and firing of China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang. China watchers have shared plenty of speculation, but Beijing has said nothing officially — and even the CIA doesn’t know for certain what happened.

Theories about Qin’s fall from power have focused on his relationship with a Chinese TV journalist named Fu Xiaotian. Qin, though married to another woman, was linked publicly to Fu after she had a child with an unidentified father through an American surrogate in 2022, just before he returned from his post as ambassador to Washington. That created a storm on Chinese social media. But was it enough to demolish the career of the foreign minister?

Qin was widely resented among his colleagues because he had risen so rapidly within the Foreign Ministry, U.S. officials say. He was viewed as a pet of Chinese President Xi Jinping, for whom he’d served as protocol chief, which peeved colleagues and produced what one U.S. official calls a “blood feud” with his predecessor, Wang Yi, who now oversees all foreign policy. But that resentment doesn’t explain his catastrophic downfall, either.

The most tantalizing theories involve speculation that Fu was an agent of a foreign intelligence service and that her spying compromised Qin. One U.S. diplomat told me he heard that Qin was a Russian agent. No, said a former U.S. official with long-standing dealings with Beijing, Chinese officials believe that Fu served as a British agent for more than a decade. The spy stories are juicy, but I haven’t been able to confirm them.

We’re left with a mystery that underlines how opaque China’s one-party state remains and how hard it is for the CIA, probably the world’s premier intelligence service, to penetrate its walls of secrecy. “We’ve looked far and wide for what happened to Qin, but it’s as if he disappeared, with his photo airbrushed out of the picture as in the Stalin era in the Soviet Union,” said a senior Biden administration official who follows China closely.

“We do not have any relevant information to offer,” said a spokesperson from the Chinese Embassy when asked about Qin’s disappearance and the spy rumors. A CIA spokesperson also declined to comment. So did a spokesperson for the British Foreign Office in London.

Qin disappeared from public view June 25, and he was officially removed from his post a month later. Intriguingly, the day he vanished, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko visited Beijing for high-level talks.

Did Rudenko bring evidence that Qin was compromised? That’s the version recounted by the former U.S. official. He says the Russian Federal Security Service had previously warned the Chinese Ministry of State Security that Fu was an agent of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. But the Security Ministry had been reluctant to move against the foreign minister without “rock solid” evidence, the former U.S. official explained.

Press reports have speculated for months that Fu could have been a spy, and some suggested Britain might have recruited her. The Biden administration has heard these rumors and pressed both the CIA and Britain about them without getting any confirmation, the senior administration official said.

Whatever the trigger, Qin, 57, was arrested and investigated soon after his June disappearance, the senior administration official said. In the version recounted by the former U.S. official, the foreign minister didn’t know of his lover’s purported intelligence ties and tried to kill himself after confronted with the information. According to this account, Qin was hospitalized at a special facility for senior Chinese military and political officials, known as “Hospital 301.” There’s no independent confirmation of that.

Fu, 40, also disappeared and is almost certain to have been arrested and imprisoned. Like Qin, she had a meteoric rise, becoming a star host for state-controlled Phoenix TV’s “Talk With World Leaders” program until she was dropped in 2022. That year, Fu’s son, named Er-Kin, was born to the surrogate mother in the United States.

The ill-fated relationship between Qin and Fu began around 2010 in Britain, according to the Financial Times, when they both were working there. Fu, born in the city of Chongqing, earned a master’s degree at Churchill College in Cambridge in 2007 and joined the Phoenix media company. Qin served in London as a junior diplomat from 1995 to 1999 and was posted there a second time as a minister-counselor from 2010 to 2011, according to his official Foreign Ministry biography. That’s probably when he met Fu.

Qin rose quickly after he returned to Beijing in 2011 following his second London posting, serving as spokesman for the Foreign Ministry for three years and then, until 2017, as the ministry’s director of protocol, where he was responsible for organizing Xi’s trips. In that role, he is said by current and former U.S. officials to have developed close ties with the Chinese president.

This warm relationship was aided by Qin’s wife, Lin Yan, who became friendly with Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan. According to the senior administration official, Qin’s wife made mooncakes for Xi’s wife, almost as if she were a family member. Qin’s intimacy with the Xi family probably helped him skip the promotion ladder that is normal in China and ascend to foreign minister at a relatively young age. This rapid rise fostered resentment among his ministry peers.

“Qin’s obsequiousness toward Xi was an affront to the rigid hierarchy cultivated by the Foreign Ministry’s founder, Zhou Enlai,” explained Christopher K. Johnson, a former CIA senior China analyst who now heads China Strategies Group, a political-risk consulting firm. “The resultant squabbling left Chinese diplomats divided and distracted as Xi pushed harder for the Communist Party to usurp their ministry’s role in shaping foreign policy.”

As Qin rose, his purported affair with Fu would have become problematic for any foreign intelligence service that had contact with her. Spy services like to have well-placed agents, but not in such prominent places that they cause flaps. The danger of recruiting agents who eventually rise to lofty positions was described to me by a CIA source decades ago as “the prime minister problem.” But, again, there’s no proof this was a problem for Qin.

Fu’s position was awkward after Qin returned home in early 2023 to become foreign minister. She began posting references on Chinese and Western social media to her baby, whom she described as “precious baby son Er-Kin” in a post on Twitter last April, as she was flying home for the last time from the United States to China. She had posted the previous month that the baby’s father wasn’t American, and around Qin’s March 19 birthday, she posted a birthday greeting to the anonymous father, according to the Financial Times.

An abiding mystery in this story is the coincidence — perhaps — of the senior Russian diplomat’s visit to Beijing on the very day China’s foreign minister vanished. Whatever intelligence Rudenko might have brought, his deeper mission was probably to remind Xi of Russia’s staying power. The day before, renegade mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin sent his private army marching on Moscow — momentarily rocking the Kremlin. Though Prigozhin’s revolt was crushed, and he died two months later in a mysterious plane crash, Putin would have wanted to quickly remind Xi that he was in control.

The takeaway for me is that Russia isn’t the hapless junior partner it sometimes appears in its relationship with Beijing. Xi’s China might have growing wealth and power, but Putin remains a master of intelligence and political manipulation. “Putin is a case officer,” observes the senior administration official.

The fall of the foreign minister and the TV star reminds us finally that even in a rigid, one-party state such as China, political life can still turn on the very human foibles of individuals. And it’s a caution, too, of just how hard it is to penetrate the curtain of secrecy that surrounds the Chinese leadership.

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · February 12, 2024

15. A Tunnel Offers Clues to How Hamas Uses Gaza’s Hospitals

​See the interactive graphic at the link.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/12/world/middleeast/gaza-tunnel-israel-hamas.html

A Tunnel Offers Clues to How Hamas Uses Gaza’s Hospitals

By Matthew Rosenberg, Ronen Bergman, Aric Toler and Helmuth Rosales Feb. 13, 2024

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Gaza’s hospitals have emerged as a focal point in Israel’s war with Hamas, with each side citing how the other has pulled the facilities into the conflict as proof of the enemy’s disregard for the safety of civilians.

In four months of war, Israeli troops have entered several hospitals, including the Qatari Hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Rantisi Specialized Hospital for Children, to search for weapons and fighters. But Al-Shifa Hospital has taken on particular significance because it is Gaza’s largest medical facility, and because of Israel’s high-profile claims that Hamas leaders operated a command-and-control center beneath it. Hamas and the hospital’s staff, meanwhile, insisted it was only a medical center.

Al-Shifa’s value as a military target was not immediately clear in the days after the Nov. 15 raid, even after the Israeli military released the tunnel video that was used to create the 3-D model seen here.

But evidence examined by The New York Times suggests Hamas used the hospital for cover, stored weapons inside it and maintained a hardened tunnel beneath the complex that was supplied with water, power and air-conditioning.

Classified Israeli intelligence documents, obtained and reviewed by The Times, indicate that the tunnel is at least 700 feet long, twice as long as the military revealed publicly, and that it extends beyond the hospital and likely connects to Hamas’s larger underground network.

According to classified images reviewed by The Times, Israeli soldiers found underground bunkers, living quarters and a room that appeared to be wired for computers and communications equipment along a part of the tunnel beyond the hospital — chambers that were not visible in the video released by the Israeli military.

What the video showed under Al-Shifa

dot on the diagram follows the path of the video below that was released by Israel after the raid.

The Israeli military, however, has struggled to prove that Hamas maintained a command-and-control center under the facility. Critics of the Israeli military say the evidence does not support its early claims, noting that it had distributed material before the raid showing five underground complexes and also had said the tunnel network could be reached from wards inside a hospital building. Israel has publicly revealed the existence of only one tunnel entrance on the grounds of the hospital, at the shack outside its main buildings.

The Israeli military says that it moved carefully because the tunnel was booby-trapped and ran out of time to investigate before it destroyed the tunnel and withdrew from the hospital. Israeli and Qatari officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel had to leave the hospital to comply with the terms of a temporary ceasefire in late November.

American officials have said their own intelligence backs up the Israeli case, including evidence that Hamas used Al-Shifa to hold at least a few hostages. American intelligence also indicates that Hamas fighters evacuated the complex days before Israeli forces moved into Al-Shifa, destroying documents and electronics as they left.

Hospitals are protected under international law, even if they provide medical care for combatants, but their use for other acts that are “harmful to the enemy” can make them legitimate targets for military action. But any action must weigh the expected military advantage against the expected harm to civilians.

Al-Shifa, Israeli officials have argued, is an example of Hamas’s willingness to use hospitals as cover and turn civilians into human shields. But critics say it is also an example of the toll on civilians when Israeli forces surround and raid hospitals to pursue Hamas fighters or rescue hostages, operations that can cut off doctors from fuel and supplies and residents from urgently needed medical care.

Five premature babies died at Al-Shifa before the raid “due to lack of electricity and fuel,” according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which helped organize the evacuation of 31 other infants.

“We all know that the health care system is or has collapsed,” Lynn Hastings, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, has told reporters.

Shack

Built early July 2021

Surgery

building

Tunnel

Al-Shifa Hospital

100 ft

N

The portion of the tunnel visible in the Israeli military video is at least 350 feet long. But confidential military documents reveal that the tunnel extends twice as far. Satellite Image by Planet Labs

Israel launched its war in Gaza after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage. Since the start of the war, more than 28,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to health officials there.

In the face of international opprobrium over its raids on hospitals, Israel has publicized evidence that it says shows that Hamas hid fighters among the ill and injured, and held hostages in the facilities. The Israeli military said that before entering Al-Shifa, it warned the buildings’ occupants, opened evacuation routes and sent Arabic-speaking medical teams along with the soldiers.

Hamas and Gazan health officials say the hospitals have served only as medical facilities. But beyond accusing the Israeli military of planting evidence at hospitals, Hamas and Gazan officials have not directly refuted the evidence presented by Israel.

The Israeli military said it apprehended dozens of “terror operatives” at Kamal Adwan Hospital in December, and released videos, at the time, of men carrying weapons. A spokesman for the health ministry in Gaza said that Israeli forces had asked the hospital’s administrators to hand over the weapons of its security guards.

After the raid on the Qatari Hospital, the commonly used name for the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, the Israeli military showed a video on Nov. 5 of what it said was the entrance to “a tunnel that was being used for terror infrastructures” on the hospital’s grounds.

But the video appears to show something else: a water storage area built in 2016, when the hospital was constructed, according to engineering plans and images from the hospital’s construction reviewed by The Times.

The Israeli military declined to provide additional imagery to support its assertion that this was a tunnel entryway or part of a tunnel complex.

Just before the Al-Shifa raid, Israeli forces entered Al-Rantisi hospital, on Nov. 13, soon after its remaining patients and staff had left. Within days, the military released two videos that showed weapons and explosives it said it found there, and a room where it said hostages had been kept. The health ministry in Gaza disputed the assertions made in the videos and said the weapons were planted.

One of the videos released by Israel showed troops rushing into the hospital and appearing to find explosives, weapons and the hostage room. In the other, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman for the Israeli military, showed off guns, explosives and other weapons that he said were found in the basement of the hospital.

The video included footage of a piece of paper taped to a wall in the hospital’s basement. Admiral Hagari said the paper — a grid with Arabic words and numbers within each square — could be a schedule for guarding hostages “where every terrorist writes his name.”

The Gazan health ministry said it was nothing more than a work schedule. But the calendar begins on Oct. 7, the day of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, and an Arabic title written at the top uses the militants’ name for the assault: “Al Aqsa Flood Battle, 7/10/2023.”

Given its size and history, taking control of Al-Shifa was always a more important goal for the Israeli military than the other smaller facilities.

Concrete sections of the Al-Shifa tunnel are visible in this still image from the video released by the Israeli military. Israel Defense Forces

There is substantial independent evidence that Hamas constructed a vast tunnel network across Gaza. Senior Israeli defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, estimate the network is between 350 and 450 miles — extraordinary figures for a territory that at its longest point is only 25 miles. The officials estimate there are thousands of entrances to the network.

There is also established documentation that Hamas used Al-Shifa before the war to mask some of its activities. During Israel’s three-week war with Hamas in 2008, armed Hamas fighters in civilian clothing were seen roaming Al-Shifa’s corridors and killing an Israeli collaborator, according to a Times correspondent reporting in Gaza at the time. Six years later, during the next round of fighting, the militants routinely held news conferences at the hospital and used it as a safe meeting place for Hamas officials to speak with journalists.

After that war, Amnesty International reported that Hamas had used abandoned areas of Al-Shifa, “including the outpatients’ clinic area, to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical center.”

Israel’s critics, though, countered with statements made at the time by two Norwegian doctors, who described themselves as pro-Palestinian activists and had worked in Gaza during the 2014 war. They insisted that they saw no Hamas presence at Al-Shifa.

Israel has also released video footage, taken by the hospital’s own security cameras, which it says shows two hostages being brought to Al-Shifa shortly after being abducted in the Oct. 7 attack.

The Al-Shifa tunnel was discovered by following ducts that ran underground from air-conditioning units that were powered by the hospital’s electricity supply and mounted on one of its buildings, officials said. Israeli soldiers also found evidence that the hospital’s water supply was being fed to the tunnel.

The Israeli military has also displayed weapons and other equipment it said were found inside Al-Shifa, including grenades placed near an MRI machine. Among the cache presented to journalists were belongings that Israeli officials said had been taken from hostages, including a bag emblazoned with the name Be’eri, a kibbutz attacked by Hamas.

The military also said it found weapons in Al-Shifa’s parking lot, and a Toyota vehicle identical to those used in the Oct. 7 attack and loaded with the same equipment that militants carried during the raid, including guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Israeli officials speculated that it was a spare vehicle not used in the attack.

Images from the video released by the I.D.F. Clockwise from top left: A room, a sink, electrical wires and a bathroom. Israel Defense Forces

Some of what the Israeli military has shown so far does not wholly match the description of a terrorist headquarters that it offered ahead of its ground invasion of Gaza on Oct. 27.

Underneath Al-Shifa, the Israeli military wrote in a lengthy post on its website, “lies a labyrinth of tunnels and underground compounds used by Hamas’s leaders to direct terrorist activities and rocket fire and to manufacture and store a variety of weapons and ammunition.”

There may no longer be a way to directly assess that claim. Israeli forces remained at Al-Shifa for a little more than a week.

Hours before Israeli forces left the hospital on Nov. 24, soldiers lined the tunnel with explosives and destroyed it in a blast that sent plumes of smoke high into the air and rocked buildings on the ground above.

Methodology

The 3-D model of the tunnel underneath Al-Shifa Hospital is schematic and is based on the video released by the Israel Defense Forces, as well as other photos and videos of the tunnel. The Times counted more than 500 concrete modules used to construct the tunnel, and used the thickness of each module to verify the tunnel length within a reasonable range. The Times verified that the approximate location of the tunnel was underneath the surgery center, and that it extended to a shack that was built more recently.

Production by Malika Khurana. Neil Collier contributed reporting.

16. US Official Warns of China’s Growing Offensive Cyber Power

Conclusion:

These U.S. House hearings should serve as a huge repository of knowledge for India on China’s advances in the cyber offensive arena and accordingly inspire India to build better resiliency as well as redundancy to avoid any major shutdowns as happened in October 2020. This calls for more intense collaboration between India and the United States as well as other like-minded partners who are subjected to similar cyber attacks emanating from China.

US Official Warns of China’s Growing Offensive Cyber Power

thediplomat.com · by Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan

FBI Director Wray, in particular, sounded the alarm about China’s targeting of U.S. critical infrastructure for potential cyber attacks.

By

February 12, 2024

Credit: Illustration by Catherine Putz

China’s offensive cyber capabilities have been under the scanner for a few years now. Even though China does not have a formal cyber offensive strategy, the capability mix and the changing approach that China has developed in the cyber offensive realm remain quite consequential.

A recent U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hearing disclosed a lot about China’s growing offensive cyber prowess. The hearing titled “The CCP Cyber Threat to the American Homeland and National Security” revealed Beijing’s interests in targeting U.S. infrastructure, the disruption of which would “wreak havoc,” creating enormous harm to American society at large. The hearing included statements from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, and U.S. Cyber Command Chief General Paul Nakasone.

In his opening statement, Wray said that “the CCP’s dangerous actions – China’s multi-pronged assault on our national and economic security – make it the defining threat of our generation.” He added that the threat posed by the CCP to the United States’ critical infrastructure – including water treatment plants, the electrical grid, oil and gas pipelines, and the transportation sector – has received very little public focus. Wray remarked that “China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.”

According to Wray, China’s cyber offensive is not merely about planning for future conflict. Rather, he said, “today, and literally every day, they’re actively attacking our economic security – engaging in wholesale theft of our innovation and our personal and corporate data.” Also, Wray asserted that China plans to not merely target the U.S. military, but attack “across civilian infrastructure… Low blows against civilians are part of China’s plan.”

Wray’s comments also highlighted that the threat from China is not just its cyber offensive capabilities. He asserted that China is “vastly more dangerous by the way they knit cyber into a whole-of-government campaign against us.”

But Wray assured the Committee that the FBI is “laser-focused” on the cyber threats coming from China and that it is working with multiple partners internally and externally, including the domestic private sector, key government agencies, and US allies abroad. Wray also briefed the Committee about an operation from a few days ago, where the United States and its partners “identified hundreds of routers that had been taken over by the PRC state-sponsored espionage and hacking group known as Volt Typhoon. The Volt Typhoon malware enabled China to hide, among other things, pre-operational reconnaissance and network exploitation against critical infrastructure like our communications, energy, transportation, and water sectors.”

CISA Director Easterly as well as Nakasone, commander of the US Cyber Command, who was also part of the hearing, referred to Volt Typhoon as one of the most significant threat from China. Easterly added that based on Volt Typhoon and other Chinese cyber intrusions, the CISA has strengthened partnerships across different U.S. agencies, including industry as well as its partners, in order “to proactively reduce risks in the face of the most pressing threats.”

In detailing the FBI’s efforts at addressing China’s cyber threats, Wray said that the FBI has issued several Joint Cybersecurity Advisories on PRC State-Sponsored Cyber Actors, which provide details including China’s “tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that can be used by network defenders to both find and prevent malicious cyber actors from accessing their networks.” The FBI’s efforts include working with and pooling resources with multiple stakeholders, including cybersecurity industry professionals who may be on top of developments involving cyber vulnerabilities.

When Wray was asked about the risks posed by Chinese apps like TikTok, he said that a critical starting point is “the role of the Chinese government.” He claimed that the company is effectively under the thumb of the Chinese government.

Easterly also noted China’s pernicious cyber offensive capabilities, including in targeting critical infrastructure. She added that the Chinese cyber threats are not theoretical, and that CISA teams have found and eradicated Chinese intrusions in many sectors.

According to Easterly, countering Chinese malicious activities and strengthening the resilience of critical infrastructure, or even retaliating, will all still be insufficient because “unfortunately, the technology base underpinning much of our critical infrastructure is inherently insecure.” A bigger emphasis is being given now to security from the time of design in order to remove the vulnerabilities. Easterly went on to add additional measures that must be put in place to enhance the cyber resilience of critical infrastructure by inculcating a sense of security from the time of designing a product.

Other experts have somewhat similar conclusions about the United States’ cyber defenses. In a testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China’s cyber capabilities in February 2022, Winnona DeSombre of the Atlantic Council and Harvard Belfer Center stated in unambiguous terms that the U.S. “does not currently have adequate cyber defenses, personnel, supply chain security, or international technical and standards leadership to rival China long-term.”

In his testimony, Nakasone categorized China’s cyber threats as “persistent,” but he was a lot more optimistic about U.S. capabilities, which he characterized as “very, very good – the best.” He added that the United States will continue to “maintain its supremacy in cyberspace.” 

The cyber vulnerabilities faced by the U.S. are by no means unique. India remains equally vulnerable to and concerned about China’s cyber offensive capabilities. China’s state-backed actors have carried out cyber attacks on Indian critical infrastructure including one on the electricity grid that caused a massive power outage in Mumbai in October 2020. The power outage in 2020 reportedly caused delays in the running of trains as well as shut down Indian stock exchanges and hospitals for hours.

These U.S. House hearings should serve as a huge repository of knowledge for India on China’s advances in the cyber offensive arena and accordingly inspire India to build better resiliency as well as redundancy to avoid any major shutdowns as happened in October 2020. This calls for more intense collaboration between India and the United States as well as other like-minded partners who are subjected to similar cyber attacks emanating from China.

Authors

Contributing Author

Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan

Dr. Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy & Technology (CSST) at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

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thediplomat.com · by Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan

17. A new report says the world faces a 'dangerous decade' as instability and military spending rise

​So I went to the IiSS website to look for the report. It is at this link: https://www.iiss.org/publications/the-military-balance/. You can view a couple parts of it there.

​But you have to order the report through Amazon or Routledge. The Routledge website charges $850 for the report. Needless to say I will not be forwarding it.

A new report says the world faces a 'dangerous decade' as instability and military spending rise

BY DANICA KIRKA

Updated 8:10 AM EST, February 13, 2024

AP · February 13, 2024

LONDON (AP) — The world has entered an era of increasing instability as countries around the globe boost military spending in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas attack on Israel and China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea.

That’s the conclusion of a new report Tuesday from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which also highlighted rising tensions in the Arctic, North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the rise of military regimes in the Sahel region of Africa as contributing to a “deteriorating security environment.” The London-based think tank has compiled its annual estimate of the global military situation for the past 65 years.

“The current military-security situation heralds what is likely to be a more dangerous decade, characterized by the brazen application by some of military power to pursue claims — evoking a ‘might is right’ approach — as well as the desire among like-minded democracies for stronger bilateral and multilateral defense ties in response,’’ the report said.

Global defense spending rose 9% to $2.2 trillion last year as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now entering its third year, heightened concerns that China and other militarily powerful states may try to impose their will on neighbors, the IISS said.

The increase was even steeper in NATO, which has supported Ukraine as a bulwark against further Russian incursions into Europe. The alliance’s non-U.S. members have boosted military spending by 32% since Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, the institute found. Ten European members reached the alliance’s goal of spending 2% of economic output on defense last year, up from just two in 2014.

European defense spending received renewed attention in recent days after former U.S. President Donald Trump told a campaign rally that when he was president he told an unidentified NATO state he would “encourage” Russia to attack alliance members that didn’t meet their funding commitments.

“‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’” Trump recounted himself as saying. “‘No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’”

Trump’s remarks caused deep concern among alliance members such as Poland, where anxieties are high over the war Russia is waging in neighboring Ukraine.

One of the report’s key findings is that Russia has lost some 3,000 main battle tanks during the fighting in Ukraine, or roughly as many as Moscow had in its active inventory before the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

While Russia has replenished its forces by pulling 2,000 older tanks out of storage, the Ukrainian government in Kyiv is relying on Western nations to provide the ammunition and weaponry it needs to hold off its bigger neighbor.

“But Kyiv also continued to demonstrate its ingenuity in other ways, using Western and indigenously developed systems to put Russia’s Black Sea Fleet on the back foot,’’ the think tank said, citing Ukraine’s use of unmanned “maritime vehicles.”

Lessons learned from the war in Ukraine are starting to influence military planning in other countries, the IISS said. In particular, many countries have recognized that they need to increase production of military hardware and build up bigger stockpiles of materiel in case they are forced to fight a protracted war.

“A just-in-time mindset that has persisted for almost three decades is giving way to a just-in-case approach, though delivering on these ambitions is challenging,” the report said.

AP · February 13, 2024

18. Mongolia's former president mocks Putin with a map showing how big the Mongol empire used to be, and how small Russia was

Will MOngoloia be next on Putin's list for invasion?

Mongolia's former president mocks Putin with a map showing how big the Mongol empire used to be, and how small Russia was

news.yahoo.com · by Sinéad BakerUpdated February 12, 2024 at 7:05 AM·2 min read1.7kLink Copied

• Putin has relied on historical borders to argue Ukraine is part of Russia and to justify the war.
• Mongolia's former president shared a map of the Mongol Empire, which included parts of Russia.
• "After Putin's talk. I found Mongolian historic map. Don't worry. We are a peaceful and free nation," he wrote.

The former president of Mongolia mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend and his focus on history to try to justify his invasion of Ukraine.

Putin has frequently used historical borders to rationalize his brutal invasion, arguing that Russia has a claim over Ukraine even though Ukraine is an independent country.

In his interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last week, Putin outlined centuries of Russian and European history. Historians say much of the history he gave doesn't stand up.

On X, Tsakhia Elbegdorj, Mongolia's president between 2009 and 2017 and its former prime minister, poked fun at Putin's argument.

He shared maps showing how large the Mongol Empire was, with it once controlling parts of what is now Russia.

After Putin’s talk. I found Mongolian historic map. Don’t worry. We are a peaceful and free nation pic.twitter.com/w5c2Hr0cQK

— Mongol Tsakhia ELBEGDORJ (@elbegdorj) February 11, 2024

"After Putin's talk. I found Mongolian historic map. Don't worry. We are a peaceful and free nation," Elbegdorj wrote.

The maps he shared also showed how small Russia was in the 15th century.

The Mongol Empire was once the largest in the world. Its territory covered much of Eurasia and included modern-day China and much of Russia, as well as Ukraine.

Today, Mongolia, between China and Russia, is a smaller country, but it's still one of the world's largest nations in terms of overall landmass.

Mongolia's government has not supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine, though it has not outright condemned it.

But Elbegdorj has been vocal in his support for Ukraine.

He wrote in February 2023: "The world's democracies must rally with even greater resolve to declare that freedom is non-negotiable, and to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to win."

He added: "I know Putin does not tolerate freedom. I have sat with him on many occasions. He despises differences and competition. He fears a free Ukraine. As a deep narcissist, he could not afford to see more successful and prosperous neighbors."

Read the original article on Business Insider

news.yahoo.com · by Sinéad BakerUpdated February 12, 2024 at 7:05 AM·2 min read1.7kLink Copied

19. Kiev needs new strategy, not just a military reshuffle

Kiev needs new strategy, not just a military reshuffle - Asia Times

Battlefield setbacks, flagging Western support, economic decline and loss of lives militate against dogged strategy of retaking all Russia-occupied lands

asiatimes.com · by Stefan Wolff, Tetyana Malyarenko · February 13, 2024

The recent replacement of Valeriy Zaluzhnyi as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces may have put a temporary end to the increasingly public disagreements between the very popular “iron general” and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

But it has not answered the fundamental question of what a winning – or even surviving – strategy in the war with Russia could look like as it moves into its third year.

Several dynamics have come together that are deeper and more complex than just a major reshuffle of the military leadership. The bigger picture that will shape the future of the war – and with it the future of Ukraine and the European and international security order – comprises four main factors. These need to be analyzed together to understand the present, and – most importantly – the future predicaments of Ukraine and its Western partners.

First, the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023 and the increasing pressure that Russia has put on Ukraine’s frontlines and hinterland put into serious question the ability of Kiev to win. This is especially the case if victory for Ukraine means forcing Russia’s complete withdrawal from all territory occupied since 2014.

The impending fall of Avdiivka, a town about 20 kilometers to the west of Donetsk in the east of Ukraine, suggests that Kiev ultimately has a weaker hand to play in a battle of attrition when confronted by a ruthless adversary with greater resources.

There is heavy fighting around the town of Avdiivka which is expected to fall to Russian forces in the next few days. Institute for the Study of War

Much like the loss of Bakhmut in May 2023, or Soledar in January 2023, this was a symbolic rather than strategic defeat for Ukraine. It also represents, at best, pyrrhic victories for Russia – as in the case of Bakhmut.

But taken together, and seen in the context of the failed 2023 counteroffensive, these were not just symbolic defeats. They marked a real and extremely wasteful loss of financial resources, manpower and military equipment.

Zelensky’s dismissal of Zaluzhny puts the blame for last year’s disappointed hopes clearly on the latter. It also indicates, more worryingly, a lack of learning the lessons of these setbacks on the part of the Ukrainian president.

The fact that the new commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, is associated with several of these costly defeats – notably Bakhmut – does not bode well for the necessary change in Ukrainian strategy.

To his credit, Syrsky also masterminded the defense of Kiev in the early days of the war in 2022 and the successful counteroffensive the following summer which saw Ukraine recapture significant territory first around Kharkiv in the north and then Kherson in the south.

Notably, these successes happened before Russia embarked on the first of several mobilizations and shifted its economy to a war footing.

Faltering international support

The second key factor to keep in mind is that Ukraine’s battlefield successes in 2022 occurred at a time when Western support for Ukraine was in full swing. Those days are long gone. This has been evident in the protracted battles in the US Congress over sending more military aid to Ukraine.

The comments by former president – and 2024 Republic nominee-apparent – Donald Trump on his lack of commitment to NATO should he be reelected in November are equally worrisome.

Former US president Donald Trump. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Despite some detractors, the EU remains committed to support for Ukraine. This became clear following the recent agreement on a new 50 billion euro (US$53.8 billion) funding package for Ukraine through 2027.

But this will barely cover Ukraine’s budget deficit, let alone make up for a potentially significant drop in US military aid. Combined with Ukraine’s own shrinking domestic capabilities to mobilize further resources, the war will have to be fought in far more difficult conditions than in the first two years.

War fatigue

Meanwhile, Ukrainian society is increasingly suffering from war fatigue. Military setbacks, economic decline, deteriorating living conditions, corruption and the scale of the loss of lives – among troops and civilians alike – make sustaining the war effort at present levels more difficult as well. Especially if the goal remains retaking all the land that Russia has occupied since 2014.

The amended law on mobilization, intended to underpin this strategy, was adopted in the Ukrainian parliament on February 6. Its provisions, including lowering the conscription age from 27 to 25 years, mandatory digital certificates and electronic prescription notifications, and stricter penalties for evading military service, are further evidence of the waning enthusiasm in Ukrainian society for the war effort.

Together with yet another 90-day extension of martial law and several financial measures designed to tighten the government’s control over the economy, the more draconian provisions in the new mobilization law also heighten the sense of uncertainty over Ukraine’s political direction.

Zelensky’s presidential term comes to an end in May 2024 and new parliamentary elections would normally be due in the autumn. While it is generally agreed that elections are close to impossible at present, both the president’s and parliament’s legitimacy after the expiry of their constitutional terms will be open to question.

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This will ultimately be an issue for the constitutional court to resolve. But it has not stopped political forces within Ukraine opposed to Zelensky and his Servant of the People political party from piling pressure on the president to agree to a government of national unity.

Given the lack of popularity of this opposition, associated primarily with former president Petro Poroshenko – who Zelensky defeated in a landslide election in 2019 – this is hardly driven by popular demand. But it nonetheless signals further political turmoil at a time when Ukraine needs unity.

It is not clear whether Zelensky’s dismissal of Zaluzhny will strengthen or weaken any political opposition. In the short term, it is likely to benefit Zelensky whose popularity still dwarfs that of Poroshenko. Yet, because replacing Zaluzhny has not come with a signal that Ukraine’s war strategy will fundamentally change, this is a very risky move on the part of Zelensky.

Maintaining the current direction asks Ukrainians for yet more sacrifices. What Zelensky is offering in return depends on a range of at best highly uncertain returns that depend on many factors beyond the Ukrainian president’s control.

Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham and Tetyana Malyarenko is Professor of International Relations, Jean Monnet Professor of European Security, National University Odesa Law Academy

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

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asiatimes.com · by Stefan Wolff, Tetyana Malyarenko · February 13, 2024

20. Empowered edge versus the centralization trap: Who will wield AI better, the US or China?

Empowered edge versus the centralization trap: Who will wield AI better, the US or China? - Breaking Defense

It’s tempting to use AI to micromanage military operations from an all-seeing HQ. But experts warn the chaos of war means AI is best used to empower decentralized initiative — an area where the democratic West just might have the edge.

By  SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

on February 13, 2024 at 8:02 AM

breakingdefense.com · by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. · February 13, 2024

A soldier from the Army’s offensive cyber brigade during an exercise at Fort Lewis, Washington in 2015. (US Army photo)

WASHINGTON — Ukraine has become “the graveyard of command posts,” in the words of one US Army general. In the age of drones, big headquarters are big targets, and Russia in particular has lost general after general to precision strikes.

Now imagine a war between the United States, with its massive Combined Air Operations Centers (CAOCs), and China, whose doctrine of System Destruction Warfare sees such high-tech hubs as pressure points to strike with long-range missiles and cyber attacks.

“You cannot put a hundred people, staff officers and NCOs, into a group of tents and hope that you will not be killed,” said Alexander Kott, an AI expert who worked for DARPA and the Army. “To this day, our command posts look like a bunch of vehicles, a bunch of antennas, a bunch of tents. We know how long this survives on the Russian-Ukrainian front, right? It survives minutes.”

“Western systems today are built in a very hub-and-spoke way,” agreed Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “Processing happens at central nodes, CAOCs for example, and those systems are inherently fragile — and adversaries have understood this, [hence] systems destruction warfare.”

But AI could make command structures more robust, Kaushal told reporters at a January briefing: “Improvements in processing mean, to a greater and greater extent, key decisions and the processing that underlies them moves to the edge of networks.”

Centralized control and decentralization to the “tactical edge” have different strengths and weaknesses, employ different forms of AI, and above all require different institutional cultures. Those cultural factors might just be America’s enduring advantage in an era when new technology, especially software, spreads rapidly around the globe.

But that’s no cause for complacency for the US. There are other models for modernization than America’s, the Pentagon has its own issues with top-down bureaucracy, and, experts warn, a close reading of Chinese military literature shows at least some officers are calling for more flexibility.

“The Nazis were pretty darn authoritarian, but that didn’t keep them from being innovative when they needed to be,” said Dean Cheng, senior advisor on China at the US Institute of Peace. “They were the ones who invented rockets, assault rifles, and the Blitzkrieg. So this idea that ‘authoritarian equals unable to innovate,’ I think that’s highly ahistorical.”

As far as American innovation goes, Kott, who retired as chief scientist of the the Army Research Lab last year, said he’s “not terribly impressed with what we are doing, unfortunately.”

“We seem to be just building more and more expensive, complicated, and stovepiped communications systems,” he said.

Meanwhile, like the old Soviet Union — or, for that matter, Germany between the World Wars — authoritarian China has a surprisingly lively discussion of military theory.

“If you look at their writings on what is called ‘informatization,’ they are very much geared towards pushing authority down to the lowest levels,” Kevin Pollpetter, a senior research scientist at CNA, told Breaking Defense. “Whether that will actually happen in practice though is up for debate.”

“At least some PLA writings envision what AI or emerging technologies more broadly could do to empower frontline commanders to make decisions,” agreed RAND researcher Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga. “The question is whether these ideas actually carry any weight [with] Chinese military leadership. That’s a really difficult thing to assess from the outside … I think it’s too early to call.”

The Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. (US Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Alexander W. Riedel)

Center Versus Edge

Centralizing control versus empowering the edge isn’t an either-or slam-dunk, but a sliding scale, one militaries move up and down all the time as technology and strategy evolve.

“In reality, it’s always a mix,” Kott said. On the one hand, he told Breaking Defense, “there is a democratization of warfare — [for instance], two soldiers with a drone can do a lot of damage … and so that would be an argument towards decision making moving closer to the edge.”

At the same time, Kott continued, warfare is becoming ever more complex and sprawling. Weapons like long-range missiles and cyber attacks able to converge on a single target from origins thousands of miles apart — if someone can coordinate them. “That has to be done at a higher level,” he said.

Given the power of AI, networks and surveillance technology to bring tremendous data to a single HQ, “there is a perfectly coherent argument [for] the all-empowered theater commander,” agreed Kaushal. “When everything goes right, they can be quite lethal.”

So one option is to use AI to centralize command-and-control still further — to build super-CAOCs with supercomputers, where top commanders and their staffs can algorithmically absorb vast amounts of data from across the war zone to gain a god’s-eye view. Such palatial panopticons are appealing to bureaucracies, but they also exploit some powerful trends in how the technology itself has been evolving.

For example, cloud computing, which the Pentagon has labored to embrace, boils down to a hub-and-spoke structure: A few massive server farms store many users’ data and, increasingly, run their software as well. It’s such hub-and-spoke models that have made power-hungry generative AIs like ChatGPT and DALL-E, which require massive computing power to run, available to millions of people on their laptops and smart phones. A central warehouse full of servers can run AIs too powerful for any one user’s machine, make the most efficient use of scarce technical talent, and reap other economies of scale.

So centralization makes a lot of sense in peacetime. It can even work well in war, coordinating strikes from far-flung forces that would otherwise struggle to act in concert. But as soon as the enemy can strike back, centralization means you have a lot of delicate eggs in one big basket.

“The challenge those structures face is they’re inherently vulnerable to a thinking adversary,” Kaushal told reporters. “When you think of the fundamentals of warfare, going to Clausewitz, that it’s characterized by fog, friction a degree of chaos, it seems more likely than not to me that initiative needs to be pushed to lower levels.”

Even if the HQ itself is a hard target — buried underground, surrounded by missile defenses, or simply so deep in mainland China it’s out of range — it has to talk to targets that aren’t: aircraft, warships, ground units both robotic and unmanned. To get anything done, central command requires hundreds or thousands of connections to its scattered subordinates, both so they can feed it data and it can send them orders. Jam the links, hack them or physically blow them up, and the commander’s god’s-eye-view of the war zone goes deaf and blind.

That’s the essence of the PLA’s “systems destruction warfare” doctrine, said Cheng: “break the connections, whether it’s data links or radio coms or what have you. It can be jamming, … cyber attacks. … It can also be psychological: how much do you trust the coms if every third message is being altered?”

AI can help here, too. “How do you communicate when the battlefield is saturated with jammers?” asked Kott. “Squeezing all the vitamins out of whatever little coms you can get … that’s another role for AI.”

Autonomous algorithms already manage cellular networks, optimizing frequencies and switching calls from one cell tower to the next without the user ever noticing. Military AI could automatically detect when a relay has been jammed, hacked or destroyed and route around it — a souped-up version of what’s called a “self-healing” network. At even higher levels of intelligence, Kott suggested, AI could also throttle usage based on preset priorities, for example by refusing to transmit bandwidth-hogging surveillance video to leave transmission capacity for telegraphic updates on target coordinates.

AI isn’t just helpful at the central hub, however: It is increasingly available and powerful at the edge as well. That dovetails nicely with Starlink putting thousands of communications satellites into Low Earth Orbit, which allows frontline users to communicate without relying on a handful of high-end, high-orbit birds. Advanced analytics firm Royce GEO, for instance, has field-tested using Starlink to download satellite images to portable computers running a slimmed-down version of its object-recognition AI.

“Starlink has been a game-changer,” said Dave Sterling, a former NGA analyst who founded Royce GEO. “It used to be you had to pack a 160-pound antenna that took three men to carry. … All that has changed in a last handful of years. Now we have it down to one person with a laptop and a Starlink on a backpack, [with] a heavy-duty battery pack, who can run machine learning [algorithms] utilizing computer vision from a pickup truck in the harshest environments around the world.”

Soldiers of a PLA Honor Guard stand at attention in front of a poster of President Xi Jinping, near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, during the COVID outbreak in 2020. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

New Tech, New Tactics

Throughout history, from the Bronze Age to the Blitzkrieg, winning commanders have used new technology, not just to fight the old way only better, but to enable entirely new kinds of tactics. Both China and the US, for instance, are exploring AI decision-making aides that can generate “courses of action” — in essence, automating the laborious staff work of tracking supplies, scheduling convoys, coordinating strikes, drafting orders and countless other details that go into a military plan.

“Looking at PLA writings on AI,” said Pollpetter, “a lot of it centers on thinking about AI as sort of a chief of staff, where it’s there in a command post somewhere, you can give it a list of parameters … and then it’ll generate options for the commander — but ultimately it’s the commander that makes those decisions.”

That suggests, said Kaushal, that forward command posts could use AI to plan complex operations without large staffs, giving them the coordinating capability of a large HQ without being a large, slow-moving target.

But will military commanders and, even more important, their political masters allow junior officers to exercise this kind of AI-driven initiative? That’s not an easy sell in Washington, let alone Beijing.

“What people often lose sight of, or maybe don’t realize, is that the PLA is a party army. It is not the country’s army: It is the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Pollpeter. “If anything … the political commissar role has been strengthened under Xi Jinping.”

While XI purges top generals, the PLA’s own official self-criticism strikes a strong note of self-doubt. “When you look at their own writing about their soldiers and their officers in particular,” said Kaushal, “[there’s] what they call the ‘Five Incapables,’ the five areas where they feel there are still considerable deficiencies. One of them is the ability of officers lower down the ranks to operate under conditions of uncertainty and fog and friction.”

That lack of confidence in subordinates suggests China’s top leaders will be reluctant to delegate — and that’s a weakness that Western forces can exploit.

breakingdefense.com · by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. · February 13, 2024

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