Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"History is full of people who, out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power, have destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again."

– Carl Sagan

"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about."

– Wayne Dyer

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."

– John Steinbeck

1. U.S. Wins Backing for U.N. Resolution on Ukraine War That Doesn’t Blame Russia

2. A Sad Day for the U.S. at the U.N.

3. Bring Warriors Back to the U.S. Military

4. Without U.S. Aid, Ukraine Would Lose Some of Its Most Sophisticated Weapons

5. ‘Ukraine Is Standing but America Is Falling’ – Serhii Plokhii

6. Russian Empire Ambitions: ‘Next Will Be Warsaw Pact Countries’ – Spy Chief Says

7. China’s War for Indo-Pacific Dominance Is Already Underway

8. Ukraine Negotiations: Widen the Aperture

9. Former NSA, Cyber Command chief Paul Nakasone says U.S. falling behind its enemies in cyberspace

10. A World Reordered By: Nadia Schadlow

11. Trump’s Foreign Policy Revolution

12. The 'Inconvenient Truth'—US Military Doctrines Shaken by Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East

13. Could Artificial General Intelligence Adoption Start a Civil War in America?

14. America’s AWOL Defense Spending

15. Trump’s targeting of Pentagon hits a nerve in POW/MIA recovery office

16. The Inside Story of DOGE’s State Department Reforms

17. Hegseth says he fired the top military lawyers because they weren't well suited for the jobs

18. 'People Are Very Scared': Trump Administration Purge of JAG Officers Raises Legal, Ethical Fears

19. We got it wrong: The real crisis in the U.S. military

20. The Pentagon must cut $50B of waste — put this weapon on the chopping block

21. DeepSeek is in the driver’s seat. That’s a big security problem

22. Russia has Failed to Break Ukraine

23. Politics Have Always Influenced the U.S. Service Academies

24. The World Trump Wants

25. Special Ops Report 2025: SOCOM on the Brink - Budget Cuts, Russian Sabotage, and the Future of Unconventional Warfare

26. Tackling the Toil: A Rallying Cry for Defense Leaders in the Exponential Age

27. A Tale of Two Typhoons: Properly Diagnosing Chinese Cyber Threats

28. 'Propaganda Girls': The women who fought to break Axis powers morale - review

1. U.S. Wins Backing for U.N. Resolution on Ukraine War That Doesn’t Blame Russia

Excerpts:

The U.S. sided with Russia and China to win the United Nations Security Council’s backing for a resolution crafted in Washington that didn’t blame Moscow for the Ukraine war and called for a swift end to the conflict, as President Trump said he was in talks with Russia about an economic-development deal.

Trump’s comments and the U.S.’s vote at the U.N. on Monday illustrated the extent to which the president has changed the U.S.’s posture toward the region, coming on the same day as European leaders gathered in Kyiv to mark the third anniversary of the invasion.

Earlier on Monday, the General Assembly, which represents the 193 U.N. member states, had approved a Ukrainian resolution pinning the blame on Russia for the war, despite U.S. efforts to kill it. The U.S. was joined by North Korea, Russia and Belarus in voting against it.

U.S. Wins Backing for U.N. Resolution on Ukraine War That Doesn’t Blame Russia

On third anniversary of invasion, Trump says he is talking to Moscow about economic development deal as Washington’s posture in region shifts

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/trump-putin-us-russia-economic-deal-679a9d26?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Laurence Norman

Follow, Annie Linskey

Follow and Jane Lytvynenko

Updated Feb. 24, 2025 8:17 pm ET

A Sad Day for the U.S. at the U.N.

The land of the free votes with Russia on a Ukraine war resolution.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/united-nations-resolution-russia-ukraine-united-states-donald-trump-bfeb0b44?mod=hp_opin_pos_0

By The Editorial Board

Feb. 24, 2025 5:43 pm ET

The UN Security Council votes at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Monday. Photo: Richard Drew/Associated Press

The United Nations is no great moral arbiter of anything, but at least the United States has tried over the years to have that group of nations recognize the truth about bad actors. That wasn’t the case Monday, as the U.S. voted with Russia against a General Assembly resolution calling out Russia for its invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

What a regrettable moment. The resolution, sponsored by Ukraine and European nations, wasn’t even all that strong. It merely noted “with concern that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation” has had “devastating and long-lasting consequences” and called for “an early cessation of hostilities.”

Apparently even this was too much of a rebuke to Vladimir Putin for President Trump to tolerate as he seeks to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. The U.S. had supported these resolutions since the war began but is now voting with the world’s rogues rather than with its allies. The U.S. tried to pressure Ukraine to withdraw its resolution in favor of an American draft that didn’t cite Russia as the aggressor in the war. Kyiv understandably refused.

The resolution has no practical importance, though it does underscore Mr. Trump’s turn toward Russia in the conflict. Perhaps he thinks that telling the truth about Russia will cause Mr. Putin to walk away from the Ukraine negotiations. Ronald Reagan, who also sought peace and achieved it, never shrank from telling the truth about the Soviet Union. The truth was an essential weapon in defeating what Reagan called an “evil empire.”

Meanwhile, at the White House on Monday, Mr. Trump and Emmanuel Macron discussed the Ukraine talks. The French President went out of his way to praise Mr. Trump’s peace effort and said Europe will be willing to deploy peace-keeping troops to Ukraine after a deal is struck. Mr. Macron also made clear such a deal would have to be backed by U.S. guarantees to be credible. He’s certainly right given that a cease-fire would give Russia a chance to rearm for another invasion if the U.S. abandons Europe.

Mr. Trump didn’t say if the U.S. would provide such guarantees. It’s hard to be optimistic if he won’t tell the truth about which country started the war.

Bring Warriors Back to the U.S. Military

Recruitment campaigns should frame service as the ultimate test of strength, courage and leadership.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bring-warriors-back-to-the-u-s-military-recruitment-strategy-defense-soldiers-929303f1?mod=hp_opin_pos_5#cxrecs_s

By Mike Gallagher

Feb. 24, 2025 1:38 pm ET

U.S. Army trainees compete against each other during basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C., Sept. 29, 2022. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

When it comes to military recruitment, President Biden left President Trump a flaming bag of you-know-what on the White House steps. Mr. Biden sapped the ranks of America’s military when he discharged more than 8,000 members for noncompliance with his Covid-19 vaccine mandate. These dismissals compounded the morale catastrophe of the Pentagon’s diversity, equity and inclusion push, best understood as a pseudoscientific attempt to favor loyalists at the expense of merit-based promotions and military readiness.

The Navy and Air Force missed their recruitment targets in fiscal 2023 for the first time this century. The Army missed its enlistment goals in 2022 and 2023, and the Marine Corps barely met its target in 2024. The most advanced weapons systems are useless without talented, motivated soldiers to operate them. Any military recruitment crisis emboldens America’s enemies. Resolving the Biden-created recruiting crisis is as important as securing our borders.

Thankfully, we are now seeing a “Trump bump” in recruitment. The 2024 Reagan National Defense Survey found that from November 2023 to November 2024, willingness to serve among adults under 30 increased from 10% to 16%. The Army announced its best December recruiting numbers in 12 years and its best January recruiting numbers in 15 years. As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted, “America’s youth want to serve under the bold & strong ‘America First’ leadership of Donald Trump.”

Bringing back service members who were unjustly discharged over vaccine refusals will help, and abolishing DEI can’t come a moment too soon. But Mr. Hegseth shouldn’t take down the “help wanted” sign yet. The Army, the largest military branch, has the fewest active-duty soldiers since World War II, Army secretary nominee Daniel Driscoll told senators during his confirmation hearing last month. After failing to meet its recruitment goal of 65,000 in 2023, the Army decreased it to 55,000 in 2024. For 2025, it’s 61,000.

Equally worrisome, military recruitment may now be contingent on who sits in the Oval Office. Veterans—whose family members represent nearly 80% of recent recruits—are increasingly unlikely to recommend military service if they disagree politically with the president. The 2024 Survey of Military Veterans found that 65% of liberal veterans but only 53% of conservative veterans would recommend service to their family members. By February 2025, after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, these numbers had flipped—nearly 75% of conservative veterans but just over 30% of liberal veterans said they would advise their family members to join.

To avoid such polarization, the president and defense secretary must fundamentally rethink the military’s pitch to young Americans. Recent recruitment campaigns shy away from the hardships of military service and emphasize educational and career benefits. However well-intentioned, these campaigns miss a fundamental reality: For the target audience, the most challenging aspects of military service are the most attractive. The military doesn’t want someone who signs up for a great retirement plan and is surprised to find himself in combat; it wants someone who signed up for combat and is pleasantly surprised by the retirement benefits.

High expectations attract young people hungry for purpose. I joined the Marines in 2006 because I expected that I would be pushed to my limit.

Why not launch a campaign presenting military service as the highest expression of national duty and personal honor? Four-star officers, senior enlisted leaders, service chiefs and decorated combat veterans could speak directly to high-school students, sports teams and community groups. These “No Apologies” tours should frame service as a rite of passage for America’s toughest, most patriotic youths.

Ads should lead with combat-first messaging. They should emphasize the realities of military life: grit, sacrifice, honor and patriotism. They should highlight elite units and battle-hardened leaders as aspirational figures.

America has no warrior caste, but family members of veterans account for the majority of military recruits. By offering legacy enlistment bonuses or ceremonial acknowledgments for meritorious recruits from veteran families, the country can continue its great tradition of multigenerational military families. Mr. Driscoll’s grandfather and father served in the Army, he is an Army veteran himself, and he told senators: “Inasmuch as you can trust the plans of an 8-year-old, my son, Daniel, plans to join too.”

When I led the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, I took every branch’s physical-fitness test. It was a fun reminder of the foundational and unifying role that physical training plays in military life. I was fist-pumping when Mr. Hegseth did hard physical training with American troops in Germany this month. President John F. Kennedy issued a 50-mile-hike challenge to military officers in 1963, which galvanized civic groups nationwide to take health and exercise seriously. Mr. Hegseth should take a cue from JFK and launch an “Earn Your Place” military-readiness challenge for young men and women. That would frame military service as the ultimate test of strength, courage and leadership and harness the innate competitive drive of American youth from across the political spectrum.

Some may worry about the price tag of a growing all-volunteer force. The solution is to save money by dramatically reducing the size of the Defense Department’s civilian workforce—which is larger than the Army—and automating back-office functions, starting with the laborious sign-on paperwork for recruits.

America needs fewer bureaucrats and more warriors. To find these warriors, Mr. Hegseth should issue a call to purpose—an embrace of the ethos of challenge and sacrifice. It could mirror the Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton’s legendary—if likely apocryphal—ad: “Men wanted for hazardous journey.”

War is hell. Those who volunteer to serve may be called to fight and die. Expect bad food, little sleep and long deployments. Yet the rewards of answering the call, serving your country with honor and holding the line against America’s enemies are incalculable. If we want to find young Americans willing to fight for freedom, we must start by telling that truth.

Mr. Gallagher, a Journal contributor, is head of defense for Palantir Technologies and a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. He represented Wisconsin’s Eighth Congressional District (2017-24) and was chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

4. Without U.S. Aid, Ukraine Would Lose Some of Its Most Sophisticated Weapons

Excerpts:

Large weapons shipments the Biden administration sent or contracted for in its final months should be enough to enable the Ukrainians to keep fighting at their current rate at least until the middle of the year, said Celeste Wallander, a former senior Pentagon official. Some Ukrainian analysts say their country might be able to eke the weapons out even longer.

“We can endure maybe half a year or a year, in order to give Europe another year to start producing whatever munitions they can,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a senior analyst at Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian charity that has supplied drones to the military. “We might suffer some losses, maybe lose some territory. But we have no choice but to fight, despite the difficulties.”

An end to U.S. military aid is the worst-case scenario, said a senior aide to Zelensky, adding that it would mean Ukraine having to build up its military production and get more from Europeans.

...

The biggest challenge, according to analysts, would be the lack of American-made air defenses, which would leave Ukraine to decide which of its areas to protect and which to leave at risk. For example, only the U.S. produces Patriot air-defense systems, which can shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.

The loss of the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, would also be a blow. Its range of up to 186 miles has made it particularly effective at striking Russian supply lines, though the Biden administration restricted the targets they could strike inside Russia.

Some analysts also questioned whether Ukraine would continue to have access to SpaceX’s Starlink internet service—a key battlefield advantage, which has been partly funded by the Pentagon. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, is a close ally of Trump.

Mykhailo Samus, director of the New Geopolitics Research Network, a Kyiv-based think tank, said it was possible that the U.S. could stop sending aid but still allow Europe to purchase American weapons on Ukraine’s behalf.

“It’s not really about aid—it’s about whether Trump will participate in the production of weapons for Ukraine,” he said. If not, “this will be a categorical blow to Ukraine and to Europe.”

Without U.S. Aid, Ukraine Would Lose Some of Its Most Sophisticated Weapons

If President Trump cuts off supplies, Kyiv and its other allies will struggle to cover a shortfall in military equipment

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/without-u-s-aid-ukraine-would-lose-some-of-its-most-sophisticated-weapons-e3bf6cb7?mod=latest_headlines

Michael R. Gordon

Follow, Alistair MacDonald

Follow and Ian Lovett

Follow | Photographs by Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

Updated Feb. 25, 2025 12:19 am ET

KYIV—Without U.S. military aid, Ukraine has enough weapons to keep fighting at its current pace until the summer, current and former Western officials said. After that, Kyiv could find itself short of ammunition and unable to use some of its most sophisticated weaponry.

President Trump’s broadsides against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in recent days are forcing Kyiv to confront the prospect of losing U.S. military support, which has been instrumental in helping it hold off Russian forces over three years of war.

Large weapons shipments the Biden administration sent or contracted for in its final months should be enough to enable the Ukrainians to keep fighting at their current rate at least until the middle of the year, said Celeste Wallander, a former senior Pentagon official. Some Ukrainian analysts say their country might be able to eke the weapons out even longer.

“We can endure maybe half a year or a year, in order to give Europe another year to start producing whatever munitions they can,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a senior analyst at Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian charity that has supplied drones to the military. “We might suffer some losses, maybe lose some territory. But we have no choice but to fight, despite the difficulties.”

An end to U.S. military aid is the worst-case scenario, said a senior aide to Zelensky, adding that it would mean Ukraine having to build up its military production and get more from Europeans.

A member of a drone team from the Ukrainian National Guard’s 14th Brigade.

A stand including a collection of Russian drones downed by Ukrainian forces.

Europe is preparing to try to make up the shortfall. In 2024, the European Union, the U.K. and Norway collectively supplied Ukraine with around $25 billion in military aid—more than the U.S. sent that year, according to European officials. The continent has substantially increased its production of artillery shells, and there are discussions for the EU to increase aid to $30 billion this year.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. has sent nearly $70 billion in military aid, according to Zelensky. That is more than all of Ukraine’s other Western allies combined, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

But Ukraine has also built its own formidable munitions industry, which now produces $30 billion a year in weaponry, according to the country’s minister of strategic industry, a sixfold increase from a year earlier. In 2024, the country produced around 1.5 million drones, which have become its primary form of defense along the front line, allowing Kyiv to hold off Russian assaults while taking minimal casualties. This year, officials say, they plan to produce 3,000 missiles and 30,000 long-range drones.

Overall, Ukraine currently builds or finances about 55% of its military hardware. The U.S. supplies around 20%, while Europe supplies 25%, according to one Western official.

But some U.S. supplies—including advanced air-defense systems, surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, navigation systems and long-range rocket artillery—will be effectively impossible to replace in the short term. Europe simply doesn’t make enough—or, in some cases, any.

Once those U.S. supplies run out, Ukraine’s ability to conduct longer-range strikes, and to protect its own rear positions, would suffer, officials and analysts said.

“Having a partner who supplies you with the highest quality military technologies, it’s by definition irreplaceable in some areas,” said Tomas Kopecny, the Czech governmental envoy for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

A Ukrainian M142 Himars launcher travels by road in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

But the specter of an end to U.S. aid has loomed for more than a year now. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly criticized the billions sent to Kyiv, and many Republicans in Congress opposed the most recent aid package for Ukraine, which was approved last April.

Before leaving office, former President Joe Biden tried to enable Ukraine to keep fighting for as long as possible. His administration sent weapons from existing U.S. stocks and signed contracts with the U.S. defense industry to procure ammunition, air-defense interceptors, vehicles and other materiel. Those deliveries will continue into 2026.

“This was in support of what we understood the strategy of the incoming administration to be: To negotiate from a position of strength and lay out for Putin that the Ukrainians can continue to fight,” said Wallander, the former Pentagon official, who served as an assistant secretary of Defense in the Biden administration.

Trump has now upended that assumption, attacking Zelensky in a series of posts on social media. He has accused the Ukrainian president of starting the war and called him a dictator. Both claims echo Kremlin talking points about the Ukrainian leader and the war, which began when Russia invaded the country in 2022.

Following Trump’s statements, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also said there was “no appetite” in Congress for another Ukraine aid bill. But Vice President JD Vance told The Wall Street Journal that the U.S. could use economic sanctions and even “military tools of leverage” to advance peace negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky.

Trump has inherited the authority to send more than $3.8 billion in arms to Ukraine from Pentagon stocks without Congressional approval, though administration officials would likely ask lawmakers to replenish the U.S. inventory should such a decision be made.

European leaders have held a series of meetings over the past week to plan how they can support Ukraine if the U.S. withdraws. The continent has also supplied some of Ukraine’s most effective weapons, including much of its modern artillery, medium-range air defense and cruise missiles. Still, analysts have questioned Europe’s ability to completely fill the gap created by lost U.S. supplies.

“While Europe could theoretically match the U.S. in spending, I don’t see them able to match the full breadth of weapons systems needed and, in certain critical categories such as air defense interceptors, there will quickly be a quantity problem,” said Oscar Jonsson, an academic at the Swedish Defense University.

Ukraine now makes 2.5 million artillery and mortar rounds a year, according to Ukrainian officials. As of September, the U.S. had sent roughly three million artillery shells to Ukraine since the start of the invasion. The EU, by comparison, increased production of artillery shells to 1.4 million in 2024 and is aiming for two million this year.

A view near the front-line town of Slovyansk in the Donetsk region.

Drone specialists from Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade test different drones near the front line.

The biggest challenge, according to analysts, would be the lack of American-made air defenses, which would leave Ukraine to decide which of its areas to protect and which to leave at risk. For example, only the U.S. produces Patriot air-defense systems, which can shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.

The loss of the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, would also be a blow. Its range of up to 186 miles has made it particularly effective at striking Russian supply lines, though the Biden administration restricted the targets they could strike inside Russia.

Some analysts also questioned whether Ukraine would continue to have access to SpaceX’s Starlink internet service—a key battlefield advantage, which has been partly funded by the Pentagon. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, is a close ally of Trump.

Mykhailo Samus, director of the New Geopolitics Research Network, a Kyiv-based think tank, said it was possible that the U.S. could stop sending aid but still allow Europe to purchase American weapons on Ukraine’s behalf.

“It’s not really about aid—it’s about whether Trump will participate in the production of weapons for Ukraine,” he said. If not, “this will be a categorical blow to Ukraine and to Europe.”

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com, Alistair MacDonald at Alistair.Macdonald@wsj.com and Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 25, 2025, print edition as 'Loss of U.S. Weapons Will Hurt Ukraine'.

5. ‘Ukraine Is Standing but America Is Falling’ – Serhii Plokhii

‘Ukraine Is Standing but America Is Falling’ – Serhii Plokhii

kyivpost.com · by Kyiv Post · February 24, 2025

Ukrainian American historian Serhii Plokhii said that Europe has a chance to reassert its agency and bring lasting peace to Europe by standing with Ukraine.

by Kyiv Post | Feb. 24, 2025, 7:01 pm

Photo: Serhii Plokhii, Source: Wikimedia Commons

On the three-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian American historian Serhii Plokhii said that something that no one could have foreseen is Ukraine standing strong against Russia, while the US falters.

“No one expected that to happen three years ago: Ukraine is standing but America is falling,” the Harvard professor told Kyiv Post in a written statement.

On Monday, Western leaders – with the conspicuous absence of US representation – gathered in Ukraine’s capital to reaffirm their continuing support for Ukraine’s fight.

“This is a chance for Europe to reassert its agency and bring lasting peace to Europe by standing by Ukraine,” Plokhii said.

The EU is currently in talks to send billions of euros to help Ukraine defend itself, the block’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas said.

Meanwhile, with doubts surfacing about whether the US would honor its NATO obligations, European leaders, such as Germany’s newly elected conservative leader, Friedrich Merz, have suggested that Europeans may have to ban together to create a NATO alternative.

Plokhii, the best-selling author of The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, is one of the foremost experts on Ukrainian history.

6. Russian Empire Ambitions: ‘Next Will Be Warsaw Pact Countries’ – Spy Chief Says

Russian Empire Ambitions: ‘Next Will Be Warsaw Pact Countries’ – Spy Chief Says

kyivpost.com · by Kateryna Zakharchenko · February 25, 2025

According to Ukraine’s military intel chief, Russia plans to create an empire modeled on the USSR, with Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bulgaria as its next targets.

by Kateryna Zakharchenko | Feb. 25, 2025, 8:50 am

Photo: Kyiv Post/Kateryna Zakharchenko

Russia does not see itself as a federation; it sees itself as an empire, said the head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, speaking at the YES conference event held in Kyiv by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation on Feb. 24 – the third anniversary of the Russian full-scale invasion – as reported by a Kyiv Post journalist.

“The empire that the current leadership of the Russian Federation is leaning toward is modeled after the Soviet Union – but with the countries of the Warsaw Pact,” Budanov said, adding, “Imagine the worst-case scenario, and yet it happened that three countries united into one, even though that is almost impossible.”

According to him, if Russia manages to create an empire, its next targets will be Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bulgaria.

“Next will be Poland – I’m telling you this directly. And there’s no need to fear it; you just need to be aware,” he said.

“After that, it will be the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bulgaria – they will all come under control. For the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, that’s the bare minimum if an empire is being formed, and then, who knows what might follow, excuse me,” Budanov added.

The Russian Federation doesn’t see itself as a federation — it sees itself as an empire— Ukraine’s Intelligence chief speaking at the YES conference event held in Kyiv by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation on Feb. 24, the third anniversary of the Russian full-scale invasion. pic.twitter.com/dUFlbDTgyS

— KyivPost (@KyivPost) February 24, 2025

According to Budanov, Russia currently needs a pause to regain strength and address its mistakes.

“The Russian Federation understands that it is unrealistic to quickly achieve its strategic goal. I won’t say that Russia is failing at everything or that everything is going badly for them. That’s not true. They are moving forward. But this progress is not significant enough – it is insufficient to quickly achieve their strategic goal. Therefore, they need a pause,” Budanov said.

UN Security Council Approves US-Backed ‘Neutral’ Resolution on Ukraine

This same text backed by the Trump White House had been presented the day before at the UN General Assembly, where it was passed with three amendments introduced by European countries.

“And then they will have a window of opportunity to achieve their strategic goal. The fact that they declare their aim to be the full occupation of Donbas, the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, and to maintain control over the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea is not the whole picture. They need much more. It is simply impossible to achieve this through war alone, and that is a fact. Therefore, a pause is necessary.”

Kateryna Zakharchenko

The youngest journalist at Kyiv Post, Kateryna, investigates today's most important topics, from geopolitical challenges and defense strategies to stories that change the course of events. She explores the secrets of Ukraine's intelligence services and shows the hidden side of global events. Her passion is uncovering secrets that change history. Born and lives in Kyiv.

7. China’s War for Indo-Pacific Dominance Is Already Underway

Excerpts:

In recognizing that China is on the move and is already at war to achieve control of the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. must be much more aggressive than it has been. China does not want a shooting war, which it would see as a breakdown of its chosen strategy. Just the same, it is using its military in provocative ways. The U.S. and its allies should respond in kind by ramping up resistance to China in disputed waters and airspace. Such responses would include freedom of navigation operations and other shows of military force. On the economic and influence front, India has banned DeepSeek and TikTok; President Trump should be matching those moves. There’s no potential economic deal on trade or fentanyl that would make up for China’s encircling Taiwan through de facto control of disputed waters and deterring the U.S. and its allies from freedom of operation in the region.

We must accurately assess the moment in which we find ourselves so that the correct actions can follow. Alas, there is a strategic-assessment mismatch between China and the West. China’s conclusion: We are at war, and the objective is Indo-Pacific hegemony and dominance over two-thirds of the globe and more than half of global trade. The West’s assessment, as of now: We are preparing for war to prevent China from taking Taiwan. But it is time for us to acknowledge that the war has begun and to expand our horizon, because Taiwan is just the beginning.

The relationship governing U.S.–PRC–Taiwan agreements and understandings has been codified over the years by a series of diplomatic instruments that collectively are known as “the three communiques” and “the six assurances.” A detailed discussion of that just now is outside the scope of this analysis, but consistent with this parlance and shorthand, one might conclude that the actual situation we are in could be described as the War of Two Denials. Beijing is at war, but denies much of what it is doing to prosecute that war. The U.S. is preparing for war, denying that China is several steps ahead of us in what it already has achieved through non-kinetic means.

While no one saw it at the time, Midway was the beginning of the end of Japanese domination in the Pacific. The question we face today is: How far will we let China advance in its ongoing war for the Indo-Pacific, as we “prepare” for war over Taiwan? Or will the Trump administration convince the world that this is a “Midway moment,” reverse the trends we’re on, and ultimately prevail.

China’s War for Indo-Pacific Dominance Is Already Underway

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/02/chinas-war-for-indo-pacific-dominance-is-already-underway/

A Navy personnel looks at the Da Wu-class rescue and salvage ship as the Taiwan military demonstrates combat readiness ahead of the upcoming Lunar New Year holidays as part of an annual exercise in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, January 9, 2025.(Ann Wang/Reuters)

By Thérèse Shaheen

February 23, 2025 6:30 AM

How far will we let China advance in its ongoing war in the Indo-Pacific, as we ‘prepare’ for war over Taiwan?

Akey driver of U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific is the set of security arrangements necessary to prevent the PRC from taking Taiwan by military force. The former commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Phil Davidson, helpfully defined in 2021 what he and Pentagon planners saw as a six-year timeframe (by 2027) that reflected Xi Jinping’s thinking about taking control of Taiwan. Davidson also warned that the U.S. should acknowledge Xi’s directives to his own planners about Taiwan as a critical step on the road to Xi’s objective “to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order” by 2050. Xi turns 72 this year. While he is unlikely to be in power in 2050, his legacy depends on this vision. That vision depends on Xi achieving the absorption of Taiwan before it is too late for him to accomplish.

Xi’s designs on Taiwan have become known in strategic planning circles as the “Davidson window,” and focused U.S. and allied planners on shortfalls in shipbuilding, weapons procurement, and the range of priorities that would be needed in the U.S., Taiwan, and our other allies in the region to counter Chinese ambition to displace the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific. But Beijing does not intend kinetic military confrontation if it can achieve its objectives without it. It isn’t clear that Xi has much confidence in his military leadership, which he has purged and continues to do — for corruption and incompetence, and to eliminate potential rivals. Xi knows that, as with all military conflict, a hot war with Taiwan would proceed quite differently than anyone can know (see Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.) This also is contrary to Xi’s ideology, which is informed by traditional Chinese philosophers, including Sun Tzu, who argued, in effect, that armed conflict is for suckers; the last preference for achieving strategic objectives.

The subtle implication of Davidson’s assessment deserves more immediate attention than as a harbinger of armed conflict in the next couple of years. In fact, the battle that China intends to wage already has started. China is not “preparing” for war — it is now fighting the war it wants, on its own terms, as it clamps down on its objective. “All warfare,” Sun Tzu wrote, “is based on deception.” And there’s no greater deception than creating the impression of preparations for a shooting war but achieving the war’s desired objectives without firing a shot. That’s what Xi is after.

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The U.S. and its allies also must shift away from the mindset of “preparing” for the real war and begin to face reality: the conflict is upon us. As Davidson noted, China is trying to deter the U.S.. The U.S., simply put, must make it clear that it will not be deterred. China’s goal is nothing less than control of the Indo-Pacific, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of global trade and is the most valuable aquatic real estate in the world. America’s own prosperity and security depend on the Indo-Pacific. Even with all of its serious internal challenges and its declining economic, social, and demographic fortunes, if the PRC can establish dominance there, it would control critical global access points —affecting shipping, supply chains, and much else — that would enable Beijing to impact the global order and global outcomes to a degree that was on par with the United States. The U.S. must use its full range of capabilities to prevent that from happening.

China wants to take control of Taiwan because doing so would cause reverberations that would help Beijing achieve the longer-term goal of Indo-Pacific dominance, even if that is never stated as the desired outcome. That program is well along, and it has many elements, including some from which the PRC has made significant gains already. This program includes:

Military build-up and aggressive power projection: The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is the world’s largest navy. The force includes aircraft carriers, submarines, and amphibious assault ships capable of power projection in the region. Beijing is flexing these capabilities throughout the Pacific, challenging freedom of navigation and harassing civilian shipping and the naval operations of the U.S., Australia, Philippines, and other nations as it seeks de facto control over contested waters in the region.

South China Sea militarization: China has transformed reefs and islands into military outposts with runways, missile batteries, and radar systems. This happened as the world stood by and watched, accepting Beijing’s false assurances over many years that it was not developing these land masses and that, even if it was, they were not intended for military purposes. It’s important to understand how China pulled this off, because it is the model for how it intends to achieve dominance over the region in general, and over Taiwan in particular. It is the game plan that Beijing used for its takeover of Hong Kong despite treaty agreements that precluded it: Deny, obfuscate, and gaslight to avoid and deter a reaction until the communist government has raised the costs of meaningful opposition beyond what the U.S. and like-minded countries are willing to bear.

Economic investment and coercion to attain strategic infrastructure: China has been funding infrastructure around the world, including ports and runways, to create a network of capabilities that will allow it to operate more freely in the region and beyond. Concern over this is behind the objection of the Trump administration to Panama’s allowing a Hong Kong–based company to operate ports on either end of the Panama Canal. That raised eyebrows when the deal was struck in 1997, as Hong Kong was operating independently from Beijing, given the terms of the U.K. handover agreement that went into effect that year, and was expected to endure 50 years. By the time the port contract was extended in 2021, Hong Kong had become a de facto province of the PRC. U.S. pressure has led to Panama’s decision to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a modest setback for a program China has used to expand its control of key infrastructure around the world. Debt diplomacy is at the core of the program, with China having taken control, or on track to do so, of facilities in Sri Lanka, the Horn of Africa, southeast Asia, and elsewhere, owing to the onerous financial terms that come with these agreements. This will continue as long as Beijing thinks it can, although the U.S. and allies having begun marshaling some effective resistance over the past several years.

Trade and investment pressure: China has been flexing its trade muscles to squeeze global supply chains, including semiconductors, batteries, shipping, and rare earth metals. This helps pressure countries to align with its interests.

Diplomatic and political influence: China is exploiting differences among the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) members to keep them divided and prevent coherent opposition to PRC territorial claims. Most countries in the organization want to maintain productive ties with both the U.S. and China, but the perceptions of China’s true aims in the region are uneven. Most are concerned — the fellow communist government in Vietnam is wary and maintains important relationships with the U.S., while Cambodia and Laos are in effect client states of the PRC. China exploits these differences to prevent ASEAN from serving as an effective diplomatic bulwark against its expansionist strategy. Even with stalwart U.S. allies in Japan, South Korea, and Australia, Beijing has been effective at exploiting internal political differences over how hard a line to take. That further complicates U.S. diplomacy in the region. The diplomatic work extends beyond the region. The Economist estimates that some 70 countries, including many in the Global South that have entered into a Belt and Road Initiative relationship with China, have made agreements with Beijing to support “‘all’ efforts by China to unify [Taiwan] with the mainland.” The implications of this are significant. China is challenging the sovereignty of other countries in the region, ramping up military activity throughout the Pacific, and using its diplomatic and economic influence to isolate and intimidate Taiwan. Now, 70 other countries in effect agree with China’s clear changes to the status quo. The PRC could impose a naval blockade on Taiwan, for instance, and there would be broad concurrence that Beijing has the right to do so.

Promoting an alternative international order: Beijing is the leader of an alternative architecture for global order. It includes Russia, Iran, many countries in Central Asia, and, to some degree, Brazil and India. China has invested in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS as explicit alternatives to the Western, U.S.-led international order. A core objective of these organizations is to gain general acceptance of Beijing’s vision for a China-centric Indo-Pacific.

Beijing has been clever over many years as it has built this engine of diplomatic, security, and trade and economic arrangements, creating multiple levers to pull on and gradually increase pressure across many fronts, dialing it up or down where the opportunities exist. Through a mix of military aggressiveness, grey zone tactics (e.g., declaring “sovereignty” over national waters around islands that it creates from nothing) and diplomatic maneuvering. The net effect, it hopes, will be to create a new reality — to slowly change the status quo, with no sudden moves — after which its absorption of Taiwan will be seen by the U.S. and its allies as an inevitable step not capable of being opposed. Just as happened with Hong Kong, where hardly an eye was batted.

It also seems likely that Beijing will dangle what appear to be significant concessions — a comprehensive bilateral trade agreement with the United States, for instance — that depend on a tacit or explicit arrangement about Taiwan that contravenes the existing declarations that have kept Taiwan free from Beijing’s control. This is the future that Xi Jinping is creating through his own version of a maximum pressure campaign designed to shift the world’s perceptions in ways large and small over time. Why should he doubt its continued effectiveness? China now has military bases on islands he insisted did not even exist a decade ago, while Hong Kong is integrated into China’s political and economic systems.

Absorbing Taiwan is an important objective for Beijing, but it will be the reverberations that emanate from the PRC absorbing the island without a hot war that will create the conditions key to China’s achievement of Indo-Pacific hegemony — in other words, winning the war it has chosen to fight, without a shot.

***

There is only one possible outcome if China succeeds: Winner takes all, and loser pays. There should be no doubt that the U.S. would be the loser in this scenario, and we would be neutered in the region. Our alliances in Asia, with Japan and South Korea, with Australia, would collapse as those parties and others realized they had to accommodate Beijing. Why would they have confidence in U.S. security partnerships if the U.S. readily abandoned Taiwan?

In that scenario, China would in effect become a troll as in ancient folklore in the Indo-Pacific region, with a tribute to be paid to Beijing across the economic system. The world depends on this region for most trade and for the advanced semiconductor fabrication that serves the central nervous system of global markets and economies. Beijing also would dictate the terms for military alignments in the region, giving it space to continue to build its nuclear and conventional forces and, despite assertions to the contrary, to become a decisive voice in geopolitical matters around the world.

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Other regions likely would be impacted if China becomes the global rule-setter for the Indo-Pacific. Regional alignments with the U.S. in the Middle East and Latin America would be impacted. Meanwhile, resource-rich African countries already are under Beijing’s sway, owing to heavy infrastructure and mineral investments. We would find ourselves in the multipolar world that China and its likeminded anti-Western countries believe they want, where the United States was no longer the unquestioned dominant power and was forced to accept a diminished role. The U.S. would be seen as a declining power. China’s victory in such a war would gut U.S. credibility in Asia, give China dominance in advanced semiconductor fabrication, embolden China’s expansionism, and fundamentally shift the balance of world power. If China sets the rules on the Indo-Pacific, other regions — the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America — would align with Beijing, seeing Washington as a declining power.

While that would likely be accompanied by the spread of techno-totalitarian copycats and the rise of anti-democratic forces, the real issue for the U.S. is the damage that would be done to the economy and to the markets on which we depend. During the pandemic of 2020–2021, the world realized the price to be paid for dependence on China for global supply chains. Reshoring, friend-shoring, and other shifts away from China, which already had begun, accelerated as companies around the world recognized the unhealthy dependency on a manufacturing source of questionable reliability. If China dominates the Indo-Pacific, with its 60 percent of global population and an even greater percentage of manufacturing, electronics, shipping, supply chains, ports control, and critical minerals processing, the sense of urgency to prevent this from happening becomes obvious. In this sequence of events, Taiwan’s self-governance becomes the linchpin to U.S. global economic stability. “For want of a nail . . .”

A strain of strategic analysis examines this period, compares it to the Cold War era, and assesses China’s intent by recalling the Soviet Union and its actions. That is understandable, given that we are in a conflict involving two nuclear powers with conventional power projection capabilities. There are parallels. As during the Cold War, there is an influence campaign underway by both powers, as they try to draw countries into their respective camps. Also, as in the prior era, there is a sense that China — as some felt about USSR in the 1960s and 1970s —is a rising source of global influence against a complacent United States. There was a time that U.S. analysts likewise believed that the Soviet Union was on the verge of an economic breakout driven by global energy machinations following the Arab–Israeli conflicts of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many today believe that China is on the cusp of a similar economic breakout because of its perceived dominance in renewables and cheap Russian energy. (Dispelling that requires a separate analysis; see an earlier piece on it here.)

But we’re in a very different conflict today. First, China is embedded in the global economy and global markets in an almost intractable fashion; the Soviet bloc was an economic pariah with no meaningful commerce with the U.S. and the West. Second, the lines are not fixed: There’s nothing that approximates the inner-German border, the Berlin Wall, or the Iron Curtain, which separated East from West. China, in fact, seeks to change well established international lines, quite apart from its obvious intention to do that across the Taiwan Strait. Across the Indo-Pacific, Beijing already has made significant strategic gains. Cambodia and Laos are client states, with military bases hospitable to the People’s Liberation Army. The military government in Myanmar has few friends; China recently has reengaged with it after a much closer relationship with it in the early years of the 2000s. China has done so with an eye toward economic, military advantages for each side, including Chinese access to the Indian Ocean to bolster what Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Djibouti provide through agreement or outright Chinese ownership. Across the Indo-Pacific, China controls 14 port facilities. In the South Pacific, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga, Papua New Guina, Kiribati — all have entered into various agreements with Beijing, to allow it greater access and control.

In some respects, a better analogy than the Cold War may be the period between Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway. The United States was caught off guard in December 1941. We were preparing for war — tepidly, mostly rhetorically — while Japan was at war, but we didn’t believe it. This gave Japan in 1941, much like China today, a strategic-assessment advantage that required the U.S. to spend six long months to even begin to stem Japanese advances throughout the Pacific before its victory at Midway. The next three years were the painful, destructive road back to victory.

In recognizing that China is on the move and is already at war to achieve control of the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. must be much more aggressive than it has been. China does not want a shooting war, which it would see as a breakdown of its chosen strategy. Just the same, it is using its military in provocative ways. The U.S. and its allies should respond in kind by ramping up resistance to China in disputed waters and airspace. Such responses would include freedom of navigation operations and other shows of military force. On the economic and influence front, India has banned DeepSeek and TikTok; President Trump should be matching those moves. There’s no potential economic deal on trade or fentanyl that would make up for China’s encircling Taiwan through de facto control of disputed waters and deterring the U.S. and its allies from freedom of operation in the region.

We must accurately assess the moment in which we find ourselves so that the correct actions can follow. Alas, there is a strategic-assessment mismatch between China and the West. China’s conclusion: We are at war, and the objective is Indo-Pacific hegemony and dominance over two-thirds of the globe and more than half of global trade. The West’s assessment, as of now: We are preparing for war to prevent China from taking Taiwan. But it is time for us to acknowledge that the war has begun and to expand our horizon, because Taiwan is just the beginning.

The relationship governing U.S.–PRC–Taiwan agreements and understandings has been codified over the years by a series of diplomatic instruments that collectively are known as “the three communiques” and “the six assurances.” A detailed discussion of that just now is outside the scope of this analysis, but consistent with this parlance and shorthand, one might conclude that the actual situation we are in could be described as the War of Two Denials. Beijing is at war, but denies much of what it is doing to prosecute that war. The U.S. is preparing for war, denying that China is several steps ahead of us in what it already has achieved through non-kinetic means.

While no one saw it at the time, Midway was the beginning of the end of Japanese domination in the Pacific. The question we face today is: How far will we let China advance in its ongoing war for the Indo-Pacific, as we “prepare” for war over Taiwan? Or will the Trump administration convince the world that this is a “Midway moment,” reverse the trends we’re on, and ultimately prevail.

Thérèse Shaheen is a businesswoman and CEO of US Asia International. She was the chairman of the State Department’s American Institute in Taiwan from 2002 to 2004.

8. Ukraine Negotiations: Widen the Aperture

Are we effectively employing maskirovka and reflexive control?

Excerpts:

A stronger, U.S.-involved NATO, with an aligned-by-necessity Russia would be a more effective balance to, or power over, China. A stronger, U.S.-involved NATO also benefits Europe and for the U.S. it maintains the U.S.-European partnership rather than create a future competitor.

If this is indeed the unspoken U.S. objective of the U.S.-Russia negotiations, it would appear to make sense. No single entity would control Mackinder’s “Heartland,” a degree of stability would be achieved in a bi-polar world, and the U.S. would retain the necessary degree of power.

When Britian no longer ruled the waves, the U.S. was positioned to assume its position post-WWII as the leader of the Rules-Based International Order; today there is no such nation positioned to assume that responsibility should the U.S. relinquish it.

While issue may be taken with Thucydides ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,’ a negotiated peace based on the above would alleviate the suffering, foster stability, and enable redirection towards the common threat posed by China.

Public announcements are neither policy, nor the basis of negotiations. Russia has long excelled at maskirovka and reflexive control; maybe, just maybe, the U.S. is playing that game.

Ukraine Negotiations: Widen the Aperture

By Mike Kelly

February 24, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/02/24/ukraine_negotiations_widen_the_aperture_1093344.html?mc_cid=b5d3cb4f28&utm

Is someone in the Trump administration seeing China as the ends, with Ukraine and a deal being the ways and means, in the current negotiations with Russia on Ukraine taking place in Saudi Arabia?

A recent Battleground[i] podcast compared the current U.S.-Russian negotiations over Ukraine with the 1938 Munich Agreement, where the U.K. and France sacrificed the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany in the name of appeasement. Time will tell if this analogy was accurate.

Widening the aperture to a global geopolitical perspective, another parallel could be President F.D. Roosevelt’s recognition of the USSR in November 1933, ending 16 years of non-recognition. While there were many factors contributing to that recognition, the President’s decision would have been influenced by Imperial Japanese inroads on the Asian mainland and the National Socialist (Nazi) Party’s becoming the largest single party in the Reichstag that year. At that time, the U.S.’s full diplomatic recognition could help the U.S.’s depression-era economic situation but also would potentially align the USSR as an actor that geographically separated the two potential future enemies.

Similarly, President Nixon’s and Secretary of State Kissinger’s decoupling of the Soviet Union and China — the perceived communist monolith — to help extricate the U.S. from the Vietnam War is another comparable move to separate aligned enemies.

Over a century ago Harold Mackinder warned that whoever controlled the “heartland” (Eurasia) would have control of over 50% of the world’s resources, have the advantage of interior lines and a central position, and would therefore rule the world. Today’s alignment of Russia and China, united in opposition to the current U.S.-led international rules-based order, would essentially control the heartland and therefore the world. It is in the U.S.’s national interest that such a hegemony is not realized.

China is a near-term threat to the U.S. and a recognized long-term threat to Russia. A U.S.-Russia deal, good, bad or indifferent for Ukraine, could benefit both the U.S. and Russia. Should Russia exact security guarantees along its western boarders, along with economic benefits from the negotiations, but accept recognition of Ukraine’s sovereignty, it could focus on the threat to the east, China. In turn, the U.S. would benefit by being able to focus on a singular peer competitor in China, while simply monitoring Russian compliance as Europe reinvigorates its own deterrent capability.

U.S. credibility will suffer a blow from pulling away from the Russia threat in Europe, but hopefully only temporarily. In the context of great power competition, the major players are undeniably the U.S. and China, with Russia a close third. NATO, the EU or Europe are seldom included. The Russo-Ukrainian war, often mischaracterized as a three-year war despite Russia’s 2014 invasion, accentuates the ineffectiveness of many of the aforementioned entities to find a solution to the crisis.

The Minsk Agreements have had a minimal impact on the war other than a brief cessation of hostilities. Personally, having 16 years of NATO experience, in uniform and as a civilian, NATO is primarily a political body. A quickly negotiated end to hostilities in Ukraine will likely be counter-productive to President Trump’s call for increased defense spending amongst NATO members.

Similar demands during Trump’s first term in office failed. Member’s defense spending did increase as a result of the renewed Russian assault in 2022, but a ceasefire agreement would likely disincentivize increased or continued levels of defense spending. Percentages of GDP for defense spending are quantifiable political goals and potential political victories, but a more meaningful metric would be the synergistic effectiveness of collective combat-power generation rather than individual national-focused acquisition.

A stronger, U.S.-involved NATO, with an aligned-by-necessity Russia would be a more effective balance to, or power over, China. A stronger, U.S.-involved NATO also benefits Europe and for the U.S. it maintains the U.S.-European partnership rather than create a future competitor.

If this is indeed the unspoken U.S. objective of the U.S.-Russia negotiations, it would appear to make sense. No single entity would control Mackinder’s “Heartland,” a degree of stability would be achieved in a bi-polar world, and the U.S. would retain the necessary degree of power.

When Britian no longer ruled the waves, the U.S. was positioned to assume its position post-WWII as the leader of the Rules-Based International Order; today there is no such nation positioned to assume that responsibility should the U.S. relinquish it.

While issue may be taken with Thucydides ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,’ a negotiated peace based on the above would alleviate the suffering, foster stability, and enable redirection towards the common threat posed by China.

Public announcements are neither policy, nor the basis of negotiations. Russia has long excelled at maskirovka and reflexive control; maybe, just maybe, the U.S. is playing that game.

Mike Kelly is a currently and associate professor at the U.S. War College. A retired U.S. Marine infantry officer, Mike has sixteen years of experience in NATO, last service as the senior intelligence analyst/SOSA at the operational/joint force command level.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and not that of the U.S. War College or other institution.

Notes:

[i] Battleground-Ukraine; #254, 13 Feb 2025

9. Former NSA, Cyber Command chief Paul Nakasone says U.S. falling behind its enemies in cyberspace

Some interesting insights in this short interview.

Former NSA, Cyber Command chief Paul Nakasone says U.S. falling behind its enemies in cyberspace

In a wide-ranging speech and interview, Nakasone also talked about Trump administration moves and the shape of cyber offensive operations.

Tim Starks

February 22, 2025

cyberscoop.com · by Tim Starks · February 22, 2025

The United States is falling “increasingly behind” its adversaries in cyberspace, a former Cyber Command and National Security Agency boss said Saturday.

Speaking at the DistrictCon cybersecurity conference in Washington, D.C., retired Gen. Paul Nakasone said that “our adversaries are continuing to be able to broaden the spectrum of what they’re able to do to us.”

Nakasone said incidents like Chinese government-backed breaches of U.S. telecommunications companies and other critical infrastructure — as well as a steady drumbeat of ransomware attacks against U.S. targets — illustrate “the fact that we’re unable to secure our networks, the fact that we’re unable to leverage the software that’s being provided today, the fact that we have adversaries that continue to maintain this capability.”

Nakasone, who led NSA and CYBERCOM from 2018 until early last year and is now founding director of Vanderbilt University’s Institute of National Security, said he fears the threats of the future are only going to get more dangerous.

One example is “we are starting to see the beginnings of the bleed from the non-kinetic to the kinetic for cyber operations,” he said, referring to actual physical damage.

“What’s next is that we are going to see cyberattacks against a series of platforms being able to actually down platforms with ones and zeros,” Nakasone said.

A board member for OpenAI, Nakasone also talked about how artificial intelligence could make cyber offense more potent. Specifically, he mentioned the notion of generative targeting, such as the idea of physical drones choosing their targets powered by AI.

“We’re starting to challenge this idea of humans in the middle of the loop, and I also offer to you as we think about artificial intelligence models, think about cyber weaponry,” he said. “How far are we talking to this idea of being able to create an agent that’s going to move through your network, that’s going to change based upon topology in the network, being able to evade the defenses that are there, choosing targets of the future?”

Members of the Trump administration, and some members from both parties in Congress, have called for the United States to get more aggressive with offensive operations in cyberspace. In a separate conversation with reporters, Nakasone said he agreed with those sentiments.

Nakasone’s Cyber Command conducted operations dating back to at least 2018 to disrupt Iranian and Russian hackers in conjunction with more defensive “hunt forward” missions in other nations designed to fortify allies’ defenses and detect future threats against the United States. He also advocated for a philosophy of “persistent engagement” — to be in constant contact with cyber enemies, proactively rather than reactively.

“We need to do more of that, certainly,” Nakasone said of offensive operations. “It’s not just the only thing we need.”

One of the points of persistent engagement was to ensure anyone who attacked U.S. election infrastructure knew they would suffer consequences from the United States, he said.

“Can we be more forthcoming in terms of some of the things we did?” Nakasone said. “Yeah, I think there is opportunity.”

In his speech, Nakasone said the top priority for the United States should be hiring top talent. Under President Donald Trump, the government has been removing some of those who were in the cyber talent pipeline.

Eventually, “we’re going to have to be able to engage folks again and say, ‘Hey, please come and work in government,’” Nakasone said. It’s an open question how long any damage to the trust of potential hires will last, he said.

Another change under Trump is that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly sped up the implementation of a Cyber Command overhaul, from 180 days to 45 days.

“How doable is it? It’s really doable when you get that direction from the secretary,” Nakasone said in response to a question from CyberScoop. Asked if he was worried about whether the tightened timeline would lead to that implementation suffering, Nakasone answered only that the concepts of Cyber Command 2.0 have been in the works for a while already.

During a question-and-answer session with the DistrictCon audience, Nakasone also didn’t voice any criticisms of Trump’s purge of top military officials, such as Gen. Charles “CQ” Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“At the end of the day, the president gets to choose his own principal military adviser,” he said, while praising Brown.

Update 2/23/25: This story has been updated with the correct title of Vanderbilt University’s Institute of National Security.

Written by Tim Starks

Tim Starks is senior reporter at CyberScoop. His previous stops include working at The Washington Post, POLITICO and Congressional Quarterly. An Evansville, Ind. native, he's covered cybersecurity since 2003. Email Tim here: tim.starks@cyberscoop.com.

cyberscoop.com · by Tim Starks · February 22, 2025

10. A World Reordered By: Nadia Schadlow

Excerpts:

A Playbook For Stability

At that dinner, some thirty years ago, President Nixon reiterated one of the key themes of his book 1999: the importance of maintaining a balance of power to preserve peace.

One of Nixon’s favorite writers was Paul Johnson, whom the former president often quoted. Johnson once wrote, “One of the lessons of history is that no civilization can be taken for granted. Its permanency can never be assured; there is always a dark age waiting for you around the corner if you play our cards badly and make sufficient mistakes.”

As Johnson’s words reflect, Richard Nixon understood how power abhors a vacuum: if the United States does not lead, someone else will. Throughout the many global shifts that occurred during his administration, the thirty-seventh president remained determined to guide America into a sustainable position of power. He was not wedded to establishment approaches to diplomacy and was not afraid to ruffle feathers.

Like Richard Nixon, Donald Trump understands that periods of geopolitical reordering offer generational opportunities to update and reconfigure the world system. The key will be in also appreciating, like Nixon, that peace is not static and that other rivals, if given the opportunity and resources, will grow their power at the expense of ours.

A World Reordered

February 24, 2025

By: Nadia Schadlow

The National Interest

Topic: Politics

Region: Americas

Tags: Donald Trump, History, Richard Nixon, and Security

February 24, 2025

Like Richard Nixon, Donald Trump understands that periods of geopolitical reordering offer generational opportunities to update and reconfigure the world system.

Recently, I found myself going through some materials about President Richard Nixon—books and copies of old speeches. I reached for one of his post-presidency books, 1999: Victory Without War, and a picture slipped out. It was a snapshot from a dinner that I had attended at his home in Wood Cliff Lake, New Jersey. He had graciously hosted the interns who had worked on the book.

The evening had begun in his library, which was just what one would imagine, filled with leather chairs, dark mahogany, and bookshelves overflowing with works of history. After appetizers, we were ushered into the dining room. It was my first “professional” dinner. The conversation was substantive: slightly formal but flowing. The former president asked us questions and seemed genuinely interested in what the twenty-somethings around the table thought, even though we didn’t know much about how the world worked.

We discussed the Strategic Defense Initiative, the START I treaty, which was then being negotiated, and Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership of the Soviet Union.

As I continued to think about that evening, I reread his 1970 First Annual Report on U.S. Foreign Policy and realized that this month marks over a half-century since its delivery to Congress. The report, striking in clarity and realism, is remarkably relevant to today’s geopolitical environment. As the new administration gets underway, it’s worth considering the parallels.

A Structure for Peace

Nixon entered the White House as the world was undergoing a fundamental reordering. In his first report to Congress, he observed that the pattern of international politics was changing. As he saw it, the challenge of statesmanship was to understand the nature of that change, define America’s goals as it unfolded, and set policies to achieve them.

The conditions that had created stability and prosperity after World War II through the 1950s and 1960s were changing. America was still the leading power, but Europe and Japan were growing stronger as they recovered economically, expressing greater self-confidence and political vitality. As Europe’s economic and political confidence grew, European views about the Soviet Union were shifting. Germany’s chancellor, Willy Brandt, was exploring how to make overtures to the Soviet Union. His policy of Ostpolitik sought reconciliation with Moscow to manage tensions, allow more fruitful exchanges between East and West Germany, and set the stage for eventual German reunification.

By 1970, the nuclear balance had also shifted. The United States no longer held strategic superiority vis-à-vis the USSR. Both Washington and Moscow now could inflict “unacceptable damage on the other.” In addition, China was developing its nuclear arsenal. These shifts and the corresponding “revolution in the technology of war,” as Nixon observed, had altered the military balance of power.

Europe’s growing economic strength, Berlin’s outreach to Moscow, and the evolving nuclear landscape brought new challenges for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Nixon, addressing these challenges, invoked the former British prime minister Harold MacMillan’s observation that alliances were held together not by love but by fear.

Nixon also identified the cracks in what, up until then, had been a monolithic Communist bloc, observing, “the Marxist dream of international communist unity has disintegrated.” As the 1960s unfolded, the Soviet Union and Communist China had become adversaries. (Some of the name-calling was intense: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had called China’s Mao Zedong an “ultra-leftist, ultra-dogmatist, left revisionist, a Buddha who gets theory out of his nose, oblivious to any interests other than his own.”)

Together, these political and military developments represented geopolitical shifts that Nixon believed could be shaped to achieve a “durable peace.” He saw peace as a process “embodied in a structure,” understood that the status quo was changing, and wanted to ensure that the United States led those changes.

In his view, Washington needed to play a key role in maintaining an equilibrium in the world—a balance of power—so that its adversaries would not prevail. Nixon believed that peace was not static; keeping it required constant calibration as other powers acted in their interests.

This belief in a continuing process for maintaining peace was a theme throughout his years in the White House, as well as after he left office. He captured the point eloquently in his book Real Peace:

Real peace will not come from some magic formula that will suddenly and once and for all be “discovered,” like the promised land or the holy grail. Real peace is a process—a continuing process for managing and containing conflict between competing nations, competing systems, and competing international ambitions. Peace is not an end to conflict but rather a means of living with conflict. Once established, it requires constant attention, or it will not survive.

Conditions For Peace

Nixon identified three conditions for maintaining a durable peace in the face of constant geopolitical shifts.

First, Nixon believed that sustaining peace required sharing responsibility. Partnerships have obligations as well as benefits, and both should be shared. He observed that America’s quintessentially “do it yourself” spirit and “healthy impatience” could lead to the tendency of “doing it all” in our foreign policy.

This call for shared responsibility did not mean that peace would be achieved “by giving up our friends or letting down our allies.” Nixon believed that the United States needed to maintain its commitments but advocated for more “responsible participation by our foreign friends” in their defense. This would make it easier for Washington to sustain commitments over the “long pull,” as he put it.

Over time, this idea would become known as the Nixon Doctrine: the United States would participate in the defense and development of its allies and friends but could not and would not “conceive of all.” A threatened nation would shoulder the primary responsibility of providing the manpower for its defense.

Second, Nixon believed that maintaining a durable peace required strength (this was Nixon’s formulation first, not Reagan’s). He believed that American weakness would invite aggression, which could lead to costly miscalculations. He sought to cultivate a world in which “the United States is powerful,” because it would be a “safer world and better world if we have a strong, healthy United States, Europe, Soviet Union, China, Japan, each balancing the other, not playing one against the other, an even balance.”

Third, peace requires a willingness to negotiate. Negotiations, as Nixon saw them, did not indicate weakness, nor were they an end in themselves. The concept of linkage was central to Nixon’s negotiating style. At one point, in planning for the May 1972 Soviet Summit, during which the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) was to be signed, Nixon made it clear that the summit itself could not be the primary consideration. He was, for example, willing to see the summit canceled if the Soviets objected to the strong U.S. response to North Vietnam’s aggression in the spring of 1972.

Nixon’s particular skill involved connecting problems across the military, political, and strategic domains. While he was willing to conduct strategic arms negotiations with the USSR, he expected progress in other areas, like Vietnam or the Middle East. At the time, Henry Kissinger, who served as national security advisor and secretary of state in the Nixon administration, explained to The New York Times that the president wanted to deal with the “problem of peace on the entire front on which peace was challenged and not only on nuclear arms talks.”

These three “instruments” of peace—shared responsibility, strength, and negotiations—would help the United States maintain an equilibrium of power during Richard Nixon’s years in the White House. It was such a balance that provided the most effective bulwark against future war.

“The Perils Of The Present, The Promise Of The Future”

The new Trump administration is well aware of the reordering taking place in the world today. In 2016, Trump was elected on a promise to shape some of these realignments, to restore American strength, and to protect and grow American advantages.

He advanced policies intended to shift the country away from the interdependencies of globalization, particularly reliance on China. Beijing’s unfair trade practices and control over critical supply chains had resulted in negative economic conditions for the American people and degraded their security. Open borders empowered drug cartels and abetted the flow of narcotics into the United States, killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. Radical Islam continued to pose a threat at home and abroad.

Today, these efforts remain unfinished. Trump won reelection in 2024 partly because Americans believed that the shifts that Trump had started to address and manage needed to be completed.

Like Nixon, Trump recognizes how power and its distribution in the world matters. Unlike the Biden administration, Trump does not view displays of power as inherently escalatory. American power can be a tool to shape geopolitical developments around America’s national advantages. Fundamental to both presidents’ worldviews is that states, as individual actors, are the primary sources of both global power and global stability. The U.S. ability to set conditions (as opposed to letting the sprawling international community do so) has set out a fundamentally different course than the Biden administration.

Specific aspects of today’s geopolitical environment are different from those during Nixon’s tenure. The Cold War Sino-Soviet split created an opportunity for Nixon. He took a risk and used U.S. power to divide two adversaries further to retain a balance of power in America’s favor.

Trump will have different opportunities—and, like Nixon, he will see opportunities where others do not. Overall, success in ensuring America’s enduring strengths is more likely if policies align with Nixon’s three conditions for a durable peace.

Trump campaigned on the platform of peace through strength, pledging in his 2025 inaugural address to build “the strongest military the world has ever seen.” As he seeks efficiencies and drives reforms to quickly acquire scalable, lethal forces that take full advantage of America’s technological strengths, deterrence also requires the United States to prove to its adversaries that, if necessary, we can sustain a fight.

He will continue to demand shared responsibility from U.S. allies. He dedicated his first term to cajoling our European partners to build up their militaries and carry their weight within NATO, which led to higher defense spending. Trump does not want a weakened Europe—such a goal would be counterproductive. Instead, he wants independent allies who can meaningfully contribute to opposing anti-Western forces. Europe is divided and stagnating on various fronts. Trump is challenging Europeans to address a status quo characterized by low defense spending, counterproductive net-zero energy policies, and pro-China trade arrangements, while Vice President Vance is reminding them of the values we hold in common.

Like Nixon, Trump will use negotiations to improve American positions in key domains. He will negotiate to achieve the reciprocity that he believes, correctly, is often missing in these areas. Thus, he will continue to drive toward a reordering of the global trading system. This will challenge critics who see his efforts as a tactical “trade war” to acknowledge, instead, that Trump’s use of tariffs and other tools is in pursuit of a more sustainable trading equilibrium.

Trump also likes linkage—a lot. He seems to be able to stretch it to its limits. He had no problem pulling out of the JCPOA in 2018 because the deal isolated the nuclear question and eschewed all linkage to Iran’s chaos-sowing behavior in the Middle East. He imposed maximum pressure through sanctions and linked an easing of sanctions to changes in Iranian behavior across the board.

His announcements of tariffs on Canada and Mexico have led both countries to finally take their border security seriously. This linkage won U.S. neighbors a one-month reprieve, during which tariffs will be further linked to achieving more balanced trade. More tariff- and sanctions-related linkage awaits Russia, Iran, and China.

Trump often takes disruptive approaches to induce others to move in the direction he prefers. His recent proposal to take over Gaza has led to states in the region positioning to rebuild the territory. His assertive posturing on the Panama Canal led its government to move toward his view on China’s role in the canal. A test of linkage now, as negotiations over Ukraine in Riyadh unfold, will be whether or not Trump can help to achieve a stable European theater that is not dominated by Russia and allows the United States to remain active in shaping a balance of power around the world. A Russia that controls Ukraine and its unparalleled resources is not in American interests and sends a provocative signal to China and Iran. U.S. interests span many regions of the world and are linked.

A Playbook For Stability

At that dinner, some thirty years ago, President Nixon reiterated one of the key themes of his book 1999: the importance of maintaining a balance of power to preserve peace.

One of Nixon’s favorite writers was Paul Johnson, whom the former president often quoted. Johnson once wrote, “One of the lessons of history is that no civilization can be taken for granted. Its permanency can never be assured; there is always a dark age waiting for you around the corner if you play our cards badly and make sufficient mistakes.”

As Johnson’s words reflect, Richard Nixon understood how power abhors a vacuum: if the United States does not lead, someone else will. Throughout the many global shifts that occurred during his administration, the thirty-seventh president remained determined to guide America into a sustainable position of power. He was not wedded to establishment approaches to diplomacy and was not afraid to ruffle feathers.

Like Richard Nixon, Donald Trump understands that periods of geopolitical reordering offer generational opportunities to update and reconfigure the world system. The key will be in also appreciating, like Nixon, that peace is not static and that other rivals, if given the opportunity and resources, will grow their power at the expense of ours.

Nadia Schadlow is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute.

Image: Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest

11. Trump’s Foreign Policy Revolution

Are we now a revisionist power?

Excerpts:

In other words, America under President Trump no longer acts as a status quo power. It is a revisionist power just as intent on changing the structure of international relations as are Russia and China. What that structure will look like once Trump is finished with it—and whether America will be a safer, richer place—is anybody’s guess.

Trump had similar goals in his first term but lacked the personnel to see them through. Now he and his team are on the same page. That’s because Trump has settled a long-running debate on the political right.

On one side of the fight are the so-called “primacists,” who insist that American leadership and greater defense can revive the postwar order. On the other side are “restrainers,” who counter that America should reduce its overseas commitments and adopt balance-of-power diplomacy toward China and Russia. Primacists tend to be hawks and are often disparaged, incorrectly, as “neocons.” (The use and abuse of that term is a subject for another column.) Restrainers are doves. Trump sides with the restrainers—for the moment.

The restrainers draw inspiration from conservative journalist Patrick Buchanan, from Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, and perhaps above all from John Mearsheimer, a scholar of international relations at the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer, a foreign policy “realist,” has the peculiar distinction of being both a pariah in establishment circles and one of the most influential strategic thinkers of our time. His infamous 2007 work, The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy, co-authored with Harvard’s Stephen M. Walt, remains a touchstone for antisemitic conspiracy theorists. (Panning Mearsheimer and Walt’s argument, the late essayist Christopher Hitchens, no supporter of Israel, wrote, “What is original is not true and what is true is not original.”)

According to realist theory, all states pursue a national interest aimed at amassing power. The tragedy is that great powers inevitably come into violent conflict as they seek advantage over one another. Nor do problems end when one great power dominates the rest. In fact, says Mearsheimer, things grow worse as liberal-minded great powers seek to convert the world to democracy—what he calls “liberal hegemony.”

America, Mearsheimer argues, has pursued liberal hegemony since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, with deadly and unpopular consequences. Hence, he writes, “American policymakers would be wise to abandon liberal hegemony and pursue a more restrained foreign policy based on realism and a proper understanding of how nationalism constrains great powers.”

...

What’s left to be decided? How far will America go in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? And can an accommodation be reached with China over Taiwan?

This sweeping agenda touches every dimension of American power: military, economic, diplomatic, cultural. And it carries great risks. Trump’s desire for loyalty has elevated inexperienced personnel whose unfamiliarity with international politics and D.C. bureaucracy could be costly. Realists are so focused on the costs of liberal hegemony that they ignore or dismiss the benefits, namely decades of unprecedented peace and prosperity in Europe, East Asia, and North America. Restrainers are so consumed with enmity toward primacists that they misread the nature of America’s enemies. Putin, Xi, Khamenei, and Kim are not self-interested, rational actors looking for off-ramps and calculating side hustles. They are predators waiting out their prey.

One of the weaknesses of realism is its inability to draw lines around America’s vital interests. Will Trump adopt a hemispheric foreign policy, and leave other theaters to fend for themselves? Or will the hemispheric foreign policy be limited to fighting cartels in Mexico and preventing foreign navies from transiting the Gulf of America? Strategic ambiguity invites rogue states to probe for weaknesses. Think of Dean Acheson leaving South Korea out of the U.S. defense perimeter—and North Korea marching on Seoul not long after.

Realists also have a legitimacy problem. True, opinion polls often show that the American public is ambivalent or unwilling to bear significant burdens overseas. That doesn’t mean they will support policies that wind up strengthening Russia, China, and Iran. Barack Obama adopted restraint when he removed U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011—only to send them back to Iraq and Syria a few years later when ISIS began its murderous rampage. Joe Biden adopted restraint when he sounded retreat from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021—only to see his approval ratings fall and never recover. Nor will Americans cavalierly abandon their belief in democracy. Trump might have no room for idealism in foreign policy. He might believe sheer economic interest benefits America. The electorate may well disagree.

Trump’s Foreign Policy Revolution

America is now just as intent on changing the structure of the world order as Russia and China.

By Matthew Continetti

02.24.25 —

U.S. Politics

https://www.thefp.com/p/trump-foreign-policy-revolution?utm

(Illustration by The Free Press, images via Getty)

The revolution began with smiles.

When Marco Rubio appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 15, his former colleagues received him with collegial deference as the media hunted elsewhere for controversy. Yet the vote that confirmed Rubio as secretary of state was noteworthy not just for its unanimity, but for its tacit rejection of decades of U.S. foreign policy.

Just listen to what Rubio told the Senate. America, he said, won the Cold War 30 years ago, but promptly succumbed to triumphalism. We sought to retain our superpower status through open immigration, free trade, and foreign intervention. The results? A border crisis, deindustrialization, endless wars, and a rising China.

“The postwar global order is not just obsolete,” Rubio said. “It is now a weapon being used against us.” Under President Trump, Rubio continued, U.S. foreign policy will prioritize the national interest. The quest for world order will be abandoned. America will secure its borders, its power, its wealth.

Rubio’s transformation from Jeb Bush’s protégé to Donald Trump’s secretary of state is one of the great political stories of our time. But his confirmation statement was not a lark. His message was a preview of what was to come.

The dramatic foreign policy reversals began with Trump’s pledges to acquire Greenland, absorb Canada, name the Gulf of America, retake the Panama Canal, and own the Gaza Strip. Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on global trade, mused over cutting the defense budget in half and stopping nuclear weapons production, and signaled his openness to a “verified nuclear peace agreement with Iran.” Trump called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator without elections,” suggested that Ukraine provoked Russia’s invasion, and bypassed Kyiv and Brussels for direct peace talks with Moscow. On February 24, the third anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war, the United States voted with Russia to kill a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression. And it’s only been a month.

Underlying these policies is the belief that the international system America built after World War II no longer works. Rather than expend further blood and treasure preserving America’s status as the global superpower, and aid democratic allies without conditions, Trump wants to rebuild alliance and security structures to reduce and delimit U.S. military and financial exposure.

In other words, America under President Trump no longer acts as a status quo power. It is a revisionist power just as intent on changing the structure of international relations as are Russia and China. What that structure will look like once Trump is finished with it—and whether America will be a safer, richer place—is anybody’s guess.

Trump had similar goals in his first term but lacked the personnel to see them through. Now he and his team are on the same page. That’s because Trump has settled a long-running debate on the political right.

On one side of the fight are the so-called “primacists,” who insist that American leadership and greater defense can revive the postwar order. On the other side are “restrainers,” who counter that America should reduce its overseas commitments and adopt balance-of-power diplomacy toward China and Russia. Primacists tend to be hawks and are often disparaged, incorrectly, as “neocons.” (The use and abuse of that term is a subject for another column.) Restrainers are doves. Trump sides with the restrainers—for the moment.

The restrainers draw inspiration from conservative journalist Patrick Buchanan, from Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, and perhaps above all from John Mearsheimer, a scholar of international relations at the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer, a foreign policy “realist,” has the peculiar distinction of being both a pariah in establishment circles and one of the most influential strategic thinkers of our time. His infamous 2007 work, The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy, co-authored with Harvard’s Stephen M. Walt, remains a touchstone for antisemitic conspiracy theorists. (Panning Mearsheimer and Walt’s argument, the late essayist Christopher Hitchens, no supporter of Israel, wrote, “What is original is not true and what is true is not original.”)

According to realist theory, all states pursue a national interest aimed at amassing power. The tragedy is that great powers inevitably come into violent conflict as they seek advantage over one another. Nor do problems end when one great power dominates the rest. In fact, says Mearsheimer, things grow worse as liberal-minded great powers seek to convert the world to democracy—what he calls “liberal hegemony.”

America, Mearsheimer argues, has pursued liberal hegemony since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, with deadly and unpopular consequences. Hence, he writes, “American policymakers would be wise to abandon liberal hegemony and pursue a more restrained foreign policy based on realism and a proper understanding of how nationalism constrains great powers.”

Mearsheimer was encouraged when Trump took office in 2017. Trump’s “America First” policy repudiated the Iraq war, sought a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan, called for Europe to pay more for defense, toyed with removing U.S. forces from the Korean peninsula, and opted for economic sanctions over military action against Iran. Yet Trump was just one man. And his first administration included such noted GOP hawks as Mike Pence, James Mattis, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pompeo.

Subsequently, Mearsheimer became pessimistic that true restraint could be achieved. Realists would have to pursue another strategy to prevent U.S. interventionism and promotion of democracy. “The best way to undermine liberal hegemony,” Mearsheimer wrote, “is to build a counter-elite that can make the case for a realist-based foreign policy. The good news is that there is already a small and vocal core of restrainers that serve as the foundation for that select group.”

Eight years later, restrainers dominate the Trump administration and MAGA movement.

First-term Trump hawks have been replaced by loyalists who argue publicly for Trump’s version of restraint. The most prominent is Vice President J.D. Vance, an Iraq war veteran who has emerged as the most eloquent articulator of the MAGA worldview. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, also a veteran, is a former Democrat whose past sympathy for Putin, Bashar al-Assad, and Edward Snowden came up in her confirmation hearing. Trump’s most important advisers, businessman Elon Musk and special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff, share the president’s instincts. And restrainers fill the ranks of lower-level appointees, such as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East Michael DiMino; acting under secretary of defense for policy Alexander Velez-Green; and Elbridge A. Colby, Trump’s choice to replace Velez-Green.

Since 2022, primacists and restrainers have clashed over Republican support for Ukraine. And the restrainers now have the upper hand. Indeed, when you study the Trump administration’s approach to Ukraine, you can see Mearsheimer’s influence.

Back in the 1990s, Mearsheimer urged Ukraine to maintain its nuclear weapons stockpile. Over the past decade, however, he’s blamed Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and direct invasion in 2022 on America’s expansion of NATO and democracy promotion within Ukraine. To freeze the conflict and relax tensions, Mearsheimer wrote in 2014, “The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer between NATO and Russia, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War.”

Trump and MAGA have put a fiery populist gloss on Mearsheimer’s academic prose. MAGA sees Zelensky as a con man and U.S. support for Ukraine as another entry in the catalogue of U.S. foreign policy fiascoes. Trump’s friend and sounding board Tucker Carlson has called Zelensky, who is Jewish, “sweaty and rat-like” and a “persecutor of Christians.” Steve Bannon says, “The Ukraine war is the central screwup of Europe over the last couple of years.”

Journalist Raheem Kassam, a frequent guest on Bannon’s podcast, calls Ukraine the foreign policy establishment’s “white Iraq.” And on February 23, after meeting with Putin for three and a half hours in Moscow and (along with Rubio and Mike Waltz) with Sergey Lavrov for more than four hours in Riyadh, Steve Witkoff told CNN, “The war didn’t need to happen. It was provoked. It doesn’t necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians. There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining NATO.”

By the logic of MAGA’s foreign policy revolution, Putin is the reasonable party and America the aggressor. Mearsheimer couldn’t have said it better himself.

Though Trump campaigned last year on the economy, the border, and the cultural radicalism of the progressive left, he also ran on the promise to restore the successful foreign policy of his first term. But that foreign policy followed a different logic. The outlines of Trump’s second-term foreign policy emerged after Election Day. Liberal hegemony is no longer America’s purpose. America will expand its territory. The world will pay for access to America’s markets. America’s allies will pay more for their defense. America will look to make deals with adversaries and use force as a last resort. Restrainers will try to impose a ceasefire on Ukraine.

What’s left to be decided? How far will America go in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? And can an accommodation be reached with China over Taiwan?

This sweeping agenda touches every dimension of American power: military, economic, diplomatic, cultural. And it carries great risks. Trump’s desire for loyalty has elevated inexperienced personnel whose unfamiliarity with international politics and D.C. bureaucracy could be costly. Realists are so focused on the costs of liberal hegemony that they ignore or dismiss the benefits, namely decades of unprecedented peace and prosperity in Europe, East Asia, and North America. Restrainers are so consumed with enmity toward primacists that they misread the nature of America’s enemies. Putin, Xi, Khamenei, and Kim are not self-interested, rational actors looking for off-ramps and calculating side hustles. They are predators waiting out their prey.

One of the weaknesses of realism is its inability to draw lines around America’s vital interests. Will Trump adopt a hemispheric foreign policy, and leave other theaters to fend for themselves? Or will the hemispheric foreign policy be limited to fighting cartels in Mexico and preventing foreign navies from transiting the Gulf of America? Strategic ambiguity invites rogue states to probe for weaknesses. Think of Dean Acheson leaving South Korea out of the U.S. defense perimeter—and North Korea marching on Seoul not long after.

Realists also have a legitimacy problem. True, opinion polls often show that the American public is ambivalent or unwilling to bear significant burdens overseas. That doesn’t mean they will support policies that wind up strengthening Russia, China, and Iran. Barack Obama adopted restraint when he removed U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011—only to send them back to Iraq and Syria a few years later when ISIS began its murderous rampage. Joe Biden adopted restraint when he sounded retreat from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021—only to see his approval ratings fall and never recover. Nor will Americans cavalierly abandon their belief in democracy. Trump might have no room for idealism in foreign policy. He might believe sheer economic interest benefits America. The electorate may well disagree.

Trump campaigned on ending the Ukraine war. His unconventional diplomacy has brought him wins in the past. Yet there is a danger he is overreading his election victory, on foreign policy especially. The critics of Bush-era overreach find themselves in charge of their own grand experiment. Realism and restraint will have to work in practice, not just in books and op-eds. A chastened Marco Rubio surely knows that applying abstract theories to world affairs has unpredictable consequences. And that hubris knows no party or ideology.

Matthew Continetti is the director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Right.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

12. The 'Inconvenient Truth'—US Military Doctrines Shaken by Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East

Excerpts:

The fundamental concept is that the optimal mix of quantity, quality, and cost in weapons production will be the key to achieving victory in future conflicts between peer adversaries, with cost reduction being the priority.

Bryan Clark, the director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, has been a prominent American defense analyst for years. He has been advocating for a fundamental transition from the costly “Death Stars”—such as the Gerald R. Ford-class supercarriers and Zumwalt stealth destroyers—to the mass production of simple, low-cost autonomous drones for network-centric warfare.

Clark is also one of the authors of the Mosaic Warfare concept, which is a refined evolution of network-centric warfare.

American analysts have come to the realization that the concept does not function as intended, nearly 25 years after the publication of A. Cebrowski and J. Garstka’s seminal article Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future.

Rather, they created Mosaic Warfare, which replaces vulnerable, costly “Death Stars” with a multitude of inexpensive weapons, predominantly drones, that are operated by skilled and independent commanders within a unified digital battlespace.

The Pentagon was unable to overcome the conservatism and corruption of the defense industry during the tenure of President Biden, a responsibility that was ultimately transferred to the administration of the 47th U.S. President, Donald Trump.

The 'Inconvenient Truth'—US Military Doctrines Shaken by Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have exposed critical flaws in US military doctrines, challenging decades-old assumptions about precision warfare. As attrition and mass warfare prove decisive, analysts warn that America's high-tech, small-force strategy may be ill-suited for future conflicts.

Frontier India News Network

2025-02-24

frontierindia.com · by Frontier India News Network · February 24, 2025

Even the Americans themselves were compelled to acknowledge, albeit reluctantly, that the military actions in Ukraine have disproven the majority of American military doctrines.

Retired U.S. Major General John Ferrari, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former Director of Program Analysis and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Defense, writes in an article for Defense One that the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have revealed a “inconvenient truth” for the Pentagon. “

Ferrari suggests that the U.S. military establishment may have succumbed to the winner’s snare and failed to address the issues and obstacles of forthcoming conflicts. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the United States may have built a military mechanism that is unsuited for the 21st century, after nearly twenty years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, which began in Somalia in 1993.

He observes that the U.S. Armed Forces’ rapid victory over the Iraqi army in the early 1990s was a turning point in generational warfare, with the main takeaway being that precision-guided munitions are essential for winning future conflicts. This narrative was a highly desired concept at the time: the notion that the U.S. could reduce the number of forces, spend less money, and transform war into a targeting exercise, defeating the adversary with precise, limited salvos that were controlled from above. This was made possible by the digital revolution.

Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that these lightning victories, which were achieved through the use of precision weapons, were only feasible in conflicts against guerrillas in sandals or the armies of third-world countries, such as Iraq.

Ferrari acknowledges that it may be time to reevaluate the key features of force design, as the thirty-year emphasis on small, sophisticated, and expensive armed forces—whose deficiencies were concealed by optimistic political assumptions, such as the notion that we would only engage in a brief, high-tech conflict—may now be warranted.

In general, this article is considered groundbreaking, as it is the first time an American general who is responsible for conceptual programs in the U.S. Army has acknowledged the failure of Pentagon doctrines and stated that future wars between peer adversaries will be fought by mass armies and be attrition wars.

The United States currently maintains the smallest army since World War II, and the Navy and Air Force are experiencing significant reductions in size. Furthermore, there is no widespread production of affordable assault weapons and munitions. In light of this, Ferrari argues that it is essential to reinstate attrition and mass as fundamental principles of force planning.

In his analysis of the combat experience in Ukraine, noted American military analyst Lt. Col. Amos Fox essentially dismisses the Pentagon’s doctrines of rapid war using precision weaponry. In his opinion, land wars, which are fought for territorial control, have profoundly different military end-states than irregular warfare, counterinsurgency, or civil wars. An industrial army designed to engage in and prevail in attrition warfare will not prevail in a territorial conflict against an army that is engaged in combat with insurgents or a police force.

Military strategies that are appropriately aligned with these objectives are necessary in conflicts that are fought for territorial control. A territorial war cannot be won by a strategy that is predicated on precision attacks without the necessary ground forces to capitalize on those strikes, particularly when confronted with an industrial army that is specifically designed for attrition warfare.

Physical mass—specifically, superiority in manpower—is more significant than precision assaults and long-range firepower when territory retention is a critical element of political and military victory, despite assertions to the contrary. The greater the physical mass of an army, the more resilient it is to attacks of any kind and the more difficult and costly it is to defeat it, whether in terms of the number of attacks required, the munitions expended, or the lives lost.

It is challenging to overcome a well-fortified, multi-layered, and prepared defense, such as the one that Russia has established along the contact line with Ukrainian forces. If the adversary lacks sufficiently resilient and well-supported ground forces, this challenge will increase exponentially.

Network-centric warfare has been the primary U.S. Army doctrine for the past three decades. This doctrine aims to create a unified digital battlespace in which every soldier or junior commander can receive real-time information about any sector of the battlefield and communicate instantaneously with higher command.

The Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) program, which was established by the Pentagon in 2019, is designed to unify all battlefield actors within a single digital environment.

However, a 2023 Government Accountability Office report stated that the Department of Defense has yet to determine details such as which existing systems will contribute to [CJADC2] and what future capabilities need to be developed after nearly four years of development, according to War on the Rocks analyst Zane Clare.

The CJADC2 team has redirected its attention after failing to realize its initial objective of universally establishing reconnaissance-strike complexes as the foundation of network-centric warfare, which involved connecting every sensor to every sniper. Bryan Clark and Dan Patt, analysts at the Hudson Institute, report that CJADC2 is currently integrating specific systems to resolve real-world operational challenges, rather than relying on top-down mandates to create more interoperable and interchangeable forces, a process that could take decades.

In other words, the responsibility for decision-making has been transferred to mid- and junior-level commanders.

It is important to acknowledge that the Pentagon has been enhancing network-centric warfare concepts for decades. Nevertheless, the failure of the universalist approach that Pentagon bureaucrats have imposed on the military for 30 years has been rapidly revealed by the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.

However, the primary challenge that the U.S. Armed Forces—and NATO armies in general—are currently encountering is not the manner in which they are to be commanded, but rather the content of their commands.

The Pentagon’s primary challenge is the smallest army since World War II, which is equipped with massive and costly weapons platforms like supercarriers, super-destroyers, and superfighters, that can be easily neutralized by swarms of cheap drones. The U.S. Department of Defense is addressing this challenge with tentative and reluctance.

The Task Force on Strategic Options was established within the Defense Science Board by a memorandum signed by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu, which was published on the Pentagon’s official website in February 2023, one year after the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.

The objective of this new Pentagon structure is to prevent the cost of U.S. intervention from exceeding an unacceptable level in terms of personnel casualties and the loss of valuable assets in the event of direct military conflict with countries seeking greater regional power.

The Task Force is assigned with the development of new strategic concepts and weapons in order to achieve victory in a potential conflict with countries such as Russia and China at the lowest possible cost.

The fundamental concern behind this memorandum was revealed by American military analyst Julia van der Kolk in her article “Building A New American Arsenal on War on the Rocks “- The Pentagon’s alarms are sounding as the United States is rapidly exhausting its munitions reserves in order to provide assistance to the Ukrainian military. The conflict in Ukraine has served as confirmation of a widely recognized fact: the industrial base of the United States has deteriorated since the Soviet Union’s collapse. The average time required to replenish critical stockpiles is a staggering 13 years at current production levels, despite efforts to reconstruct and strengthen the production base.

Van der Kolk endorses Shyu’s initiative and suggests the creation of a unique value armament sector within the U.S. defense industry. This sector would function as a budgetary component of the U.S. military-industrial complex.

The fundamental concept is that the optimal mix of quantity, quality, and cost in weapons production will be the key to achieving victory in future conflicts between peer adversaries, with cost reduction being the priority.

Bryan Clark, the director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, has been a prominent American defense analyst for years. He has been advocating for a fundamental transition from the costly “Death Stars”—such as the Gerald R. Ford-class supercarriers and Zumwalt stealth destroyers—to the mass production of simple, low-cost autonomous drones for network-centric warfare.

Clark is also one of the authors of the Mosaic Warfare concept, which is a refined evolution of network-centric warfare.

American analysts have come to the realization that the concept does not function as intended, nearly 25 years after the publication of A. Cebrowski and J. Garstka’s seminal article Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future.

Rather, they created Mosaic Warfare, which replaces vulnerable, costly “Death Stars” with a multitude of inexpensive weapons, predominantly drones, that are operated by skilled and independent commanders within a unified digital battlespace.

The Pentagon was unable to overcome the conservatism and corruption of the defense industry during the tenure of President Biden, a responsibility that was ultimately transferred to the administration of the 47th U.S. President, Donald Trump.

frontierindia.com · by Frontier India News Network · February 24, 2025

13. Could Artificial General Intelligence Adoption Start a Civil War in America?

Conclusion:

Analysts have long discussed the issue of AI “alignment” with the values of the “human race.” But such abstract and philosophical discussions, however important, overlook the far more urgent and proximate question of a technology’s “alignment” with the interests of contending groups of people in any given society. Technological innovation has almost always had an “alignment” problem in this sense: some groups have invariably gained while others lost. The advent of AGI will differ only in the identities of the potential gainers and losers. The promise of super productivity through widespread adoption of AGI could well be a boon to mankind. But without a careful consideration of the potential costs, the potential for disaster suggests more thought is urgently needed to better understand the technology’s attendant risks, as well as its promised opportunities.

Could Artificial General Intelligence Adoption Start a Civil War in America?

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/02/25/could-artificial-general-intelligence-adoption-start-a-civil-war-in-america/

by Timothy R. Heath

02.25.2025 at 06:00am

With indicators already pointing to a volatile level of political stress in the United States, a large-scale displacement of educated elites by artificial general intelligence (AGI) could spark a convulsive breakdown of the state.

Technological innovation has been a major driver of productivity and economic growth since the start of the industrial age. However, gains have almost invariably come at the expense of workers with lower skill and education levels. As but one example, automation from 1990-2007 resulted in the loss of an estimated 400,000 jobs in the United States, primarily among non-college educated workers.

Educated elites often avoided large-scale job displacement from technological innovation in part by possessing difficult to automate skills. But their vulnerability could increase if the most visionary ideals of artificial intelligence (AI) come to pass. Already, analysts warn that white collar jobs could be threatened by generative AI technologies, which have shown an impressive ability to carry out tasks involving images, video, and text. A Pew study concluded that one in five American jobs have a “high exposure” to artificial intelligence, with high earners and the college educated most exposed. The situation for educated elites could worsen significantly. Some experts have predicted that “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) may soon be available. Although prospects for and definitions of this potential technology remain hotly debated, AGI may be generally understood as a versatile, reliable general intelligence that is comparable or superior to human intelligence.[1] A report by Goldman Sachs assessed that AGI capable of carrying out work “indistinguishable” from human output could wipe out a fourth of current jobs and 300 million jobs worldwide.

The bitter irony that educated elites could be rendered obsolete by the advanced technologies that they once hailed may well inspire a sense of just desserts, especially among the workers who have long borne the heavy cost of “technological progress.” But however much one may be tempted to relish the misfortunes of the well-to-do, the political repercussions of such an outcome are potentially catastrophic for the entire country.

Political scientist Peter Turchin has provided the most thorough explanation of why a collapse in elite employment could be disastrous. Turchin’s research, which builds on the work of George Mason University political scientist Jack Goldstone, shows that the combination of popular immiseration and elite overproduction has often resulted in a breakdown of the state. Popular immiseration is when non-elites (bottom 90% of income earners) experience stagnating or declining living standards. Immiseration raises discontent, lowers trust in the government, and elevates the potential for anti-system political mobilization. Elite overproduction is when the supply of positions that support an elite lifestyle is greatly outnumbered by aspirants to those positions. Because elites have access to resources and networks in key sectors of state power, including the military, government, and economy, their opposition to the state can pose a serious threat. Frustrated elites can become “counter elites” who exploit popular grievances to lead rebellions or revolutions against authorities. Turchin and Goldstone grimly warn that in past societies facing such predicaments, about 75% of the cases resulted in some sort of political collapse, such as civil war or revolution.

A review of the situation in the United States through this lens provides ample cause for alarm. Popular immiseration has become a dispiriting feature of American society. Income and wealth inequality has worsened as the non-elite share of national income and wealth has shrunk. Indeed, the fortunes of the working class have largely stagnated or worsened since the 1970s. The elimination of good paying industrial jobs via automation proved a major contributor to their declining fortunes. Symptoms of popular immiseration include the increasing gap in life expectancy and health outcomes between the working class and college educated elites. While college educated people have become healthier and wealthier, Americans without college degrees are dying from pain and despair. Not surprisingly, popular trust in the government and confidence in the future has plummeted, steadily declining since the 1970s and rarely reaching above 20% since 2008.

Non-elites have responded to their worsening situation by repeatedly expressing their dissatisfaction through their votes and via mass protests. Waves of popular unrest have roiled modern societies since the turn of the century, and some political scientists warn that the severity of anti-government demonstrations will likely intensify in the future as global economic activity slows and the international security situation deteriorates. However, non-elites have generally lacked the organization and resources to reverse their situation and restore their fortunes. Elites, who have usually favored and benefited from automation trends, are generally too entrenched in the centers of state power to be easily overcome.

The failure to address the grievances of the working classes leaves a persistent peril, however. As trust has evaporated and discontent grown, countries have become less stable. As conditions for non-elites become intolerable, more seek to join the already swollen ranks of elite aspirants. Even so, elites can generally manage popular discontent so long as they work together. The danger increases, however, once elites are no longer unified. Although elites routinely divide themselves into factions and groups and disagree on many issues, the most profound and bitter divisions emerge over access to resources to support elite lifestyles. Although there are always more elites and elite aspirants than there are positions to support them, “elite overproduction” occurs when the supply of elites vastly outnumbers available positions. Past incidents of civil war and political revolution have underscored the critical role that divided elites play in the onset of mass political violence.

Signs that elite aspirants already exceed available positions can be seen in the decline in employment opportunities for individuals with college and advanced degrees in all countries. As an example, the underemployment rate for American college graduates has exceeded 50% even ten years after graduation, with many unable to pay off school debts. The increasingly ruthless struggle for admissions into elite schools, and the collapse of the humanities departments in favor of business and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs that promise better job prospects also reflect the same problem of overproduction of elites. Educated European youth have faced elevated unemployment rates for years, reaching 15% in 2020. Although jobless rates have since subsided, many young Europeans face high prices with precarious jobs. Across the European Union, nearly a third live at home to save money. In some countries, such as Croatia, the number is closer to 65%. The problem of surplus educated youths has intensified in China as well, especially as its economy cools. Unemployment levels for educated urban youth has surpassed 20% since 2020. In 2011, the death of a Tunisian fruit seller kicked off a wave of protests among young people. The protests reverberated around the world, sparking a historically precedented level of unrest around the world, especially among educated youths in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, and the United States.

The problem of elite overproduction and popular immiseration occur along signs of state breakdown around the world. Globally, domestic instability and violence have been on the rise. Liberal and democratic freedoms and institutions have deteriorated steadily for 18 straight years. Although conflict between states has increased in the past three years, violence between domestic groups remains far more common. Fighting within states tends to center around issues of the breakdown in the rule of law, resource scarcity, and illicit economic gains. The number of conflicts within a state has since increased steadily since the end of the Cold War, peaking in 2016 and subsequently subsiding slightly. In 2023, 75 countries experienced intrastate conflict, resulting in 12,000 deaths.

AGI’s Possible Impact on Political Stability

The widespread adoption of transformative AI could drive countries already grappling with fragile political situations into crisis or collapse. As a general purpose technology that could execute intellectual, analytical, and cognitive tasks better than trained humans, AI could render large numbers of educated elites redundant, possibly even before the technology crosses the unknown, possibly unknowable threshold to AGI. Professionals such as lawyers, analysts, computer programmers, financial services, and others could be replaced by AGI powered computers and robots. Although the advent of AGI could create some new jobs, the advent of information technologies in the 1990s suggests the number of new, good paying job may be far smaller than the large number of jobs lost through automation. With much of the populace already disaffected, elites frustrated by the prospect of downward mobility could have a strong incentive to oppose leaders who backed AGI adoption. Counter-elites could find ready audiences among a disaffected populace that has seen little improvement in its situation. Efforts by the state to suppress insurrections led by counter elites could trigger civil war or revolution.

Liberal democratic states such as the United States could be especially vulnerable to AGI-driven instability. These governments are less likely resort to the brutal and cruel measures frequently employed by autocracies to control numbers of elite aspirants, such repression, purges, and arbitrary violence. This still leaves unresolved the problem of an oversupply of elites. The experience of democracies in the developing world, where elite aspirants have long outnumbered resources to support them, suggest one disturbing possibility. In these countries, rival factions sometimes weaponize political institutions to suppress their rivals and capture the spoils of the state. Liberal democracies may similarly experience a growing temptation to adopt illiberal practices to marginalize and suppress rival elites. The fraying of democratic norms, increasing resort to hardball politics, the spread of political violence, and general decline in popular support for democratic institutions in the wealthiest and most stable democracies suggest that these trends may already be well underway.

Conclusion

Options to mitigate the danger of political upheaval owing to AGI-driven job losses among elites are few and difficult to implement. The most effective measures would address the core drivers of popular immiseration and the overproduction of elites. But past efforts to adopt ameliorative measures to ease such political pressures have rarely succeeded.

If provided enough basic goods and services, popular immiseration could be reversed or at least eased. This could have the salutary effect of reducing potential constituencies for counter-elites. However, policies to ensure access to a basic level of basic goods and services such as food, housing, basic education, and health care for most of the population would be extremely expensive. Efforts to fund such measures through taxation of the wealthy have generally failed, as elites have historically proven effective at stopping such transfers owing to their dominance of state power. Indeed, Stanford University professor Walter Scheidel has documented how high levels of inequality have historically only been overcome through violent cataclysms such as lethal pandemics, wars, communist revolution and societal collapse.

There are also few options to resolve the problem of elite overproduction. One option could be to restrict access to elite positions. China, fearing the potential destabilizing effects of unemployed educated youth, has adopted measures to restrict access to college and even high school for the country’s youths and to instead compel more workers to accept jobs in trades and the lower paying service sectors. These measures have encountered fierce resistance by many parents angered by state-directed efforts to foreclose possibilities for their children. Free societies are even less likely to tolerate such restrictive measures.

Buying elite support through state subsidy is another option. Some countries, such as China, rely on state employment as a way to improve political stability. In the United States, an oversupply of college graduates has led many job postings to require post-secondary education that previously did not require it, raising charges of “degree inflation.” However, state subsidies to an excessively large pool of elites could also prove extremely expensive and it could incentivize more people to become elite aspirants, further aggravating the problem of elite overproduction. Moreover, this option carries the risk that control of the state will become viewed as a prize worth fighting for as has occurred in some developing countries.

Analysts have long discussed the issue of AI “alignment” with the values of the “human race.” But such abstract and philosophical discussions, however important, overlook the far more urgent and proximate question of a technology’s “alignment” with the interests of contending groups of people in any given society. Technological innovation has almost always had an “alignment” problem in this sense: some groups have invariably gained while others lost. The advent of AGI will differ only in the identities of the potential gainers and losers. The promise of super productivity through widespread adoption of AGI could well be a boon to mankind. But without a careful consideration of the potential costs, the potential for disaster suggests more thought is urgently needed to better understand the technology’s attendant risks, as well as its promised opportunities.

[1] See, for example, Benjamin Boudreaux, Taking Artificial General Intelligence Seriously, Not Literally, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2025 (Forthcoming). Boudreaux emphasizes the three dimensions of capabilities, deployment, and emergence when thinking about AGI.

Tags: AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, civil war, Income Inequality, Job Automation

About The Author

Timothy R. Heath
Timothy R. Heath is a senior international defense researcher at RAND. Prior to joining RAND, Heath had over fifteen years of experience in the U.S. government researching and analyzing military and political topics related to China. In addition to his publications with RAND, Heath has published numerous articles and two books on topics ranging from political economy to China. He has a Ph.D. in political science from George Mason University and an M.A. in Asian studies from George Washington University.

14. America’s AWOL Defense Spending

Excerpts:

The United States must strike a delicate balance between maintaining military superiority and practicing responsible fiscal management. While the defense budget ensures national security, unchecked bureaucracy, inefficient programs, and misaligned priorities have led to significant financial waste. Reform is not about weakening the military but using resources more effectively to enhance readiness, address emerging threats, and defend the homeland.

The Pentagon can modernize the force by streamlining command structures, holding contractors accountable, and prioritizing critical capabilities like missile defense while reducing unnecessary expenditures. Furthermore, fostering stronger cost-sharing with allies will ensure global security responsibilities are more equitably distributed.

A more potent, more efficient military does not require ever-increasing budgets but a commitment to more intelligent, transparent spending. Through these reforms, the United States can better defend itself, maintain its strategic edge, protect its citizens, and continue to lead on the world stage.

America’s AWOL Defense Spending

By Don McGregor

February 24, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/02/24/americas_awol_defense_spending_1093338.html?mc_cid=b5d3cb4f28&utm

A Path to Accountability

America's defense budget, the largest worldwide, guarantees U.S. military dominance. However, it faces challenges such as escalating costs, inefficiencies, misaligned priorities, and an unequal burden of global security responsibilities. A cumbersome bureaucracy, escalating defense programs, and insufficient oversight drain resources, leaving vital areas underfunded, rendering the defense budget “absent from duty.”

This essay examines spending challenges and proposes reforms to streamline and make resource allocation more accountable while modernizing the force, improving readiness, and sharing global security costs more equitably. It begins with a swollen bureaucracy.

Bloated Bureaucracy

Since the Cold War, four-star generals have increased while active-duty forces shrank, creating a top-heavy bureaucracy. Today, according to a 2024 Congressional Research Service report, there is one general for every 1400 service members, compared to one per 6,000 in WWII.

Additionally, the 'Fourth Estate' agencies within the Department of Defense (DoD) have expanded unchecked, now encompassing over 30 defense agencies with 380,000 employees at an annual cost exceeding $100 billion, growing annually by $10 billion since 2018.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found “…areas of fragmentation, overlap, and duplication among the DAFAs [Defense Agencies and Field Activities] – a 25% reduction in bureaucratic overhead alone could save over $40 billion annually.”

The consequences of an oversized command structure and unchecked bureaucratic growth are significant. Leadership interests are often prioritized over warfighter needs, raising concerns about resource allocation and spending priorities.

The Cost of Defense Spending

Defense spending, the fourth-largest federal expenditure, consumes nearly half of the U.S. government’s discretionary budget. Since 2010, it has risen by 44%, accounting for 40% of global military spending. This increase reflects the costs of maintaining an international military presence, developing cutting-edge technologies, and sustaining an all-volunteer force—now a third smaller than during the Cold War, yet 46% more expensive to maintain today.

60% of the defense budget supports operations, maintenance, and personnel costs—totaling around $200 billion annually, nearly 25% of the budget. Additionally, veteran benefits cost another $200 billion, making this defense budget segment the most expensive. These expenses continue to grow while modernization efforts lag.

Modernizing the Force

The F-35 fighter aircraft became the world's most expensive weapons system. According to a 2024 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the program surpassed $1.7 trillion due to procurement inefficiencies and changing performance standards—a 78% increase over the original total program cost estimates.

Similarly, the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) has resulted in vessels riddled with design flaws and exhibiting limited combat effectiveness at an exorbitant cost of $500M a vessel. Seven ships have already been decommissioned, and six more are planned to retire in the next three years due to design flaws, high maintenance costs, and operational challenges.

Additionally, a 2024 GAO report found that major defense acquisition programs experience an average delay of three years, often due to contractor-friendly agreements. The report also found that most middle-tier acquisition (MTA) programs fail to adopt industry-leading practices to improve acquisition speed, frequently adding 50% longer development timelines.

While these high-profile defense programs highlight the challenges of cost overruns and lengthy development timelines, innovative acquisition programs like the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) represent a promising counterpoint, working to streamline innovation and accelerate capability delivery for national security.

However, like broader defense initiatives, innovative efforts like DUI must navigate and compete with complex funding priorities, including global security commitments that can hinder modernization efforts.

Global Security Commitments

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, like the United Kingdom and Germany, spend less as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with the U.S. shouldering a disproportionate burden of European defense. Their defense budgets—$81 billion for the UK and $86 billion for Germany—are nearly half of the U.S. percentage of GDP or a difference of $330 billion annually.

Additional global obligations, such as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative – a $40B multi-year program – further strain America’s defense resources, diverting funding from higher priorities such as homeland defense and force readiness.

Readiness Concerns

The U.S. military's operational tempo after decades of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan has strained readiness. A GAO report found that only four of 49 aircraft types met mission-readiness goals, with maintenance backlogs growing annually. Additionally, since fiscal year 2016, the condition of the Naval depot’s infrastructure—its facilities and equipment—has remained in the fair-to-poor range and has not improved, with backlogs of facility projects growing by $3.1 billion.

Exacerbating the problem, potential adversaries' capabilities—notably China and Russia—have also pressured U.S. forces to address readiness challenges. Accelerating technological improvements, especially space and missile capabilities, and growing security cooperations present the U.S. with more than a conventional challenge but an existential one.

DoD is making strides to address these critical issues. The Department's FY 2025 budget request prioritized force readiness, investing $147.5 billion to build and maintain warfighting forces and capabilities. However, these funding levels are designed to keep our current readiness levels while modernizing them, not necessarily improving them.

Yet, readiness challenges are not solely a product of aging equipment or a high operational tempo. These issues often stem from broader strategic defense misalignments.

Misaligned Priorities

A recent "Nuclear Deterrence and America's Missile Defense Program " analysis highlights one of several misaligned defense priorities, warning that outdated deterrence doctrines and flawed defense strategies leave the United States vulnerable to modern missile threats.

Despite the Pentagon's 2024 budget of $842 billion, only 3 percent or $28.4 billion is allocated to missile defense—a figure that has remained unchanged since 2019, even as China and Russia rapidly enhance their military capabilities. The U.S.’s current "limited missile defense" strategy is outdated, relying on decades-old nuclear deterrence policies and incremental upgrades instead of bold new deterrence approaches and modernization efforts.

Although the Pentagon officially lists "Defending the Homeland" as its top priority, this focus often becomes secondary in practice. Resources are directed toward inflated procurement programs and inefficient spending rather than ensuring that the nation's strategic deterrence remains credible against modern threats.

However, this issue extends beyond poorly managed defense priorities; it reflects a failure to oversee, manage, and efficiently service its resources, underscoring the department's most striking problem: a lack of accountability.

Lack of Accountability

The DoD has failed seven consecutive full-scale audits, with the Marine Corps being the only branch to pass. A joint Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce report found that the department could not account for 61% of its assets. These failures highlight systemic mismanagement and the urgent need for financial oversight.

Legislation like H.R. 7603, which promotes AI-driven audits, could identify waste and improve accountability. Additionally, leveraging independent congressional audits and oversight mechanisms, such as DoD’s AI Adoption Strategy, could enhance transparency and enforce fiscal responsibility.

Recommendations

To address AWOL defense spending and return it to accountability, the following reforms should be implemented:

Streamline Bureaucracy:

Reduce the number of senior officers and unnecessary administrative layers.
Conduct a comprehensive review of Fourth Estate agencies to eliminate redundancies.
Prioritize resource allocation to warfighting capabilities.

Reform Defense Spending:

Redirect efficiency savings toward modernizing the force, improving readiness, and homeland defense priorities.
Incorporate AI-driven program modeling to improve predicting lifetime program costs while considering emerging threats and upgrades.
Adopt MTA industry-leading practices to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and accelerate delivery of capabilities.
Hold defense contractors accountable, allowing for rebidding if underperforming.
Expand new technology adoption through initiatives like the Defense Innovation Unit.

Improve Readiness:

Reduce overseas commitments that deplete resources.
Strengthening training programs to counter near-peer threats.
Replenish munitions stockpiles to ensure wartime preparedness.

Reassess Global Security Priorities:

Align national security strategies with homeland defense needs.
Conduct a Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) review of overseas commitments.
Redirect savings from closures toward securing U.S. space, air, and maritime approaches.

Enhance Accountability:

Congress should mandate a bi-annual independent audit that external accounting professionals conduct.
Adopt real-time financial tracking using AI-driven auditing tools
Accelerate DoD’s AI Adoption Strategy

Conclusion

The United States must strike a delicate balance between maintaining military superiority and practicing responsible fiscal management. While the defense budget ensures national security, unchecked bureaucracy, inefficient programs, and misaligned priorities have led to significant financial waste. Reform is not about weakening the military but using resources more effectively to enhance readiness, address emerging threats, and defend the homeland.

The Pentagon can modernize the force by streamlining command structures, holding contractors accountable, and prioritizing critical capabilities like missile defense while reducing unnecessary expenditures. Furthermore, fostering stronger cost-sharing with allies will ensure global security responsibilities are more equitably distributed.

A more potent, more efficient military does not require ever-increasing budgets but a commitment to more intelligent, transparent spending. Through these reforms, the United States can better defend itself, maintain its strategic edge, protect its citizens, and continue to lead on the world stage.

Major General Don McGregor (USAF, ret.) is a combat veteran and an F-16 fighter pilot. While serving as a General Officer in the Pentagon, he was the National Guard Director of Strategy, Policy, Plans, and International Affairs, advising a four-star Joint Chiefs of Staff member. He was the lead liaison between the Council of Governors and the Secretary of Defense and administered the Department of Defense’s premier international affairs program, with over 80 global partnerships. He has held various operational command and director positions across the National Guard and military commands. Major General McGregor is an expert in defense strategy, policy, planning, and global security and is well-regarded for his expertise in the use of military forces to support federal agencies. He holds a master’s degree in Diplomacy and International Conflict Resolution from Norwich University.

15. Trump’s targeting of Pentagon hits a nerve in POW/MIA recovery office

Some things are sacrosanct. I hope the DOGE wix kids can understand how important it is for us to recover our fallen and missing. If they cannot grasp the importance of this effort they need to stay out of the Pentagon.

Excerpts:

“Out of every DOD agency there is, we’re the only one above reproach from a moral standpoint,” said one DPAA employee, speaking, like others, on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation or because they were not authorized to speak with the media. “It’s not about making weapons. It’s about returning loved ones to their families.”

...

Hegseth has ordered leaders throughout the Defense Department to submit plans for a potential 8 percent budget cut in each of the next five years, with limited exemptions. He has sought to portray the directive as part of a “realignment” intended to boost Trump’s national security priorities, such as immigration enforcement and homeland defense.

A spokesperson for DPAA referred questions to the Pentagon, which did not provide comment. A person familiar with the agency’s outlook said officials will have to manage staffing and budget realities but predicted that any reductions would not prove existential.

“Money and manpower,” this person said, “will dictate what we can do every year.”

In offices spread across the world, the methodical and arduous work to bring the dead home unfolds over years — decades in many cases.

Trump’s targeting of Pentagon hits a nerve in POW/MIA recovery office

As the administration moves to flatten the federal workforce and slash spending, those tasked with repatriating missing Americans fear their mission is in jeopardy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/23/trump-musk-pentagon-cuts/?utm

February 23, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EST February 23, 2025

Military personnel at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska unload cases containing the remains of unidentified U.S. service members repatriated from Europe in 2018. (Nati Harnik/AP)

By Alex Horton, Hannah Natanson and Dan Lamothe

Chinese soldiers poured from the mountains in Unsan, shattering the lines of the U.S. Army’s 8th Cavalry Regiment in the dark and cold night of Nov. 1, 1950.

In the fiery blur of hand-to-hand fighting and the punctuating sound of enemy bugles, American commanders made the call to pull out, leaving a single battalion of soldiers — a few hundred men against a force of thousands — to provide cover for the withdrawal. Somewhere in the maelstrom was Master Sgt. Charles Hobert McDaniel, a 32-year-old combat medic from Indiana, who was last seen tending to the wounded, soldiers who caught a glimpse of him later recalled. His skills were in desperate, abundant need as the Chinese closed in from three sides.

“He disappeared from history that night,” his son, Charles Hobert McDaniel Jr., who is 77, said in an interview recounting a lifetime of what-ifs and fantasies that his father would someday return from the Korean War with a dramatic tale of survival.

Closure came instead with part of a clavicle, a cracked remnant of a skull and a jagged dog tag — all mixed in with the remains of other U.S. troops handed over by the North Korean government in 2018, part of a deal brokered during President Donald Trump’s first term in office as he attempted to reset relations with the authoritarian leader in Pyongyang. Master Sgt. McDaniel, missing 68 years, was home at last, received by his two graying sons.

The solemn task of locating, repatriating and identifying America’s war dead falls to a 700-person organization within the Defense Department known as the POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA, which deploys historians, archaeologists and scientists to long-silent battlefields where the remains of those classified by the U.S. government as prisoners of war or missing in action are believed to be. As the Trump administration moves with haste to dismantle the federal workforce and slash government spending, including at the Pentagon, staff at DPAA fear an indiscriminate approach will jeopardize what they consider a sacred mission.

“Out of every DOD agency there is, we’re the only one above reproach from a moral standpoint,” said one DPAA employee, speaking, like others, on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation or because they were not authorized to speak with the media. “It’s not about making weapons. It’s about returning loved ones to their families.”

Larry and Charles McDaniel Jr. reveal the dog tag that belonged to their father, Army Master Sgt. Charles Hobert McDaniel, during a ceremony in Arlington, Virginia, in 2018. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

This sense of peril within DPAA illustrates how civil service missions of all sizes are under threat as Trump, guided by billionaire Elon Musk, targets what his administration has deemed wasteful spending and what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says are “individuals whose contributions are not mission-critical.” More than 300 staffers at the agency are federal employees. The other roughly 400 are service members and contractors. The budget last year was $196 million.

Hegseth has ordered leaders throughout the Defense Department to submit plans for a potential 8 percent budget cut in each of the next five years, with limited exemptions. He has sought to portray the directive as part of a “realignment” intended to boost Trump’s national security priorities, such as immigration enforcement and homeland defense.

A spokesperson for DPAA referred questions to the Pentagon, which did not provide comment. A person familiar with the agency’s outlook said officials will have to manage staffing and budget realities but predicted that any reductions would not prove existential.

“Money and manpower,” this person said, “will dictate what we can do every year.”

In offices spread across the world, the methodical and arduous work to bring the dead home unfolds over years — decades in many cases.

Often, it starts in a research division, where historians piece together battlefield reports and eyewitness accounts to track where remains could be located. Investigation teams deploy to examine leads, begin archaeological surveys and conduct interviews with locals, supported by other DPAA staff whose job it is to obtain the requisite agreements from host nations where this work is performed.

When a likely site is uncovered, staffers delicately excavate and sift for remains and artifacts that can provide clues to what happened. Missing personnel are found in every environment and condition imaginable. Farm fields in Germany. Sweltering jungles in Vietnam. Disintegrating warships and planes turned underwater tombs. Unexploded ordnance can pose significant risk.

Once human remains are collected, they are sent to forensic anthropologists and other scientists based in Hawaii and Nebraska, who analyze DNA, dental records and other biographical information to complete the puzzle. Families are notified of positive matches, bringing the painful, generational void to a close.

DPAA has accounted for 3,477 missing Americans since 1973, when the agency was established, including 172 last year, officials said, short of an internal annual goal of 200. More than 81,000 remain unaccounted for, though the agency acknowledges thousands will probably never be found.

Master Sgt. McDaniel's dog tag and military medals, on display in Arlington in 2018. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Kelly McKeague, the director of DPAA, has sought to tamp down on the anxiety within his organization, writing in a message to his workforce on Feb. 14 that the agency has a “unique and compelling mission,” according to an email obtained by The Washington Post. McKeague wrote that he was confident “there will not be wholesale changes and impacts like other Federal agencies are experiencing.”

But the double-barrel shot of budget cuts and firings would splinter DPAA, said two employees there.

Recognizing the case backlog and long timelines for recovery, Defense Department leadership recently granted DPAA a number of new positions, they said, permitting longtime contractors to become full hires. Several are still in probationary status — the first group of civilian workers to be targeted for dismissal — because they have not completed a year of service as federal employees, the two staffers said. They are also mostly concentrated in fieldwork and laboratories, the two operations considered the lungs of DPAA.

Confusion about the process and employee status has swirled at DPAA and throughout the Defense Department.

There is concern that a team focused on the 7,444 missing in Korea could lose its chief of research, the employees said. Worries circulate that an already understaffed lab that uses DNA analysis to identify remains would lose at least five archaeologists with spades of degrees and years of experience, they said.

President Donald Trump with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a 2019 meeting in the demilitarized zone, which separates the two Koreas. (Kcna/Reuters)

Any reduction in capacity would slow the work considerably, the staffers said, describing the threat as a “disservice” to the missing troops’ families — especially those who are getting up in years and still awaiting closure. The Pentagon had previously vowed to improve its procedures following a 2014 investigation by ProPublica and subsequent reviews that found outdated methods and stifling bureaucracy slowed its operations, angering some families who felt the agency, then known as the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, was moving too slowly.

The repatriation of service members missing in action in North Korea was touted by Trump in his first administration as a key diplomatic victory. Washington and Pyongyang worked through fraught negotiations that secured the 2018 transfer of hundreds of boxes of remains of troops who fell during the Korean War. DPAA experts have since identified 97 Americans and 90 South Koreans.

That included McDaniel. He was one of the first two identified by Trump that year, along with Pfc. William H. Jones, a 19-year-old soldier from North Carolina. McDaniel’s dog tag was the only personal artifact in the boxes, his son Charles McDaniel Jr. said, which helped expedite identification and bring something tangible back. “It had strong emotional meaning to me,” he said.

The family lived in Japan before his father was sent into combat, and McDaniel has just flashes of memory. His father coming home from work. Bouncing on his lap. The family china rattling from an earthquake.

He was 3 years old, a year ahead of his brother Larry, when they watched their father leave for the Korean Peninsula. More than 600 troops were lost in the disastrous Battle of Unsan, most assigned to McDaniel’s 3rd Battalion.

Master Sgt. McDaniel in an undated photo. (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency)

After DPAA positively identified him among the remains repatriated from North Korea, McDaniel and his brother toured the agency’s facility in Hawaii and met with experts who explained how they analyzed unique aspects of clavicles to increase their confidence of a match.

The brothers were brought into a private room with the remains. McDaniel caressed what was left of the skull. The family received a book dense with information on DPAA’s investigation, including the tactical situation in Unsan and DNA sequences used in the process.

While the scientific rigor impressed McDaniel, he was most struck by how caring the workers were with his younger brother Larry, who was sick with cancer. DPAA assigned a uniformed officer named Jessie to help the family manage the media’s interest in their father’s story. Larry and Jessie bonded fast over their love of football, which they both played, McDaniel said.

There were a few moments when meetings and interviews with the press took a toll. Larry staggered, and Jessie put out his arm for support.

“My brother was a quarterback, and Jessie was a lineman,” McDaniel said, choking back tears. “He was blocking for him.”

Larry McDaniel was able to bury his father, whom he never really knew. He died four years later.

Trump presidency

Follow live updates on the Trump administration. We’re tracking President Donald Trump’s progress on key campaign promises and lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders and actions.

U.S. DOGE Service: Elon Musk and his team have moved to dismantle some U.S. agencies, push out hundreds of thousands of civil servants and gain access to some of the federal government’s most sensitive payment systems. But many of these moves appear to violate federal law, according to several government officials.

Trump’s Cabinet: Several of Trump’s Cabinet picks, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth have been confirmed. We’re tracking the nominations here.

Tariffs: Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. The move came a week after Trump’s 10 percentage point increase in tariffs on Chinese goods took effect, prompting retaliatory measures from Beijing. Previously, Trump granted Mexico and Canada a 30-day reprieve on tariffs. Here’s what could get more expensive with Trump’s tariffs.

Federal workers: Trump targeted federal workers in his opening act — putting federal diversity, equity and inclusion employees on leave; banning remote work; and stripping employment protections from civil servants. In its latest move, the White House offered a “deferred resignation” to federal employees.

By Alex Horton

Alex Horton is a national security reporter for The Washington Post focused on the U.S. military. He served in Iraq as an Army infantryman. Send him secure tips on Signal at alex.horton85follow on X@AlexHortonTX

By Hannah Natanson

Hannah Natanson is a Washington Post reporter covering national education. Reach her securely on Signal at 202-580-5477.follow on Xhannah_natanson

By Dan Lamothe

Dan Lamothe joined The Washington Post in 2014 to cover the U.S. military. He has written about the Armed Forces for more than 15 years, traveling extensively, embedding with five branches of service and covering combat in Afghanistan.follow on X@danlamothe

16. The Inside Story of DOGE’s State Department Reforms

Conclusion:

Everything is in flux at present and no one should make any decisions based on this or any other article. But what is clear is that this time Trump means business. Unlike the small-scale RIF which took place at State during the Clinton administration, this time it’s for real, a seemingly determined effort to downsize the State Department both at home and abroad while at the same time likely increasing the authority of political appointees. It is both a paradigm shift and a power shift away from a more-or-less independent State Department (and other agencies) toward a concentration of power higher in the executive branch.

The Inside Story of DOGE’s State Department Reforms

A radical shift in paradigm and power is afoot at Foggy Bottom.

The American Conservative · by Peter Van Buren · February 24, 2025

The DOGE tsunami is about to strike the U.S. Department of State, as well as other agencies. Let's see what that means.

The day the music died was January 28, when nearly everyone at State, along with over two million other federal civilian employees, received an email referring to “A Fork in the Road.” The email offered qualifying diplomats and civil servants a choice ahead of planned Reductions in Force (RIFs, layoffs): resign now under a special program, don’t come to work for a few months while being paid, and then in September become eligible for whatever retirement benefits you would otherwise be eligible for, if any. State offers its diplomats a full retirement with pension after age 50 and 20 years of service, similar to the military, and after 30 years for civil servants, all with exceptions of course.

Despite the general sense that the buyout was some sort of trick (workers questioned what legal authority allowed State and other federal agencies to pay people who technically resigned, then bring them back into the system to retire), across the government some 77,000 people signed up for the deal before it was brought to a pause by court action. For those with a long way toward formal retirement, it seemed like good enough; ahead of being RIFed, they’d pocket some seven months’ salary on top of whatever severance package might await them when actually let go. The Fork program, as it was commonly now called (alongside the new expression “to get forked”), acquired a formal name, “deferred resignation,” and the paid time off without working became “administrative leave.” An involuntary retirement is called the Orwellian “Discontinued Service Retirement.”

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and others sued to block the “deferred resignation” program, arguing that its chaotic rollout and shifting legal justifications constituted violations of the Administrative Procedure Act’s protections against “arbitrary and capricious” decision-making, and the promise to pay employees past the March 14 possible government shutdown deadline could constitute an Anti-Deficiency Act violation.

On February 12 the federal judge who had temporarily blocked the plan reversed course, ending the temporary restraining order upon concluding he lacked jurisdiction in the case. The deferred resignations would be allowed to go forward (though the sign-up deadline has now passed) reducing headcount at State and other federal agencies if everything went as planned. In his decision, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole wrote that the unions’ challenges are of the type Congress “intended for review within the statutory scheme,” referring to the need to file administrative appeals before going to court. There were doubts the Trump administration would or legally could follow through as stated. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, called the plan “an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk.”

Then things started to get really interesting at State.

Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) February 12, stating, inter alia,

The Secretary [of State] shall, consistent with applicable law, implement reforms in recruiting, performance, evaluation, and retention standards, and the programs of the Foreign Service Institute, to ensure a workforce that is committed to faithful implementation of the President’s foreign policy... In implementing the reforms identified in this section, the Secretary shall, consistent with applicable law, revise or replace the Foreign Affairs Manual and direct subordinate agencies to remove, amend, or replace any handbooks, procedures, or guidance…. Failure to faithfully implement the President’s policy is grounds for professional discipline, including separation.

Many at State read this as implementation of a “loyalty test” for continued employment. The full scope of the EO will depend on the actual steps taken after its signing, especially the admonition to revise or replace the Foreign Affairs Manual, the set of rules State functions under administratively and policy-wise. It could pave the way for a massive restructuring of State, consolidating power under political appointees and away from diplomatic staff.

Then things got really interesting.

Nearly concurrent with the February 12 EO, Foggy Bottom HQ sent out a message to all embassies and consulates warning outposts around the world to start planning for staff reductions, according to ABC News. Senior embassy officials were asked to provide comprehensive lists of all employees and their employment status as part of the process, sources said, explaining that the request includes tenured, untenured, and temporary duty assignments. Embassies will be required to cut both American staff and employees hired locally, sources added.

The edicts followed a Rubio’s decision not to extend contracts for civilian personnel services contractors (PSC) who provide housekeeping and maintenance at embassies. But PSCs also supplement diplomatic security; roughly half of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s contractors fall under the new directive. Contracts in the process of being signed are to be halted and any job postings made after the inauguration of Donald Trump are to be rescinded. Only State’s domestic passport PSC operations staff are exempted (a smart move in that it limits direct public impact from an otherwise nearly totally foreign-facing organization.)

Trump wasn’t finished. In another EO, he declared,

Agency Heads shall promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law, and to separate from Federal service temporary employees and reemployed annuitants working in areas that will likely be subject to the RIFs. All offices that perform functions not mandated by statute or other law shall be prioritized in the RIFs, including all agency diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; all agency initiatives, components, or operations that my Administration suspends or closes; and all components and employees performing functions not mandated by statute or other law who are not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations as provided in the Agency Contingency Plans on the Office of Management and Budget website. This subsection shall not apply to functions related to public safety, immigration enforcement, or law enforcement.

The uniformed military and postal service employees are also exempt.

That means State, along with other agencies, is going to have to soon start firing people.

The EO led directly to State’s diplomatic union issuing an urgent message to its members, explaining,

Agencies have 30 days to submit reorganization plans to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The implementation of these plans will include RIFs. The executive order does not specify when RIFs will begin... Section 611 of the Foreign Service Act allows for RIFs. This section also requires the creation of rules for letting go of career and career candidate members under Chapter 3 of the Act. The regulations note that the retention hierarchy in the event of a RIF should be based on the following: organizational changes; employee knowledge, skills, or competencies; tenure of employment; employee performance, and military preference.

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Regulations allow for 120 days notice to the RIFed employee though note under some special circumstances the notice need be only 30 days. They go on to say while an employee may file a grievance against the RIF, the grievance will not delay separation and is limited only to cases of reprisal, interference in the conduct of the member’s official duties or similarly inappropriate use of RIF authority. The current understanding is that RIFed employees, if otherwise eligible, can receive their retirement pensions. Ineligible RIFed employees will likely lose their healthcare and life insurance as best as things are understood. But this is far from over and no one knows how it will end.

“We do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind. Just leave part of them behind. It’s easy. It’s kind of like leaving a weed,” Elon Musk said. “If you don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”

Everything is in flux at present and no one should make any decisions based on this or any other article. But what is clear is that this time Trump means business. Unlike the small-scale RIF which took place at State during the Clinton administration, this time it’s for real, a seemingly determined effort to downsize the State Department both at home and abroad while at the same time likely increasing the authority of political appointees. It is both a paradigm shift and a power shift away from a more-or-less independent State Department (and other agencies) toward a concentration of power higher in the executive branch.

The American Conservative · by Peter Van Buren · February 24, 2025

17. Hegseth says he fired the top military lawyers because they weren't well suited for the jobs

Excerpts:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that he was replacing the top lawyers for the military services because he didn’t think they were “well-suited” to provide recommendations when lawful orders are given.

...

He did not identify the lawyers by name. The Navy JAG, Vice Adm. Christopher French, retired about two months ago, and there was already an ongoing effort to seek a replacement. The Army JAG, Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, and Air Force JAG, Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, were fired.

The removals — which came without any specified reasons in terms of their conduct — sent a new wave of apprehension through the Pentagon. And they added to the broader confusion over the changing parameters of Elon Musk’s demand that federal employees provide recent job accomplishments by the end of Monday or risk getting fired, even though government officials later said the edict is voluntary.

Hegseth says he fired the top military lawyers because they weren't well suited for the jobs

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

Updated 7:40 PM EST, February 24, 2025

AP · February 25, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that he was replacing the top lawyers for the military services because he didn’t think they were “well-suited” to provide recommendations when lawful orders are given.

Speaking at the start of a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, Hegseth refused to answer a question about why the Trump administration has selected a retired general to be the next Joint Chiefs chairman, when he doesn’t meet the legal qualifications for the job.

President Donald Trump on Friday abruptly fired the chairman, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., and Hegseth followed that by firing Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, and Air Force Gen. James Slife, the vice chief of the Air Force. He also said he was “requesting nominations” for the jobs of judge advocate general, or JAG, for the Army, Navy and Air Force.

He did not identify the lawyers by name. The Navy JAG, Vice Adm. Christopher French, retired about two months ago, and there was already an ongoing effort to seek a replacement. The Army JAG, Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, and Air Force JAG, Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, were fired.

The removals — which came without any specified reasons in terms of their conduct — sent a new wave of apprehension through the Pentagon. And they added to the broader confusion over the changing parameters of Elon Musk’s demand that federal employees provide recent job accomplishments by the end of Monday or risk getting fired, even though government officials later said the edict is voluntary.

Throughout the Pentagon on Monday, military and civilian workers juggled their routine national security duties with a growing unease that anyone could be next on the firing block.

Hegseth has defended Trump’s firing of Brown, saying it was not unusual and the president deserves to pick his own team. The defense chief argued that other presidents made changes in military personnel.

Trump’s choice of retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine is unusual. Caine would have to come back onto active duty, but he does not meet the legal requirements for the top post. According to law, a chairman must have served as a combatant commander or service chief.

Those requirements can be waived by the president. Historically, Pentagon leaders have deliberately shifted top admirals and generals into a job as service chief for even a brief period of time in order to qualify them for the chairman’s post.

In recent decades, a number of three-star and four-star officers have been fired, but Pentagon leaders have routinely made clear why they were ousted. Those reasons included disagreements over the conduct of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, problems with the oversight of America’s nuclear arsenal and public statements critical of the president and other leaders.

Brown, a history-making fighter pilot and only the second Black general to serve as chairman, is the first in that post to be fired in recent history. Hegseth made it clear before he took the secretary’s job that he thought Brown should be fired, and he questioned whether Brown got the job because he was Black.

Hegseth has also repeatedly argued that military officers would be reviewed “based on meritocracy.” It’s unclear, however, how Franchetti, Slife and the lawyers were evaluated and what meritocracy they were found to lack.

As a result, Pentagon workers are left to decipher whether the officers were fired due to political reasons or because of their race or gender. Hegseth has laid out a campaign to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks. And there have been persistent threats from the Trump administration that military officers advocating diversity and equity — or so-called “wokeism” — could be targeted.

Hegseth has said that efforts to expand diversity and equity have eroded the military’s readiness.

AP · February 25, 2025

18. 'People Are Very Scared': Trump Administration Purge of JAG Officers Raises Legal, Ethical Fears

'People Are Very Scared': Trump Administration Purge of JAG Officers Raises Legal, Ethical Fears

military.com · by Thomas Novelly,Konstantin Toropin · February 24, 2025

Current military lawyers and legal experts told Military.com the administration's firings of the Air Force, Army and Navy's top judge advocates general politicizes and sets an alarming precedent for a crucial job in the military, all as President Donald Trump has mused about using the military in unorthodox and potentially illegal ways.

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced late Friday evening the firings of the top legal officers for the military services -- those responsible for ensuring the Uniform Code of Military Justice is followed by commanders -- as well as the Joint Chiefs chairman, the Navy's top officer and Air Force vice chief.

As part of the judge advocates general purge, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer and Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Berger were fired. Navy Rear Adm. Lia Reynolds remains in the position because she was already performing the duties of the top lawyer for the sea service following the resignation of Vice Adm. Christopher French late last year. French had been in the job as the Navy's top lawyer for just a few months.

Hegseth told reporters Monday that the removals were necessary because he didn't want them to pose any "roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief."

Those senior judge advocates general, or JAGs, of the military branches play the important role of setting each service's legal priorities and interpreting military law for top leaders. Their roles have been historically viewed as apolitical, and they oversee everything from a wide variety of criminal cases involving the rank and file to making sure commanders are aware of international law in combat.

The defense secretary didn't elaborate on what specific orders the military's top lawyers could potentially try to block, but Trump has a history of saying he wants to use troops to enforce federal laws, especially in cities run by Democratic mayors.

"Ultimately, I want the best possible lawyers in each service to provide the best possible recommendations, no matter what, to lawful orders that are given, and we didn't think those particular positions were well suited, and so we're looking for the best," Hegseth said.

One Air Force JAG officer told Military.com the move harms those who wear the uniform by removing the institutional knowledge those top officers hold -- and could result in them being replaced with inexperienced lawyers.

"I think amongst the community, there's just a lot of concern about who's going to come next," the currently serving Air Force JAG officer told Military.com. "People are very scared."

Hegseth hinted to reporters Monday that, as with Trump's pick of Dan "Razin" Caine to be Joint Chiefs chairman, the military may make non-traditional choices for the JAG posts. Caine, who is retired, has no experience leading a combatant command and has never served as a service chief, and would need to be brought back into military service and promoted to serve in the role.

"We're opening it up to everybody to be able to be the top lawyer of those services," Hegseth said, without elaborating further.

But the Air Force JAG officer told Military.com that not just anyone should hold those top positions.

"You can't just pull a lawyer off the street and put him in that job, because there's decades of policy that you kind of have to understand -- the bigger picture of how we got to where we are – in order to steer the ship," the JAG officer added.

The officer also said there are worries that the military justice system could soon become politicized as a result of the moves and that it may throw many uniformed lawyers into an uncomfortable position when administrations eventually change over to a different political party.

"I think everybody now will have a fear of 'well, if I follow this Trump guidance, is the next administration going to fire me?'" the officer said. "We're trying to be apolitical."

Concerns over misuse of the military or bending of the law may be well-founded. Trump has a history of suggesting that he would use troops against U.S. citizens despite federal legal restrictions.

For example, during a March 2023 rally in Iowa, Trump suggested that he would use federal troops in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, which he argued have become crime dens.

"We cannot let it happen any longer. And one of the other things I'll do -- because you're supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in -- the next time, I'm not waiting," Trump said.

The judge advocates general could be at the center of such historic and consequential legal decisions as they are being weighed by the administration and military.

Retired Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap Jr., the former deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force and a professor at Duke University, told Military.com in an emailed statement that military lawyers "have earned an international reputation for expertise, integrity and straightforwardness."

"The U.S. public gives the military their sons and daughters. We owe it to them to provide those serving with the best possible legal advice from lawyers who not only know the law but live the military life," Dunlap said. "No one wants U.S. troops to even be accused of war crimes, and providing nonpartisan expert legal advice from military [lawyers] is key to achieving that goal."

The firing of the JAGs came alongside removals of top senior military officers late Friday evening, including Gen. Charles "CQ" Brown, who was serving as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who stepped down in January and knew Brown when he served as the Air Force chief, said in a New York Times op-ed on Monday morning that the widespread dismissals were concerning, but especially those of top legal officers.

"What frightens me even more is the removal of three judge advocates general, the most senior uniformed legal authorities in the Defense Department," Kendall wrote. "Their removal is one more element of this administration's attack on the rule of law, and an especially disturbing part."

Meanwhile, allies of the administration and Hegseth have argued that the move would actually help restore the reputation of at least the Navy's legal command.

Tim Parlatore, a former Navy officer who went on to become a lawyer and represented a number of high-profile military clients, including Hegseth and Trump, argued in a video posted to social media Sunday that the last four heads of the Navy's JAG office have had major issues with their leadership.

"One was found to have committed unlawful command influence by interfering in a court-martial for political purposes to keep an innocent man in jail," Parlatore said, referring to the case of Vice Adm. James Crawford, who was found to have unlawfully weighed in on a rape case by a military court of appeals in 2018.

Parlatore also alleged that French, the Navy's most recent judge advocate general, "rushed a retirement package two and a half months into the job, probably to avoid being prosecuted himself for misconduct."

Parlatore offered no evidence for the claim in his post.

But other experts such as Dunlap added that, due to the nonpartisan nature of the military's judge advocates general, they have often been a role model for other nations and have garnered great respect and even deference to U.S. perspectives on the law when working with allies and partners.

"I am not aware of any time in American history where the military's most senior legal officers were fired en masse," Dunlap told Military.com. "This can't help our relations with our allies."

military.com · by Thomas Novelly,Konstantin Toropin · February 24, 2025

19. We got it wrong: The real crisis in the U.S. military

I think this will probably be recognized as one of the most controversial and consequential critiques of the administration's recent actions.

Excerpts:

Civilian leaders have often been given a pass, but they have broken trust with the institution by the events over the weekend. In one single night, Trump redefined civil-military relations. In announcing these firings, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared, “We are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars.” He is sorely mistaken. Instead, he is breaking the trust that underpins the all-volunteer force. The closest experience that America has with a broken military is post-Vietnam War. We are perilously close to some version of that.

We were wrong: America’s military is now in crisis. If Congress does not step in to ensure the military remains an institution of the nation and not an individual, then those who have taken the oath to sacrifice their lives for our country may instead find themselves subject to the whims of the very individual who broke the bonds of trust.

We got it wrong: The real crisis in the U.S. military

Thanks to Trump’s Friday night purge, the relationship between the military and the nation has been fundamentally altered

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/we-got-it-wrong-the-real-crisis?utm

Feb 24, 2025

262

By Mara Karlin and Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Paula Thornhill

We’ve written for years about civil-military relations and raised concern about potential crises in the delicate American system of civilian control. The crisis has occurred, but it didn’t ride in as a general on horseback launching a military coup. Instead, it came in the form of a Friday night bureaucratic massacre when the commander in chief fired—for no apparent cause— the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of Naval Operations, and the vice chief of staff of the Air Force. Because President Donald Trump did not give a reason for their removal, one can only look at their gender, their race, and their comments on diversity to conclude that was the cause. Less noticed is the similarly historic firing of the senior lawyers in the U.S. military, known as the Judge Advocate General of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. We’re now in a civil-military crisis, but it is a very different one than we expected.

In a democracy, the trust between the military and the nation it serves is inviolate. Military members must have faith in the civilian leadership’s ability to develop and use the institution responsibly. When the political leaders fire, for no apparent cause, senior leaders and, as important, the lawyers who embody the protection of the military members under the law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the relationship between the military and the nation has been fundamentally altered.

To be sure, presidents and secretaries of defense have fired senior military leaders throughout history. From exercising poor judgement with the press to obstinately ignoring civilian priorities, generals and admirals have been removed from their positions by civilian leaders, who have the prerogative to do so. However, there are no examples of firings at this level without any reason or evident failure to perform. The military is now in uncharted territory. And so is the nation.

First, there is the question of loyalty. At every level, officers will have to determine if they are being assessed for their competence or their loyalty. That will undermine unit cohesion in a very coercive way as members start to question personal or partisan motives rather than focusing on building their unit’s competence and unity.

Second, the question of loyalty produces institutional instability as military members try to understand the new norms of behavior. With the most turbulent global security environment in decades, this uncertainty will disorient the military and distract it from tackling threats like China.

Third, the removal of senior military lawyers from across the Department of Defense calls into question the willingness to follow the rule of law. That undermines good order and discipline, the enforcement of standards, and adherence to the UCMJ. In the military, specialized law exists to protect both the institution and the individual responsible for wielding violent means on behalf of the nation. The gratuitous firing of all three senior lawyers sends a chilling message about the precariousness of what protection under the law now means.

Finally, although the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff is the principal military adviser to the commander in chief, he is also, de facto, the senior ranking military leader. To replace him with a national guardsman out of retirement confuses this position— and the roles of the national guard and the active-duty force, which runs the danger of diminishing both. Though Trump’s new nominee for this position has a storied career, he has not filled any of the positions in which a chairman is required to have held. Indeed, his selection only makes sense in the context of a decision by the president to federalize the national guard to militarize anti-migrant programs. That would represent a new purpose for the military and ultimately, a renegotiation of the relationship between the military and the American public.

Civilian leaders have often been given a pass, but they have broken trust with the institution by the events over the weekend. In one single night, Trump redefined civil-military relations. In announcing these firings, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared, “We are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars.” He is sorely mistaken. Instead, he is breaking the trust that underpins the all-volunteer force. The closest experience that America has with a broken military is post-Vietnam War. We are perilously close to some version of that.

We were wrong: America’s military is now in crisis. If Congress does not step in to ensure the military remains an institution of the nation and not an individual, then those who have taken the oath to sacrifice their lives for our country may instead find themselves subject to the whims of the very individual who broke the bonds of trust.

Mara Karlin served in the Pentagon under six secretaries of defense across Democratic and Republican administrations. As U.S. assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and capabilities from 2021 to 2023, she led the 2022 National Defense Strategy. She is the author of “Building Militaries in Fragile States: Challenges for the United States” and “The Inheritance: America’s Military After Two Decades of War.” Paula Thornhill is a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general who worked for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She is the author of “Demystifying the American Military: Institutions, Evolutions, and Challenges since 1789.” They are both professors at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

20. The Pentagon must cut $50B of waste — put this weapon on the chopping block

RADM Mongtgomery is saying the quiet part out loud. He is making a point I think every crisis action planner has thought about but few are willing to say out loud – reference strategic bombers, deterrence, and north Korea. Many of us often voiced this among ourselves - but the strategic bombers looked good on the PowerPoint charts and showed that at least we were doing something - on the other hand strategic reassurance of our allies is an important consideration of course. And lastly while we could never measure appreciable effects (though sometimes non-action is an important effect - but can that be connected to our action or did the adversary already have plans for not further action?) It is what is in the mind of the target of deterrence that is most important and we may never know what the real effect on his strategic decision making was.

Excerpts:

The only way to find that kind of money is to cut weapons programs that no longer meet America’s needs. And the first item on the chopping block should be the Long-Range Standoff missile, which will cost at least $16 billion over the next 10 years.

...

Let’s take these justifications individually.

First, the Trump administration’s urgent order to focus on top defense priorities means the Pentagon can’t afford weapons that only provide a “complementary” capability.

Second, there are plenty of ways to “signal” our intent, including bombers carrying conventional weapons, aircraft carriers and subs with SLBMs.

As a commander, I was told numerous times in my career to move nuclear-capable bombers around the strategic chessboard to “affect the adversary” — usually Kim Jong Il in North Korea.

But I never saw a measurable response to the nuclear bomber “signal,” and I suspect crazy does not respond to subtle shifts.

Finally, in today’s environment, a bomber’s ability to be recalled may be an outright liability, as spoofing and jamming of communication systems reach new heights.

Who would know who is really initiating that recall? Slim Pickens didn’t get the word in “Dr. Strangelove,” and that was 60 years ago.

The Pentagon must cut $50B of waste — put this weapon on the chopping block

By Mark Montgomery

Published Feb. 23, 2025, 6:18 a.m. ET

https://nypost.com/2025/02/23/opinion/the-pentagon-must-cut-50b-of-waste-axe-this-weapon-first/?utm

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans this week to move up to $50 billion of the Pentagon’s budget from “low-impact and low-priority programs” to ones that align with President Trump’s defense strategy — an excellent first step to get the department ready for the threats America faces from China and other adversaries.

But not even cutting every last DEI program and burdensome administrative process will yield anywhere close to $50 billion.

The only way to find that kind of money is to cut weapons programs that no longer meet America’s needs. And the first item on the chopping block should be the Long-Range Standoff missile, which will cost at least $16 billion over the next 10 years.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks with reporters outside the Pentagon on Jan. 27, 2025.

AFP via Getty Images

The LRSO is a nuclear-capable, air-launched cruise missile intended to be carried by bombers like the B-52, the B-2 and the B-21. The US nuclear arsenal includes a triad of air, land and sea weapons, and the LRSO is part of the air component.

But we may no longer need air-based nuclear weapons at all.

The bedrock of our nuclear arsenal is the land-based arm of the triad, including intercontinental ballistic missiles.

They would deliver a massive retaliatory blow if we detect an inbound Chinese or Russian first strike, making ICBMs the backbone of the Mutually Assured Destruction strategy that has for decades prevented nuclear war.

We also still need the sea-based leg of the triad, which consists of submarine-launched ballistic missiles. No surprise attack could take out these subs, so they guarantee a devastating retaliation even if the enemy somehow destroys our ICBMs.

The sea leg provides what the Pentagon calls second-strike survivability.

So what does the air leg of the triad, including bombers with LRSOs, add to our defense?

Not much.

Even the air leg’s most charitable supporters say its role is to “complement land- and sea-based nuclear forces” and provide a “highly visible means to signal US intent.” Bombers are also different, boosters say, because of their “ability to be recalled.”

Let’s take these justifications individually.

First, the Trump administration’s urgent order to focus on top defense priorities means the Pentagon can’t afford weapons that only provide a “complementary” capability.

Second, there are plenty of ways to “signal” our intent, including bombers carrying conventional weapons, aircraft carriers and subs with SLBMs.

As a commander, I was told numerous times in my career to move nuclear-capable bombers around the strategic chessboard to “affect the adversary” — usually Kim Jong Il in North Korea.

But I never saw a measurable response to the nuclear bomber “signal,” and I suspect crazy does not respond to subtle shifts.

Finally, in today’s environment, a bomber’s ability to be recalled may be an outright liability, as spoofing and jamming of communication systems reach new heights.

Who would know who is really initiating that recall? Slim Pickens didn’t get the word in “Dr. Strangelove,” and that was 60 years ago.

Scrapping the LRSO would generate significant savings: The Congressional Budget Office estimated about $16 billion in development and procurement costs would be avoided over the next 10 years — even if the price of the missile never increases. If it did, there would be even greater savings.

Additionally, nixing the missile would save the Air Force hundreds of millions a year on maintenance and modernization of LRSOs, weapons storage (LRSOs are not kept in the outdoor shed) and crew training.

The opportunity for savings is even greater if the Air Force also gets rid of another component of the triad’s air leg, the gravity-dropped nuclear bomb.

The money saved should not leave the Air Force’s accounts, but should immediately be put to use building and modernizing the Air Force we need to fight China and Russia — transport aircraft, refueling aircraft, conventional munitions and, most importantly, as many B-21s as we can get our hands on.

Those bombers would help us fight and win a conventional campaign against China and Russia. And the better the odds of winning, the better the odds no one attacks us in the first place.

A last warning: Even if Trump and Hegseth get rid of every low-impact, low-priority program in the Pentagon, we still need to spend much more on defense.

The current US defense budget consumes 3% of America’s gross domestic product, nearly the lowest level since the 1930s.

Congress has plans to add up to $150 billion over the next 10 years. But to get defense spending up to 3.4% of GDP — the level at which Trump left it at the end of his first term — we’ll need to add at least $30 billion to $40 billion more each year to Congress’ planned outlay.

Killing the LRSO is just the first step toward the president’s goal of “peace through strength.”

Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is a senior director at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

21. DeepSeek is in the driver’s seat. That’s a big security problem

Excerpts:

Governments must ensure this issue is given immediate attention from their security agencies. This needs to include an in-depth assessment of the risks, as well as a consideration of future challenges. Partners and allies should share their findings with each other. An example of the type of activity that should be incorporated into such an assessment is Australia’s experience in 2017 and 2018 leading up to its 5G decision, when the Australian Signals Directorate conducted technical evaluation and scenario-planning.

There is also a question of choice, or rather lack of it, that needs deeper reflection from governments when it comes to high-risk vendors. Democratic governments should not allow the commercial sector to offer only one product if that product originates from a high-risk vendor. Yet there are major internet providers in Australia which provide only Chinese TP-Link modems for some internet services, and businesses which only sell Hikvision or Dahua surveillance systems (both Chinese companies were added to the US Entity List in 2019 because of their association with human rights abuses and violations).

Not only do the digital rights of consumers have to be better protected; consumers must also be given genuine choices, including the right to not choose high-risk vendors. This is especially important in selecting vendors that will have access to personal data of citizens or connect to national critical infrastructure. Currently, across many countries, those rights are not being adequately protected.

As smart cars integrate AI systems, consumers deserve a choice on the origin of such systems, especially as censorship and information manipulation will be a feature of some products. Governments must also provide a commitment to their citizens that they are only greenlighting AI systems that have met a high standard of data protection, information integrity and privacy safeguards.

Which brings us back to DeepSeek and other AI models that will soon come out of China. If politicians, government officials, companies and universities around the world are being told they cannot use DeepSeek because such use is too high-risk, governments need to ensure they aren’t then forcing their citizens to take on those same risks, simply because they’ve given consumers no other choice.

DeepSeek is in the driver’s seat. That’s a big security problem | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Danielle Cave · February 24, 2025

Democratic states have a smart-car problem. For those that don’t act quickly and decisively, it’s about to become a severe national security headache.

Over the past few weeks, about 20 of China’s largest car manufacturers have rushed to sign new strategic partnerships with DeepSeek to integrate its AI technology into their vehicles. This poses immediate security, data and privacy challenges for governments. While international relations would be easier if it weren’t the case, China’s suite of national security and intelligence laws makes it impossible for Chinese companies to truly protect the data they collect.

China is the world’s largest producer of cars, and is now making good quality, low-cost and tech-heavy vehicles at a pace no country can match. It has also bought European industry stalwarts, including Volvo, MG and Lotus. Through joint ventures, it builds and exports a range of US and European car models back into global markets.

DeepSeek has struck partnerships with many large companies, such as BYD, Great Wall Motor, Chery, SAIC (owner of MG and LDV) and Geely (owner of Volvo and Lotus). In addition, major US, European and Japanese brands, including General Motors, Volkswagen and Nissan, have signed on to integrate DeepSeek via their joint ventures.

Australia is one of the many international markets where Chinese cars have gained enormous traction. More than 210,000 new cars were sold into Australia in 2024, and Chinese brands are set to take almost 20 percent of the market in 2025, up from 1.7 percent in 2019. Part of this new success is due to the government’s financial incentives encouraging Australians to purchase electric vehicles. China now builds about 80 percent of all electric vehicles sold in Australia.

Then, there are global markets where Chinese car brands are not gaining the market share they have in Australia (or in Russia, the Middle East and South America), but where Chinese-made cars are. This is the case in the United States and in Europe, for example. This is because many foreign companies use their joint ventures in China to sell China-made, foreign-branded cars into global markets. Such companies include Volkswagen, Volvo, BMW, Lincoln, Polestar, Hyundai and Kia.

Through its Chinese joint venture, Volkswagen will reportedly partner with DeepSeek. General Motors has also said it will integrate DeepSeek into its next-generation vehicles, including Cadillacs and Buicks. It’s unclear how many such cars may end up in overseas markets this year; that will likely depend on each country’s regulations.

It is not surprising that DeepSeek is a sought-after partner, with companies scrambling to integrate and build off its technology. It also shouldn’t have been a shock to see this AI breakthrough coming out of China—and we should expect a lot more. Chinese companies, universities and scientific institutions made impressive gains over the past two decades across most critical technology areas. Other factors, such as industrial espionage, have also helped.

But widespread integration of Chinese AI systems into products and services carries serious data, privacy, governance, censorship, interference and espionage risks. These risks are unlikely ever to go away, and few government strategies will be able to keep up.

For some nations, especially developing countries, this global integration will be a bit of a non-event. It won’t be seen as a security issue that deserves urgent policy attention above other pressing climate, human security, development and economic challenges.

But for others, it will quickly become a problem—a severe one, given the speed at which this integration could unfold.

Knowing the risks, governments (federal and state), militaries, university groups and companies (such as industrial behemoth Toyota) have moved quickly to ban or limit the use of DeepSeek during work time and via work devices. Regulators, particularly across Europe, are launching official investigations. South Korea has gone further than most and taken it off local app stores after authorities reportedly discovered that DeepSeek was sending South Korean user data to Chinese company ByteDance, whose subsidiaries include including TikTok.

But outside of banning employee use of DeepSeek, the integration of Chinese AI systems and models into data-hungry smart cars has not received due public attention. This quick development will test many governments globally.

Smart cars are packed full of the latest technology and are built to integrate into our personal lives. As users move between work, family and social commitments, they travel with a combination of microphones, cameras, voice recognition technology, radars, GPS trackers and increasingly biometric devices—such as those for fingerprint scanning and facial recognition to track driver behaviour and approve vehicle access. It’s also safe to assume that multiple mobile phones and other smart devices, such as smart watches, are present, some connecting to the car daily.

Then there is the information aspect—a potential influx of new AI assistants who will not always provide drivers with accurate and reliable information. At times, they may censor the truth or provide Chinese Communist Party talking points on major political, economic, security and human rights issues. If such AI models remain unregulated and continue to gain popularity internationally, they will expose future generations to systems that lack information integrity. As China’s internal politics and strategic outlook evolve, the amount of censored and false information provided to users of these systems will likely increase, as it does domestically for Chinese citizens.

Chinese built and maintained AI assistants may soon sit at the heart of a growing number of vehicles driven by politicians, military officers, policymakers, intelligence officials, defence scientists and others who work on sensitive issues. Democratic governments need a realistic and actionable plan to deal with this.

It may be possible to ensure that government-issued devices never connect to Chinese AI systems (although slip-ups can happen when people are busy and rushing), but it’s hard to imagine how users could keep most of their personal data from interacting with such systems. Putting all security obligations on the individual will not be enough.

Australia has been here before. Australia banned ‘high-risk vendors’ in from its 5G telecommunications network in 2018, and the debates leading up to and surrounding that decision taught us how valuable it was for the business community to be given an early and clear decision—something some other countries struggled with. Geostrategic circumstances haven’t improved since Australia banned high-risk vendors from 5G; unfortunately, they’ve worsened.

Australia’s domestic policy settings are also driving consumers towards the very brands that will soon integrate DeepSeek’s technology, which politicians and policymakers have been told not to use. Politicians from all parties test-driving BYD and LDV vehicles highlights that parliamentarians may need greater access to more regular security briefings to ensure they are fully across the risks, with updates provided to them in a timely fashion as and when those risks evolve.

Tackling this latest challenge head-on is a first-order priority that can’t wait until after the 2025 federal election.

Governments must ensure this issue is given immediate attention from their security agencies. This needs to include an in-depth assessment of the risks, as well as a consideration of future challenges. Partners and allies should share their findings with each other. An example of the type of activity that should be incorporated into such an assessment is Australia’s experience in 2017 and 2018 leading up to its 5G decision, when the Australian Signals Directorate conducted technical evaluation and scenario-planning.

There is also a question of choice, or rather lack of it, that needs deeper reflection from governments when it comes to high-risk vendors. Democratic governments should not allow the commercial sector to offer only one product if that product originates from a high-risk vendor. Yet there are major internet providers in Australia which provide only Chinese TP-Link modems for some internet services, and businesses which only sell Hikvision or Dahua surveillance systems (both Chinese companies were added to the US Entity List in 2019 because of their association with human rights abuses and violations).

Not only do the digital rights of consumers have to be better protected; consumers must also be given genuine choices, including the right to not choose high-risk vendors. This is especially important in selecting vendors that will have access to personal data of citizens or connect to national critical infrastructure. Currently, across many countries, those rights are not being adequately protected.

As smart cars integrate AI systems, consumers deserve a choice on the origin of such systems, especially as censorship and information manipulation will be a feature of some products. Governments must also provide a commitment to their citizens that they are only greenlighting AI systems that have met a high standard of data protection, information integrity and privacy safeguards.

Which brings us back to DeepSeek and other AI models that will soon come out of China. If politicians, government officials, companies and universities around the world are being told they cannot use DeepSeek because such use is too high-risk, governments need to ensure they aren’t then forcing their citizens to take on those same risks, simply because they’ve given consumers no other choice.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Danielle Cave · February 24, 2025

22. Russia has Failed to Break Ukraine

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russia-has-failed-break-ukraine

Russia has Failed to Break Ukraine

By Grace Mappes

February 24, 2025

Executive Summary:

Russia dedicated staggering amounts of manpower and equipment to several major offensive efforts in Ukraine in 2024, intending to degrade Ukrainian defenses and seize the remainder of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. These Russian efforts included major operations in the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast area, Avdiivka, Chasiv Yar, northern Kharkiv Oblast, Toretsk, Marinka-Kurakhove, Pokrovsk, and Vuhledar-Velyka Novosilka. Russia has achieved relatively faster gains in 2024 than throughout most of the war after the initial invasion and developed a blueprint for conducting slow, tactical envelopments to achieve these advances, but Russian forces have failed to restore the operational maneuver necessary to achieve operationally significant gains rapidly. Russia has thus paid an exorbitant price in manpower and equipment losses that Russia cannot sustain in the medium term for very limited gains.

Russian losses in massive efforts that have failed to break Ukrainian lines or even drive them back very far are exacerbating challenges that Russia will face in sustaining the war effort through 2025 and 2026, as ISW's Christina Harward has recently reported. Russia likely cannot sustain continued efforts along these lines indefinitely without a major mobilization effort that Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far refused to order. Ukraine, on the other hand, has shown its ability to fight off massive and determined Russian offensive efforts even during periods of restricted Western aid. The effective failure of these major and costly Russian offensive operations highlights the opportunities Ukraine has to inflict more serious battlefield defeats on Russia that could compel Putin to rethink his approach to the war and to negotiations if the United States and the West continue to provide essential support.

23. Politics Have Always Influenced the U.S. Service Academies

A very thoughtful essay.

Excerpts:

Neither woke progressivism nor MAGA populism are terms that would be familiar to Hamilton, Jefferson, Partridge, Thayer, or Jackson. But the underlying debate would resonate with all of them.

Today, cadets and midshipmen at the academies study theories of civil-military relations that emphasize the apolitical nature of military service and a strict separation of military institutions from partisan concerns. Yet, this goal has never fully matched the reality of military education. Because the U.S. is a democracy, the military—including our military academies—have never been fully insulated from the political and cultural concerns of the day. And, in fact, they are obligated to respond to the needs of the nation, as determined by the citizens at the polls.

The principal concern, voiced by both sides in every era, is that the service academies continue to produce leaders who can defend the nation in times of war. The challenge for the current leaders of all of the academies will be—as it was for their predecessors—to stay focused on that mission amid the political noise.

Politics Have Always Influenced the U.S. Service Academies

By Ryan Shaw / Made by HistoryFebruary 24, 2025 7:15 AM EST

TIME · by Ryan Shaw / Made by History

The nation’s military service academies have become a central battleground in the new Trump administration’s “war on woke.” At the confirmation hearing for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) warned, “It now appears they are a breeding ground for leftist activists and champions of DEI and Critical [Race] Theory.”

Hegseth pledged to tackle the problem by getting rid of the civilian professors from “left-wing, woke universities” who “try to push that into service academies” and replace them with battle-hardened, uniformed officers. President Trump may be going even further: On Feb. 10, he dismissed the Board of Visitors for all four service academies to combat their infiltration by "Woke Leftist Ideologues.” Trump then pledged on his Truth Social platform to: “Make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN.”

Each side in this debate accuses the other of dragging the country's revered service academies into culture wars and political debate. But the truth is, our service academies have been a part of such battles since their very inception. For more than two centuries, the service academies have been both pawns and prizes in evolving cultural and political fights.

George Washington recommended establishing a military academy as early as 1783. Theoretically, it should’ve been an easy win. During the Revolutionary War, Washington’s Continental Army had depended on the good graces of foreign officers like the Prussian Baron von Steuben, who instilled order and discipline in the ragtag forces at Valley Forge, and Tadeusz Kościuszko a Polish engineer who designed the fortifications at West Point, among other places. It seemed obvious that if the U.S. wanted to maintain its new independence, it would need to educate its officers in the art and science of war.

But the establishment of a U.S. military academy became politically divisive, tied up for decades by competing visions for the nation.

The initial debate pitted the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, against the Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson. The Federalists dreamed of a commercial colossus rivaling the empires of Europe, whereas the Republicans imagined a simple, agrarian republic of yeoman farmers defended by citizen militias, with no need for a federal military academy. When General Washington became President Washington, he tried to prevent the emergence of parties by bringing both factions into his administration, making both Jefferson and Hamilton cabinet secretaries. But this effectively gave both men a veto over major initiatives, and no proposal for a military academy made it out of cabinet debates.

Two days before his death in 1799, Washington was still writing wistfully about the need for an academy.

But Jefferson quickly shifted gears when he became president in 1801, suggesting that his objection was not to a military academy per se, but rather to putting such a powerful institution at the disposal of elitist Federalists like Hamilton. A year later, he signed into law the Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802, which finally created the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

But despite Republicans dominating politics over the next three decades, the nature and purpose of the new academy remained unresolved. Republican purists wanted a simple, technical training school that kept the costs low and, more importantly, kept the officer corps from evolving into an aristocracy. Many other Republicans, however, were expansionists, who had a continent to conquer. Further, they were proponents of Enlightenment science and education, with no vehicle for advancing those aims other than the Academy.

This factional dispute almost proved fatal in West Point’s early years. As the Chief of Engineers, Jonathan Williams was, by law, Superintendent of the Academy, and he envisioned “a great national establishment to… rival any in Europe.” But his duties mostly kept him away from West Point, and day-to-day leadership fell to Alden Partridge, who preferred to run things more like a drill sergeant. If the Army wasn’t sure how to run the Academy, neither was the government—in 1811, the Secretary of War ordered most of the cadets away for service elsewhere in the Army, effectively shutting it down for a year and a half.

It seemed Williams' vision won out when, in 1817, President James Monroe appointed Sylvanus Thayer as Superintendent. Thayer inaugurated a set of reforms that established West Point as the nation’s premier scientific and engineering school and secured himself a legacy as the “Father of the Military Academy.” But Partridge was so committed to his rival vision for the Academy that the path for this progress had to be cleared by dragging him away from West Point under arrest.

Further, while Thayer’s firm hand eliminated one set of factional disputes, he envisioned the science and engineering program at West Point as serving strictly military ends. This vision created a new set of problems, because he took over the academy just as the Republican Party split into factions. The “National Republicans” led by John Quincy Adams wanted to grow the nation’s infrastructure. They needed civil engineers to build roads, canals, and railways to promote the national economy and support westward expansion. West Point was the only school that could provide them, but Thayer resisted any changes to the curriculum.

Finally, in 1824, a frustrated Congress passed the General Survey Act, which authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to support internal improvements. The law left Thayer with little choice but to green light the development of the nation’s first civil engineering program.

The General Survey Act also gave now-President Adams and his administration broad authority to dole out federal money in very targeted ways. West Point graduates led many of these internal improvement projects. Many took private pay, in addition to their military salaries, then cashed in on their taxpayer-funded education by leaving the Army for more lucrative civilian employment. This smelled of corruption, and it fueled the rise of Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Republican (eventually just Democratic) Party, as the National Republicans became the Whig Party.

The Academy became an easy target for Jackson, the self-taught, populist hero of the Battle of New Orleans. After he defeated Adams in 1828, Jackson actively antagonized Thayer by repeatedly reinstating cadets Thayer had expelled for disciplinary infractions, including for pro-Jackson political demonstrations. Partridge resurfaced to join congressional Democrats like Davy Crockett who called for abolishing West Point altogether.

Thayer resigned in frustration, but the Academy survived. Having made his political point, Jackson stopped meddling and instead deferred to Thayer’s successors in their disciplinary decisions.

In the Romantic era that followed, there were so many demands for additions to the Academy's curriculum—history, literature, rhetoric—that the course of study was expanded to five years to accommodate them all, before the Civil War forced a return to the four-year program. This pattern continued through secession and Civil War, Reconstruction, the 20th century Civil Rights Movement, the other rights revolutions that made the academies more diverse, and through to the present day. A growing U.S. military also created the need for additional service academies to train officers for the Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard.

Neither woke progressivism nor MAGA populism are terms that would be familiar to Hamilton, Jefferson, Partridge, Thayer, or Jackson. But the underlying debate would resonate with all of them.

Today, cadets and midshipmen at the academies study theories of civil-military relations that emphasize the apolitical nature of military service and a strict separation of military institutions from partisan concerns. Yet, this goal has never fully matched the reality of military education. Because the U.S. is a democracy, the military—including our military academies—have never been fully insulated from the political and cultural concerns of the day. And, in fact, they are obligated to respond to the needs of the nation, as determined by the citizens at the polls.

The principal concern, voiced by both sides in every era, is that the service academies continue to produce leaders who can defend the nation in times of war. The challenge for the current leaders of all of the academies will be—as it was for their predecessors—to stay focused on that mission amid the political noise.

Ryan Shaw is a professor of practice in history and strategy at Arizona State University. A retired Army officer, he previously taught U.S. history at West Point.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

TIME · by Ryan Shaw / Made by History

24. The World Trump Wants

There is perhaps an underlying thesis that is unwritten in all these essays. While it is always about the possible change to the world order, perhaps what should be thinking about is that maybe all our beloved international relations theories are either no longer valid or perhaps only pieces and parts of each are (and maybe always have been) synthesized. Maybe there is not (nor ever has been) an international relations theory that really fully and completely explains the international relations and national security phenomena we see. The real issue may be that international relations theories do not really work (though I remain convinced that fear, honor, and interest and passion, reason, and chance remain the best concepts for understanding what we see).

Excerpts:

If Trump and his team can practice it, flexible diplomacy—the deft management of constant tensions and rolling conflicts—could pay big dividends. Trump is the least Wilsonian president since Woodrow Wilson himself. He has no use for overarching structures of international cooperation such as the UN or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Instead, he and his advisers, especially those who hail from the tech world, might approach the global stage with the mentality of a start-up, a company just formed and perhaps soon to be dissolved but able to react quickly and creatively to the conditions of the moment.

Ukraine will be an early test. Instead of pursuing a hasty peace, the Trump administration should stay focused on protecting Ukrainian sovereignty, which Putin will never accept. To allow Russia to curtail Ukraine’s sovereignty might provide a veneer of stability but could bring war in its wake. Instead of an illusory peace, Washington should help Ukraine determine the rules of engagement with Russia, and through these rules, the war could gradually be minimized. The United States would then be able to compartmentalize its relations with Russia, as it did with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, agreeing to disagree about Ukraine while looking for possible points of agreement on nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, climate change, pandemics, counterterrorism, the Arctic, and space exploration. The compartmentalization of conflict with Russia would serve a core U.S. interest, one that is dear to Trump: the prevention of a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia.

Biden, not Trump, represented a detour.

A spontaneous style of diplomacy can make it easier to act on strategic luck. The revolutions in Europe in 1989 offer a good example. The dissolution of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union have sometimes been interpreted as a masterstroke of U.S. planning. Yet the fall of the Berlin Wall that year had little to do with American strategy, and the Soviet disintegration was not something the U.S. government expected to happen: it was all accident and luck. President George H. W. Bush’s national security team was superb not at predicting or controlling events but at responding to them, not doing too much (antagonizing the Soviet Union) and not doing too little (letting a united Germany slip out of NATO). In this spirit, the Trump administration should be primed to seize the moment. To make the most of whatever opportunities come its way, it must not get bogged down in system and in structure.

But taking advantage of lucky breaks requires preparation as well as agility. In this regard, the United States has two major assets. The first is its network of alliances, which greatly magnifies Washington’s leverage and room to maneuver. The second is the American practice of economic statecraft, which expands U.S. access to markets and critical resources, attracts outside investment, and maintains the American financial system as a central node of the global economy. Protectionism and coercive economic policies have their place, but they should be subordinate to a broader, more optimistic vision of American prosperity, and one that privileges long-time allies and partners.

None of the usual descriptors of world order apply anymore: the international system is not unipolar or bipolar or multipolar. But even in a world without a stable structure, the Trump administration can still use American power, alliances, and economic statecraft to defuse tension, minimize conflict, and furnish a baseline of cooperation among countries big and small. That could serve Trump’s wish to leave the United States better off at the end of his second term than it was at the beginning.

The World Trump Wants

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael Kimmage · February 25, 2025

American Power in the New Age of Nationalism

Michael Kimmage

March/April 2025 Published on February 25, 2025

Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro; Photo sources: Reuters, Getty Images

MICHAEL KIMMAGE is Director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute and the author of The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy.

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In the two decades that followed the Cold War’s end, globalism gained ground over nationalism. Simultaneously, the rise of increasingly complex systems and networks—institutional, financial, and technological—overshadowed the role of the individual in politics. But in the early 2010s, a profound shift began. By learning to harness the tools of this century, a cadre of charismatic figures revived the archetypes of the previous one: the strong leader, the great nation, the proud civilization.

The shift arguably began in Russia. In 2012, Vladimir Putin ended a short experiment during which he left the presidency and spent four years as prime minister while a compliant ally served as president. Putin returned to the top job and consolidated his authority, crushing all opposition and devoting himself to rebuilding “the Russian world,” restoring the great-power status that had evaporated with the fall of the Soviet Union, and resisting the dominance of the United States and its allies. Two years later, Xi Jinping made it to the top in China. His aims were like Putin’s but far grander in scale—and China had far greater capabilities. In 2014, Narendra Modi, a man with vast aspirations for India, completed his long political ascent to the prime minister’s office and established Hindu nationalism as his country’s dominant ideology. That same year, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had spent just over a decade as Turkey’s hard-driving prime minister, became its president. In short order, Erdogan transformed his country’s factionalized democratic ensemble into an autocratic one-man show.

Perhaps the most consequential moment in this evolution occurred in 2016, when Donald Trump won the presidency of the United States. He promised to “make America great again” and to put “America first”—slogans that captured a populist, nationalist, antiglobalist spirit that had been percolating within and outside the West even as the U.S.-led liberal international order took hold and grew. Trump was not just riding a global wave. His vision of the U.S. role in the world drew from specifically American sources, although less from the original America First movement that peaked in the 1930s than from the right-wing anticommunism of the 1950s.

For a while, Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race seemed to signal a restoration. The United States was rediscovering its post–Cold War posture, poised to buttress the liberal order and to stem the populist tide. In the wake of Trump’s extraordinary comeback, however, it now appears more likely that Biden, and not Trump, represented a detour. Trump and comparable tribunes of national greatness are now setting the global agenda. They are self-styled strongmen who place little stock in rules-based systems, alliances, or multinational forums. They embrace the once and future glory of the countries they govern, asserting an almost mystical mandate for their rule. Although their programs can involve radical change, their political strategies rely on strains of conservatism, appealing over the heads of liberal, urban, cosmopolitan elites to constituencies animated by a hunger for tradition and a desire for belonging.

In some ways, these leaders and their visions evoke “the clash of civilizations” that the political scientist Samuel Huntington, writing in the early 1990s, imagined would drive global conflict after the Cold War. But they do so in a manner that is often performative and flexible rather than categorical and overzealous. It is the clash of civilizations lite: a series of gestures and a style of leadership that can reconfigure competition over (and cooperation on) economic and geopolitical interests as a contest among crusading civilization-states.

This contest is rhetorical at times, allowing leaders to employ the language and the narratives of civilization without having to stick to Huntington’s script or to the somewhat simplistic divisions it foretold. (Orthodox Russia is at war with Orthodox Ukraine, not with Muslim Turkey.) Trump was introduced at the 2020 GOP convention as “the bodyguard of Western civilization.” The Kremlin leadership has developed the notion of Russia as a “civilization-state,” using the term to justify its efforts to dominate Belarus and subjugate Ukraine. At the 2024 Summit for Democracy, Modi characterized democracy as “the lifeblood of Indian civilization.” In a 2020 speech, Erdogan declared that “our civilization is one of conquest.” In a 2023 speech to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese leader Xi Jinping extolled the virtues of a national research project on the origins of Chinese civilization, which he called “the only great, uninterrupted civilization that continues to this day in a state form.”

In the years to come, the kind of order these leaders fashion will greatly depend on Trump’s second term. It was, after all, the U.S.-led order that had encouraged the development of supranational structures following the Cold War. Now that the United States has joined the twenty-first-century dance of nations, it will often call the tune. With Trump in power, conventional wisdom in Ankara, Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, and Washington (and many other capitals) will decree that there is no one system and no agreed-on set of rules. In this geopolitical environment, the already tenuous idea of “the West” will recede even further—and, consequently, so will the status of Europe, which in the post–Cold War era had been Washington’s partner in representing “the Western world.” European countries have been conditioned to expect U.S. leadership in Europe and a rules-based order (not necessarily of American vintage) outside Europe. Shoring up this order, which has been crumbling for years, will be left to Europe, a loose confederation of states with no army and with little organized hard power of its own—and whose countries are experiencing a period of acutely weak leadership.

The Trump administration has the potential to succeed in a revised international order that has been years in the making. But the United States will thrive only if Washington recognizes the danger of so many intersecting national fault lines and neutralizes these risks through patient and open-ended diplomacy. Trump and his team should regard conflict management as a prerequisite for American greatness, not as an impediment to it.

THE REAL ROOTS OF TRUMPISM

Analysts often wrongly trace the origins of Trump’s foreign policy to the interwar years. When the original America First movement flourished in the 1930s, the United States had a modest military and did not have superpower status. America Firsters wished more than anything to keep it this way; they sought to avoid conflict. In contrast, Trump cherishes the superpower status of the United States, as he emphasized repeatedly in his second inaugural address. He is sure to increase military spending, and by threatening to seize or otherwise acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, he has already proved that he will not shy away from conflict. Trump wants to reduce Washington’s commitments to international institutions and to narrow the scope of U.S. alliances, but he is hardly interested in overseeing an American retreat from the global stage.

The true roots of Trump’s foreign policy can be found in the 1950s. They emerge from that decade’s surging anticommunism, although not from the liberal variant that channeled democracy promotion, technocratic skill, and vigorous internationalism, and that was championed by Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy in response to the Soviet threat. Trump’s vision stems from the right-wing anticommunist movements of the 1950s, which pitted the West against its enemies, drew on religious motifs, and harbored a suspicion of American liberalism as too soft, too postnational, and too secular to protect the country.

This political legacy is a tale of three books. First came Witness by the American journalist Whittaker Chambers, a former communist and Soviet spy who eventually broke with the party and became a political conservative. Witness was his 1952 manifesto on fellow-traveling American liberals and their treachery, which emboldened the Soviet Union. A similar vision motivated James Burnham, the preeminent postwar conservative foreign-policy thinker. In his 1964 book, Suicide of the West, he faulted the American foreign-policy establishment for snobbish disloyalty and for upholding “principles that are internationalist and universal rather than local or national.” Burnham advocated a foreign policy built on “family, community, Church, country and, at the farthest remove, civilization—not civilization in general but this historically specific civilization, of which I am a member.”

Artwork depicting Trump, Putin, and Xi at an art gallery in Crimea, Ukraine, February 2025 Alexey Pavlishak / Reuters

One of Burnham’s intellectual successors was a young journalist named Pat Buchanan. Buchanan supported Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, was an aide to President Richard Nixon, and in 1992, launched a formidable primary challenge to the sitting Republican president, George H. W. Bush. It is Buchanan whose ideas most precisely foreshadow the Trump era. In 2002, Buchanan published The Death of the West, in which he observed that “poor whites are moving to the right” and contended that “the global capitalist and the true conservative are Cain and Abel.” Despite the book’s title, Buchanan had some hope for the West (in his us-and-them sense of the term) and was confident in globalism’s impending crack-up. “Because it is a project of elites, and because its architects are unknown and unloved,” he wrote, “globalism will crash on the Great Barrier Reef of patriotism.”

Trump assimilated this decades-long conservative tradition not through studying such figures but through instinct and campaign-trail improvisation. Like Chambers, Burnham, and Buchanan, outsiders enamored of power, Trump relishes iconoclasm and rupture, seeks to upend the status quo, and loathes liberal elites and foreign-policy experts. Trump may seem an unlikely heir to these men and the movements they shaped, which were shot through with Christian moralism and at times with elitism. But he has cannily and successfully cast himself not as a refined exemplar of Western cultural and civilizational virtues but as their toughest defender from enemies without and within.

THE REVISIONISTS

Trump’s dislike of universalistic internationalism aligns him with Putin, Xi, Modi, and Erdogan. These five leaders share an appreciation of foreign-policy limits and a nervous inability to stand still. They are all pressing for change while operating within certain self-imposed parameters. Putin is not trying to Russify the Middle East. Xi is not trying to remake Africa, Latin America, or the Middle East in China’s image. Modi is not attempting to construct ersatz Indias abroad. And Erdogan is not pushing Iran or the Arab world to be more Turkish. Trump is likewise uninterested in Americanization as a foreign-policy agenda. His sense of American exceptionalism separates the United States from an intrinsically un-American outside world.

Revisionism can coexist with this collective avoidance of global system building and with the thinning out of the international order. To Xi, history and Chinese power—not the UN Charter or Washington’s preferences—are the true arbiters of Taiwan’s status, for China is whatever he says it is. Although India does not sit beside a global flash point like Taiwan, it continues to litigate its borders with China and Pakistan, which have been unresolved since India achieved independence in 1947. India ends wherever Modi says it ends.

Erdogan’s revisionism is more literal. To advantage its allies in Azerbaijan, Turkey facilitated Azerbaijan’s expulsion of Armenians from the contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, not through negotiation but through military force. Turkey’s membership in the NATO alliance, which entails a formal commitment to democracy and to the integrity of borders, did not stand in Erdogan’s way. Turkey has also established itself as a military presence in Syria. This is not quite a reconstitution of the Ottoman Empire. Erdogan does not aim to keep Syrian territory in perpetuity. But Turkey’s military-political projects in the South Caucasus and the Middle East have a historical resonance for Erdogan. Proof of Turkey’s greatness, they show that Turkey will be wherever Erdogan says it ought to be.

Amid this rising tide of revisionism, Russia’s war against Ukraine is the central story. Acting in the name of Russian “greatness” and presiding over a country that has no end in his eyes, Putin’s speeches are awash in historical allusions. Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, once wisecracked that Putin’s closest advisers are “Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.” But it is the future, not the past, that really concerns Putin. Russia’s 2022 invasion was a geopolitical turning point akin to those the world witnessed in 1914, 1939, and 1989. Putin waged war to partition or colonize Ukraine. He meant the invasion to set a precedent that would justify similar wars in other theaters and possibly excite other players (including China) about the possibilities of disruptive military ventures. Putin rewrote the rules, and he has not ceased doing so: badly as the invasion has gone for Russia, it has not resulted in Russia’s global isolation. Putin has renormalized the idea of large-scale war as a means of territorial conquest. He has done so in Europe, which had once epitomized the rules-based international order.

Today’s conflicts amount to the clash of civilizations lite.

The war in Ukraine, however, hardly augurs the death of international diplomacy. In some ways, the war has kickstarted it. For example, the BRICS group, which formally links China, India, and Russia (along with Brazil, South Africa, and other non-Western countries) has grown larger and arguably more cohesive. On the other side, Ukraine’s coalition of supporters has become far more than transatlantic. It includes Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea. Multilateralism is alive and well; it is just not all-encompassing.

In this kaleidoscopic geopolitical landscape, relationships are protean and complex. Putin and Xi have built a partnership but not quite an alliance. Xi has no reason to imitate Putin’s reckless break with Europe and the United States. Despite being rivals, Russia and Turkey can at least deconflict their actions in the Middle East and in the South Caucasus. India regards China apprehensively. And although some analysts have taken to describing China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia as forming an “axis,” they are four profoundly different countries whose interests and worldviews frequently diverge.

The foreign policies of these countries emphasize history and uniqueness, the notion that charismatic leaders must heroically uphold Russian or Chinese or Indian or Turkish interests. This militates against their convergence and makes it hard for them to form stable axes. An axis requires coordination, whereas the interaction among these countries is fluid, transactional, and personality-driven. Nothing here is black and white, nothing set in stone, nothing nonnegotiable.

This milieu suits Trump perfectly. He is not overly constrained by religiously and culturally defined fault lines. He often prizes individuals over governments and personal relationships over formal alliances. Although Germany is a NATO ally of the United States and Russia a perennial adversary, Trump clashed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in his first term and treated Putin with respect. The countries Trump wrestles with the most are those that lie within the West. Had Huntington lived to see this, he would have found it baffling.

A VISION OF WAR

In Trump’s first term, the international landscape was fairly calm. There were no major wars. Russia appeared to have been contained in Ukraine. The Middle East appeared to be entering a period of relative stability facilitated in part by the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords, a set of deals intended to enhance regional order. China appeared to be deterrable in Taiwan; it never came close to invading. And in deed if not always in word, Trump conducted himself as a typical Republican president. He increased U.S. defense commitments to Europe, welcoming two new countries into NATO. He struck no deals with Russia. He talked harshly about China, and he maneuvered for advantage in the Middle East.

But today, a major war rages in Europe, the Middle East is in disarray, and the old international system is in tatters. A confluence of factors might lead to disaster: the further erosion of rules and borders, the collision of disparate national-greatness enterprises supercharged by erratic leaders and by rapid-fire communication on social media, and the mounting desperation of medium-sized and smaller states, which resent the unchecked prerogatives of the great powers and feel imperiled by the consequences of international anarchy. A catastrophe is more likely to erupt in Ukraine than in Taiwan or the Middle East because the potential for world war and for nuclear war is greatest in Ukraine.

Even in the rules-based order, the integrity of borders has never been absolute—especially the borders of countries in Russia’s vicinity. But since the end of the Cold War, Europe and the United States have remained committed to the principle of territorial sovereignty. Their enormous investment in Ukraine honors a distinctive vision of European security: if borders can be altered by force, Europe, where borders have so often generated resentment, would descend into all-out war. Peace in Europe is possible only if borders are not easily adjustable. In his first term, Trump underscored the importance of territorial sovereignty, promising to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the U.S. border with Mexico. But in that first term, Trump did not have to contend with a major war in Europe. And it’s clear now that his belief in the sanctity of borders applies primarily to those of the United States.

Trump and Modi in New Delhi, February 2020 Al Drago / Reuters

China and India, meanwhile, have reservations about Russia’s war, but along with Brazil, the Philippines, and many other regional powers, they have made a far-reaching decision to retain their ties with Russia even as Putin labors away at destroying Ukraine. Ukrainian sovereignty is immaterial to these “neutral” countries, unimportant compared with the value of a stable Russia under Putin and with the value of continuing energy and arms deals.

These countries may underestimate the risks of accepting Russian revisionism, which could lead not to stability but to a wider war. The spectacle of a carved-up or defeated Ukraine would terrify Ukraine’s neighbors. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are NATO members that take comfort in NATO’s Article 5 commitment to mutual defense. Yet Article 5 is underwritten by the United States—and the United States is far away. If Poland and the Baltic republics concluded that Ukraine was on the brink of a defeat that would put their own sovereignty at risk, they might elect to join the fight directly. Russia might respond by taking the war to them. A similar outcome could result from a grand bargain among Washington, western European countries, and Moscow that ends the war on Russian terms but has a radicalizing effect on Ukraine’s neighbors. Fearing Russian aggression on the one hand and the abandonment of their allies on the other, they could go on the offensive. Even if the United States stayed on the sidelines amid a Europe-wide war, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom would probably not remain neutral.

Were the war in Ukraine to widen in that way, its outcome would greatly affect the reputations of Trump and Putin. Vanity would exert itself, as it so often does in international affairs. Just as Putin cannot afford to lose a war to Ukraine, Trump cannot afford to “lose” Europe. To squander the prosperity and power projection that the United States gains from its military presence in Europe would be humiliating for any American president. The psychological incentives for escalation would be strong. And in a highly personalistic international system, especially one agitated by undisciplined digital diplomacy, such a dynamic could take hold elsewhere. It could spark hostilities between China and India, perhaps, or between Russia and Turkey.

A VISION OF PEACE

Alongside such worst-case scenarios, consider how Trump’s second term could also improve a deteriorating international situation. A combination of workmanlike U.S. relations with Beijing and Moscow, a nimble approach to diplomacy in Washington, and a bit of strategic luck might not necessarily lead to major breakthroughs, but it could produce a better status quo. Not an end to the war in Ukraine, but a reduction in its intensity. Not a resolution of the Taiwan dilemma, but guardrails to prevent a major war in the Indo-Pacific. Not a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but some form of U.S. detente with a weakened Iran, and the emergence of a viable government in Syria. Trump might not become an unqualified peacemaker, but he could help usher in a less war-torn world.

Under Biden and his predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush, Russia and China had to cope with systemic pressure from Washington. Moscow and Beijing stood outside the liberal international order in part by choice and in part because they were not democracies. Russian and Chinese leaders exaggerated this pressure, as if regime change were actual U.S. policy, but they were not wrong to detect a preference in Washington for political pluralism, civil liberties, and the separation of powers.

With Trump back in office, that pressure has dissipated. The form of the governments in Russia and China does not preoccupy Trump, whose rejection of nation building and regime change is absolute. Even though the sources of tension remain, the overall atmosphere will be less fraught, and more diplomatic exchanges may be possible. There may be more give-and-take within the Beijing-Moscow-Washington triangle, more concessions on small points, and more openness to negotiation and to confidence-building measures in zones of war and contestation.

If Trump and his team can practice it, flexible diplomacy—the deft management of constant tensions and rolling conflicts—could pay big dividends. Trump is the least Wilsonian president since Woodrow Wilson himself. He has no use for overarching structures of international cooperation such as the UN or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Instead, he and his advisers, especially those who hail from the tech world, might approach the global stage with the mentality of a start-up, a company just formed and perhaps soon to be dissolved but able to react quickly and creatively to the conditions of the moment.

Ukraine will be an early test. Instead of pursuing a hasty peace, the Trump administration should stay focused on protecting Ukrainian sovereignty, which Putin will never accept. To allow Russia to curtail Ukraine’s sovereignty might provide a veneer of stability but could bring war in its wake. Instead of an illusory peace, Washington should help Ukraine determine the rules of engagement with Russia, and through these rules, the war could gradually be minimized. The United States would then be able to compartmentalize its relations with Russia, as it did with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, agreeing to disagree about Ukraine while looking for possible points of agreement on nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, climate change, pandemics, counterterrorism, the Arctic, and space exploration. The compartmentalization of conflict with Russia would serve a core U.S. interest, one that is dear to Trump: the prevention of a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia.

Biden, not Trump, represented a detour.

A spontaneous style of diplomacy can make it easier to act on strategic luck. The revolutions in Europe in 1989 offer a good example. The dissolution of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union have sometimes been interpreted as a masterstroke of U.S. planning. Yet the fall of the Berlin Wall that year had little to do with American strategy, and the Soviet disintegration was not something the U.S. government expected to happen: it was all accident and luck. President George H. W. Bush’s national security team was superb not at predicting or controlling events but at responding to them, not doing too much (antagonizing the Soviet Union) and not doing too little (letting a united Germany slip out of NATO). In this spirit, the Trump administration should be primed to seize the moment. To make the most of whatever opportunities come its way, it must not get bogged down in system and in structure.

But taking advantage of lucky breaks requires preparation as well as agility. In this regard, the United States has two major assets. The first is its network of alliances, which greatly magnifies Washington’s leverage and room to maneuver. The second is the American practice of economic statecraft, which expands U.S. access to markets and critical resources, attracts outside investment, and maintains the American financial system as a central node of the global economy. Protectionism and coercive economic policies have their place, but they should be subordinate to a broader, more optimistic vision of American prosperity, and one that privileges long-time allies and partners.

None of the usual descriptors of world order apply anymore: the international system is not unipolar or bipolar or multipolar. But even in a world without a stable structure, the Trump administration can still use American power, alliances, and economic statecraft to defuse tension, minimize conflict, and furnish a baseline of cooperation among countries big and small. That could serve Trump’s wish to leave the United States better off at the end of his second term than it was at the beginning.

MICHAEL KIMMAGE is Director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute and the author of The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael Kimmage · February 25, 2025

25. Special Ops Report 2025: SOCOM on the Brink - Budget Cuts, Russian Sabotage, and the Future of Unconventional Warfare

Is this excerpt really accurate? (one can only hope).

Excerpt:

The Pentagon is waking up to the fact that SOF isn’t just a high-speed, low-drag assault force—it’s a strategic asset in the great power competition against China and Russia. Reports are pushing for a return to SOF’s unconventional roots, dusting off Cold War-era tactics and applying them to modern conflicts. Russia has been very effective here as well. Psychological operations, guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency—these are the skills that will define the next decade of competition, all enhanced with AI and more tech of course.

Special Ops Report 2025: SOCOM on the Brink - Budget Cuts, Russian Sabotage, and the Future of Unconventional Warfare

sofrep.com · by Brandon Webb · February 24, 2025

19 hours ago

The Battlefield Is Evolving—And SOF Is Still The Tip of the Spear

The world is spiraling into deeper chaos—new threats, old enemies, and the same political games that have historically been strangling the warriors who actually get shit done are slowly being undone by Trump and the new SECDEF Pete Hegseth.

Special Operations Forces (SOF) have been the scalpel in America’s war machine, slicing through problems while bureaucrats sit in meetings debating whose fault it all is. But as the global security landscape shifts, so must the warriors tasked with keeping the wolves at bay.

Cutting Budgets, Cutting Throats: The Pentagon’s Tight Purse Strings

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just threw down the gauntlet, ordering an 8% budget slash—a cool $50 billion in spending reductions. It’s the kind of move that makes generals sweat, and contractors start hunting for side gigs. For SOF, this means fewer resources in the short-term, leaner operations, and a lot of creative problem-solving to stay lethal.

The upside is that Hegseth is rightfully improving the snail’s pace Defense acquisition system to put better gear in the warfighter’s hands faster. In Europe and the Middle East, commands scramble to keep capabilities intact while the bean counters decide what they can live without.

Here’s a hint: SOF doesn’t do “without”, they always find a way.

Russia’s New Shadow War: Enter the SSD

Because the Cold War nostalgia wasn’t thick enough, Russia decided to spice things up by forming the Department of Special Tasks (SSD) in 2023. Think of them as Putin’s covert wrecking crew, hellbent on undermining Western stability through sabotage, espionage, and a whole lot of creative skullduggery. SOF is already adapting, ramping up counterintelligence ops and reinforcing NATO partnerships to keep these bastards in check. The game of cat and mouse is back in full swing, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

NATO Steps Up—Sort Of

With the U.S. taking a step back from direct involvement in NATO’s Steadfast Dart 2025, European allies are getting a taste of what it’s like to handle their own security. Ten thousand troops from nine nations are playing war games without Uncle Sam holding their hand. SOF’s role? Making sure these allies don’t trip over themselves in the process. The goal is greater military self-sufficiency in Europe—because let’s be real, America can’t babysit everyone forever.

The Battlefield Is Evolving—And SOF Is Still The Tip of the Spear

Cutting Budgets, Cutting Throats: The Pentagon’s Tight Purse Strings

Here’s a hint: SOF doesn’t do “without”, they always find a way.

Russia’s New Shadow War: Enter the SSD

NATO Steps Up—Sort Of

Tech, AI, and the Thin Line Between Progress and Horror

Artificial intelligence and autonomous systems are creeping into SOF operations faster than anyone expected. Drones, automated recon, AI-assisted targeting—the tech is making operators deadlier and missions more precise. But with great power comes great ethical nightmares. Who’s accountable when an AI-driven kill order goes sideways? How do we keep the human element in warfare when machines start calling the shots? These are the questions keeping military ethicists up at night. Meanwhile, SOF just wants the tools to get the job done—red tape be damned.

Planes, Procurement, and the Price of Readiness

SOF’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget includes plans to procure 12 additional Sky Warden aircraft—down from the initial projections, because apparently, air superiority is now a luxury. The cuts are frustrating, but the mission doesn’t stop. The strategy is shifting toward making every dollar count, ensuring these aircraft and other assets are optimized for unconventional warfare rather than just racking up a pretty inventory.

Digital Shadows and the Art of Staying Ghost

The modern battlefield isn’t just about bullets and bombs—it’s about data. SOF is taking the fight to the digital realm, working to minimize its footprint and stay off the grid. Adversaries have better surveillance and reconnaissance tools than ever, making operational secrecy a game of chess in a world full of digital spies. The motto? Security through obscurity. If they can’t see you coming, they sure as hell can’t stop you.

The Next Decade: Unconventional Warfare’s Revival

The Pentagon is waking up to the fact that SOF isn’t just a high-speed, low-drag assault force—it’s a strategic asset in the great power competition against China and Russia. Reports are pushing for a return to SOF’s unconventional roots, dusting off Cold War-era tactics and applying them to modern conflicts. Russia has been very effective here as well. Psychological operations, guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency—these are the skills that will define the next decade of competition, all enhanced with AI and more tech of course.

Final Thoughts: Adapt, Overcome, Dominate

The world isn’t getting any safer, and SOF remains the last line of defense against anarchy. Budget cuts, shifting alliances, emerging threats—none of it changes the mission. Special operators are bred to adapt, to fight, and to win. No matter how many suits in Washington try to tighten the leash, the wolves of war always find a way to hunt.

The future of SOF isn’t just survival—it’s evolution. And as history has proven, evolution favors the lethal.

We’re encouraged by the recent and needed changes in DOD being pushed with the speed of F1 by SECDEF Pete Hegseth because the warfighters deserve it.

Out for now.

As someone who’s seen what happens when the truth is distorted, I know how unfair it feels when those who’ve sacrificed the most lose their voice. At SOFREP, our veteran journalists, who once fought for freedom, now fight to bring you unfiltered, real-world intel. But without your support, we risk losing this vital source of truth. By subscribing, you’re not just leveling the playing field—you’re standing with those who’ve already given so much, ensuring they continue to serve by delivering stories that matter. Every subscription means we can hire more veterans and keep their hard-earned knowledge in the fight. Don’t let their voices be silenced. Please consider subscribing now.

One team, one fight,

Brandon Webb former Navy SEAL, Bestselling Author and Editor-in-Chief

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Tackling the Toil: A Rallying Cry for Defense Leaders in the Exponential Age - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Alexis Bonnell · February 25, 2025

Time is our most precious resource, and yet, we squander it daily. This is not just about efficiency or a better return on taxpayer dollars — it’s about our humanity. How we value and leverage time reflects how we prioritize ourselves as a society or organization. The cost of wasted time is one we can no longer afford.

We live in an age defined by the exponential acceleration of knowledge and demands on our time. In 2020, 64.2 zettabytes of data were generated globally. That figure is expected to more than double within four years. This is not just a technological shift — it is a revolution. In the past, an entire fleet might have generated the same amount of quality surveillance data in a year that a single drone now collects in an hour.

The Exponential Age is not merely knocking on our door — it is knocking us to our knees. It has fundamentally altered our relationship with time. The pace of change requires us to move our traditional calendar-based mindset to a stopwatch mentality. The supply of time remains fixed, and every minute wasted is a minute lost forever.

Time wasted also impacts our humanity, sense of anxiety, pride in our work, and well-being. There are not enough minutes in the day, so our decision paradigm becomes more stressful. We are confronted with a type of “betrayal conundrum” — the tension between knowing how we should spend time accomplishing the mission we believe in — on the one hand, and how we are required to spend it, on the other. This tension has caused a split in my own sense of self and identity. It puts me in an unwinnable situation. I know what the priority is, but I am also required to spend my time on things I know are less important, leaving me feeling guilty, frustrated, and disillusioned. As the chief information officer of the primary scientific research and development center for the Department of the Air Force & Space Force, I experience the time-toil dichotomy daily — and so do many others.

Many of my customers are scientists and researchers. They know their most valuable moments are doing research. Each new “request for information,” new tracking system introduced, form to fill, extra clicks, and data entered forces them to spend their time on something that isn’t what we hired them for. They have an incredible job of future-proofing our national security. They believe passionately in the mission and that anything else is a distraction. They are right.

Become a Member

The Enemy Within: Toil

Toil is more than a nuisance. As I wrote about in the Texas National Security Review, toil is sabotage. During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services developed a field guide for undermining enemy productivity. Many of its recommended tactics, such as insisting on unnecessary meetings and creating endless forms, have ironically become the norm for many modern workplaces, particularly within the U.S. government. Gratuitous bureaucracy has defined American institutions, sapping their efficiency and the morale of the people who operate them.

Indeed, the toil problem is especially acute in government. Millions of public servants work tirelessly, driven by conviction in the purpose and importance of the mission. However, belief in the mission is not enough to overcome the obstacle of unnecessary bureaucracy. Toil drains purpose faster than the mission can replenish it. In one instance, a military service asked me to examine its culture and define what made it less innovative than big tech company cultures. Toil impacts the most innovative people the most, so I specifically interviewed members who had chosen to leave the force to understand the reason for their decision. The service members reported their sense of purpose had plummeted — from nine out of 10 when they started in the force to two out of 10 when they chose to leave. The culprit was not a lack of motivation or skill — it was toil.

The servicemembers wanted to innovate, to try new coding approaches and new AI tools, but were blocked by bureaucracy. They wanted to move quickly but were bogged down by the process. They wanted to focus on the mission but were distracted by endless administrative tasks. As with me, the time-toil dichotomy created a gap in how they saw themselves. With a purpose-driven workforce, spending time on pointless tasks chips away at their sense of self. They don’t respect the toil-driven tasks like filling out forms for system access when they must use a card to log into a system that already identifies them, and spending time doing it instead of what they know matters erodes their sense of self, their leadership, and their mission.

The Cost of Leadership Failures

Leaders often unwittingly contribute to the problem. I know this because it has been my signature at the bottom of a memo directing a toil-driven task, my meetings, and my processes that have contributed to buttressing the unnecessary bureaucracy in organizations in which I have served. Early in my career, when my work, opinions, and approaches were formalized into the processes in our organization, it made me feel important. After all, making the rules is a form of validation and power over others. But as I started to participate in “toil tours” — hands-on experiences where I had to navigate the steps and requirements of the processes on my own without help — I started to wilt — and understand: While a single form, a five-minute meeting, or an extra checklist might seem inconsequential to a senior leader, these small demands accumulate into a crushing weight for teams already stretched thin.

As leaders rise in rank, we become increasingly insulated from the daily grind of our teams. We no longer experience the full burden of the policies and processes we create or allow to continue. This disconnection enables inefficiencies to proliferate, turning workplaces into time-toil traps. This isn’t about demonizing a current process, system, or approach — most elements of sabotage originate for a reason — but it is also perfectly valid to ask, “Does this still need to be done at all, or in this way?”

In the Department of Defense, what if we required “impact math?” In other words, leaders had to know, and supervisors had to sign off and approve any new toil added, or were required to take an element of toil away.

I put a challenge out today: Calculate the toil!

Take all the things we require someone to do, all the time, all the lists, the forms, the trainings, and then stack them against the actual value of the risk they mitigate.

There will always be someone who does something wrong, who messes up, but the auto-response to have to train hundreds, thousands, even millions of people on that one thing — because one person messed up — might not be worth it.

A Culture of Risk Aversion

Toil is often a symptom of a deeper issue: an organizational aversion to taking risk. When trust is replaced with paperwork, the mission and its people suffer. In an era of constant change, leaders put their people in an unwinnable position, demanding they move fast while simultaneously burying them in layer upon layer of departmental approvals and redundant processes.

Over a recent weekend, I calculated where I spent my time at work. Between emails, meetings, training requirements, and administrative tasks, my weekly workload exceeded 60 hours before I even began to focus on strategic priorities, which is the actual expertise I was hired for. This isn’t unique to me. It’s the reality for countless professionals, many of whom are burning out under the burden of tasks that do nothing to advance the mission. If you don’t believe me, then do the math on your own workload. Then, ask the toil question: “Why do we do this?”

If the answer to your question is that a current, time-intensive task resulted from an incident that happened a decade ago, the likelihood that risk mitigation is still relevantly optimized, considering today’s technology and mission, is very low. You might still think it is worth doing or even legally required, but it might very well be done in one click on a pop-up versus eight clicks and two separate forms.

Then, ask yourself the critical questions:

“Would we do this in war?”

“Would we do this when every second counts?”

If the answer is no, then there is a strong likelihood that the task, process, requirement, or activity is toil, or is at least ripe to be reconsidered.

When I left the private sector and returned to the government, I had to complete four different four-day manager and other training courses. Shockingly, this accounted for almost 7 percent of my year. Most of my time was taken up by dense PowerPoint slides being read aloud virtually by a presenter, which was wasteful and ineffective.

Leaders should stop asking, “Has this person been trained in a particular skill?” That is a play-it-safe and one-size-fits-all approach to knowledge. Instead, they should ask: “What knowledge can they exercise?” Personally, I do not excel at retaining information presented in large group settings. What you really want someone to be able to do is recognize sensitive circumstances and issues when they arise and know where and who to go to for help. If leadership accounted for the possibility that new hires might already exhibit the knowledge, skills, and attributes needed, it could reduce a four-day training course to a two-hour module. You could then use an AI chatbot or curated tool to make the larger knowledge set easily accessible to those who need additional help or resources.

The Way Forward

Solving the time-toil problem requires a shift in mindset. Leaders should prioritize empathy for their teams and respect for their time. Efficiency is not about adding more tools or processes. It’s about eliminating what no longer serves the mission. At the Air Force Research Laboratory, we introduced a “kill bonus” to reward employees for identifying processes or tasks that could be eliminated. I look at everything with a “minus two” mentality, meaning how can I take two steps out of this? This approach acknowledges a simple truth: Stopping unnecessary work is as valuable — if not more so — than starting new initiatives.

The government celebrates those who navigate the bureaucracy to launch new programs, but it rarely recognizes the heroism of those who dismantle outdated systems. Yet, in an age where time is as critical as any advanced weapon or capability, the ability and courage to eliminate waste is nothing short of a strategic necessity.

A Call to Action

The irony of toil is that it tends to disappear in a crisis. When faced with an emergency, all the unnecessary steps and processes are swept aside. This begs the question: If they are not essential in a moment of crisis, why are they considered essential at all?

National security is not just about defeating external adversaries. It is about confronting internal inefficiencies head-on. Every minute wasted on unnecessary tasks is a minute stolen from the mission. We should treat time with the same urgency and care as we would any critical resource.

The Exponential Age demands leaders who trust their teams, streamline their organizations, and ruthlessly protect time. The future of our national security depends on it.

Become a Member

Alexis Bonnell is the chief information officer and director of the Digital Capabilities Directorate at the Air Force Research Laboratory and a proud public servant. The views expressed in this essay are those of the author and not those of the Air Force Research Laboratory, the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government, but she’s doing her best to inspire others to choose solutions and be brave enough to tackle the toil and get minutes back on mission.

Image: Airman 1st Class Whitney Gillespie via DVIDs.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Alexis Bonnell · February 25, 2025

27. A Tale of Two Typhoons: Properly Diagnosing Chinese Cyber Threats

Excerpts:

Many policymakers have been treating the cyber threats emanating from China, specifically Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon, as essentially the same. In turn, they are reaching for a similar set of policy tools to address them. As demonstrated, this is problematic. These threats represent different types of cyber operations in support of radically different strategic objectives.

Instead of lumping these threats together, policymakers would be more successful if they evaluated how they fit into distinct, longstanding concepts in international politics, whether it be espionage, warfighting, or deterrence and coercion. The fact that Salt Typhoon was carried out through cyber means does give rise to unique challenges and may suggest certain policy tools in response, but conceptually it is part of a broader umbrella of intelligence and counterintelligence. The same goes for Volt Typhoon. China’s cyber operational preparation of the environment is part of a broader strategic effort by Beijing to plan and build capabilities for a future military engagement with the United States. In turn, the United States should see Volt Typhoon through the lens of deterring conflict writ large with China, while preparing to be resilient and prevail if deterrence fails.

- War on the Rocks

Erica Lonergan and Michael Poznansky

warontherocks.com · by Erica Lonergan · February 25, 2025

How should the United States address the multiple cyber “typhoons” emanating from China? Over the past year, Chinese cyber threat actors have gained access to important U.S. networks. The most high-profile of these are Volt Typhoon, which burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure, potentially to preposition cyber assets in the event of a crisis or conflict with the United States, and Salt Typhoon, which penetrated multiple telecommunications networks to spy on Americans.

There are two fundamental problems with the current state of the policy debate. The first is that Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon are fundamentally distinct, but policymakers tend to treat them interchangeably. The second problem, which follows from the first, is that policymakers are grasping for the same policy levers — especially deterrence — to address these threats when they suggest different solutions.

With a new administration confronting these daunting challenges, there is an opportunity to get things right when it comes to how we talk about and distinguish between cyber threats and therefore the policy choices appropriately matched to address them. For threats like Salt Typhoon, a large-scale espionage operation, policymakers should emphasize incident response and improve future defense and resilience. For threats like Volt Typhoon, which represents operational preparation of the environment, leaders should focus first and foremost on deterring war and, should that fail, try to deter attacks against civilian targets and improve resilience for military targets.

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Two Distinct Threats

At first blush, Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon share several things in common. First, they have a similar naming convention. This reflects Microsoft’s taxonomy for naming cyber threat actors linked to a particular nation-state. Second, both entailed gaining unauthorized access to critical U.S. systems using some similar tactics, techniques, and procedures like “living off the land.”

Third, and most relevant here, U.S. policymakers from both sides of the aisle frequently group these episodes as part and parcel of the same phenomenon, namely an unrestrained China that sees little disincentive for burrowing deep into American infrastructure in cyberspace. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz noted in a December interview with CBS News that the United States must ratchet up its offensive approach and impose costs in cyberspace, including against “private actors and nation state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us, and that even worse, with the Volt Typhoon penetration, that are literally putting cyber time bombs on our infrastructure, our water systems, our grids, even our ports.” Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reasoned similarly at the end of the Biden administration.

When it comes to operational and strategic objectives, however, these two “typhoons” represent fundamentally different kinds of threats. Salt Typhoon, by all accounts, appears to be a classic — if somewhat breathtaking in scope — case of espionage. The intrusion, which entailed gaining access to unprecedented amounts of extremely granular information from some of America’s largest telecommunications companies including Verizon and AT&T, was an intelligence bonanza for China. According to major reports, hackers gained access to extremely high-value targets, including then President-elect Donald Trump’s and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s cell phones.

Unlike some cases of cyber espionage, the ostensible goals of this operation appear to have had national security aims in mind, as opposed to many known past cases of Chinese cyber espionage, which primarily had to do with intellectual property theft. In this sense, Salt Typhoon is a close cousin of some of the largest cyber intelligence breaches over the last decade. Back in 2015, for example, China broke into the Office of Personnel and Management, stealing sensitive records of millions of federal employees. Five years later, Russia carried out a supply chain hack against SolarWinds, gaining access to and exfiltrating data from multiple government department and agency networks.

Volt Typhoon represents a different sort of breach entirely. U.S. officials, together with Five Eyes intelligence partners, described in early 2024 how Volt Typhoon “has been pre-positioning themselves on U.S. critical infrastructure organizations’ networks to enable disruption or destruction of critical services in the event of increased geopolitical tensions and/or military conflict with the United States and its allies.” Then-director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, warned in Congressional testimony about how Volt Typhoon could “well endanger the lives of Americans here at home — through the disruption of our pipelines, the severing of our telecommunications, the pollution of our water facilities, [and] the crippling of our transportation modes” in a future crisis.

This is not the first time adversaries have gained access to U.S. critical infrastructure. In 2018, the U.S. government accused Russia of penetrating several critical infrastructure sectors, including energy, nuclear, water, aviation, manufacturing, and commercial facilities. But as of the time of this writing, it does not appear Russia has exploited that access for cyber effect operations against the United States — despite fears that Russia would do just that during its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

As should be clear, Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon differ in terms of their operational objectives and their temporal dimension. For Salt Typhoon and other forms of cyber espionage, the objective is to stealthily steal information in support of an adversary’s intelligence collection priorities. Moreover, such access can be actively exploited. In contrast, Volt Typhoon represents cyber operational preparation of the environment. The immediate operational objective is ostensibly to gain access and preposition capabilities to use at some future date. China may seek to launch disruptive or destructive attacks against U.S. and allied critical infrastructure for coercive purposes or to impede America’s ability to mobilize key military assets and capabilities during a crisis or conflict. Importantly, however, the effects are (currently) held in reserve and may potentially be employed at some future date.

Responding to Salt Typhoon

Despite the fact that Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon represent different cyber threats, policymakers seem to be taking a one-size-fits-all approach to address them — one that is largely anchored in some form of deterrence strategy. As described above, the Trump administration is leaning toward a more muscular, offensive approach to “reestablish deterrence” of Chinese cyber threat actors. But the same factors that distinguish these threats also suggest different courses of action — and reveal the limitations of relying on deterrence theory alone to confront the panoply of threats in the cyber domain.

For Salt Typhoon, the big challenge policymakers face is that while cyber deterrence in general is always difficult, it is especially tough to deter cyber espionage specifically. Deterrence entails the credible threat of force to prevent an adversary from taking some unwanted action such that the costs of compliance are seen as less than the costs of defection. In the case of Salt Typhoon, China has already captured sensitive information from its unauthorized access to U.S. telecommunications providers, and is likely acting on the intelligence, making deterrence for this particular operation moot.

Deterring future Chinese cyber espionage is also problematic for several reasons. Most obviously, espionage relies on secrecy and stealth for operational success, and such deception complicates deterrence. Moreover, threats to deter cyber espionage may not be credible. The value China likely perceives in these sorts of intrusions is enormous, making it difficult for the United States to credibly threaten to impose a level of consequences that outweigh the benefits (especially without unduly risking escalation).

On top of all this, espionage for national security purposes is an implicitly, if begrudgingly, accepted state practice — it is simply what states, including the United States, do. When the United States uncovered the Chinese hack of the Office of Personnel Management in 2015, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper famously remarked, “You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did.” If China perceives America engaging in the same behavior, it is especially unlikely to restrain itself. Indeed, the United States has tried time and again to deter cyber espionage and come up short. America’s response to SolarWinds entailed a combination of naming and shaming, indictments, and economic sanctions, but it’s not clear that Moscow was deterred from conducting cyber espionage as a result (or Beijing, for that matter).

Rather than lean on deterrence, the United States should situate cyber espionage where it really belongs, namely in the context of intelligence and counterintelligence. Salt Typhoon, of course, demands immediate incident response: assessing the full scope of the compromise, containing the damage, removing threat actors from affected networks, and, likely in this case, upgrading and rebuilding telecommunications equipment to make it less susceptible to future intrusions. Over the long term, the United States must invest in improving its defense, resilience, and counterintelligence capabilities to make it harder for threat actors to gain access and less consequential if — and more realistically, when — they do. This requires doing a better job of identifying and anticipating adversary intelligence collection priorities, which can guide policymakers in identifying which sectors and entities are more likely to be targeted.

Policymakers may also consider a “defend forward” counter-cyber response in the hopes of degrading China’s ability to conduct similar types of cyber espionage campaigns in the future. Indeed, this will ostensibly be most appealing to the Trump administration, not simply because the concept was introduced during Trump’s first term, but also because it aligns with a more muscular, military-centric approach to cyber threats.

But several notes of caution are warranted here. First, such an approach should not be the only solution and cannot replace the measures described above. Second, if the aim of a counter-cyber campaign is simply to degrade China’s cyber espionage capabilities, that would be one thing. But threatening or even imposing costs for the purposes of shaping Chinese behavior in the future – which would go beyond the conventional understanding of defend forward – is unlikely to work for all the reasons noted earlier. Relatedly, policymakers must consider the downstream implications of conducting offensive cyber operations in response to cyber espionage. Put simply, it may set a precedent that the United States should expect the same response in kind.

Responding to Volt Typhoon

Volt Typhoon is a different story. Unlike Salt Typhoon, where the benefits to China are effectively immediate from access to telecommunications networks, in this case, the actions the United States most wants to deter — disruptive or destructive cyber operations against critical infrastructure — have not yet taken place. China is holding a capability in reserve, and its access is primarily valuable insofar as it gives China tools it can use later. This creates a window for deterrence. Several implications follow.

Most obviously, it means China is unlikely to deliberately activate its pre-positioned disruptive or destructive cyber capabilities unless there is a crisis or a war with the United States. As a result, to deter such cyber operations, the United States should primarily focus on deterring conflict with China — rather than narrowly concentrating on the cyber dimension of the threat. This may seem like stating the obvious. However, policymakers who focus on cyberspace sometimes neglect the broader geopolitical dynamics, homing in narrowly on the cyber issue but failing to situate it in the bigger picture. Volt Typhoon is not only a cyber policy challenge, it is one tool in the broader Chinese toolkit for potential conflict with the United States and its allies and partners. In short, to deter Chinese activation of Volt Typhoon, policymakers must deter war with China.

And what if the United States fails to deter war? The question then becomes whether the activation of these exploits can be deterred in the event of conflict. To better understand this issue, we need to distinguish between counterforce versus countervalue targeting. The former in this instance refers to activation of Volt Typhoon exploits specifically oriented toward military bases, facilities, and other infrastructure that could impede effective military mobilization and operations. The latter captures cyber operations aimed at civilian populations with the intention of disrupting daily life, sowing chaos, and causing pressure on American policymakers as a result.

If China ultimately believed the United States would fight for Taiwan directly, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping still decided to initiate a war, there is likely little that could be done to deter Volt Typhoon actors from trying to activate any available exploits against counterforce targets. The reason is straightforward. With direct fighting assumed, it is unclear what would prevent China from attempting to use all available tools to slow down the U.S. effort to defend Taiwan. The real solution, then, would be to focus on improving the resilience of the targets, actively removing malware, ensuring secondary and tertiary capabilities, and so on.

Deterring China from activating countervalue exploits is a bit more complex. One potential source of deterrence may simply be that China fears such disruptions would backfire. While it is possible, according to one analyst, “the [United States] might refrain from aiding Taiwan in times of crisis for fear of domestic disruption,” it is equally plausible that major attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure could backfire and galvanize the American public behind a robust response.

Another potential source of deterrence is “mutually assured disruption,” which National Security Advisor Waltz himself has alluded to. The logic here is that Washington could deter the activation of countervalue exploits associated with Volt Typhoon by threatening to impose equivalent costs on Beijing in cyberspace. Even if the United States sought to refrain from directly targeting civilian infrastructure, there are alternative options to include “holding something other than Chinese infrastructure at risk — something the Chinese value more highly (like, say, their control of information flows into China).” The real challenge here is that, to be effective, the United States would have to credibly signal such activity to China beforehand. While not impossible, this is a notorious challenge in cyberspace.

Implications

Many policymakers have been treating the cyber threats emanating from China, specifically Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon, as essentially the same. In turn, they are reaching for a similar set of policy tools to address them. As demonstrated, this is problematic. These threats represent different types of cyber operations in support of radically different strategic objectives.

Instead of lumping these threats together, policymakers would be more successful if they evaluated how they fit into distinct, longstanding concepts in international politics, whether it be espionage, warfighting, or deterrence and coercion. The fact that Salt Typhoon was carried out through cyber means does give rise to unique challenges and may suggest certain policy tools in response, but conceptually it is part of a broader umbrella of intelligence and counterintelligence. The same goes for Volt Typhoon. China’s cyber operational preparation of the environment is part of a broader strategic effort by Beijing to plan and build capabilities for a future military engagement with the United States. In turn, the United States should see Volt Typhoon through the lens of deterring conflict writ large with China, while preparing to be resilient and prevail if deterrence fails.

Become a Member

Erica D. Lonergan is an assistant professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Previously, she served as a senior director on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. She is the co-author, with Shawn W. Lonergan, of Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Michael Poznansky is an associate professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department and a core faculty member in the Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of In the Shadow of International Law: Secrecy and Regime Change in the Postwar World (Oxford University Press, 2020).

The views expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not reflect the policy or position of any U.S. government organization or entity with which they are or were previously affiliated.

Image: MSgt Jonathon Alderman via DVIDS.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Erica Lonergan · February 25, 2025

28. 'Propaganda Girls': The women who fought to break Axis powers morale - review

As Bonaparte said, "the moral is to the physical as three is to one." That was true in the 19th century, in WWII, and it is just as true today. Why aren't we investing sufficient resources in influence? And the irony is influence resources are damn cheap.

'Propaganda Girls': The women who fought to break Axis powers morale - review

Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS by Lisa Rogak reveals yet another untold chapter of the history of women in America.

By RIVKAH LAMBERT ADLERFEBRUARY 23, 2025 14:29

Jerusalem Post

The 2016 feature film Hidden Figures, based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book, introduced the previously untold story of three courageous and brilliant Black women mathematicians who worked for NASA in the 1960s facing racism, as well as sexism.

Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS by Lisa Rogak reveals yet another untold chapter of the history of women in America. This one involves four other women who went to work for the US government during World War II, creating psychological propaganda, known as “black propaganda,” designed “to break the morale” of the enemy Axis soldiers.

In her introduction to Propaganda Girls, Rogak explains that “In essence, black propaganda was a series of believable lies designed to cause the enemy soldiers to lose heart and ultimately surrender...” It consisted of pamphlets, radio broadcasts, fake newspapers, and other campaigns based on “lies, stories, and rumors” regarding the war.

Who were the Propaganda Girls?

The book is divided into four parts, each with a chapter focusing on one of the four women: Betty McDonald, Jane Smith-Hutton, Zuzka Lauwers, and Marlene Dietrich (yes, that Marlene Dietrich).

The women were hand-selected by General William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which Rogak identifies as “the precursor of today’s CIA.” Unlike most men of his generation, Donovan specifically sought to hire women. He was convinced that women “would excel at creating subversive materials.”

Before Donovan tapped her, Betty MacDonald was the society and women’s editor at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. She found this job less than professionally engaging, so she devoted her spare time to learning about Asian culture.

Zuzka Lauwers was born in Czechoslovakia. With a facility for languages, she eventually landed in the Czech consulate in Washington as a ghostwriter, before being hired by Donovan.

Jane Smith-Hutton, married to a diplomat, lived at the American embassy in Tokyo, where she and her family were held hostage for a time. In Tokyo, she became near-fluent in Japanese. That skill, and her desire for revenge, helped her in her work creating black propaganda aimed at Japanese soldiers.

The fourth of the Propaganda Girls was Marlene Dietrich, famous American entertainer and German expat who had great antipathy toward Nazi Germany. She wanted nothing more than to take down the Nazis.

For Rogak, the sexism deeply embedded in the culture in which these four unusual women operated is a significant part of the story. They loved their OSS work but were increasingly stymied by male decision-makers who tried to clip their creative wings, despite their effectiveness.

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She focuses on what they endured in the 1940s: low pay and low military rank in comparison to the contributions they were making; having to answer to male superiors who had far less experience in their areas of expertise; and ceaseless frustration at not being recognized.

Rogak characterizes MacDonald, Lauwers, Smith-Hutton, and Dietrich as women who “All had careers that were highly unusual for women in the 1930s and ’40s, and they all yearned to escape the gender restrictions of the day that dictated they are mothers and wives, or teachers or nurses if they absolutely had to work.”

After introducing the four women, the central part of the book describes in detail the black propaganda campaigns they undertook and the risky circumstances they found themselves in, along with the sexism they encountered.

In part four, Rogak devotes a chapter each to what happened to the women after the war. This section lacks the drama of the first three, reading somewhat like an undergraduate research paper, but it does tie up loose ends.

Lauwers was tasked with mounting a music festival in Salzburg, Austria, in the immediate aftermath of the war. She reunited with her parents in Czechoslovakia, moved frequently between Europe and the United States, and eventually settled into a fulfilling life with two serious partners.

Dietrich found the transition to civilian life emotionally challenging. Eventually, she returned to entertaining but always considered the work she did during WW II “the most important work I’ve ever done.”

MacDonald also suffered from a lack of direction and urgency in the immediate post-war period. As soon as she returned to the States, she had “the realization that the autonomy and independence that she had experienced for the last three years was over.”

Smith-Hutton, the only one of the four whose marriage survived the war, spent her war years in Paris as the wife of an American diplomat before returning to the US.

The book closes with an extensive bibliography and more than 250 endnotes. It is due to be released on March 4. 

The reviewer is a freelance journalist and expert on the non-Jewish awakening to Torah, happening in our day. She is the editor of Ten From The Nations and Lighting Up The Nations.

Jerusalem Post

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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'Propaganda Girls': The women who fought to break Axis powers morale - review

Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS by Lisa Rogak reveals yet another untold chapter of the history of women in America.

Who were the Propaganda Girls?